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Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

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Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#211

Post by cmeacham98 »

nkrisc wrote: post #86
loeg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly recommend a payroll service for this, like Poppins. It costs like $50/mo for a single employee, which is rounding error on nanny wages, and they do all the withholding and state tax filing for you. Then give you instructions on how to fill out federal tax Schedule H on your personal taxes (1040). I did it manually the first time around and it was a pain in the ass.

Yes, I wish I had known about this before. In our case we weren’t hiring a full-time nanny, but a regular part-time babysitter (16 hrs/week) just often enough that we met the criteria for needing to file and all that, so payroll services would be a more significant part of the total we ended up paying for wages.

You employed someone for 64 hours a month and $50 would be a significant part of the total wages?

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#212

Post by tacocataco »

There are a lot of things that remind me that the government doesn't work for the people, and tax time is just another one of those times.

Getting taxes automated is a solved problem. There is only one reason this status quo persisted for so many years. it's just to bad that we must bend the knee before the real americans, Intuit's lobbyists.

I'm glad the IRS is showing signs of wriggling free of such influence, but it is unfortunately to late a fix for yet another unforgiveable position for me.

The US government has shown me its priorities again and again throughout my life, and it's not the people. There is no rehabilitating this image in my eyes.

Hopefully I can be proven wrong, and the next generation can grow up far less cynical of our elected representatives.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#213

Post by Maxatar »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #178
throwup238 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 14% of the US is foreign born according to the last census so that’s not enough to make up the difference. The functional literacy statistics are bad no matter how you dice them.

Someone can be US born but still have a higher fluency in another language. Many on the US/Mexico border fall into this category where they were born here but speak Spanish better than English.

That's an even tinier slice of a very tiny pie. You're talking about maybe 0.5 to 1% of Americans who were born near the US/Mexico border who speak Spanish better than English.

According to the U.S. Census Data, only 18 million, or 5% of Americans even live along the U.S./Mexico border. Of that 18 million, 9 million or 2.5% identify as Hispanic. Of that 2.5%, about 70% identify Spanish as their native language.

I can't find how many among the 2.5% who identify as Hispanic were born in the U.S., but even if we assume they all are, this is basically a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#214

Post by lesuorac »

II2II wrote: post #162
thegrim33 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was originally done this way because in the past people actually had some semblance of privacy and the government didn't actually know a great deal about people's income. Eventually, privacy was eroded away year after year to the point where the government now knows an extreme amount about each citizen. I guess I'd refrain the question - instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government know…

> instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government knows everything about us that they could do it for us They cannot do everyone's taxes since what they know about many individuals is incomplete. > should we really have that little privacy? Put that way, the answer is no. On the other hand, virtually everyone demands services from their government and very few people want those services to be transac…

> For various reasons, it has been decided that a person's income should be a portion of those revenues. In order to ensure that people are paying their dues, the government needs to collect some information. Are there other ways the government could get revenues? Sure, but all of them are going to be problematic in some form or other.

No, just a singular reason: Prohibition.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#215

Post by wredue »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88
tmountain wrote: post #8

It’s amazing that 54% of adults in the United States have a literacy below 6th grade level, but it is expected for the same population to have the financial literacy to file their taxes accurately. Going further, the IRS already knows the details of most people’s taxes before they file, yet everyone is expected to complete what amounts to a complex task for many people. I cannot fathom why it is still done this way.

What's sad to me is the level of apprehension people have towards doing taxes. It's not that hard! The first few years of my adult life I did it by hand, using the paper forms. It is very easy to do if you can follow basic instructions, yet people act as if it's super difficult and requires an expert.

If having spent some time in IT support has taught me anything at all, it’s that “reading basic instructions and following them” is not among the talents of a huge portion of people.

Even the people I work with as team mates often call me and do a screen share for a problem and most of the time the answer is “dude, you’re just machine gunning the buttons before I can even read them. Lets just slow down for a second here”.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#216

Post by dh2022 »

alistairSH wrote: post #103
altdataseller wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about expenses for those that are self employed? What about rental income? What about expenses related to rental properties? Lots of things the government doesn’t know…

None of which apply to the vast majority of filers. Nobody is saying filing taxes should never be necessary. Only that it shouldn’t be necessary for most people. The flow should be… Employer and financial institutions send info to IRS (they mostly do already). Then, in January, IRS sends a “Is this correct?” notice to residents. If correct, no action is needed. If not correct, then make adjustments.

How would the residents verify the amount on the notice is correct? It sounds like the residents would have to do their taxes to verify the amount on the notice....

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#217

Post by XorNot »

RiceRichardJ wrote: post #54
Barrin92 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we change the way the government is intimately entangled with our lives? I've lived in Sweden where taxes are not just automatically filed but every citizen can trivially look up anyone's tax returns and nobody ever saw it as the government being intimately entangled with anyone's life. Privacy violation would be to look into how and on what you spend your money, not that everyone pays their share of taxes. That tel…

Swedish views on privacy don’t necessarily apply outside of Sweden. Are income levels not deserving of privacy?

The idea that they are is a construct for the benefit of employers, not workers.

Even your sense that you should hide it is in service of this and the effort to get people tearing each other down is also just a good way to depress salaries.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#218

Post by [deleted] »

nkrisc wrote: post #24
tmountain wrote: post #8

It’s amazing that 54% of adults in the United States have a literacy below 6th grade level, but it is expected for the same population to have the financial literacy to file their taxes accurately. Going further, the IRS already knows the details of most people’s taxes before they file, yet everyone is expected to complete what amounts to a complex task for many people. I cannot fathom why it is still done this way.

It’s amazing how much of an idiot I felt like when we hired a babysitter for two days a week for about a year and then it came time to do things properly regarding taxes and her wages. I understand why it’s important to do it properly (for the employee’s benefit) but when I tried to look into what we had to do, as technically her employer, and it was nearly impossible for me to figure out what we had to do and then h…

[deleted]

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#219

Post by dh2022 »

klyrs wrote: post #120
willcipriano wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less than two hours > hassle-free taxes That's still a crazy demand on the time of someone paying for everything. My bank, my employer and my brokerage all report on me, the IRS should be able to just mail a check or a bill most of the time.

"Less than two hours" does sound like a lot. I'm also in Canada and spend about 10 minutes per year on my Canadian taxes. Settling with the US government as an expat, on the other hand... I pay handomely for somebody to handle that.

Let's all absorb the HN moment when Canadian taxes are preferred to American taxes.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#220

Post by nkrisc »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #211
nkrisc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I wish I had known about this before. In our case we weren’t hiring a full-time nanny, but a regular part-time babysitter (16 hrs/week) just often enough that we met the criteria for needing to file and all that, so payroll services would be a more significant part of the total we ended up paying for wages.

You employed someone for 64 hours a month and $50 would be a significant part of the total wages?

No. I said “more significant”, relative to full time employment. It would have been around 5% extra per month, so it’s not nothing.

With the hindsight I have now it would have been much cheaper for us than it turned out to be, but that’s still extra money I’m paying simply because complying with the law is as complex as it is, and I’m not running a business, just hiring a part-time caretaker.

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