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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

#501

Post by onetimemanytime »

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…

Conspiracy theory: what if IRS (the Govt) when designing the free software with all the options--thousands and thousands of pages https://www.politifact.com/missouri/statements/2017/oct/17/r... --lean on the side of the government when in doubt? Intuit, HR Block etc have some sort of guarantee and incentive to save users, IRS not so much. Doesn't even have to be a conspiracy theory ("We need the money so let's make them pay $xx Billion more this year") just the way incentives work. Maybe simplify the code first?

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

#502

Post by tokyodude »

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…

maybe not exactly the same but it is aguable if the majority of people had to write check to pay their taxes instead of having their taxes auto-deducted by their employer they'd push much harder for lower taxes and less government spending

it's much harder to make $40k a year and write a check for $5k than to just get a net pay of $35k with the $5k never reaching your bank account. (note: No idea what income tax is at $40k)

PS: don't have an opinion if this would be a good or bad idea. can see it both ways

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

#503

Post by freddie_mercury »

tokyodude wrote: post #502
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…

maybe not exactly the same but it is aguable if the majority of people had to write check to pay their taxes instead of having their taxes auto-deducted by their employer they'd push much harder for lower taxes and less government spending it's much harder to make $40k a year and write a check for $5k than to just get a net pay of $35k with the $5k never reaching your bank account. (note: No idea what income tax is a…

Why is it "arguable"?

What you suggest is exactly how it worked before 1943 and there was a massive expansion of government, government services, and tax rates between 1913 and 1943.

The actual historical evidence strongly suggests this theory is spurious and easily dismissed.

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

#504

Post by dwighttk »

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…

Checking math? You must have simpler taxes than I do. By the time I’m done entering various non w2 forms I don’t even know what math I’d check.

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

#505

Post by dwighttk »

guelo wrote: post #352
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…

I would classify causing mass pain for political gain as purely evil.

So:

Politics is evil...

Checks out.

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

#506

Post by jason_slack »

I just filed my taxes this morning.

I owe the government $4,600. I received an "underpayment penalty fee of $44" because I did not "pre-pay an estimated tax" each quarter. Something I have never done in the ~25 years I have been paying taxes.

Not only do they want the $4,600 by 4/15 they also want an estimated $1,200 "pre-payment" for 2019 by the same date or I will incur this same fee of $44 next year.Plus 3 more payments of $1,200 each quarter. So they want to hold my money without paying me interest. At least in my bank I earn more than the $44 penalty in interest each year.

This is bizarre. I surely didn't know about this nor did I read anything about new tax laws as I imagine most people don't.

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

#507

Post by otikik »

linuxftw wrote: post #201
otikik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe "Voting doesn't work" works very well for preserving the status quo. Don't you agree?

If voting is shown to not work, I'm not sure how you would peaceably replace such a system, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be replaced.

> voting is shown to not work

I'll grant that voting works only sometimes. And when it does change things, it's often not everything we want changed, and definitively not fast enough. But it can change things. If it didn't, voter suppression would not exist[1]. (One of the ways of suppressing vote is promoting voter apathy, by the way).

The only sure guarantee is that not voting doesn't work.

> peaceably

Even something as seemingly mundane as voting carries a lot of risk of physical violence in some places. That's how voting was in the US in the 1870s[2], if you were black. It might sound like a far away past for certain US citizen, but I (an European) own a house older than that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression_in_the_Unite... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenfranchisement_after_the_R...

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

#508

Post by janandonly »

To me (as a Dutchman) this sounds crazy. Here in Holland the only way to file your taxes as in individual (I don't know about company's) is to login to the government tax website (with my digid (a government issued digital identity)) and then to simply check if all the information that they have collected on me is correct. It usualy is.

All I have to add is my deduction items, and BAM! it's done. Also, we automatically pre-pay our taxes because it is calculated and payed for by all employers.

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

#509

Post by JulianMorrison »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #106
ddlatham wrote: post #56

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 tha…

I will say, vote with your dollars. If you don't like Intuit's lobbying, please don't feed the beast and use their services.

Vote with your votes. And with direct action and protest. Your dollars are small and easily ignored. Political organizing works when it's political, because it forces change rather than pitting the minnows against the shark one on one.

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

#510

Post by lukeqsee »

jason_slack wrote: post #506

I just filed my taxes this morning. I owe the government $4,600. I received an "underpayment penalty fee of $44" because I did not "pre-pay an estimated tax" each quarter. Something I have never done in the ~25 years I have been paying taxes. Not only do they want the $4,600 by 4/15 they also want an estimated $1,200 "pre-payment" for 2019 by the same date or I will incur this same fee of $44 next year.Plus 3 more pa…

Strictly speaking, you're holding their money for a year without interest.

The estimated payments are not prepayments—they are payments that match what most W2 employees would pay every paycheck, but isn't the case for 1099 (or otherwise self-employed) individuals, since they don't have taxes withheld from their paychecks.

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