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TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

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Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#181

Post by [deleted] »

BeetleB wrote: post #174
steverb wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived through my parents being audited multiple times I am definitely afraid of the IRS boogey man. Merely dealing with an audit (even if everything you id was correct and above board) can be extremely stressful and time consuming. My parents also thought their CPA was really good an knew what they were doing. Turns out that even CPAs screw up sometimes. :-)

I've dealt with the IRS. It was a major pain. Ridiculous pain. They were contesting some education credits some years after graduation. Showed proof of payments to the university, but they responded with "Well how do we know you were paying for education - you could have been paying for things like parking?" They kept saying "Send us this doc and you'll be good." We'd get the doc, send it to them, and they'd say it's…

[deleted]

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#182

Post by dizzant »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #46
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And yet what am I going to do but use turbo tax again. The perceived risk and effort of using a non-automated system to fill them out doesn't seem worth the cost. I'd suggest FreeTaxUSA.com as an alternative. Federal is always free, and state taxes are ~12/state. I don't have anything obscure about my taxes, and their forms indicate they can handle much more complicated situations than I have. I've used them for 3 y…

Why not use the official IRS free file forms?

I tried Free File Fillable Forms last year on principal, but I ran into issues in two areas:

1. reporting scholarship income (goes on the line beside box 1 and nowhere else), and 2. state taxes are not supported, and my state does not have an equivalent service.

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#183

Post by fatnoah »

wccrawford wrote: post #13
fatnoah wrote: post #3

I totally agree that making you pay to file when it should be free is scummy, but the linked article completely ignores that the first non-ad result is from the IRS page on how to file your taxes for free.

No it doesn't. Keep reading the article and they cover that.

They do, but perhaps the IRS has since changed things, since what I see on that link is not what is pictured in the article. (Ok, I see the article is from 2019, which is why it's so different)

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#184

Post by justin66 »

chrisfinazzo wrote: post #153
THE_PUN_STOPS wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can thank Grover Norquist[1] for that. The Taxpayer Protection Pledge [2] that he promulgates to US republican lawmakers is the primary mechanism though which those legislators justify blocking simplification and streamlining of tax filing. If it's easier for people to pay taxes the government will probably ask for more cash if we implement those systems, right? Therefore it must be blocked according to the pledg…

Theoretically, the ideas he's talking about make sense. If say, you're a single person w/ no dependents who doesn't itemize making the process much simpler is attractive. However - as Ted Cruz showed everyone - being able to do your taxes on something the size of a postcard is only possible if just about every specific deduction is cut out. Once people saw that, it was DoA. Also, while I'm here, can someone explain w…

> Theoretically, the ideas he's talking about make sense.

You'll want to be very clear about which of his ideas "make sense." You're talking about the guy who equates estate taxes with the Holocaust.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145298...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/01/06/o...

> Also, while I'm here, can someone explain what was supposed to replace the IRS in Cruz's plan?

It wasn't meant to be good government, or even tenable government. It was an idea designed to appeal to stupid people. That is all.

(The failure of such a stupid idea to actually work or be implementable could be spun politically. The spin wouldn't have to be especially plausible, either, because, you know... stupid people)

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#185

Post by _huayra_ »

minikites wrote: post #4

Imagine if the USA was like most other developed nations where the government just sends you a receipt for you to verify and your taxes are otherwise taken care of for you. Instead we have Intuit lobbying to make it as difficult as possible, aided by Republicans who want the process to be as unpleasant as possible so people begin to loathe the very concept of taxation (This isn't hyperbole, Grover Norquist and his nu…

It gets even worse if you are a US citizen abroad. The amount of financial clout means the US can bully other countries into bending to their laws (FATCA) and citizenship-based (global) taxation means I have to shill out several hundred bucks to some specialized accountant just to avoid spending several weekends tabulating things and staying up-to-date on the law changes of the US and my current country :(

If the US wants to improve its image abroad, joining the rest of the world (well, except Eritrea....) and doing residency-based taxation would mean that whenever a US expat is asked what they think about the US (e.g. by someone looking to go there for work opportunity, education), they wouldn't unleash a littany of dire warnings about the pesky taxation issues. My answer is always "yeah if it'll help your career I guess get in the H1B lottery, but be very careful to not pick up that green card or you'll be royally screwed for a looong time to come".

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#186

Post by mathgladiator »

Given all the importing it does from the variety of finance places, what they charge is reasonable. It all depends on your opportunity cost and value of your time.

I do agree that most people really don't need it, and they need to simply report their wages and submit an 1040EZ.

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#187

Post by spullara »

cycomanic wrote: post #145
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And yet what am I going to do but use turbo tax again. The perceived risk and effort of using a non-automated system to fill them out doesn't seem worth the cost. I'd suggest FreeTaxUSA.com as an alternative. Federal is always free, and state taxes are ~12/state. I don't have anything obscure about my taxes, and their forms indicate they can handle much more complicated situations than I have. I've used them for 3 y…

Here in Sweden I go to the tax office website, log in, have a brief look at that all my salary has been correctly entered (I have yet to encounter that it hasn't) add if I possibly want to deduct some extra things (also very uncomplicated), go to file and click send (the whole thing can even be done on mobile) . The process typically takes 20min max, Australia was quite similar. I'm always amazed by tax systems which…

If your taxes are easy in Sweden / Australia they would be easy in the US.

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#188

Post by yboris »

gwright wrote: post #99
suifbwish wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And tell me again why lobbying is legal and people are marching to protest 100 yo statues but NOT lobbyinng? People in the US dumbfound me at how willing they are to accept public corruption while they claim the moral high ground over social issues that are trending

> And tell me again why lobbying is legal The 1st Amendment: Congress shall make no law [...] abridging [...] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This is the core idea, but obviously the concept of "lobbying" embodies a lot more than just assembly and petitioning in current usage. I do think it is important to realize that we do have a right to ad…

Giving money or paying for a dinner doesn't seem like "assembly and petitioning".

It is illegal to bribe a cop. It doesn't seem like "a clever loophole" to buy the police department new equipment - it still seems like a bribe to me.

There's no legal reason we can't craft law to be different than it currently is, closing these "loopholes". Campaign finance reform (publicly financing campaigns and limiting campaign spending) would be a great step.

Re: TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)

#189

Post by glsdfgkjsklfj »

pwg wrote: post #171

There is also OpenTaxSolver: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ Which, if it works for you, is both free and open source.

interesting project. It never showed up on my searches. thank you for sharing.

Curious tech choices. Coded in C. Deal with raw column numbers as the paper form instead of meaningful aliases. guess it makes it easier to implement at first from the forms but might make it harder when the form updates/add lines.

uses a special format raw text file as input. this is a pragmatic as it can get i guess.

some bold choices overall. i think i like it.

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