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H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

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Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#161

Post by senior_james »

blackguardx wrote: post #53
senior_james wrote: post #40

The government would actually love this. Most people are ignorant of tax laws and would just sign a piece of paper to get all of their taxes done. It would be an instant pay raise because most people would never even know if they could write something off. It would also allow them to easily remove the ability to write anything off, without too many people complaining. What many people don't like to talk about is that…

Have you ever actually done your taxes by hand? The 1040EZ is supposed to take 7 hours. Back when I did paper taxes and couldn't do the 1040EZ, the 1040 long form took me about 20 hours to do, slightly beating the IRS estimate of 22 hours. The government has all the information about me. Why do I have to gather it all up and tell them again? A friend in Finland tells me it takes him 10 minutes to approve the tax docu…

"The 1040EZ is supposed to take 7 hours"

Huh?

I've had my business for a few years, but I did my 1040EZ by hand many times. It took at most, 3 hours. Most people have one job and you basically just copy all of the info you have from your W2 (which is provided by your employer).

"The government has all the information about me. Why do I have to gather it all up and tell them again?"

So does the government also have all of the info about the gas you write off or anything else specific about your life? If so, the surveillance state is getting pretty bad.

If not, then I will have to fill out the longer forms anyway.

If they don't and you just fill out a form and send it in, you are giving them more money than you should. The end result will be that poor and uneducated people will give more money to the government and the people that actually pay attention will be giving less.

I'm only looking out for the best interest of everyone. You seem to be fighting for the right to be lazy because you don't want to have to think about it, which never leads to anything good.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#162

Post by senior_james »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #46
senior_james wrote: post #40

The government would actually love this. Most people are ignorant of tax laws and would just sign a piece of paper to get all of their taxes done. It would be an instant pay raise because most people would never even know if they could write something off. It would also allow them to easily remove the ability to write anything off, without too many people complaining. What many people don't like to talk about is that…

It's not like you couldn't still go to Intuit or H&R Block if you didn't trust the IRS. There's literally no downside to the government providing this service.

Like I said, the downside is that most people are lazy and will just fill out the form and send it in because they don't want to deal with it or think about it. You can't get most people to do simple math.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#163

Post by JoshTriplett »

M_Grey wrote: post #65
JoshTriplett wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you believe in the Citizen's United decision or not, companies are still groups of people. People, alone or in groups, have the right to speak, and to petition the government.

Lets not pretend that a lobbying organization is somehow representing anything other than the company and its shareholders.

For clarity, I think this particular attempt at lobbying is terrible and they ought to be blasted for it publicly. That doesn't mean it should be illegal for a group of people to talk to the government about their interests, just that if those interests are counter to the interests of the general public then we should judge that accordingly.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#164

Post by mabbo »

__david__ wrote: post #159
mabbo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of what H&R Block sells is experience in filing taxes, not just knowledge of how to do it. I have complex multi-country taxes to file (Canadian living in Canada, but with some income the IRS says is American income). H&R Block have a guy who has handled this exact kind of tax filing hundreds of times before. If I make any mis-steps in filing, the IRS is going to demand I give them thousands of dollars. I'm not…

> Canadian living in Canada, but with some income the IRS says is American income… So in that case, I'm curious what the penalty is for not paying. Presumably the IRS doesn't have the power to garnish wages from Canadian banks…

I'm not really enthusiastic about finding out.

It was RSUs granted in 2012, while I lived in the US, that vested over 4 years (the last of which was 2016). That counts as 'American income'. After this year, I don't have to do this ever again and plan to start doing my own taxes.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#165

Post by refurb »

anigbrowl wrote: post #130

They've been doing this for years. When I grumble about capitalism this is the sort of thing that annoys me. People say government is bad because it doesn't have competition and is a van intrinsically violent monopoly, but here we see an example of private actors spending money to make government unresponsive or outright antagonistic to people's needs so as to profit by serving those needs. The argument goes on that…

* When I grumble about capitalism this is the sort of thing that annoys me.*

Is this a problem with capitalism or government? If a company tries to get the gov't to block competition, the correct response is "piss off".

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#166

Post by skylan_q »

problems wrote: post #113
gech wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But we also recognize that it's in the government's interest to maximize the tax we pay, and (ideally) it's in the tax preparers' interest to minimize the tax we pay. I don't buy this at all

What don't you buy about it? If a tax preparer doesn't give me the return I'm expecting, you can bet I'm going somewhere else or using different software the next year. And of course the government wants to maximize revenue - if they were given control over this they could easily do small UI tweaks that may result in significant increases in revenue.

How do you know that the tax filer is getting you the best outcome? You're outsourcing all that work to them anyways and everyone's situation is different so it's near impossible for people to discern.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#167

Post by SeanDav »

danielweber wrote: post #151
d3ad1ysp0rk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact anecdote for why Intuit would want to keep tax law complicated.

How do you think carryover losses of subchapter S corporations should be handled to make them easier?

The idea is to make it easier for the average person. Those involved with subchapter S corporations are probably not amateurs and are not the target audience.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#168

Post by coldpie »

arebop wrote: post #36
serg_chernata wrote: post #9

Is there anything we can do to fight back?

I would gladly match my tax prep fee with a donation to the counter-lobby, if one existed. Where can I buy tax-complexity-offsets?

Senator Warren has introduced bills in the past to simplify the tax filing process. I'll let you do the homework to figure out for which party you should vote to help this kind of legislation pass.

https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2016/04/13/elizabeth-wa...

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#169

Post by steego »

John23832 wrote: post #96
zhte415 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying who? Absolute transparency is needed of any lobbying, and does that happen? Non-perfect?

I agree, transparency is needed in lobbying.

We have more transparency than we've ever had. Transparency isn't the magic bullet. Many people are aware of the problem. We know who they special interests are and how much they contribute to each representative.

What's the plan on censuring representatives that don't represent us? This information isn't helping us change our behavior.

The problem is our representatives have developed a sixth sense that is fine tuned to be aware how their vote affects their donors. Special interests are outspending and out-strategizing us. They are organized and disciplined and we are divided and hopelessly emotional. They have full-time policy wonks that understand the issues, and most of us don't even understand the premises behind the issues.

Even with full transparency, most of us drown in the amount of information we have to process. Something has to come after transparency and most of us are clueless as to what we really need to do.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#170

Post by accountface »

berberous wrote: post #131
naftaliharris wrote: post #121

I'm surprised the article and comments haven't mentioned CreditKarma's tax solution yet, which is (actually) free. [1] Presumably their strategy is to take the users and data they get from offering free tax filing and use them to advertise lending products. I think that's a sustainable and politically feasible way to get free tax filing, actually; I expect that in ~5 years Credit Karma will have eaten a big part of T…

I have not used CreditKarma's tax product, but I've heard folks say that it calculates some things incorrectly. I think that's understandable for a brand new product, but I'd be cautious about using it this year if you don't (1) have a very simple return, (2) check their work against the IRS forms/instructions and/or (3) check against another product. (For those who don't want to give TurboTax or H&R money, I've been…

I tried to use their product but fell into a fringe case where I could claim my spouse as an exemption. It's literally one box and a calculation on a tax form, but their support told me I was basically SOL.

It's a nice product from a UX/UI standpoint (so usability issues to solve still), and I look forward to trying it again next year.

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