161–170 of 283 posts
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The real dark pattern is the ability of the state to put you in jail unless you fork over money.
The real dark pattern is the propagation of antisocial behavior that spreads the idea that you don't owe society anything.
The real dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.
I can't imagine how horrible a single captive solution from the IRS would be compared to one spawned by the competitive marketplace. Now why our tax code needs to be so complex that it requires software like Turbo Tax is certainly a fair question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real dark pattern is the ability of the state to put you in jail unless you fork over money.
... to pay for public services you're using? Roads, schools, firefighters? Of course, I'm not happy with plenty of other things my taxes pay for (Predator drones, e.g.), but I'd like to think that can be fixed via legislation, eventually.
Credit Karma does a good job providing free federal and state tax filing. Disclaimer: I work there but not on tax
The real dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.
But will the UX/UI actually be good and how will we hold them accountable? My city's site for filing is absolutely terrible and I'm surprised I can even make it through to the end and submit payment. I'm actually surprised they have online filing to begin with. I'd rather pay for good UI/X than a crappy experience that wastes even more of my time.
But return free filing is honestly the goal for most people and it already exists in many countries.
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Mate, even when you do pay for services, you're still getting your data sold to third-party vendors. So you might as well utilize companies that provide an actually good product.
Do the offline/desktop versions of TurboTax, etc do this? Not arguing, just surprised
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CreditKarma is 100% free for everything. I've used them the last two years without issue, although they dramatically improved the service this last year. It was a little rough year 1.
I want to try CreditKarma's free filing, but since its free, I'm the product, and i'm not sure what that means, when handing them all my tax info yet..
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... to pay for public services you're using? Roads, schools, firefighters? Of course, I'm not happy with plenty of other things my taxes pay for (Predator drones, e.g.), but I'd like to think that can be fixed via legislation, eventually.
And if I'm not using them?
The real dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.
Nah, you're missing the forest when looking at the trees. Go bigger. Why the hell is the tax code so damn complicated that it requires certified experts and special software to perform personal tax filings? I can see the case for a complex code for business taxes since there are many different industries that have different rules. But personal returns should never, ever have such complicated rules. And that doesn't m…
My response is:
>Nah, you're missing the forest when looking at the trees. Go bigger.
Why are we even having to file our own taxes? The IRS already checks everything. They have all the information that you enter into these systems (in fact, turbo tax has frequently had my W2 before my employer gives it to me, as well as many other documents).
So having us, or some middleman, doing it is double work. Let the IRS do it (because they determine if there is fraud or not), they send you a copy and you send it back either as is or with modifications.
If taxes are done this way who cares how complicated it is? (I'll hedge that in that it is harder to check the IRS's work, but I think less people care about this)
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But how can I incentivise people to do things like buy hybrid or electric cars, solar, etc without tax breaks, and how do I do tax breaks without complicated calculations based on laws pseudocode) and a bunch of other numbers?
I'm in the camp that there should be no incentives for taxes for anything. Similarly there should be no difference in filing married vs separately or with children. To me it just feels wrong to incentivise living a certain lifestyle by getting a discount at just existing. It is great when it incentivises the things you want, such as hybrid cars or something, but what would happen if someone wanted to give you a disco…
Whether or not we can imagine a world where buying a gasoline-powered car or private telecom is considered a social good is less of an issue than whether we want to be able to incentivize those things should they become necessary.