Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit • Hacker News Board

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#181

Post by jfengel » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

KorematsuFred wrote: post #153

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap “ProPublica has long detailed how Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and other companies have worked against making tax preparation easier and less costly. They have lobbied to ban the IRS from offering free, simple tax filing. And they have deceived customers who should qualify for the Free File product.”

I find this criticism somewhat weird. It is very common for companies or even individuals to promote and support policies that benefit themselves. Intuit is seeking self interest here. But why would IRS and our elected representatives cave in ? Are these people so clueless or unethical that they do not care about their constituents anymore ? And if that is the case I don't see how anyone can bell the intuit's cat.

They're capitalizing on a generalized anti-government and anti-IRS sentiment. It's not difficult for them to convince representatives that the IRS would do it badly, and it should be left up to the free market.

They made, and basically broke, an agreement with the IRS. But it's really not easy for a government agency to say, "No, you broke the roles, so our agreement is void". It would basically take a lawsuit, which would be ugly, expensive, and time-consuming.

It's not so much a matter of simply "caving", as that Intuit has gotten itself entrenched and it's difficult to dig them out. In theory it's not impossible, but it would require a ton of work, time, and will. Such things are very hard to come by, especially when you're the IRS and everybody already is predisposed to hate you.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#182

Post by burkaman » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

KorematsuFred wrote: post #153

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap “ProPublica has long detailed how Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and other companies have worked against making tax preparation easier and less costly. They have lobbied to ban the IRS from offering free, simple tax filing. And they have deceived customers who should qualify for the Free File product.”

I find this criticism somewhat weird. It is very common for companies or even individuals to promote and support policies that benefit themselves. Intuit is seeking self interest here. But why would IRS and our elected representatives cave in ? Are these people so clueless or unethical that they do not care about their constituents anymore ? And if that is the case I don't see how anyone can bell the intuit's cat.

You accept that Intuit is lobbying for unethical policies in order to enrich themselves, but you don't understand why anyone would criticize that?

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#183

Post by trhway » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #120

trhway wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marlon Brando look alikes have the right to lobby too. It doesn't make them any less evil.

We are talking about inexpensive tax software as an alternative to free filing methods. It's not a big deal. Of course it could be more efficient and cheaper ... but so can many government programs. Are public sector unions evil when they negotiate outrageous contracts that the public has to pick up the tab for? This is what democracy looks like.

> Are public sector unions evil when they negotiate outrageous contracts that the public has to pick up the tab for?

the question starts to sound more interesting when you add the fact that the members of that union have "death or life" power over the public.

>This is what democracy looks like.

it is more like a "contract you can't refuse".

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#184

Post by not2b » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #163

KorematsuFred wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this criticism somewhat weird. It is very common for companies or even individuals to promote and support policies that benefit themselves. Intuit is seeking self interest here. But why would IRS and our elected representatives cave in ? Are these people so clueless or unethical that they do not care about their constituents anymore ? And if that is the case I don't see how anyone can bell the intuit's cat.

> why would IRS and our elected representatives cave in? money.

The IRS has almost no say in this (because they've been denied funding to fix it); it is entirely Congress's doing.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#185

Post by alkonaut » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

bingidingi wrote: post #161

WisNorCan wrote: post #2

Intuit is consistently one of the least ethical actors in tech. They have a monopoly position in many of their products and take advantage of some of the poorest people through misinformation and lobbying. Facebook & Uber have received most of the heat over the past few years. Intuit has strangely avoided the same level of scrutiny.

i reckon people hate filling out tax forms by hand more than turbotax… and within good reason, even if you’re educated it can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple english), and there’s a lot of anxiety around messing it up unfortunately turbotax is also one of the major players trying to prevent tax simplification… so they’ve got a great scheme going anyway there are more…

I really don't get the money side of US politics. How do these companies use money (presumably) do sway politicians? Just openly contribute to individual politicians/think tanks/PACs?

How do they launder the money Is that what the PACs do? Make sure Joe Politican can get the money, but isn't seen handed a bag of cash from a company?

Or is it simply that accepting campaign donations from corporations isn't seen as corruption by voters, so politicans can do it in the open?

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#186

Post by alkonaut » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #96

whoisjuan wrote: post #39

Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about Intuit. Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis on "some"). A sinister business model in every possible way.

The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over government!

You mean the tax authority has a monopoly on collecting taxes?

That would be one way of looking at it yes.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#187

Post by notshift » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #34

cmckn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform, the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them $89.99.

This year we tried doing our taxes using both TurboTax and FreeTaxUSA. TurboTax has a much worse interface, it took almost twice as long to complete the taxes despite having an identical return. TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow despite having entered the same information into both sites, but that amount is less than the fee TurboTax would charge so we ended up submitting through FreeTaxUSA inste…

I did the same this year, but found that FreeTaxUSA's support for crypto transactions was basically non-existent. Filing through TurboTax was way less work than what I would've had to do with FreeTaxUSA.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#188

Post by kregasaurusrex » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

I'd previously got about 3/4ths of the way through filing my taxes using TurboTax, only to find that I wasn't able to deduct student loan interest on the free product. Intuit also regularly deletes threads of people who go on to ask why an expected feature isn't in the free tier, advancing the dark pattern of needing to pay for the feature on both the federal and state level returns. This is likely a systemic problem- the self employed through platforms like GrubHub & freelancers have less simple tax structures and even if they're only making a modest wage; spending $80 just to fill out your own return definitely acts as a regressive tax that disproportionately affects lower-wage groups.

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#189

Post by throwaway413 » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

caseyross wrote: post #28

What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is really, really, good, deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to do my taxes. The very fact that Intuit has clearly invested money into making a beautiful interface for a tax program, a program that people use once a year , just goes to show how profitable the current arrangement is for them, and how determined they are to keep the average taxpayer from s…

Do you think if it was a government program that it would have the same level of UX polish and ease of use?

Re: Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit

#190

Post by fleddr » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

avalys wrote: post #170

kerkeslager wrote: post #24

Yet another case where letting the free market handle things results in bad outcomes.

This is not the free market, it’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with government. The fact that the IRS rules are set by politicians and bureaucrats, not accountable to market forces, are what allows this corrupt situation to persist in the first place. You can’t say “the IRS makes this too complicated in order to funnel money into Intuit’s pocket so I am going to pay my taxes elsewhere.” And it's a perfect exampl…

Just to give a counter example here:

In my country (Netherlands), the IRS itself provides the software. Once a year, you download and run it. Everything is prefilled: income from work, bank accounts, mortgages.

So if you're a boring, financially stable person, the entire process is literally next -> next -> next -> submit.

Filling out tax forms is not a value-add economic activity, so I have no idea why you'd insist on free market, nor do I understand the classic American anti-government stance.

If we have solved this a decade ago, why can't you?