TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free • Hacker News Board

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#291

Post by chrismeller » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

Chris_Chambers wrote: post #277

tasty_freeze wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a word for what you did: exaggeration. But your exaggeration was small enough that it was believable and thus misleading. Now you are criticizing someone for giving a factual response. Time for some reflection.

Sure, it’s “exaggeration” if you have no imagination. Maybe someone is hit with penalties 3 or 6 years later, but then they’re consequently permanently flagged to get aggressively audited for the rest of their life and continue to deal with penalties for much longer than 10 years. There’s a word for what you’re doing: Pedantry. There’s also another word for what you’re doing: Bootlicking. The person you’re responding…

We aren’t going to get anywhere in this thread, my friend. TurboTax is evil. Ignore the fact that there are a dozen other companies offering the same service and that prices have actually fallen because of that competition.

Also no mention of filling out the free 1040 form... that’s too difficult. As if the companies charging you to do that for you just existed because they were forcing people to pay them...

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#292

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #288

rubicon33 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really as simple as that? Budget trumps all? With all due respect to the OP, most state run software operations are complete, utter, garbage. I'd happily pay money to avoid some of the clunky, poor UI/UX, and downright broken web tools that the state of California produces. TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

I am tired of for-profit companies hamstringing government using bribes to representatives and funding lobbyists from delivering inexpensive or free services to citizens. If someone wants to pay TurboTax, that is fine. If someone wants to continue to support their efforts to stymie government from delivering said services for free, they should be tarred and feathered. Intuit's tax products are regulatory capture, pla…

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#293

Post by adolph » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

sergiosgc wrote: post #156

chrismeller wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m overly cynical, but creating tax returns for everyone for free would prevent the IRS from allowing you to incriminate yourself by mis-filing (intentionally or not) and then levying huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later. Everyone is hating on TurboTax for making money, but they’re pretending the government tax machine has no such motivation, which simply is not true.

> Maybe I’m overly cynical, but creating tax returns for everyone for free would prevent the IRS from allowing you to incriminate yourself by mis-filing (intentionally or not) and then levying huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later. Many countries pre-fill the tax return, but require the citizen to submit it. The citizen is responsible for the submitted information, not the government.

That would expose the level of identity theft that the IRS does nothing about and actively tries to hide by refusing to provide identity theft victims with documentation.

https://web.archive.org/web/20161209003500/http://www.ayotte...

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#294

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

toomuchtodo wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tired of for-profit companies hamstringing government using bribes to representatives and funding lobbyists from delivering inexpensive or free services to citizens. If someone wants to pay TurboTax, that is fine. If someone wants to continue to support their efforts to stymie government from delivering said services for free, they should be tarred and feathered. Intuit's tax products are regulatory capture, pla…

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

It seems to be working fine in every other country mentioned in this thread where government is free to provide free tax filing services. We do not need bullshit jobs at rent seeking companies that are glorified PDF generators. This is a government feature, not a product.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#295

Post by pzs » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

Yet another data point: Hungary.

For most people the National Tax Bureau (NAV) prepares the filing based on the data they receive from employers, banks, etc. You can check the content on a web page, and approve, if you agree.

For those who have income that must be self-reported, there is the free Java app provided by NAV. I have used the latter for several years and it has been working reasonably well for me.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#296

Post by mszkoda » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

jkeuhlen wrote: post #236

komali2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on why people are "afraid" of lobbyists? The way you write that makes it sound like the elected officials the lobbyists are trying to convince, are afraid of those same lobbyists. What I assume you meant is that ground troops like you are afraid lobbyists will notice your work and pay more attention to your given team of elected politicians. Can you help me understand?

My intuition is that the elected officials are wary of choosing positions blatantly opposite of the interests the lobbyists are pushing for since the lobbyists could easily support a different candidate and put a lot of money into supporting them. So if you don't behave in the way the powerful lobbyists want, they'll get you kicked out of office.

It is exactly this.

You look at donations to people from corporations or through lobbyists and they don't look that large, $15-20k and they are getting big bills passed.

That $15-20k isn't buying the politician or their vote. The threat to give millions of dollars to the opposing politician that will support them is.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#297

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #294

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

It seems to be working fine in every other country mentioned in this thread where government is free to provide free tax filing services. We do not need bullshit jobs at rent seeking companies that are glorified PDF generators. This is a government feature, not a product.

So maybe this one should be allowed.

Other government competition with private enterprise is not so clear. Paving roads? Providing medicine? Delivering packages? Its been a rocky road.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#298

Post by abustamam » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #281

abustamam wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already see this on your pay stub (if you look at it, I know I don't bother with mine) In principle I like your suggestion but in actuality I think many Americans will not like their "yearly tax bill." Just think about people who are already living paycheck to paycheck; not saving much, or just overall spending every penny that comes into their bank account. They would be in trouble come April if they had to…

...in an ideal world, they wouldn't have to spend every penny, either.

I would argue in an ideal world money wouldn't exist but I think people have different ideals in that sense :)

I know some people _have_ to spend every penny because they need to to survive, but there are also plenty of people who spend every penny because they just have no discipline and buy anything they want without regard to whether or not they could afford it. Ideally the people in the former category would get some sort of welfare. Not sure what, if anything, to do with the people in the latter.

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#299

Post by vernie » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #283

xivzgrev wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude I salute you. There are so many edge cases to support. For number 2 can you import fed return with calfile? IRS free returns going down too so you are not alone: https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/Free_File_Program_Is_Failin... This is a large reason why Prorepublica keeps digging at this - it’s fucking crazy actual free filing is going down while these paid shenanigan products are holding strong with their ginorm…

Is it really as simple as that? Budget trumps all? With all due respect to the OP, most state run software operations are complete, utter, garbage. I'd happily pay money to avoid some of the clunky, poor UI/UX, and downright broken web tools that the state of California produces. TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

"Intuit succeeded so I'm happy."

Re: TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free

#300

Post by nan0 » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

ratata wrote: post #282

nan0 wrote: post #257

Who is going to build this "free" tax filing system? I hope not the IRS [0] 0: https://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/irs-predic...

There is a branch of government in charge of large software projects: https://www.usds.gov

This looks very promising! I read more into this agency and it looks like they are looking to put a price tag on some of their services [0] From the article: "The hope is that by putting a price tag on some of USDS services, that will encourage agencies to develop their own native digital service teams, as the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have already done. That in turn will free up capacity so that more agencies can tap USDS personnel for their own needs."

0: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/06/17/weichert-usds-funding-ma...

Update: Services offered to other government branches, not to end-users.