Why innovate when you can be a perpetual rentier?
Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
51–60 of 284 posts
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#52Turbo tax is free for federal filers with no business income, same thing as this service. Except now no taxpayer dollars were spent on maintaining this. This would have been useful if it also did state taxes, which turbo tax is not free for.
No business income (including no Uber/doordash/etc due to schedule SE?), no dividends over $1500, no itemized deductions, no capital gains, no nanny (like you hiring a nanny), no unemployment income, no gambling winnings, no alimony, etc etc
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#53The Trump Administration is hell bent on doing everything it can to benefit large corporations at the expense of the American people.
Cash App offers free Fed and State filing and it's quite good (used it last year for the first time). Not many people know about it though.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#54What was wrong with using Free File Fillable Forms in the first place? It's the real deal forms just online and with nothing obscured or sugar coated. I use it every year, and while I wouldn't exactly say I enjoy doing my taxes, I do enjoy being fully aware what I'm filing and not being forced to do it on paper just because others have obtuse opinions or are lazy.
I've used the fillable forms before; the problem is that to fill them out with confidence - to even know with confidence which ones you should be filling out - requires more knowledge of tax law than the average person can reasonably be expected to possess. Now, the various self-filing software products also feel a lot like guessing, but at least they walk you through which guesses are mostly likely to be correct and…
The form that you fill out has a very tearse description of the field, but the actual instructions are in a separate document. For example, form 1040 is here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf and the instructions document is here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf
The instructions make it very clear when a field in the form should be used and what should go in it.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#55Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#56Money well spent https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-makers-turbotax-gave-trum...
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Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such a cheap bribe holy crap.
Maybe lobbyists should be punished by having their skin fully tattooed blue like smurfs. This way, you’d have to really be into lobbying to suffer the tattoo pain and permanent branding.
Or voters should take some civic responsibility and stop voting for corrupt politicians. Americans seem to be either unable to make their own decisions without paid advertising to direct them or they're afraid of "wasting" their vote on candidates that didn't spend enough on advertising.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used the fillable forms before; the problem is that to fill them out with confidence - to even know with confidence which ones you should be filling out - requires more knowledge of tax law than the average person can reasonably be expected to possess. Now, the various self-filing software products also feel a lot like guessing, but at least they walk you through which guesses are mostly likely to be correct and…
The form that you fill out has a very tearse description of the field, but the actual instructions are in a separate document. For example, form 1040 is here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf and the instructions document is here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf The instructions make it very clear when a field in the form should be used and what should go in it.
Yes, obviously, everyone knows that. When all you have to file is a 1040, reading one of the instructions documents is fine. When you have to use several forms it start to add up.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#59As long as they don't kill FreeFillableForms...
It started requiring phone numbers and things and I stopped using it in favor of my own spreadsheet.
Re: Direct File won't happen in 2026, IRS tells states
#60Meanwhile in pretty much all other nations you go online to the free website, see your employer contributions already filled in and acknowledge they are correct for the year, add any extra income, check boxes for relevant deductions and you’re done.
Doesn't America have uniquely complicated tax that requires you to keep all your receipts to claim all sorts of confusing deductions? How can the IRS know what you spent your income on if you don't tell them?
I've had the misfortune of having to fill in a W8-BEN-E form [1] and the first time, I just gave up and refused to work with the client because it was too complicated. The 2nd time, I got an LLM to tell me how to fill it in. Just look at the dense jargon - nonparticipating FFI, deemed-compliant FFI, Restricted distributor, International organiztion (hint, that's the wrong answer), Excepted territory NFFE, Passive NFFE, Direct reporting NFFE. There are 32 of them! What the hell is all that? Well 99% of cases are just one of those buried among the rest but you wouldn't know which without some advice.