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

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

#291

Post by roshin »

etskinner wrote: post #7

Before everyone gets too excited: This will probably only apply to simple tax situations: If you have more than these, you might not be able use it: #Income reporting W-2 wage income Social Security and railroad retirement income Unemployment compensation Interest of $1,500 or less #Credits Earned Income Tax Credit Child Tax Credit Credit for Other Dependents #Deductions Standard deduction Student loan interest Educa…

As an expat, I assume that there will be no soon changes to the complicated tax filing that I have to do. Although I am exempt from paying taxes to Uncle Sam, the "tax" that I have to pay to an accountant to fill out the complicated forms is more than enough to make me want to get rid of my citizenship, if that in itself wasn't so expensive.

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

#292

Post by dang »

tpmx wrote: post #107
dang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've changed it now. Submitted title was "IRS will officially launch free online tax filing service for 2024 tax season".

Please consider punishing the marketing guy doing this submission. This was not done by chance or mistake.

I don't understand what you mean.

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

#293

Post by Rebelgecko »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #117

This is great. I wished the individual states would do this too for their tax filers.

California already has one, and it actually has fewer limitations than this federal pilot (it handles itemization and capital gains and such, although that's only because california doesn't have a separate capital gains rate)

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

#294

Post by Rebelgecko »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #198
nashashmi wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just print out the sheet from your broker of all the trades you did with the end result of gains circled. Send that in. You should be ok from doing anything more complex.

If you buy or vest more shares, you might not be able to use capital losses to offset your gains until you understand the wash-sale rule.

You didn't hear this from me, but allegedly the IRS doesn't give a shit about wash sales via RSU vesting. YMMV, IANAL, IANAA, IARPA, etc etc

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

#295

Post by refurb »

mmanfrin wrote: post #257
adventured wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> It's less than 1/2 of 1% of the labor force. So it's only millions of people.

Nope.

167,929,000 * 0.5% = 839,645

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

#296

Post by refurb »

MBCook wrote: post #278
willdr wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're expecting coherency in the American libertarian mindset. There is none. "why should the government control the means of tax filing! I need to be free to pay a private company to do it!"

It’s not just that. Remember this is normal in the US. Paper sucks. Tax filing helpers (people/software) have always cost money. “The government sucks” and won’t try to help you. And, oh yeah, ads and tax prep stores everywhere . No one questions it. They don’t like it, but they accept it. Just like so many other things in the US because we’ve never seen anything else.

I’ve paid taxes in countries where it pre-filled forms.

Guess what I do? I get all my forms together. Look up the numbers on the forms. Double check the entries on the fillable forms are correct.

Then I get my paystubs, I check the deductions, double check the prefilled form is correct.

So what did it save me over the way US taxes are done? The form prefilled the numbers, that’s it. All the rest is the same. Same collecting forms, same doubling checking math.

And why? Because mistakes are made. My employer sent the wrong numbers in, so the prefilled form was incorrect and would have cost me about $1,000 in extra tax.

If you want to make tax filing better, make the tax code way more simple. I’ve lived in countries where the tax form was 2 pages with 12 entires. That’s it.

Now that is the way to go. I could care less about fillable forms.

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

#297

Post by reustle »

gwbas1c wrote: post #282
gerdesj wrote: post #229

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 divid…

> 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. Because the IRS isn't allowed to tell you what you owe. You're supposed to calculate that yourself... (And it's so damn complicated that it's worth paying someone to do it, unless you were the kid who did the math textbook for fun.) Eventually, the IRS calculates what th…

What's to say it doesn't start incorporating some of that data in the future? Having an official IRS tax prep tool is absolutely the first step towards that.

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #296
MBCook wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that. Remember this is normal in the US. Paper sucks. Tax filing helpers (people/software) have always cost money. “The government sucks” and won’t try to help you. And, oh yeah, ads and tax prep stores everywhere . No one questions it. They don’t like it, but they accept it. Just like so many other things in the US because we’ve never seen anything else.

I’ve paid taxes in countries where it pre-filled forms. Guess what I do? I get all my forms together. Look up the numbers on the forms. Double check the entries on the fillable forms are correct. Then I get my paystubs, I check the deductions, double check the prefilled form is correct. So what did it save me over the way US taxes are done? The form prefilled the numbers, that’s it. All the rest is the same. Same col…

[deleted]

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

#300

Post by pipodeclown »

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 find it bizarre that this is even a market in the US. I would think enabling people to do their taxes is a basic task of the government. Where I'm from the government provides a very simple click through filing system. Most information is auto filled from info the government already has or is manditorily shared with it such as my income as reported by my employer and any tax withholdings performed by them, securities holdings at brokers, houses registered on my name etc. I basically just have to click 'yep, that all sounds right', and I'm done. The tax authorities slogan over here is "we can't make doing your taxes fun, we can make it easy".
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