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FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

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Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#431

Post by astura »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #186
wolverine876 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for error. Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are…

My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though, admittedly. It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many thousand…

>Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by.

Every single wall or desk calendar I've ever seen has "Tax Day" labeled on it.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#432

Post by tylerhou »

JSavageOne wrote: post #376
softveda wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how is works in Australia. The Australian Tax Office will pre-fill your tax return online with income from your wages, interests, managed fund distributions, dividends etc. That maybe enough for simple tax returns, you can just accept their values and submit. What they don't know is your income from sources like rental income or crypto. They also don't know deductions you are going to claim. In this case you…

Pretty much every other major developed country operates like this. Here in South Korea for example filing taxes is as simple as logging into some government portal, verifying that the information they already have on you is correct, and making any corrections if necessary. 10 minutes, done. The U.S is unique in forcing its citizens to waste countless hours and pay hundreds/thousands of dollars every year doing the u…

There is another reason: a group of Republican lobbyists (Americans for Tax Reform) deliberately want to make taxes more difficult. The idea is that 1) if taxes are difficult, you will spend as much as your time trying to get every deduction and 2) a prefilled tax form from the government would look too much like a bill, so people will pay it without contesting.

Of course, TurboTax/Intuit also lobbies to keep taxes more difficult to protect their profits.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/0...

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#433

Post by hunter2_ »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #420
fragmede wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So give me a partially filled out form with the information they do know then. Fill in the standard deduction, let me do the extra credit work for itemized deductions if I really want, eg I find taxes fun to do. (Some 90% of filers just go with the standard deductions.) Don't buy into Intuit's nonsense that the current system is good for anything other than their bottom line.

Standard deduction varies based on your filing status (single/married joint/married separate/etc). IRS will not know if that changed in the year.

So the IRS calculates for each filing status, and you choose one. This would be a lot to ask years ago, but nowadays many citizen-facing government processes are web apps. Think TurboTax pre-filled with whatever has been reported.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#434

Post by efitz »

AceyMan wrote: post #382
JSavageOne wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every other major developed country operates like this. Here in South Korea for example filing taxes is as simple as logging into some government portal, verifying that the information they already have on you is correct, and making any corrections if necessary. 10 minutes, done. The U.S is unique in forcing its citizens to waste countless hours and pay hundreds/thousands of dollars every year doing the u…

[flagged]

“Capitalism” does not mean “every use of money that I disagree with”.

It also does not mean “greedy immoral bastards who sell political influence to the highest bidder”.

There are lots of corrupt things about the US government. That’s not capitalism; it’s corruption. It can happen in any form of government; in the US it just happens to be much more visible.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#436

Post by astura »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #202
wolverine876 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. That does not at all match my experience, it's widely discussed every year, and I wonder how many returns are late.

Alright. Thanks for the data point. But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't impoverished. I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the fact that you have a stable, fully functional family. Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate. If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle class or higher, then that's an important data poi…

Wtf?!

I grew up impoverished. Impoverished people talk about tax filing time way, way more than well off people because they need the money (refund) much more. A very pleasant memory of my early childhood was at my aunt's house celebrating her tax refund with her by making strombolis.

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#439

Post by supramouse »

zw123456 wrote: post #332
supramouse wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't really go to prison unless you're going out of you way to do something really nefarious it's also super easy to setup a payment plan online now if you really mess things up

well, I am walking around free so, for sure you don't go to prison but you pay a penalty perhaps. In my case I just paid it. It was an honest mistake and they did not bust my chops over it, they did charge interest, which is stupid. But, fine, if your computer can figure it out why not just send me the bill monthly like my city government does?

IRS is currently in the MVP phase, waiting on buy in from the steakholders on UX improvements

Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

#440

Post by Griffinsauce »

zw123456 wrote: post #271

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on…

This is literally how it works here in the Netherlands.

Every year I get a reminder, log into an app with my government ID, click "next" a few times while checking the numbers and submit. It literally takes 2 minutes if you don't have anything to adjust.

does the US have a thing like DigiD?

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