141–150 of 284 posts
The 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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When you look at the donations politicians receive and the ROI they produce you quickly realize that they are way too cheap. Politicians should ask for way more money so lobbying is not that incredibly profitable.
> Politicians should ask for way more money so lobbying is not that incredibly profitable. Except those corrupt politicians want lobbying to be profitable, so they can profit from it too. And if they ask for too much, they’ll just bribe the next guy or may even try to put their own in office. Can’t have that!
Kirsten Sinema got a job as a senior lobbiest after her short congressional stint.
Why won't a non-profit pick up the open-source code they released and modify it for 2026? Everybody seems to care about this issue so much, so this feels like an extremely high-impact thing to do.
The 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?
Direct File did have a lot of limitations, so I assume when they say “eligible taxpayers” that’s the total number of people that could have used Direct File, which is much less than 100% of taxpayers. Even then, I’d assume more than 10 million people in the U.S. have very simple tax returns.
Free file: government partners with private companies to offer free tax returns through their software for low income people. It's suspected a lot of people don't know about it, and just use the paid versions of filing software because you have to start the process on IRS.gov and dark patterns were employed by the snakes at Intuit et al. Hence "just 3%". Been around for decades.
Direct file: New program (since 2024) for eligible people to file directly for free with the IRS, no third party tax software middleman. Only half the states are eligible, income criteria, simple taxes only. 300,000 touted as a bigger number because it's a very new program.
Why won't a non-profit pick up the open-source code they released and modify it for 2026? Everybody seems to care about this issue so much, so this feels like an extremely high-impact thing to do.
There are already ways to file your taxes for free or very cheap, e.g. https://www.freetaxusa.com . It would be hard for anyone to compete with a free or very cheap competitor, even as a nonprofit.
The Trump Administration is hell bent on doing everything it can to benefit large corporations at the expense of the American people. Cash App offers free Fed and State filing and it's quite good (used it last year for the first time). Not many people know about it though.
So I had filed taxes with CreditKarma one year, and then the next year the CreditKarma tax service had no information about my previous filing. So I tried out the CashApp app, since I was going to have to fill out all the info anyway, and it actually did have my information from the previous year and I only had to change the new information, rather than re-enter all of my address and employer info, etc.
So I also recommend the CashApp app - it's free for basic taxes, it's not helping turbotax and their relentless lobbying, and it's really convenient if you already use CashApp. Of course, all of this is subject to change any specific year. Big companies gonna big company, after all.
Ok, fine, I’ll use TurboTax. I live and work abroad and Turbotax requires a US billing address to pay the fee of using Turbotax. :facepalm All the other self-service options do not work and I’m not sure if the risk is worth it to file it myself. To my fellow Expats, what are you doing?
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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!
Jon Oliver tried his best to bribe Clarence Thomas, but unfortunately, the prick turns out to only be for sale to one side. You might run into similar problems.
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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.…
As soon as the words “passthrough LLC” (or “farm” or “S-corp” or “itemize”) are on the table, it’s usually worth it to pay $1,000 for a professional, assuming your time is worth something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…