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Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

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Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#151

Post by pompino »

deprecative wrote: post #138
pompino wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that’s a common talking point, but that is not exactly true. they don’t know how many dependents you have, if you are eligible for certain tax credits, whether you use your home as a work location, etc., etc.

If only there were a way for you to tell the IRS how many dependents you have. Seems like we should just scrap the ability for folks to fill out anything and let Daddy Intuit do it for us since we're all so helpless with our taxy waxies.

You’re barking up the wrong tree. More than a third of people file their own taxes.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#152

Post by ndriscoll »

asadotzler wrote: post #121
colonwqbang wrote: post #85

> The Biden administration announced Friday that its first-of-its-kind free tax filing website... In the rest of the world in many places we have been filling taxes directly online for many years. Sorry Americans, you did not invent free electronic tax filing. You are at least twenty years late to the party.

We've had electronic filing for probably as long as any country, but in the US, no corporation gets left behind so financial services companies get to rip us off when we electronically file.

There's been a free e-file since 2009 according to archive.org. Looks like this was the selection of forms at the time:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090418011703/http://www.irs.go...

I've used it for years. It's just the paper forms with some auto-calculation built in. I've never had a company do my taxes for me so it's a little hard for me to even imagine the value-add for simple taxes. Presumably they ask for the same information that's on the form.

I imagine Intuit is still ripping us off behind the scenes even if it's free at point of use, but maybe they don't get a good deal and are happy to do it free/cheap as long as they can make it have a scary enough UX to get you to pay them instead.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#153

Post by pompino »

_mlbt wrote: post #144
pompino wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a specific country's tax system that you look up to as the ideal? I see often people claim that the US tax code sucks (nobody is going to defend it with the rising inequality), but there isn't any proposal about how exactly to enact the changes while still keeping the benefits of the tax code that apply to the disadvantaged. Also, I'd like to point out that the tax code has every type of federal tax, adminis…

I would propose that we enact a graduated income tax system starting at 0% for the economically disadvantaged. It is not the job of the tax code to do anything else for them. We already have a plethora of state, federal, and non-profit agencies and organizations that provide targeted aid to them and are far more effective than the IRS could ever hope to be. The money saved by simplifying the tax code and thus the IRS…

I hope you realize that these federal agencies are funded through revenue collection - i.e tax code.

Unfortunately, Your simplification isn't really a simplification.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#154

Post by exegete »

Not available in my state but am looking forward to if/when it becomes available. I do my own taxes with the free fillable forms site. I would rather use this direct file service if possible. State of NJ has a free online site but NY does not for non-residents so I end up mailing in a return for them. It’s silly really.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#155

Post by bobthepanda »

altdataseller wrote: post #90
nilamo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just withholding. Cost basis info on all stock market transactions are also provided to the IRS by your brokerage...

What about expenses for those that are self employed? What about rental income? What about expenses related to rental properties? Lots of things the government doesn’t know…

free-file is entirely voluntary. You can still submit the forms yourself if you want.

free-file is estimated to cover 47% of Americans. we fund public schools even though a significantly smaller proportion of Americans are children. you would have a hard time finding any government service that applies to 100% of people

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#156

Post by bedobi »

bananskalhalk wrote: post #140
bedobi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh plenty of Sweden see that as a huge invasion of privacy Sweden also doesn’t have secret ballot In Sweden, anyone can look up your address, phone number, social security number, your car registration etc etc This is not cool or desirable

Secret ballot was introduced 1866 in Sweden. I think we were the third country in the world to do so.

Sweden has never had secret ballot. The “Valmyndigheten” election authority themselves have criticized the lack of secrecy and general chaos with Sweden’s ballots. But what do they know? They only administer the elections.

Swedes have a highly developed superiority complex and ability to perform mental gymnastics about the flaws of their country and ways of doing things. No sane person from any other country in the world would consider a system where voters must, in public and under the active scrutiny of other voters and local election officials (who are themselves politicians and party members) pick ballots for the party you intend to vote for and then bring it into the “secret” booth. Any child or idiot can see that’s not secret other than in the most distorted and disingenuous sense of the word.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#157

Post by ForHackernews »

RiceRichardJ wrote: post #54
Barrin92 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we change the way the government is intimately entangled with our lives? I've lived in Sweden where taxes are not just automatically filed but every citizen can trivially look up anyone's tax returns and nobody ever saw it as the government being intimately entangled with anyone's life. Privacy violation would be to look into how and on what you spend your money, not that everyone pays their share of taxes. That tel…

Swedish views on privacy don’t necessarily apply outside of Sweden. Are income levels not deserving of privacy?

> Are income levels not deserving of privacy?

... No? I don't think so, anyway. Maybe if people understood how obscenely unequal our society is, it would go part of the way toward fixing that.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#158

Post by pessimizer »

philistine wrote: post #134
akira2501 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that you work for your employer isn’t a secret I would prefer if it was. It's even worse than that, the government has entitled itself to be a party to every transaction over $600, so even the self employed have to shoulder this unseemly burden. > Your salary isn’t a secret It is. It's a shared secret. Again, I would prefer if I didn't have to do this. My salary is not at all the same as my "taxable income…

There never was a point in the period of time when people filed taxes in the US that the government wasn’t entitled to know your salary. It used to take more time and effort to get the info, but better technology doesn’t change the game, it highlights that it wasn’t a « shared secret ». Your employer has a ton of paperwork to file related to your pay.

Only if you're defining "filed taxes in the US" as "filed income taxes in the US," which would make your statement redundant. The first income tax in the US wasn't until the Civil War, and only existed for the length of it. The "first peacetime income tax" didn't come until 1894, only applied to income over $4000 (2023: $126,000), and thus only to the top 10% of the population.

Even the constitutionality of an income tax was in question until 1913 and the 16th Amendment.

People today assume the past was a lot more surveilled than it was. The government (at any level) often didn't even have a record of people's births until they needed to interact with the government for some reason, even in the early 20th century. That was largely changed by Social Security, and people at the time and since complained that its foothold would begin a slippery slope of government intrusion into every aspect of their lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#159

Post by Gibbon1 »

thegrim33 wrote: post #14
tmountain wrote: post #8

It’s amazing that 54% of adults in the United States have a literacy below 6th grade level, but it is expected for the same population to have the financial literacy to file their taxes accurately. Going further, the IRS already knows the details of most people’s taxes before they file, yet everyone is expected to complete what amounts to a complex task for many people. I cannot fathom why it is still done this way.

I guess it was originally done this way because in the past people actually had some semblance of privacy and the government didn't actually know a great deal about people's income. Eventually, privacy was eroded away year after year to the point where the government now knows an extreme amount about each citizen. I guess I'd refrain the question - instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government know…

Up until WWII most working class people didn't pay federal income taxes.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#160

Post by _mlbt »

pompino wrote: post #153
_mlbt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would propose that we enact a graduated income tax system starting at 0% for the economically disadvantaged. It is not the job of the tax code to do anything else for them. We already have a plethora of state, federal, and non-profit agencies and organizations that provide targeted aid to them and are far more effective than the IRS could ever hope to be. The money saved by simplifying the tax code and thus the IRS…

I hope you realize that these federal agencies are funded through revenue collection - i.e tax code. Unfortunately, Your simplification isn't really a simplification.

Yes, the purpose of the IRS is revenue collection via federal income tax for funding the government with. Said funding can then be given to the agencies and organizations I mentioned in my previous comment.

Simplified tax code means less tax money is spent on administration overhead of the IRS itself and more money that can go to programs like WIC, SNAP, TANF, and other targeted programs that are more effective aid to the economically disadvantaged.

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