191–200 of 240 posts
Is there anything we can do to fight back?
The only other hope is probably tax reform but good luck getting agreement on where the tax rate(s) should be if deductions and credits were eliminated.
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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…
Then it's also safe to assume that legislators will act in self serving ways. Sure, they should represent your interests but let's not be naive.
IMO people should be held accountable for acting immorally, full stop. Just because it's particularly bad when public servants fail in their job doesn't let others off the hook.
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The AMT calculation is tedious as hell. Considering that the yearly cost for H&R Block is something like 20$, it's well worth the money just to avoid needing to do that by hand, and that's not even taking into account all of the other time savings features of it. And the cost for the software itself is tax deductible as tax prep costs.
AMT only really affects people who make like $200,000+, right? It's a reasonable point, but I think it only applies to 5% or so of taxpayers.
If you make more than the exemption amount for your category (between 40-85K or so depending on your situation and tax year), then you should be calculating the AMT to determine whether or not you owe. It affects more people than you might think, even if it just requires the calculation to occur to see if you owe it or not.
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…
I'm confused about Step 2. Please remind me why I would want to allow the IRS to send all of my personal and financial history to a third party?
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…
If you wanna help on this mission, we are hiring! Feel free to reach out to matt at creditkarma.com.
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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.
I'm not defending Intuit here, by the way. But most people don't need what they are selling.
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I never said we can't condemn the behavior of businesses. The prime objective for a business is to make money. All the ethics, right/wrongs, etc are things that we expect from the people who run those businesses. But the business is there to make money. It is up to the people in charge of making choices for society to make the right choices. It's not the responsibility of the business. They have every right to lobby…
Why is it incumbent on politicians to be moral, "do the right things", but not businesses? That's a laughably arbitrary choice you're making.
While you can "choose" a politician, you get whoever the group chose for 2-6 years. Don't like your president or their morals? Deal with it until the next round of choice.
I think that imbalance in individual authority and power gives everyone the right to hold public and private individuals to different standards.
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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…
TurboTax found several thousand dollars for me in a fairly complicated tax situation that I was completely not expecting and would never have realized on my own. Even some CPAs I've talked to have said "oh, really?" They've bought some tremendous goodwill from me with that. I'm probably sticking with them forever.
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Why is it incumbent on politicians to be moral, "do the right things", but not businesses? That's a laughably arbitrary choice you're making.
What's laughable? You can choose which businesses you want to interact with anytime you want, and if you don't like their policies, choose someone else. While you can "choose" a politician, you get whoever the group chose for 2-6 years. Don't like your president or their morals? Deal with it until the next round of choice. I think that imbalance in individual authority and power gives everyone the right to hold publi…
You try to exercise your consumer rights next time you're in a hospital, or something unforeseen occurs, or you're subject to a telecom monopoly, etc... etc...
Your way of thinking only works in a perfect fiction that has never and will never exist, except as a sop to some egos.
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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.
Taxes are easy for the average person. A basic 1040-A, and certainly 1040-EZ (these two cover most taxpayers), are not difficult to do on paper if you can read and have a little patience. I'm not defending Intuit here, by the way. But most people don't need what they are selling.