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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)

#201

Post by svachalek »

Domenic_S wrote: post #80
rconti wrote: post #30

Funny anecdote, I've been using TurboTax installable for a decade or so (having given up on doing them completely by hand). Been considering hiring a professional because you always hear that they are worth their weight in gold. (Our tax situation is not particularly complicated though, typical Silicon Valley married homeowners). Well, last year, did everything in turbotax, said we were short by like 15k. Believable,…

The real wtf is: if the IRS already knew what you owed why did you have to go through the rigamarole to begin with?

Lobbyists. Intuit (creator of TurboTax) among other organizations tells Congress that if the IRS does it for us, it's stealing jobs.

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

#202

Post by matmatmatmat »

at_a_remove wrote: post #83

I am a chump who uses TurboTax every year. Having seen a few cases of the IRS going after someone I knew, I just pay the danegeld. Perhaps I do not need TurboTax, but I know that the laws at the state and federal level change every year and that I have no real ability to track any of this, but the penalties can be high for failure. I rarely understand tax jargon, in any case; I always feel like I am on the back foot…

Also, as one of two full-time working parents, with a nanny, and some other income, I do not have time for this crap. Yes, I'm getting shafted by Intuit and their lobbying, and I know it. I hate myself every year that I pay for TurboTax but then I have a glass of wine in the evening and forget about it.

Also, we buy it at Costco for a 5-seat license and split it amongst family. That takes the cost down to something much more edible.

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

#203

Post by jrochkind1 »

memco wrote: post #135
mywittyname wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit Karma is free. Works great, and has no discernable dark patterns. They even have import features from major payroll companies like ADP. I had to quit turbotax because one year I was a 1099 worker and every year since, it pushes me to go with their "small business edition." Each year it got harder to avoid "upgrading." Seriously, just do it. Quitting TT is so much easier than quitting anything else.

I got an email from Credit Karma advertising for TurboTax. This plus the glitch that exposed into [1] leaves me very little confidence in CK. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20699410

I thought I remembered TurboTax purchased CreditKarma, but googled,and now I'm confused...

> Intuit Inc., owner of the popular TurboTax DIY tax preparation service, has moved forward with its $8.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma, Inc., after satisfying the government’s requirement that Credit Karma divest its tax preparation business.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/anticompetitive-concern...

Divest their tax prep business? I just did my taxes on creditkarma, and it was the same website that was trying to market me credit cards that i prepared the taxes on.

AHA, that article has a date "January 3, 2021", so I guess still in progress?

But ok, divest their tax prep business... the WAY CK was providing free tax prep was by funding it with the rest of their portfolio, the credit card marketing and such. The tax prep got people into their system (and possibly got their data into their system, I'm not sure how much was opt-in or opt-out).

Divest their tax prep business? Into it's own business? It won't possibly be able to provide the service for free anymore right? They will probably quickly go out of business.

I don't know how the heck anti-trust regulators think this did anything positive. Intuit one way or another succesfully eliminated the competition from free creditkarma tax prep. Gah.

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

#204

Post by Gh0stRAT »

kickapps wrote: post #199
ourmandave wrote: post #162

Every year I do my taxes on H&R Block or one of the others right up to the point where I review the form and the next step is to submit. Then I write all the numbers down and file for free on Free File Fillable Forms. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... Thanks H&R!

what about state taxes? is there a state level Free File Fillable form?

California has CalFile. (way better than FreeFillableForms) Not sure about other states.

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

#205

Post by jsmith45 »

klmadfejno wrote: post #21

I used to say turbo tax wasn't that bad, and that free filing was easy if you just ignored their promises to save you money if you upgraded. Last year however I got all the way to the end of the process where they revealed I made too much and had to pay. That felt extremely unethical, as the information required to come to that conclusion was available far earlier in the process. And yet what am I going to do but use…

The fact that Turbo tax has at least 2 totally different free products, only one of which is part of FreeFile[1], and the other of which has a whole slew of exclusion criteria, mainly tied to which tax forms you will need to file is completely absurd. The IRS should really tell the FFA members that their advertised free product must be the same as or a superset of their FreeFile offering.

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

#206

Post by leesalminen »

andrewflnr wrote: post #169
htrp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have your senator's personal cell phone number? Does your senator recognize you by face? Will he remember whatever question you're talking about even if you secure a f2f meeting? The lobbyist, who used to be that senator's chief of staff definitely does......

None of that is bribery, though, which was the original question.

The lobbyist is taking the representative out to fancy dinners, golf courses, family vacations. It just so happens that they’ve known each other for years.

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

#207

Post by dawnerd »

kickapps wrote: post #199
ourmandave wrote: post #162

Every year I do my taxes on H&R Block or one of the others right up to the point where I review the form and the next step is to submit. Then I write all the numbers down and file for free on Free File Fillable Forms. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... Thanks H&R!

what about state taxes? is there a state level Free File Fillable form?

Oregon is free to efile as well

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

#208

Post by pwg »

glsdfgkjsklfj wrote: post #189
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 ov…

Their blog entry for 2020-11-30 states in part:

> This will mark the 18th consecutive year that OTS has provided updated tax programs.

Given this implies the first version was 18 years ago, the choice of using C might not, at that time, have seemed as odd as it does now in 2021.

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

#209

Post by tolbish »

suifbwish wrote: post #91
grayhatter wrote: post #2

We're sorry the answer to "why can't we have nice things" wasn't [political party], it was lobbyists . Lobbyists is the answer to, "why can't we have nice things"!

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

You have the ability to organize protests against lobbying, if you are genuinely interested.

As you noted by your statues example, protests can be quite effective.

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

#210

Post by UncleMeat »

asavadatti wrote: post #59
klmadfejno wrote: post #21

I used to say turbo tax wasn't that bad, and that free filing was easy if you just ignored their promises to save you money if you upgraded. Last year however I got all the way to the end of the process where they revealed I made too much and had to pay. That felt extremely unethical, as the information required to come to that conclusion was available far earlier in the process. And yet what am I going to do but use…

Unless your taxes are really simple I’d suggest hiring a professional to do it for you. It is money well spent

My experience has been the opposite. Unless I'm prepared to spend literally thousands of dollars, tax preparers don't seem to be able to do any better than I can. They largely make me do the hard stuff (splitting RSUs by state, fixing incorrect 1098Ts) myself anyway.
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