In Europe (in most countries as far as I can tell), electronic filing is administered by the government, and it's easy to use (often prefilled for simple situations). As mentioned in the article, in the US, electronic filing is offered for free only to taxpayers below a certain income threshold, and the service is offered by private companies. They often pay themselves back with tax advances at usury rates. I can't help but think that it is another example of how the US tax system is beholden to private interests.
FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
511–520 of 610 posts
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
[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.
However, Capitalism inherently rewards corruption. If you are a corrupt politician and earn $10 million through corruption you can invest your money and the capital gains alone will exceed any politician's salary and this is ignoring that you will earn more every single year due to compounding.
You can burn the amazon down and then invest the earned or saved money and economists will tell you, you are doing well and that you have a god given right to that wealth.
Communism doesn't even try to address the root cause, it's actually making the problem worse by concentrating everything at the top.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is the system still this backwards? Intuit lobbying hard to keep tax rules complex.
TurboTax is a relatively new product, and they haven't been big lobbyists for their whole existence. Why wasn't the tax process simple before then?
TurboTax was first released in 1984, according to Wikipedia.
That's ~20 years before Sweden got everything prefilled for some of the population. As an example.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#514A 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…
It's well known fact that the government can auto-file for most people, it's not really a secret. Many other countries do it, it's been proven to work just fine.
That's just it, when I do my annual taxes (I should do that within the next month btw), all the data - from my employer's wages, all assets at banks including checking-, saving- and investment accounts, and things like mortgage interest (which is still partially deductible) etc are all filed.
The only thing I need to manually add is the EUR value of crypto assets on Jan 1st of the preceding year (good luck figuring that one out, the exchanges are kinda shit), and any charity donations I may have done. (my dad will pettily write down any speeding ticket cost as charity donations)
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
> need to be part of this transaction at all Because Capitalism, in essence, is the optimization of one particular group’s ability to alter how people live their lives in a way that transfers the most wealth from the working class. America’s economy is a house of cards built around financial middlemen.
I think you meant cronyism.
Capitalism without cronyism isn't something people would recognize as capitalism.
Americans would probably still decry it as socialism or communism even though it is very far away from those.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#516Earlier 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…
Since we're having the semi-annual "how do taxes work in other countries" thread, here is my experience as an American living in Switzerland. Though I have been here a while, I still find it interesting and a little weird. At the beginning of the year, you get a bill for that year based on what they think you will owe. This bill is due on October 31, i.e. you need to pay your estimated income tax before you have earn…
Which canton? As I recall, Zug is near Zürich and has very low tax rates. Many highly paid professionals make the daily commute.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people to hate the idea of taxes in general.
That's why I do my taxes manually and mail them in. I want it to be as painful as possible.
At some point the tax system will be so painful that filing your taxes manually will be considered to be as severe as physical assault.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#518Earlier 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…
> Pretty much every other major developed country operates like this cries in German
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent The argument I've heard is that so righteous indignation over the "staggeringly high" taxes "stolen from the hardworking American people" or whatever. This is one of the same arguments as to why sales taxes shouldn't be included in the shelf price of an…
> The argument I've heard is that ... > Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file. "that can't possibly be a fair representation of that ideologue's position, there's huge gaps in the logic!" look, positions way out on the fringes don't have to make coherent sense to the rest of us. PETA runs kill-shelters that euthanize millions of animals every year, so…
That's highly ineffective and ultimately pointless. I don't want income taxes to be abolished because I think taxation is wrong. I want them to be abolished because there are better taxes than income taxes cause dead weight losses in the economy and tell people to work less than they want.
Abolishing income tax because it is hard to file is quite absurd. You can have a flat percentage income tax and then you wouldn't have to file. Then you could implement an automatic deduction via tax credits ala Milton's negative income tax. For me that would be an acceptable compromise if my goal was simplifying taxes.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#520Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard a slightly different version of that rational, which I think is more more plausible but cynical. Tax collection is deliberately painful to justify cutting IRS funding and passing tax cuts (mostly for the very wealthy). It doesn't really make a lot of sense rationally, but might be effective as a manipulation tactic.
Well if you work from an assumption that taxation is theft and gov't is an existential threat to liberty then it makes sense why filing for taxes is terrible.
By that very same logic living in a community without paying for public infrastructure is theft as well which would turn a lot of land owners (frozen property taxes) into thieves.