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How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

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Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#201

Post by JPKab »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18
rm999 wrote: post #11

This stuff aggravates me. My taxes aren't abnormally complex (single, one state, very few deductions, one w-2), but I get several 1099s for my investments and end up spending an hour filling them in manually, importing CSV files from my brokerages, and double checking the numbers. What annoys me is all the forms clearly state the IRS has also been sent this information; I'm literally filling out forms in a slow, erro…

The government is not bad at code because of lobbying, they're bad at code because of fluctuating budgets, low salaries, and ridiculous processes.

The government doesn't pay low salaries to coders, (remember, all they really need are CRUD apps. This isn't rocket science), its just HORRIBLE at hiring.

Rather than leaving any hiring decision to anyone who knows the issue at hand, hiring is done based on a process which is optimized to be legally unimpeachable. When government succeeds, nobody gets credit, but when they get sued, its cover your ass time. This is why ALL government processes, including hiring, are first and foremost about CYA.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#202

Post by guelo »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #118

Couple of notes. 1) The IRS itself gets most of the tax advice wrong that it gives out to taxpayers 2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear. 3) There is a difference between a simple tax system and a tax system tha…

1) Source?

2-3) The idea that it should be painful to pay your taxes so that people won't want to pay their taxes is a political idea, not a technocratic idea. But I don't give a shit about your politics. Keep your politics out of my government services. Political meddling by ideologues is what makes government services so awful. Whatever the government is required to do after the law is passed should be done in as friendly and efficient manner as possible. Advocating for the most painful possible experience for millions of people is evil in my opinion.

4) Nobody said anything about "sole source". You could still get your taxes prepared by whoever you want. The rest of this paragraph doesn't make sense.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#203

Post by whitenoise »

ScottWhigham wrote: post #16
niggler wrote: post #10

FYI: this exists: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ I haven't used this personally for filing because it doesn't handle certain forms like 1128, but I'm told it's pretty good for basic stuff

I think you're missing the point. The IRS has already received your 1099/W2/etc and thus it knows (a) your income, and (b) how much in taxes you've already paid. By then having the IRS start your tax return for you, you would no longer have to fill in that info. The IRS makes free forms available already. Besides, are there actually people so stupid that they would give their SSN/info to a site like that?

"Besides, are there actually people so stupid that they would give their SSN/info to a site like that?"

Honest question. Are you saying that this particular site is less secure or all online e-filing services less secure? This is one of the options recommended by IRS[1] for e-filing.

[1] - http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-...

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#204

Post by xenophanes »

ilaksh wrote: post #180
jdminhbg wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems an easy to grasp example of how the free market... I can't even begin to grasp what part of lobbying the government to prop up your business via threats of penalties and imprisonment you are interpreting to be "the free market."

You aren't going to get something that works better without altering the fundamental structures. The way things are set up you can't take lobbying, money, and special interests out of government. Because every politician needs money for everything and there is one number tied to your bank account that goes up or down on the basis of how much people give you, with little to no accounting for what you did to get it. Wh…

Trying to make people do the right thing with math and technology sounds scary as hell. How will that work? What about edge cases and outliers?

What we need is philosophy and persuasion. People need to learn better and understand why there actually are benefits to doing the right thing, not have an algorithm monitor them and punish for deviations.

Doing the right thing already is in one's self-interest. The problem is bad philosophy claiming otherwise. The solution is things like Objectivism which explain why the free market is good for people like you, why smaller government is better for everyone, how to live the right way and be better off (and how to think well in order to understand these things clearly. a great deal of the opposition to these things is confused and up to low quality standards).

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#205

Post by ajross »

Domenic_S wrote: post #175
ajross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The current IRS interest rate for unpaid tax is 4%. You apparently paid almost three years late, which is getting pretty far afield from "explainable mistake" or "charge you a giant penalty for !=". Hell, if you had "cheated" and put that money in a mutual fund you'd have made a profit.

> You apparently paid almost three years late Well that's the thing, the IRS can wait 3 years (or 6 if the error was bad enough), then look at your taxes, and pound you with 4%/year, instead of setting up a job to look at everything right away.

Is that what happened in this case? Again, this is turning into an anti-government diatribe. The original assertion was that the IRS would apply heavy penalties for getting math wrong on the return. No, that's incorrect. Then it was that they'll assess a 12% penalty. No, that's wrong too, it's just a 4% APR.

Now your claim is that they're... what, lying in wait? Deliberately maximizing penalties? That's not my experience (our mistake was caught after about 5 months I think). You have a counterexample?

(Edit: and reading the replies, the discussion has now slipped yet further afield from the original assertion, and in two directions: on one hand, it's now outrageous -- yet somehow still an argument against the reforms in the linked article -- that some people merely have "bad experiences" with the IRS. On the other the IRS are apparently now highway bandits literally robbing people with threat of force. I give up.)

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#206

Post by theorique »

yyqux wrote: post #172
theorique wrote: post #47

All taxes are theft of the private property of free citizens.

So taxes are morally equivalent to stealing? I think taxes are ok, so stealing must be ok too. I'll be over at your house to take your stuff in a jiffy!

That wasn't the moral lesson I was aiming for ...

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#207

Post by [deleted] »

Domenic_S wrote: post #175
ajross wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The current IRS interest rate for unpaid tax is 4%. You apparently paid almost three years late, which is getting pretty far afield from "explainable mistake" or "charge you a giant penalty for !=". Hell, if you had "cheated" and put that money in a mutual fund you'd have made a profit.

> You apparently paid almost three years late Well that's the thing, the IRS can wait 3 years (or 6 if the error was bad enough), then look at your taxes, and pound you with 4%/year, instead of setting up a job to look at everything right away.

[deleted]

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#208

Post by eumenides1 »

teamonkey wrote: post #186
eumenides1 wrote: post #106

Isn't there free options in the US? In Canada, we have StudioTax. http://www.studiotax.com/ It's free and on a donation basis. I switched from TurboTax to this and I'm really happy with it. I'm surprised there isn't a open-sourced free way to do taxes. That way we can address the tinfoil hat based worries of the government doing your taxes and have free and easy software.

I might do the same, having just filed last years' Canadian taxes with TurboTax. I didn't have a problem with TT but I do have a problem with Intuit's actions here. Coming from the UK where it has been automated all my working life, I resent having to file my taxes each year. As others have said, the government has nearly all the information anyway.For anything else, then only short declaration forms should be necess…

The only reason why i used TurboTax in the past was because my parents used it and they were comfortable with the UI. But I've since taken over that task and I have no such love for their UI, especially when a free alternative is available.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#209

Post by nmcfarl »

crazy1van wrote: post #171
nmcfarl wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly - my experience, on innocent mistakes, has been varied. I got hammered owing 6 or 8 hundred dollars for a $200 mistake when I was 10 years old and making money off of my paper route. (No, my parents didn't cover the bill nor do my taxes.) And I made $10,000 mistake five years ago and they said "Oh - whoops, pay your bill and be more careful next time" and then called it a day.

We've become a nation of men instead of a nation of laws.

That is a reasonable conclusion to draw. But not the one I draw.

However there were 20 years between the 2 events.

And the first was found because of an audit, while the second I found and reported within a few months of filing.

There’s a lot going on here. The lesson I draw is: different circumstances different results. But both good and bad results are possible, for fairly similar inputs into the process.

Re: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

#210

Post by ajross »

chime wrote: post #179
ajross wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one pays penalties for simple mistakes. That's what FOX news tells you, but it's not true. We've made five-figure goofs on taxes in the past and a simple letter explaining the mistake (assuming it's an explainable mistake and you didn't get caught in actual attempted fraud) is enough to get the penalty waved.

Since I can't reply to you in the other comment: Like I said, it was an error on our part. I don't disagree that at all. I have absolutely no qualms in paying what I owed. But I wouldn't have paid a dollar over the amount owed if they had adequate systems in place to catch my typos and immediately notified me to fix it. But a lack of proper processes on their part meant it took them 2+ years to find an error and now…

This is where I simply don't understand the thought process. You got burned and had to write a check, and you're angry. And yes, a more efficient and effective tax regime (which is what the linked article is about!) would have caught that faster and you would have been less angry. But that's where this has to stop -- your rationalizations just don't hold water.

I mean, really: how is paying 4% APR on a loan[1] you got from the government "at their mercy?". It's not even a bad rate for an unsecured loan! People routinely pay much higher for car loans, and even now mortgages (which are at historic lows) are only a little better.

[1] Which is what this is. You walked around with extra money in the bank for three years, albeit accidentally. Why doesn't that fact figure in your analysis?

(FWIW: if the stepdad was really "estranged" and still claiming your wife as a dependent, then you should have been able to fight that. That's not how tax law works. My guess is that they weren't actually "estranged" three years ago, and she probably did meet the definition of a dependent. Again, that's your mistake if so.)

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