It's pretty dumb that this has an upper income limit that covers plenty of regular W2 wage workers
$200k puts you in the top 5% of earning, FYI.
Why does that mean they should be excluded?
IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
221–230 of 338 posts
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#222It's SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I've been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn't include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b/c they were able to scope things down to somet…
sigh this is a baby step but - Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File - From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it - Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboT…
This comment is why people hate tech bros.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#223> Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), an accountant and senior member of the House Financial Services Committee, told Axios in April that he wants to go "way beyond Direct File," calling for a "self-populating form." > > "Why in the heck should you have to fill out your return when the government has all the information. They know what's on your W-2 form before you do. They know what's on your 1099 … Do you know how many m…
This works against the governments interest, as they'll lose revenue from all the fines they give to people who accidentally fuck up their tax return.
> all the fines they give to people who accidentally fuck up their tax return.
You only get fined if you deliberately (and fraudulently) fuck up.
If you make a mistake, they give you a chance to correct it before fining you.
I forgot a W-2 once (I switched jobs 4 weeks into the year and the first employer gave me my W-2 late) and filed without it. My return was rejected and I got a letter telling me why and requested an amended return. I amended, re-filed, got accepted, and got my refund. No fines.
And certainly no jail time like a lot of memes like to suggest.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a huge problem that when the opposition comes into power, they immediately try to revert and undermine what the previous party did. Not because of merit, but just because of partisanship. So you end up with a lot of programs that get started and after a while get repealed or maintained badly. This costs the country a lot of money. The ACA is a classical example. Instead of improving it or proposing a real replac…
Please provide examples of Democrats undoing good policy/legislation just because it was passed by a prior Republican administration.
Our current border situation...?
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you care about economic success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in real terms. Just like how "collect as many taxes as possible" isn't actually a good goal, just "make the citizens wealthier" isn't actually a good goal either because it says nothing about the distribution of that wealth. If we enacted a law that made 99.9% of all citi…
> Taxes are used to run society, from it's roads, fire department, education, social services, and much more The "much more" is much, much, much more than anyone thinks. The federal budget is tremendous. People cannot conceive of trillions, yet the federal government alone spent over six of it a year, three years in a row. Virtually nobody has a problem with tax funds being used to build roads and bridges, fire depar…
> It's everything else that's contentious.
In part, because of comments using wording like "hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars" as if it were huge, when it describes a pretty miniscule part of the 6,000,000 millions in the budget. (It also misses those same immigrants paying billions in sales and other taxes here, including quite a bit of Medicare/Social Security funding they'll never get back.)
As a result, Americans have a massively skewed idea of where it all goes; they think NASA gets 6.4% of the budget when it gets 0.5%, for example. https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-budget-estimates-opinio...
Defense, healthcare, and social security make up the vast majority of Federal expenses. Education is, comparatively, a pittance; nonprofits serving immigrants don't even show up on the chart as a full pixel.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_Mand...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_Disc...
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
States part of the pilot program (i.e., 2023 tax year): Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington (state), Wyoming as per https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/irs-direct-file... . Looks like exactly half and half, Democratic/Republican to me ... But, who knows maybe next year ...
If you look at the tax situation across the states, the party split makes a bit more sense. Of the states involved in the pilot program, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and (to some extent) Washington do not have individual income tax. Also, Arizona and New Hampshire both have a flat rate income tax, which I readily admit knowing nothing about, but which I presume simplifies them being part of the pi…
I can speak to Arizona and New York: they both have state taxes but didn't have any existing web portal that could be integrated with Direct File.
They were in the pilot because the organization I worked for, Code for America, offered to build them one: https://codeforamerica.org/programs/tax-benefits/state-tax-f...
We reached out to other states as well, but those were the two that ended up being most impactful + most cooperative + easiest to implement :)
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you care about economic success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in real terms. Just like how "collect as many taxes as possible" isn't actually a good goal, just "make the citizens wealthier" isn't actually a good goal either because it says nothing about the distribution of that wealth. If we enacted a law that made 99.9% of all citi…
> Taxes are used to run society, from it's roads, fire department, education, social services, and much more The "much more" is much, much, much more than anyone thinks. The federal budget is tremendous. People cannot conceive of trillions, yet the federal government alone spent over six of it a year, three years in a row. Virtually nobody has a problem with tax funds being used to build roads and bridges, fire depar…
Most public education funding at the K-12 level is from state and local taxes.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
The confusion is that that doesn’t follow, at all. [edit] it occurs to me that this is a term of art you may be unfamiliar with, so reading it in an unusual sense: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law Basically, it’s a super-important thing to have if you want to live in a “developed” country that doesn’t have all kinds of very-bad problems, and isn’t some proxy for level-of-authoritarianism, which is how it s…
I'm not confused at all about the concept. Your stance is incomplete. "Rule of law" does not stand alone either, you've also mixed in a few concepts that frankly do not apply, but we'll ignore that for now. "Rule of law" requires government (and it's officers) be above all, both in practice and in theory. Just on the basis of who can violate rights, perceived or otherwise, and who in turn pays for the consequences, i…
Ah—you know the sense in which it was intended but, unusually (I intend this descriptively, not pejoratively), reject its definition as self-contradictory. That, I was not expecting.
I don’t think we’re gonna bridge that gap productively in a comment section. Have a nice weekend (sincerely).
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
> going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of what was "good" I'd expand this to examples of either party undoing legislation the other championed and passed. It's exceedingly rare, in large part by design.
I still hope we can undo the "permanent" tax cuts of 2017 at some point.
Why would you expect that?
We didn't even allow the 2001 Bush tax cuts to automatically expire at the end of 2010, despite control of the House, Senate, and White House passing from the Republicans to the Democrats during the intervening years.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#230I would argue that having to file taxes through a 3rd party accountant or service is not only forced commerce but also broken glass economics. Looks like it helps the economy by creating jobs but the job is redundant and does not create anything of value. Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or 1 million? Where are financial crimes more likely to occur, people that make $10,000 a year or people t…
Who steals more? 10,000 people evading 100k or 1million people evading 1k?