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IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
101–110 of 338 posts
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#102H&R Block and Intuit to begin their trial of "even bigger bribes to politicians"
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Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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IRS funding is objectively efficient. Every additional $1 spent on IRS budget brings in $5-9 of additional funding through enforcement. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444
The efficiency bar has to be particularly low when you consider that it is enforced by law. What incentives do they have to do anything differently when people HAVE to pay them or face consequences.
I'm glad they are at least now trying to have a semblance of customer service awareness.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
So in its initial form it is indeed a complete waste of tax payers money. Shocking.
If it gives feature parity with the existing solution, it seems fine as a start. At least we'll presumably be able to file on a .gov now instead of freefilefillableforms.com, which seems like it was chosen to be intentionally sketchy looking. Edit: actually looks like it doesn't reach parity with the existing free e-file system and only covers the simplest cases, and "the annual cost of a direct-file system could ran…
The high end estimate would be for 25 million households and would mostly go to customer service [0]. It may well be too high, but "absolutely absurd" doesn't seem fair.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why we still have the income tax system that we do. It’s a $14 billion a year industry. I’ve talked to people who work the lobbying system very hard. There’s lots of wining and dining to make sure no one messes with the complexity of the system. We need more people who are immune to lobbying in government positions. We’ll see how this goes.. depending on the next election cycle this will either get quashed qu…
> We need more people who are immune to lobbying in government positions. What we need to do is stop pretending people like that exist, and come up with a system that works despite people's self-interest, greed and corruption. Maybe what we have is the best we can do.
This is always my frustration when people suggest things for governments. You cannot design a government that relies on people being good. You have to design a government that highly discourages bad actors, make it easy to eject them, and operates while they exist. It's a crazy hard optimization problem and isn't going to work if people are just smart or good. And I never understand why people suggest fixing government by giving government more power and nothing else.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#106[flagged]
Not only will they, but Trump's Secretary of Treasury will order the IRS to cancel the program as soon as he's elected.
I get that people don't want to underestimate someone as bad as him being president again, but at the same time, he's not even going to be on the ballot in Colorado, he's pretty much already finished as a politician.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I heard that this sometimes takes them much longer to process the returns that way. Has that been your experience? One time I reproduced the forms in a spreadsheet following the instructions and it wasn't much different from doing the online wizards. I would have liked to mail it in but I just paid to e-file anyway.
My experience has been that it can be relatively faster. That is, the last time I filed online it took I think practically a year before they got to it (I think the year of the pandemic) I figure there's so few people filing by mail these days that they're able to process them faster than the huge amount of online filing. I'm guessing they're separate teams (online vs mail). However I have no idea. Regardless mailing…
The IRS just does some very simple checking and then mails your refund (or accepts your payment) - the actual processing/checking of the return can happen months if not years later.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unless you're dealing with foreign income, are a business, or do a lot of contract work for cash, I don't see much reason why the IRS can't just handle all the taxes automatically - apart from the fact that some company wants to charge me $150 a year to file my taxes and making sure that my tax situation (which would fit on a beer coaster otherwise) is as complicated as possible. I imagine there are heavy software…
I have no idea what "wash sale" is. I only heard that term when I was reading the help page in TurboTax, which I'm effectively forced to use. Seriously, I doubt there is more than 100k people in US that have this "wash sale" any year. I'm so tired of every time someone suggests automatic tax filling, there is always one guy bring up some tax term that 99.99% people never heard of. Sure, if auto tax filling doesn't so…
Beware the paradox of averages. I bet a lot more than 99% of people have some wrinkle with their return.
One person has a wash sale, another has some real estate stuff, another became disabled, another has child care stuff, another has education credits, etc etc etc.
Actually now I am curious how many people file the “simplest” return (wage only, standard deduction, and absolutely no other adjustments).
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#109I have a hard time understanding why the IRS doesn't at least have a basic web portal for individuals and businesses to do simple things like update addresses, send secure correspondence, check on the status of correspondence, file forms electronically, etc. A lot of paper forms and letters, human resources and time could be saved with such a system, even if it doesn't actually provide for any tax computations itself…
As someone from Mexico, it's honestly insane that our system works as good as it does compared to the US.
1. All my incomes are automatically filed. 2. Each month I say "yes this is correct" on the website, and pay immediately via any bank. 3. At the end of the tax year, the system calculates if they own me money automatically, I give it my bank account and in some days I have my return.
It even handles tax deductibles and everything.
Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
#110Shoutout to Code for America for getting the state filing system going in New York. That's a lot of potential.
Are there current or future opportunities to assist with remaining state integrations?