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Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

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Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#131

Post by dalyons »

Analemma_ wrote: post #9

I've been using FreeTaxUSA for a while now to do my taxes, and I like it very much. (If you use TurboTax or H&R Block or something, I strongly recommend giving FreeTaxUSA a look). I was sort of wondering if the IRS would just buy them wholesale and use that as the free file software, since it's already "finished" and making another one would be duplicated effort. But is there precedent for that, the government just b…

I gave FTuasa a go after seeing it mentioned here a lot. Unfortunately it seems the investment part is very manual compared to TurboTax. I have a couple of robotrader , brokerage accounts etc. on TurboTax it’s a few clicks and that’s imported, FTusa is tediously transcribing numbers off dozens of forms that I have no idea if I’m doing it right.

I reluctantly gave money to TT again.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#132

Post by [deleted] »

dpifke wrote: post #80
nlh wrote: post #14

This is only tangentially-related, but I know I'm asking the right audience: I switched, blissfully, away from Quicken/Quickbook/Xero/all that heavy crap to very simple and elegant textfile-based accounting (ledger/hledger) and it's been the best and most flexible accounting experience I've ever had. I finally feel completely in control of my companies' books. Is there an equivalently-blissful tax-filing software/ser…

With Beancount, I use metadata tags in my chart of accounts for the tax form and line number, e.g. 2017-01-01 open Expenses:GA:Insurance USD tax_form: "1040 Schedule C" tax_line: "15" tax_description: "Insurance (other than health)" I can then report my transactions based on the tax_form and tax_line attribute, which gets me much of the way there. I still have to do the math on derived lines on the forms, but this at…

[deleted]

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#133

Post by petsfed »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #123
tombert wrote: post #50

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…

Don’t you already get free filing below some income threshold?

Yes, and Intuit lost a court case recently because there was only 1 way to get to it, and it required following a series of dark patterns to do so.

I got ~$35 out of it, which was nice.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#134

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kdmccormick wrote: post #108
wolverine876 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an industry exists because of the government and it can be replaced by a public service, then it doesn't deserve to exist. It's a start, but I'd need to think of examples. I'd say if the government creates inefficiencies, such as for basic tax filing, it should remove them if possible regardless of the effect on businesses profiting from them. Off the top if my head, there could be cases where government makes a…

> I'd say if the government creates inefficiencies, such as for basic tax filing, it should remove them if possible The complexity of the US tax code is certainly inefficient from the perspective of someone trying to get through their taxes, but many economists would argue that it enables a very economically efficient way to soft-enforce policy and influence behavior without resorting to regulation and law enforcemen…

Most of the inefficiency comes from the implementation rather than the policy, and the use of an income tax rather than a consumption tax.

If you had a national VAT instead of a national income tax and the government wanted to subsidize e.g. solar panels, they would simply exempt solar panels from VAT and individuals wouldn't have to file anything, they would just pay less for solar panels because the seller wouldn't have to collect VAT.

The system we have now is unnecessarily complicated because the subsidy is essentially always for something you buy, but then you have to go and file paperwork to deduct it from your income tax. On top of that, then penalties have to work differently -- if you want to impose a penalty on cigarettes then you can't just change the amount of the existing VAT on that product, you need a whole new tax with a duplicative collections infrastructure.

The justification for this is nominally progressive taxation, but you could get a progressive effective rate curve just by giving everyone a fixed "standard refund" (i.e. a UBI) against an otherwise flat rate consumption tax.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#135

Post by tombert »

radlad wrote: post #109
tombert wrote: post #50

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/

Jackson Hewitt Online isn't terribly pricey (Cost me a total of about $25 last year), so that's what I've used for the last two years. Keep in mind that Jackson Hewitt Online is a different thing that the vanilla Jackson Hewitt

Still, I kind of feel annoyed that I have to pay any amount of money to do something legally required of me to avoid going to jail. I think the IRS should provide a free option for filing, and TurboTax/FreeTaxUSA/Jackson Hewitt would be forced to provide a better service than "the bare minimum".

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#136

Post by sys_64738 »

whatever1 wrote: post #101

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.

There are too many additions to the tax code beyond that. Really, if they cut away 95% of the cruft then it could be dramatically simplified. Everybody has their thing they hold onto for dear life in a tax code.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#137

Post by ghaff »

bigbillheck wrote: post #111
ghaff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list suggests that if you have a 1099 (which I assume is most people with meaningful savings), you probably won't qualify.

I think there are probably a lot fewer people with meaningful savings than you might think.

It looks like about half have brokerage accounts although some of those are probably just 401Ks and there's obviously a strong correlation with income levels.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#139

Post by Alupis »

happytiger wrote: post #52
Alupis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Same logic for health care?

People focus on the insurance side of health care in the US - but that ignores the reasons the system is so broken (Medicare + Pharmaceutical Companies).

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#140

Post by InitialLastName »

jjulius wrote: post #78

To clarify: This is not a full launch, it's just a "limited pilot" that will only be available in 13 states in 2024. Arizona California Florida Massachussetts Nevada New Hampshire New York South Dakota Tennessee Texas Washington Wyoming Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

By my count that's about 146 million people, so a notch less than half the US population.
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