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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

#51

Post by SilasX »

SkyBelow wrote: post #50
fsloth wrote: post #25

Oh man, I've had government provided automatic filings for ages now (Finland). US is really odd how it emphasizes the benefit of the middleman over the benefit of the individual citizen (it seems). Or have I completely misunderstood what's going on here?

>US is really odd how it emphasizes the benefit of the middleman over the benefit of the individual citizen (it seems). I wonder what extent this is decided by how we vote. As long as voters pick the politician who prioritizes the middle man and gets their campaign contribution is selected over the politician who prioritizes the public but whose opponent gets the middleman's campaign contribution we will continue to…

Is the public really to blame for this? Is there an actual broad constituency that doesn't want this, or at least who trusts an interest group to represent them and who doesn't want this?

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

#52

Post by tudelo »

komali2 wrote: post #11
Brendinooo wrote: post #3

Headline is a bit misleading: The IRS does not currently offer free online tax filing, and bipartisan Congressional leaders are seeking to codify this status quo.

I am very confused - last night I filed my taxes in an hour flat on freefillableforms or whatever that terribly named piece of software is. I thought this was a service provided by the IRS?

I used CreditKarma and it took 10-15 minutes... afaik they didn't charge a fee either. This is the second year I have used them. I would prefer a Government solution if it was good, but there are plenty of very low cost/free alternatives out there already so oh well.

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

#53

Post by gpapilion »

0xfeba wrote: post #26

What's preventing a OSS solution to this? What I can think of off the top of my head: * Lack of e-file permission * Lack of any kind of legal recourse or audit protection for the user * Constantly changing tax system After a casual search on GitHub I see a few calculator projects but nothing serious. I'd be down to help make a free competitor to Intuit. I see no reason to use a non-static site unless it's to keep pre…

Those are the first three. If you want to offer state income taxes, that means you’ll need to also implement those rules. There are also a ton of legal restrictions on handling data, that if done wrong send you to jail.

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

#54

Post by wbl »

nemo44x wrote: post #13
xbryanx wrote: post #8

This is pure anecdote, but... A NOAA employee told me about the time their boss caught holy hell from a Senator because the NWS had the gall to update a particular weather product they offered by adding color to the map. Evidently someone had a business essentially downloading the free NOAA data and improving it by coloring the maps and selling that as a product. When NOAA made it free, they called their Senator in a…

Michael Lewis wrote about the NOAA and this exact type of thing in his last book. In essence the NOAA spends lots of tax payer money to collect weather data but can’t do much with it other than give it away exclusively to a handful of entities that can repackage and sell it. The eventual dystopian end state could be where the NOAA can’t alert people to tornados and only those subscribing to a weather service would be…

Have you seen weather.gov? They do provide free products.

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

#55

Post by mikeyouse »

gpapilion wrote: post #53
0xfeba wrote: post #26

What's preventing a OSS solution to this? What I can think of off the top of my head: * Lack of e-file permission * Lack of any kind of legal recourse or audit protection for the user * Constantly changing tax system After a casual search on GitHub I see a few calculator projects but nothing serious. I'd be down to help make a free competitor to Intuit. I see no reason to use a non-static site unless it's to keep pre…

Those are the first three. If you want to offer state income taxes, that means you’ll need to also implement those rules. There are also a ton of legal restrictions on handling data, that if done wrong send you to jail.

Even worse -- Since State and Local income taxes are (partially) deductible on your Federal taxes -- you need to implement those rules no matter if you plan on filing State and Local returns.

edit

Actually now that I think about it, since the standard deduction is increased, you could catch the majority of simple returns by just assuming the standard deduction and including a few disclaimers about the option to itemize.

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

#56

Post by ddlatham »

NPR's Planet Money just re-ran an episode[1] related to this. In 2005, California ran a pilot program where they sent simple, pre-filled tax forms[2] to a sample of the population. 98% of people liked them and would use them again. In 2006 it would have become standard for California, but failed in the legislature by a single vote. Opposition was from two factions: lobbying by Intuit, and Grover Norquist claiming that it violated a pledge for no new taxes. Fascinating stuff.

Later, California's Franchise Tax Board, went ahead and made it an option anyway, but hardly anyone knew about it. It was since been superseded by California's free online option: CalFile[3]. Of course, it's not that helpful if you have to go through the whole federal process anyway. But it serves as an example that it could work fine here in the states like the rest of the world if Congress would be willing to go for it instead of bowing to Intuit and Grover Norquist.

1. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn

3. https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp

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

#57

Post by Symmetry »

tarabanga wrote: post #31
fsloth wrote: post #25

Oh man, I've had government provided automatic filings for ages now (Finland). US is really odd how it emphasizes the benefit of the middleman over the benefit of the individual citizen (it seems). Or have I completely misunderstood what's going on here?

More like, corporate interest > citizen interest

Corporate pressure is important but the fact that people in the tax preparation industry form a decently sized and committed voting block is even more important.

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

#58

Post by hobs »

chadash wrote: post #48
0xfeba wrote: post #26

What's preventing a OSS solution to this? What I can think of off the top of my head: * Lack of e-file permission * Lack of any kind of legal recourse or audit protection for the user * Constantly changing tax system After a casual search on GitHub I see a few calculator projects but nothing serious. I'd be down to help make a free competitor to Intuit. I see no reason to use a non-static site unless it's to keep pre…

The problem is that the system requires constant maintenance every time some tax law changes in any state, and great maintenance is something that only the most well funded OSS projects get. And you need participation from lawyers and accountants, not just software developers. As the article notes, there are already free solutions for people with basic income situations (W-2, some bank interest, no stock sales) makin…

I mind, because turbotax actively lobbies to make the tax system more complex, and to put us in this situation.

Pretty much all the major tax preparers do this, and they are pretty scummy.

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

#59

Post by knubie »

fsloth wrote: post #25

Oh man, I've had government provided automatic filings for ages now (Finland). US is really odd how it emphasizes the benefit of the middleman over the benefit of the individual citizen (it seems). Or have I completely misunderstood what's going on here?

The question I have is whether a government provided automatic filing would actually be cheaper (or more effective) than say, Turbotax.

I see a couple of ways in which it might not be as favorable:

1. It costs more than $100 per tax payer per year to implement (about the cost of Turbotax). However the flat $100 or so that most people pay to Turbotax can be seen as a kind of regressive tax.

2. It is less effective at finding the biggest possible return.

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

#60

Post by moftz »

nemo44x wrote: post #13
xbryanx wrote: post #8

This is pure anecdote, but... A NOAA employee told me about the time their boss caught holy hell from a Senator because the NWS had the gall to update a particular weather product they offered by adding color to the map. Evidently someone had a business essentially downloading the free NOAA data and improving it by coloring the maps and selling that as a product. When NOAA made it free, they called their Senator in a…

Michael Lewis wrote about the NOAA and this exact type of thing in his last book. In essence the NOAA spends lots of tax payer money to collect weather data but can’t do much with it other than give it away exclusively to a handful of entities that can repackage and sell it. The eventual dystopian end state could be where the NOAA can’t alert people to tornados and only those subscribing to a weather service would be…

You can get an emergency radio capable of receiving VHF NOAA weather alerts. There is typically at least one of the frequencies within range where ever you are. You can subscribe to weather alerts through RSS on their site as well.

https://alerts.weather.gov/

You can even pass lat/long points to the forecast page and it will pull up the closest weather station, even points in the ocean work.

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=43.4802&lon=-1...

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