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Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

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Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#301

Post by arcticbull »

rayiner wrote: post #277
dgacmu wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big donors are a high return-on-time for busy politicians. I donated the max (2*$2700) to a few candidates during the previous midterm elections, and was (naively) surprised to be invited to have brief 1:1 meetings with each of them. Money speaks depressingly loudly in politics. Corporations have to go through PACs, but many have their own (Intuit has their "21st Century Leadership Fund" PAC, which you can view here:…

> Money speaks depressingly loudly in politics. I don't know what's disheartening about it. Here in D.C., Democrats are in an ideological war with Republicans. Money is necessary to fuel the war machine: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015... . Of course they want to get larger donors more involved.

The problem is exactly what you describe, the "war machine." Elections are in the public interest and should be solely publicly funded. Collect taxes for it, distribute it directly to candidates evenly, via some set model. You can look to Canada's system as a basis, although we do still allow some limited private contributions (which I disapprove of, but ~20% of total funding) [1].

That's all they should be allowed to spend. Then they use that money to make their case to the people on merit. No PACs, no contributions, no lobbyists, and equal access to airtime. This eliminates pay-to-play or at least criminalizes it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#302

Post by Green_man »

mattferderer wrote: post #265

If I read this right, you can still use the free service the IRS provides if you make less than $66,000. Has anyone used Turbo Tax or H&R "free" versions to file? I can't use them & last time I tried they charged you to submit your taxes electronically but otherwise it was simple & easy. I also know many cities offer services to help people file simple taxes for free. I believe this bill also states the IRS cannot se…

> Has anyone used Turbo Tax or H&R "free" versions to file? I can't use them & last time I tried they charged you to submit your taxes electronically but otherwise it was simple & easy.

Yeah, I've used H&R's free filing for 4 years or so now. When I lived in a state with state income tax, they charged me for that, and offered to charge me to remember my data for next year (I declined). their website indicates that state tax filing is now free, I wonder if it depends on the state, or if things just changed since 2015 tax year filing.

unfortunately I don't have any other tax experiences to compare to, but it was very easy. as a student, I don't have complex deductions or income, but as long as I can use the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and it doesn't take too long, I'm happy.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#303

Post by Dig1t »

mattferderer wrote: post #265

If I read this right, you can still use the free service the IRS provides if you make less than $66,000. Has anyone used Turbo Tax or H&R "free" versions to file? I can't use them & last time I tried they charged you to submit your taxes electronically but otherwise it was simple & easy. I also know many cities offer services to help people file simple taxes for free. I believe this bill also states the IRS cannot se…

This is definitely a nuanced issue, and some people in this thread are being alarmist. Another legitimate issue that many people cite is that by creating a system whereby people can just click a button to pay their taxes is that it can cause people to pay more taxes in general by not fighting for every deduction that they can. People are complacent, and if they are told by the government that they owe some dollar figure, the great majority of people will just click the button and put in their bank account info to make the problem go away.

Say what you will about the greed of tax companies, there absolutely is merit in those arguments. However, there is also something to be said for the effect of large numbers of people being lazy and not fighting to keep every dollar they are entitled to.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#304

Post by fattire »

Calloggs wrote: post #298

Planet Money covered tax filing a few years ago and visited it again recently: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor... My understanding is that the main opposition appears to be (1) the tax preparation lobby to protect their business interests and (2) anti-tax activists that believe that making people calculate their own taxes will make them more aware of how much they are paying in taxes. The…

Link to audio:

https://www.npr.org/player/embed/708195702/709698927

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#305

Post by brianpgordon »

hbosch wrote: post #288
DubiousPusher wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perrenial misunderstanding about lobbying in the US is that it's about money. It's not. It's about access. The money spent by lobbying firms is almost always in pursuit of that access. AKA buying a $10,000 plate at this donor dinner gets you a sit down with the Senator. Not only do lobbyists get more accessible they get more credibility. The lobbyists are high paid lawyers at respected firms. They have degrees fr…

I think this is a very level-headed view of lobbying and I want to say that I appreciate your comment. It’s enticing to imagine that Intuit is building a new pool on Chuck Schumer’s vacation property, and in a dark room somewhere a bunch of fat white guys are lighting this bill in fire with the ends of their cigars. One other factor is that in “government time” we’re not far removed from the Healthcare.gov fiasco and…

This seems pretty in line with 18F's mission and skillset.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#306

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

indemnity wrote: post #227

Meanwhile, in my little country (NZ), as a regular salaried worker, I only had to interact with the IRD in the years that I had a few side gigs in addition to my regular employment. Most years I don't interact with them at all. Don't even have to file. I guess in the USA they are worried the IRS will get it wrong, so on the chance they will, everyone has to follow really complicated processes, even if their tax affai…

We just like creating businesses for everything here. Someone needs to squeeze profits out of each segment. Like healthcare.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#307

Post by shalmanese »

hurryskurry wrote: post #216
shalmanese wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every flat tax proposal comes with a Negative Income Tax portion to counter regressitivity. People misunderstand what flat tax proposals are all about. With a tiered tax system, individuals need to be the ones who pay taxes because people who combine income from multiple sources need to pay differing amounts of taxes. With a flat tax system, all income is treated exactly the same so governments can switch to collecti…

Seems like it would harm job growth, because labor costs would increase for low wage jobs. Also what about income from investment?

It's an open question whether anything would change between a company giving you $12/hr and a company giving you $8/hr and the government giving you (the equivalent of) $4/hr as a monthly lump sum.

Income from non-salary sources aren't generally covered by flat tax proposals because they're so complex and the existing tax system would still exist to deal with them. However, for the vast majority of citizens, salary is their only source of income and their experience with the government becomes "how much can I convince the government to give to me" rather than "how do I try to avoid the government from taking from me".

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#308

Post by rayiner »

arcticbull wrote: post #301
rayiner wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Money speaks depressingly loudly in politics. I don't know what's disheartening about it. Here in D.C., Democrats are in an ideological war with Republicans. Money is necessary to fuel the war machine: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015... . Of course they want to get larger donors more involved.

The problem is exactly what you describe, the "war machine." Elections are in the public interest and should be solely publicly funded. Collect taxes for it, distribute it directly to candidates evenly, via some set model. You can look to Canada's system as a basis, although we do still allow some limited private contributions (which I disapprove of, but ~20% of total funding) [1]. That's all they should be allowed t…

The US is fundamentally more adversarial than other developed countries. Our political system reflects that. The Canadian way is one way to do it, but I don’t see why our way is fundamentally wrong.

Also this focus on the “merits” is misguided. The US is too big and diverse for votes to correspond very well to actual policies. By the time you get all the stakeholders on board with something the final result won’t appear anything like the original proposal. So we place a much higher emphasis on people, personality, and party than policy.

I’ll give you a concrete example of this: immigration. Canada is much less divided on immigration than the US. Here, you have one side calling immigrants criminals, and the other side calling for open accommodation of hundreds of thousands of low-skill immigrants illegally crossing the border each year. By contrast, Canada’s right is less vitriolic, but it’s left is also far less idealistic. Even Trudeau generally seems to support Canada’s point-based immigration system, which puts a heavy emphasis on English skills and education. That system would be m demonized as regressive and racist were Republicans to propose it here.

So what good does it do to vote for policy here in the US? You think anyone will hash out an immigration policy that makes both sides happy? No. So instead we raise money to go to war and try to bury the other side.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#309

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

arcticbull wrote: post #290
arkades wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I read this right, you can still use the free service the IRS provides if you make less than $66,000. You did not. You can contact the private companies such as H&R Block and request Their free service if you make less than 66k - and subject yourself to their upselling and scam artistry, to try and get you to pay anything more than "free." > I don't expect the IRS to make software for complicated taxes as that's…

Exactly. W-2 and 1099 income is really straight-forward. If anything the IRS should provide ways for you to submit all your non-W2/non-1099 income to them and roll them up into a new form so that no matter what your situation you can "fetch" your current returns, sign them, and submit them. No need for third-parties at all. Any additional complexity is a symptom of rent-seeking IMO.

It would be incredibly easy to set up a step by step flow to intake basic info or to confirm the numbers and hit send.(if not doing alway with you doing the taxes)

I can only suspect that this hasn’t happened because of strong lobbying.

Re: Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing

#310

Post by RickJWagner »

"It could also submit pre-prepared tax returns for people to approve and then file based on the salary data the agency already has."

That's the dream. Put the onus of doing the calculations on the government, and you get the right to disagree if you find fault with it.

Wouldn't that be great!

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