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Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

irs.gov

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Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#221

Post by freeone3000 »

tombert wrote: post #50

This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially lower-income people. The private companies have demonstrated pretty clearly that they will do everything they can to avoid people actually having free tax filing, and while ~$50-100 might not seem like a ton of money, keep in mind that at the current United S…

I’ve been using https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes ; cross-checked with my manual form filing and it’s spot on. Print and mail and save the hassle :)

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#222

Post by hintymad »

whalesalad wrote: post #218
hintymad wrote: post #214

Will this system integrate with all the banks, exchanges, registered businesses, and etc? I find that 90% of the time spent on tax filing is gathering data. Turbotax does offer some integration, but the experience was not necessarily smooth.

Is a CSV not a good API? Most systems will allow you to export data in a columnar CSV format. Being able to then import these would solve the problem. "Swivel chair handoff"

In that case I'll have to log in to each account, find the right place to download data, download them, and import them to my tax system. I'd rather have a turn-key solution. And I definitely have no interest of writing a program to automate such task.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#223

Post by adventured »

tombert wrote: post #50

This is great news; no matter how restricted it may be initially, I think having a "guaranteed-free" tax filing system will be great for most people, especially lower-income people. The private companies have demonstrated pretty clearly that they will do everything they can to avoid people actually having free tax filing, and while ~$50-100 might not seem like a ton of money, keep in mind that at the current United S…

> keep in mind that at the current United States minimum wage ($7.25 as of this writing), it would take upwards of working 6-14 hours just to pay for tax filing

Relatively few people in the US earn the Federal minimum wage. It's less than 1/2 of 1% of the labor force. It's a very poor reference for anything in terms of personal finance comparisons.

You can walk into a CVS or Walgreens and earn $15 / hr as the minimum scanning barcodes with zero experience, zero job history, as a teenager. You'll get heavily subsidized health insurance, dental, vision, and PTO.

On top of that, the majority of US states have a higher minimum wage than the Federal.

If you're still earning the Federal minimum wage at this point, it's almost always by choice (if you don't want to work for Costco, Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens, et al.).

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#224

Post by foota »

hedora wrote: post #220

The description of this makes me skeptical. People have been asking for a system where the IRS does your taxes for your, sends you the draft, and you add in any deductions, etc. They already do your taxes in the background to confirm your return is correct, so this is not significantly more work for them (in fact, it is probably less work). In some countries with such a system, unless you intentionally lie, you are a…

That might take more work in terms of process changes, but the setup would be there.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#226

Post by asdff »

coconut08 wrote: post #116
radlad wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, FreeTaxUSA[0] is much cheaper than Intuit and has worked great for me the past few years. I find it slightly easier than TurboTax, in fact. [0] https://www.freetaxusa.com/

sorry... cheaper? surely a place called free tax usa would be free?

Its free for state as well if you qualify

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#228

Post by RC_ITR »

hedora wrote: post #220

The description of this makes me skeptical. People have been asking for a system where the IRS does your taxes for your, sends you the draft, and you add in any deductions, etc. They already do your taxes in the background to confirm your return is correct, so this is not significantly more work for them (in fact, it is probably less work). In some countries with such a system, unless you intentionally lie, you are a…

>They already do your taxes in the background to confirm your return is correct

This is a common misconception. Most places that send you forms also send them to the IRS (but by no means all places). The IRS makes sure that the information you put in your forms is the same as the forms they got, but they know nothing about your dependents, whether you pay mortgages interest, etc.

Now, the counterpoint to that argument is that c.90% of people just take the standard deduction anyway now that there's not SALT, but the argument there is that we should move completely away from deduction-driven taxes (which is probably the solution).

As for TurboTax et al, those places are not sending your forms to every state tax agency (why do people always forget about state taxes in these threads?), so there's still very much a need for some solution there. Probably IRS data sharing, but good luck getting all the states to agree with the Feds on tax forms (just look at the SALT battle).

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#229

Post by gerdesj »

There are lots of comments along the lines of "xxx is cheap"

Why on earth do you need a third party for your tax calc and resolution? It is surely the antithesis of the "land of the free" and all that stuff.

In the boring old UK I login to a govt. run website to do my annual tax self assessment. My P60 is already filled in (that's my PAYE - pay as you earn, my normal salary) I'm a company director too so I have dividends and expenses and offsets etc to worry about. It takes around an hour to complete.

Most UK employees don't do self assessment. PAYE is such a simple and obvious idea - routine taxation should be done by routine.

Re: Free IRS-run tax filing pilot to be available in 13 states

#230

Post by starik36 »

mminer237 wrote: post #178
starik36 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I've always just entered the summary. However, that process is manual and requires scouring the forms for correct info. With TurboTax, it lets you integrate into the brokerage and just sucks down the info.

Your 1099-B should give you all the info right on the first page in a table.

Not really because FreeTaxUSA asks questions about whether there are state specific bonds that have already collected taxes, whether the investment qualifies as a foreign investment, etc... That requires digging in a bit.
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