111–120 of 350 posts
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On the other hand, that's a whole lot of people -- probably almost everyone who is not a homeowner, and quite a few who are.
That list suggests that if you have a 1099 (which I assume is most people with meaningful savings), you probably won't qualify.
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Just as in tech we build things that will get refactored and thrown away, it should be expected certain private sector components might be eventually deprecated when government steps in to provide as a public good.
> it should be expected certain private sector components might be eventually deprecated when government steps in to provide as a public good I support many public goods, including this one, but they are a tool with appropriate uses just like private enterprise is. I don't want operating systems to be a government-provided 'public good'. Also, I think freedom is the core, but not only, value here, including in commer…
Some things should not be privatized. The government allowing corporations to profit off of a civic duty like taxation, while offering no free public alternative, just anoints a handful of corporations with the gift of extracting profit from a mandatory governmental process. You should not be required to understand the intricacies of tax code, or pay for someone who does, just to file your taxes as required by law.
If a criminal has the right to be provided a public defender, then every American with an income should have the right to be provided with public tax preparation service from the same government that mandated tax collection in the first place.
If an entire industry can be killed by a public service, it probably didn't deserve to exist in the first place.
It was created by a public service. It would be better if they'd just made a rule that those with super simple tax affairs just didn't need to file, as we have in the UK. But there's probably no pork in just making things better.
Why does the average American have to file taxes? You know my W2 you know my family members. Just send out the withhold amount to my employer.
I agree it's probably a bit much for most people though and not filing should be akin to not reporting anything else and the IRS should automatically calculate your return and mail a check or a bill if you owe.
One thing I really want to see is an official form where if you answer all the questions, to the best of your knowledge correctly, protects you from liability for incorrectly filing your taxes. End of the day with TurboTax and co, you, as expected, get a "not our system, not our problem" type response when dealing with the post-filing ramifications. There seems to generally be a lot of "I'm not sure if I did it right…
In practice, it's not really needed. The thing is (and I realize that it's not the general perception) if you sincerely try to file your taxes and you screw up, the IRS will generally work with you to fix things. Sure, if you go all sovereign-citizen/Wesley Snipes and refuse to acknowledge taxes they'll kick in the door and take all your stuff. But if you accidentally report select head-of-household instead of single, and you can explain why you did, the IRS won't ruin your life.
This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially lower-income people. The private companies have demonstrated pretty clearly that they will do everything they can to avoid people actually having free tax filing, and while ~$50-100 might not seem like a ton of money, keep in mind that at the current United S…
FWIW, FreeTaxUSA[0] is much cheaper than Intuit and has worked great for me the past few years. I find it slightly easier than TurboTax, in fact. [0] https://www.freetaxusa.com/
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The government could theoretically make anything a public service; that standard doesn't distinguish between one industry and another. I support the IRS's new service, as a general matter (i.e., without knowing details), but you raise a serious issue.
Ehh I can see GP's point though, 'can' comprises public opinion, taxpayer money; you can (try to) nationalise internet service provision say, wiping out ISPs, but it'll be a political issue and need support.
The reason public tax filing software makes sense is that the government imposes this cost on the public so the government should collect the money to pay for it in the usual way (i.e. from taxes paid in proportion to ability to pay) instead of imposing a fixed fee on everyone.
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I disagree. If anything, this will compel the tax preparation software companies to get even better than before, and offer an increased value proposition. Competition benefits the consumer, and for a long while there's been limited, mostly fixed competition (via Brand awareness mostly). FreeTaxUSA is amazing, and cheap, but it does not yet have the brand power the incumbents do. It's unlikely the IRS offering will be…
Lobbying by the tax prep companies is a big part of how it got so byzantine in the first place.