I’m currently making my way through a video series on Ancient Rome. Apparently, there were times when Rome contracted out the right to collect taxes from certain regions. So businessmen would bid on this, and the winner then had a limited time when they could go out and collect the taxes. If they managed to collect more than what they paid for the bid, that was their profit. It’s easy to see how this was heavily abused, and these “publicans” were hated by the people. They’re even referenced in the Bible; “sinners and publicans”. How long before the IRS considers this arrangement?
Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
131–140 of 284 posts
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe lobbyists should be punished by having their skin fully tattooed blue like smurfs. This way, you’d have to really be into lobbying to suffer the tattoo pain and permanent branding.
Lobbyists aren't the problem. They are doing what they are paid to do. If you donate to a large charity, there is a good chance some of that $ goes to lobbying, as it should. (Presumably you want the issues goy care about to be fixed!) If you work at a large company, 100% chance it lobbies, for good reason. Large employers lobby for better mass transit (because parking garages are expensive), more housing (because it…
This is a misleading characterization of the issue here. Let me pull up another very relevant analogy here. Let's say that you visit a government office for a driving license. Should you pay a bribe to the official? You are a responsible adult, after all. Bribes are needed for everything from housing permits to your kids' food assistance. How is it bad when it gets good things done?
Is this how you reason about corruption in government service? Unlike your argument about about lobbying, the problem is very conspicuous here - you're supposed to get those services without paying anything beyond the nominal service charges. They're your rights in an society where you already pay taxes to fund them. The government officials are already being paid with your tax money to do this job. What's even worse? If such loose and open-ended bargaining is permitted for basic essential services, then the only ones who will get those services will be the ones with money, not the ones who need it. Your housing permits and your kids' food assistance will become increasingly costlier and harder goals to achieve. That's why bribes are illegal.
If you look at this scenario carefully, it isn't much of an analogy. It's exactly the same situation, but with different players! When politicians debate public policy, the only criterion should be the public interests - because the public are the primary stakeholders in a democracy, and it's the utilization of their tax payments that these politicians are debating. Those politicians are supposed to be the people's 'representatives' who are elected and paid to listen to their constituents and lobby on their behalf. The public shouldn't have to 'lobby' with them too, especially for basic essentials like nutrition, national parks or tax filing!
What you call 'lobbying' in the US is known as 'political corruption' in most of the rest of the world. It's just a weasel word used to underplay the seriousness of such corruption. And as I pointed out earlier in my analogy, the rich ones outcompete the majority public here too. It's abundantly clear that even town councils favor big corpos even in the face of loud vocal opposition from the majority of their constituents. It's clear how much special treatment these professional grifters called 'lobbyists' get when they walk into the town hall just minutes before the discussion of a topic, while the town's people have to wait there for one and a half days without proper food, water or sleep in order to speak a few words in opposition. This is what happens when you legitimize corruption with cute terms like 'lobbying'.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have a unreasonably complicated return, you need absolutely no knowledge of tax law. It's all just "take the number from box X on form A and write it in box Y of form B."
Yes. I've used Free filllable forms several times. For basic tax situations, and even mildly complex ones, the problem isn't so much that it is hard as that it is very tedious. It involves reading a lot of instructions, with many references to other documents and other sections. It involves copying a lot of numbers from one place to another, and doing basic math on them to get a new one. It could be improved a lot ju…
> It could be improved a lot just by automatically calculating more fields, and adding more of the "worksheets" that are in the instructions into the forms so it can calculate those for you.
It already does this. The form validation checks that you have filled in the required fields and on most forms about half of the field values are not user-editable and instead auto-calculated from the other half.
It also looks for the required related forms you should have attached. The worksheets are another matter and aren't required to be attached, so they aren't part of the validation. It's assumed that you have read the instructions and done the worksheets elsewhere, although you certainly can attach them anyway.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#134Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#135Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
This is true even of some third world countries like Sri Lanka (where I live). There is a web-based system called RAMIS (Revenue Administration Management Information System). Any taxpayer can log in using their tax identification number and file their taxes.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am surprised no one has started a go fund me to make a fund just to bribe politicians to fix tax filing. It would be cost effective VS paying for tax prep!
The average HNer, who is fairly literate and well-informed about tax-prep, tends to misunderstand the situation. Using tax preparation software is the cheap (or free!) alternative to what millions of Americans are doing. It was a change for the better for people who didn't do their own taxes. A regular person's taxes can always be done electronically for free, or if they really want, for $20-$100 through tax prep sof…
I'd like to defend the notion of using a CPA a bit. I started using one when I became a partner in a passthrough LLC. I was now self-employed and was responsible for paying taxes on the businesses income as well as my own personal income. Filing that first year was incredibly stressful and time consuming, and I came to the conclusion that sometimes the right thing to do is to hire someone who knows what theyre doing.
Your post paints accountants as con-men, swindling people and promising "loopholes". Maybe some are, but they do provide a valuable service, especially if your tax situation is non-trivial.
I would love for the tax code to be simplified enough that I don't feel compelled to hire someone who put in the work to understand it, but that's simply not the case right now.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#137Money well spent https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-makers-turbotax-gave-trum...
I thought we were draining the swamp >:(
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#138The article touts the ~300k users of direct file as a big number, and the “just 3% of eligible tax payers” used free file as a small number.
Wouldn’t the 3% number come out yo millions of people?
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember, Americans have to file taxes separately to the State and Federal government. The Federal government has little authority to dictate State taxes. The paperwork is in part a coordination problem between the State and Federal governments. Basic taxes are trivial in the US if you just work to live, it is essentially one page. However, there is an extremely long and fat tail where the government has no way of kn…
If they genuinely can't work out what you owe, why bother paying it at all? Shouldn't there be a massive tax evasion problem?
There is actually a pretty massive tax evasion problem. Or at least the IRS is pretty sure there is, but they don’t have the resources to go after even a small fraction of them. The only thing that keeps people honest is the worry that if they lie, the IRS might already know (based on e.g. 1099 reports that go to the IRS), or they’ll get audited (which actually happens very infrequently).
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#140The article touts the ~300k users of direct file as a big number, and the “just 3% of eligible tax payers” used free file as a small number. Wouldn’t the 3% number come out yo millions of people?
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