311–319 of 319 posts
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> I'd suggest FreeTaxUSA.com as an alternative. LOL I just tried to sign up and they rejected me because my personal email is on a .ch domain: The Email Address can't be a foreign email address ending with .ch. Wowwwwww.
Certainly is a weird requirement. Could this possibly a governmental requirement? I certainly know governments have some silly requirements.
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I hear what you are saying about the problems with the current system being fraught with problems, and there being a total gap in a government provided service. That said, there are a lot of challenges to such a program. Ready return was limited to people who were single, no-dependents, standard-deduction, only-wage-income, one-employer, with a maximum adjusted gross income of $139,917 This is great for a number of p…
It's not challenging at all. I did taxes in NZ for a contract once. You do make a few choices if you want add some exemptions to save money, but it doesn't amount to much either way.
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It's not challenging at all. I did taxes in NZ for a contract once. You do make a few choices if you want add some exemptions to save money, but it doesn't amount to much either way.
Does NZ have a tax code as insane as the US? My point is that half the problem is the law, which needs to be updated.
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What does "IRS going after" mean here? I've been filling my taxes by hand, and back when I used some "free" online thing, I had problems multiple times and the IRS basically just sent me a bill saying what I owed and I payed it. (Doing it myself has proven more reliable.) Contrary to popular belief, it's not a crime to make a mistake on your taxes. So what happened that you're so concerned about?
An example, from this year: a friend received a letter from the IRS. They were about to levy something in the order of ten thousand dollars . I will mention that the tax return that year had been prepared by a family friend of theirs who worked for the IRS. I have no further details at the moment. Perhaps you are not fussed by the prospect, but I do not ever want to get a letter from the IRS telling me I need to pay…
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Even then 90% of the 1040-EZ is instructions on how to actually use the form. If you cut all that out and just have the boxes to fill with labels it's not much bigger than the post card it's just needlessly hard to file.
I recall seeing recently (somewhere in Europe, I think) the idea that because the government tracks this information anyway as people get paid throughout the year, all that is required is basically you (the taxpayer) attesting that the information being submitted is correct. At that point, you just sign the form and send it back.
It's also unlikely to happen because a dedicated faction in the GOP specifically want taxes to be as annoying as possible to make people resent it more.
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I think you are right, my point more that until we have revamped our school systems so that teachers do not have to purchase extra expenses, the tax code remains unfortunately complicated. A lot of the blame goes ( justifiably ) at private companies and their lobbyists, but even without these vested interests there's a lot of complexity that cannot be easily removed
>A lot of the blame goes ( justifiably ) at private companies and their lobbyists, but even without these vested interests there's a lot of complexity that cannot be easily removed There's nothing logistically difficult about removing the complexity of deductions/exemptions/credits, it's a few sentences typed into a law voted in by the legislature. The difficult is all in the politics since costs of various subsidies…
Funny anecdote, I've been using TurboTax installable for a decade or so (having given up on doing them completely by hand). Been considering hiring a professional because you always hear that they are worth their weight in gold. (Our tax situation is not particularly complicated though, typical Silicon Valley married homeowners). Well, last year, did everything in turbotax, said we were short by like 15k. Believable,…
BTDT = been there done that Should I feel old if I didn't know that?
So in the Netherlands, I can file my taxes for free, it takes me less than an hour for me and my wife. It’s also auto populated with all relevant figures. The hardest part is remembering your password for the nationwide single-sign-on service. Some problems are best solved by governments.
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An example, from this year: a friend received a letter from the IRS. They were about to levy something in the order of ten thousand dollars . I will mention that the tax return that year had been prepared by a family friend of theirs who worked for the IRS. I have no further details at the moment. Perhaps you are not fussed by the prospect, but I do not ever want to get a letter from the IRS telling me I need to pay…
Of course I don't, but I guess the question is: would they have owed that much anyway? My thought was that the IRS just billed you what you should have payed already plus maybe some interest. So if you get a $10k bill, it's an unpleasant surprise but doesn't that mean they just messed up and should have payed that 10k (less some interest) a few months earlier?
The answer is I don't. Even tax experts seem to make mistakes, as pointed out. Faced with that, I tread lightly. Remember, the IRS has worked very, very hard to get a certain kind of reputation and there are knock-on effects from that.