Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 240 posts

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

#171

Post by bprieto »

Maarten88 wrote: post #99

In the Netherlands we have had this for years. You login with the tax agency and download a pre-filled tax form. Wages and Income Tax is pre-filled, as are Bank savings and morgages. The pre-filled form is complete for over 90% of people. The 10% for who it is not can add or correct things that our IRS may not know correctly (i.e. foreign holdings or bitcoins). You then digitally sign and submit it. It's quite easy t…

It's mostly the same in Spain. Our IRS equivalent sends you a draft that you can approve digitally. If you have something to add or change, there is an online form that you can pre-load with the government data and then edit anything you need. You sing it digitally and you're done.

Before that, there was a market for tax advisors that filled taxes for ordinary people, but it's gone. Only rich people or people who own complex business or investments need an advisor to fill their taxes now.

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

#172

Post by redthrow »

smnrchrds wrote: post #114
jawns wrote: post #74

Because of the complexity of tax regulations, I don't think coming up with a competing free/open-source/nonprofit tax preparation service is the right answer to this problem. Let's consider the positions of all sides: * The professional tax preparers are worried that they're going to lose business if the government assumes the bulk of the tax preparation work. * We as taxpayers would prefer that the government pre-fi…

We (almost) have this in Canada. CRA (our version of IRS) has an Auto-fill [0] option allowing the tax preparation software to import most commonly-used data after authorization. There are some good free tax preparation software, my favourites being SimpleTax (online, web-based) and StudioTax (offline, with option to file digitally or print the completed forms for paper filing). It typically takes me less than 15 min…

SimpleTax.ca is great. I think they were initially run by just 4 people (Accountant, Designer, Programmer, and Sales).

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

#173

Post by 8ytecoder »

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 had issues with CreditKarma. The problem I faced was most likely an issue specific to me and my state. Having said that, their lack of response is a major put off. It's time like these when you need a response in a reasonable amount of time. (As a matter of fact, they are yet to respond - weeks after I figured I'll just file directly)

For others in CA, FTB's free tax filing tool works just fine.

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

#174

Post by gpawl »

mikeash wrote: post #14
roesl027 wrote: post #3

In this alternative solution, the government does your taxes, so instead of paying a company/accountant to do it, our taxes / the deficit will pay for it. Someone has to do the work, and if it's not these companies, it will be the IRS. I'd be in favor of simplifying the tax code so everyone could file their own return with confidence!

The work is already being done. Try putting some incorrect numbers into your tax return this year. Sometime after you file, you'll probably get a letter informing you of the mistake, telling you how much your actual tax liability differs from what you filed, and either a check or a bill for the difference.

IRS checks your math and makes sure all the reports (your copy vs employer/bank/vendor copy) match. They won't tell you which deductions you are supposed to take.

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

#175

Post by Dunan »

Maarten88 wrote: post #99

In the Netherlands we have had this for years. You login with the tax agency and download a pre-filled tax form. Wages and Income Tax is pre-filled, as are Bank savings and morgages. The pre-filled form is complete for over 90% of people. The 10% for who it is not can add or correct things that our IRS may not know correctly (i.e. foreign holdings or bitcoins). You then digitally sign and submit it. It's quite easy t…

Japan is like this, only most regular employees never have to do a thing. Our employers take care of everything and our December pay packets are adjusted so that the correct amount of tax for the year has been paid. Banks also take tax out before paying interest to account holders.

You can also go to a tax office sponsored by your city hall and have a preparer assist you at no extra charge.

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

#176

Post by nightski »

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?

In my mind move to a consumption tax with pre-bate (aka FairTax) and remove corporate income taxes altogether.

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

#178

Post by jandrese »

mikeash wrote: post #11
John23832 wrote: post #4

It's never wrong for businesses to lobby for their interests. It's wrong when our elected officials bend to those business interest when it goes against the public interest.

I completely disagree. It's absolutely wrong for a business to lobby for their interests when it harms others. This is little different from dumping toxic waste into the local reservoir. That would be wrong even if it were legal. Obviously, a lot of business don't really care about right and wrong, and so they'll still do it. But we can condemn it.

Asking people to act against their own interests voluntarily never works in the long term. It is safer to assume that businesses will act in self serving ways. Where we currently fall down is with legislators completely failing their mission of protecting the public. Your congressmen shouldn't be representing corporate interests, in a capitalist society their interests will always be well represented. The congressmen should be protecting the people who don't have the money to represent their own interests. That's one of the most important jobs of government in a capitalist economy--to prevent the wealth from accumulating entirely at the top as will otherwise naturally happen. When government fails at its job you end up with times like the Guided Age, which can typically only be corrected with massive social upheaval or devastating war.

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

#179

Post by jandrese »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #145

Every time I read that Intuit is lobbying against making Tax filing free and easy, I feel immensely grateful that Indian tax filing is simple and free. Yes, we might lack in 24x7 electricity or the first world infrastructure, but our tax filing mechanism is simple! I hope that the US makes this change to their tax process.

People in India pay their taxes? That's news to me.

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

#180

Post by jandrese »

BrandonM wrote: post #156

For anyone who can program (including spreadsheets!), it's not all that hard to file your own taxes the old-fashioned way. To do it digitally, just use https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ and start with a 1040. Read each line carefully and go from there. The IRS has tons of great resources, and you can even call them up. Each form has a companion instruction booklet (online PDF), and sometimes those instructions r…

> it's not all that hard to file your own taxes the old-fashioned way

> Each time, it has taken me a full 12-16 hours

You have a strange definition of "not that hard".

This is exactly my experience trying to do it the old fashioned way. The IRS's documentation is written in accountant speak so deciphering what each means is an effort and all of the time it takes adds up. Who else uses the word "schedule" to mean "form"? And then there are so many places where it talks about "qualifying" this or that without telling you how you know if something qualifies.

And that's before you get to the nightmare if you own stocks. My wife inherited some telecom stocks from her grandmother. Her grandmother got them as part of her paycheck when she worked at AT&T. Unfortunately she didn't keep any of the original documentation for them (my wife had to track down the stock management companies and get them to reprint the certificates). These stocks were then of course split across all of the baby bells and merged and split a ton of different ways over the years. Then one of the companies merges and we get a payout for a fractional amount of a share and have to calculate the strike price of the stock for the sale.

As an average person this seems like an impossible task. We just enter 0 and pay a ton of extra tax because how in the hell are we supposed to do that calculation? As far as I can tell we can never sell these stocks.

Post reply on HN