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IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
281–290 of 338 posts
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if that's true, the number of dollars being evaded is substantially lower. Not reporting $2000 a year in tips isn't exactly going to have the same effect of a billionaire not reporting $100,000,000 of their income. There are plenty of legal ways to evade (or at least not pay) taxes as well, though. An easy way, for example, is to store wealth in the form of stock; generally you don't pay taxes until you sell, so…
> For that matter, they could also buy a piece of art for a million dollars, a year later get it appraised as worth $40 million, donate it, and then write off $39 million. Again, as far as I know this isn't strictly illegal, but it can be used to evade taxes. This is so wrong it hurts my brain. The IRS requires using a qualified appraiser , and none of them will suddenly appraise an artwork for 40x its last sold valu…
I doubt every "qualified appraiser" is above being bribed.
I thought it was implied that writing off $39 million didn't mean a $39 million dollar reduction in taxes.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#283I 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…
Conventional wisdom is that if one can fund the IRS with one extra dollar, and they use that dollar to collect two dollars more taxes (from evaders), than that was a good way to spend taxpayers money. Many economists don't agree though. 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. Effort your citizens p…
One good way of measuring economic success is by ignoring the income and wealth of the top 10%. The exact percentage is not important. What matters is the idea that the success of the well-off only benefits the society to the extent it improves the lives of ordinary people.
Many government activities make sense from that perspective. By redistributing money from the top 10% to the bottom 90%, they increase the economic success of the country, though possibly at the expense of economic output.
And fairness is also important, because societies are built on trust. When people don't trust government institutions and each other, everything starts falling apart.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why there's an income cap though. There's nothing that gets more complicated on income alone, only if you add extra stuff to track
Anybody who makes more than about $200K-$300K/year is likely making a mistake if they don't have a CPA.
I disagree. If there's a CPA who wants to give me money-back guarantee, be my guest.
I do my taxes first. You (CPA) look over it, if can save me any additional money, I'll give you 1/2 of the additional money saved as your compensation. Deal?
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is ~$70 per hour - which you can earn from US firms while remoting across many timezones.
$70/hour is about $145k/year. If you're meaning it's close to $200k/year, that'd be $95/hour assuming 2080 hours/year (52 weeks at 40 hours a week).
I always assume 48 weeks (1 month vacation per year as is normal in most places)
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get why there's an income cap though. There's nothing that gets more complicated on income alone, only if you add extra stuff to track
Anybody who makes more than about $200K-$300K/year is likely making a mistake if they don't have a CPA.
I kind of wonder if software engineers making this kind of money but no tax problems should be getting advice from folks who can look back and see what they should have done. (tax problems sometimes come from outlier behaviors that might be good)
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
$70/hour is about $145k/year. If you're meaning it's close to $200k/year, that'd be $95/hour assuming 2080 hours/year (52 weeks at 40 hours a week).
I always assume 48 weeks (1 month vacation per year as is normal in most places)
Then $70/hour is only $134k/year, still a far cry from $200k. $200k for 48 full weeks of work works out to around $105/hour.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be worth a conversation with HR and reveiwing your tax withholdings just to make sure there is not an error and misunderstanding as to how your company or the HR software is handling it. I ran into a somewhat similar situation early on at my current job, but we were able to find an issue and correct before I got hit with a nasty surprise at tax time. My issue was that my with-holdings and everything looked f…
Thanks! I'll speak with them. I know everything is through Bamboo/whatever software nowadays so I wasn't sure if they really had any control/input on these things.
> I know everything is through Bamboo/whatever software nowadays so I wasn't sure if they really had any control/input on these things.
You have control, they don't.
Withholdings are calculated based on elections you make on an IRS form called a W4 (which could be electronic or paper). Neither your employer nor the IRS "control" that, but there are some common case defaults.
It's on each taxpayer to understand their actual tax liability situation and adjust withholdings accordingly.
Re: IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax season
#289I 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…
I think this has been studied and low-to-medium income filers are more likely to actually commit tax fraud so you get better returns as the IRS by focusing on these filers
That's exactly it. The earned income tax credit (EITC) is a direct transfer of money from the government to tax payers that only low income households are eligible for.
Most of the low income audits are related to the EITC, because people tend to fudge checking a box to get more money.