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Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

nytimes.com

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Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#101

Post by dragonwriter »

1971genocide wrote: post #6

As an non-american this baffles me. Why is there so much distrust towards the government, police, and military in US ? Isn't the US the oldest democracy ? Society is built on trust - once that doesn't exist then nothing gets done.

> Why is there so much distrust towards the government, police, and military in US ?

Well, for one thing because certain factions (heavily represented, oddly enough, in government, including the police and military) actively promote that distrust to get more power for themselves. This doesn't seem like it would work, but it has more than one would think.

> Isn't the US the oldest democracy ?

US politicians, especially recently, have taken to claiming that a lot, but you'd probably have to construct a very special definition of democracy for that to be even arguably true.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#102

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #14

People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees. The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the money in the first place. Lots of people want to make paying taxes painful, so once a year you have to spend hours facing the reality of how much money the government is taking from your paycheck.[1] Intuit just jumped on the bandwagon.…

> People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees.

No one has says Intuit controls the government. Some people have said Intuit is a special interest that heavily, and successfully, lobbies the government on this one issue, which isn't the same thing as controlling the government.

> The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the money in the first place.

No, I won't. As long as I'm still seeing the deductions on every paycheck, and the amount I end up paying at the end of the year, I'm going to remember that I had, and paid, the money.

All dealing with the headache of filing taxes does is give me reason to be upset at the incompetence of the decisionmakers mandating that wasteful and inefficient process, which at least temporarily surpasses and overwhelms any frustration I have about the amount of tax paid. (Given the number of people who pay extra money for tools, services, etc., to mitigate the pain of tax filing, I don't think that's an uncommon feeling, either.)

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#103

Post by dragonwriter »

_asummers wrote: post #23
1971genocide wrote: post #6

As an non-american this baffles me. Why is there so much distrust towards the government, police, and military in US ? Isn't the US the oldest democracy ? Society is built on trust - once that doesn't exist then nothing gets done.

America was built because we rebelled from our government via violent revolution. The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Whether this attitude should be so pervasive is another discussion, but that's where the seed is from.

> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment).

The original text of the Constitution was written by people tired of the failings of a weak government and wanting to replace it with a much stronger one. The bill of rights, including the 2nd Amendment, was written to mitigate the fears of a significant but somewhat less prominent faction that feared that without the express boundaries it provided, a stronger central government would become too strong.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#104

Post by rmxt »

rayiner wrote: post #14

People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees. The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the money in the first place. Lots of people want to make paying taxes painful, so once a year you have to spend hours facing the reality of how much money the government is taking from your paycheck.[1] Intuit just jumped on the bandwagon.…

I think that saying "lots of people want to make paying taxes painful" is quite a bold assumption, and it works all too nicely with the argument that Intuit is merely riding along with public sentiment. The reality is that the bottom 50% of tax filers in the United States have a federal tax rate of about 3%. [1] That isn't too much to get worked up about, and certainly not worth the punishment of needing to deal with complicated tax forms that can otherwise be completely between employer and government. I can't find a statistic that backs up my instinct here, but considering that 56% of individual returns were filed by preparers [2], I would posit that most of these 3% tax rate filers pay someone to do their taxes, such that they are hardly aware of the "reality" of their tax situation. Why would these people want to continue paying Intuit or HR Block or whomever for something that can (and should) be completely automatic?

A more accurate assumption might be that "lots of people [with money to throw around] want to make paying taxes painful [so that they can continue being employed/acting as a middle-man in an industry that would otherwise be rendered obsolete by advances in technology]." See this comment [3].

[1] http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-inco...

[2] http://www.irs.gov/uac/SOI-Tax-Stats-Tax-Stats-at-a-Glance

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9381549

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#106

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

maxerickson wrote: post #18
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #9

If it came with some sort of indemnity from audit penalties, and as long as I could amend or re-file with my own calculated return, yes.

Do you mean indemnity against errors in the return, or would you also include indemnity against missed information? (The latter could conceivably include information that a taxpayer intentionally sought to hide from the IRS)

Indemnity against mistakes made by the IRS for sure; against the taxpayer intentionally hiding income, not so much. Then there is the whole problem of determining intent, but that's already a problem.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#107

Post by lkbm »

mannykannot wrote: post #90
acheron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else said that elsewhere in the thread, and I disagreed there, too... it's funny how people can look at the same situation and come to completely opposite conclusions. But to me it looks as though the entire system is designed to hide how much people pay in taxes. Almost everybody pays via automatic withholding so they never see the money in the first place; the defaults are designed so that people over-withh…

You have a point - it could be worse, but automatic withholding is not likely to go away, because the government needs the cash flow, and even most fiscally conservative politicians tacitly recognize this. I think the the emotional impact is important: preparing a return is still burdensome, even if not as bad as it could be, and that adds to and reinforces the pile of negative emotions associated with taxation.

Automatic withholding is also really important for taxpayers, as few people are fiscally responsible enough to save up the money throughout the year on their own. People end up living paycheck to paycheck regardless as to whether they're earning 20k/yr, 50k/yr, or 100k/yr, so sudden expense of several thousand dollars, even one they knew was coming, would be seriously damaging to their financial stability.

I've tried telling people to save even just $50/mo. until they've built up a three month cushion, and they insist they can't afford that. You wanna try convincing them to also set aside a few hundred bucks a month for taxes?

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#108

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

masklinn wrote: post #24
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #9

If it came with some sort of indemnity from audit penalties, and as long as I could amend or re-file with my own calculated return, yes.

> If it came with some sort of indemnity from audit penalties Not really possible, after all you may have income streams you must declare which the IRS is not immediately aware of, and failure to declare those would be an audit failure. > and as long as I could amend or re-file with my own calculated return, yes. If it's anything like most of the developed world (which I'd expect), the tax authority's automated syste…

Of course it's possible. It may not be likely.

>...the tax authority's automated systems simply pre-fill the declaration with what they know,

That's the minimum that they ought to do, disclose what they know, and guarantee that they haven't provided you with incorrect information.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#109

Post by lkbm »

acheron wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #14

People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees. The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the money in the first place. Lots of people want to make paying taxes painful, so once a year you have to spend hours facing the reality of how much money the government is taking from your paycheck.[1] Intuit just jumped on the bandwagon.…

I would contend that's the opposite of what happens: most people get their taxes automatically withheld so they never saw the money in the first place, and then get a small refund after filing. If "we" wanted people to actually see how much money they were paying in taxes, we'd end automatic withholding.

Yeah, I just now looked up how much I was actually paying in withholding, because I seriously had no idea. I know how much I had to pay when I filed this year, and how much I've gotten in refunds in past years, but I couldn't have told you within a 100% margin of error what actual withholding was without checking.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#110

Post by harryh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #102
rayiner wrote: post #14

People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees. The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the money in the first place. Lots of people want to make paying taxes painful, so once a year you have to spend hours facing the reality of how much money the government is taking from your paycheck.[1] Intuit just jumped on the bandwagon.…

> People saying "Intuit controls the government" are missing the forest for the trees. No one has says Intuit controls the government. Some people have said Intuit is a special interest that heavily, and successfully, lobbies the government on this one issue, which isn't the same thing as controlling the government. > The IRS doesn't compute your taxes and send you a bill because then you'll forget you ever had the m…

Do you think it's possible that other people might have a different emotional reaction from you if their taxes were withheld/calculated/paid in a less painful manner?
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