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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

#641

Post by sanderjd »

astine wrote: post #370
sanderjd wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the tax preparation industry must be taking a significant enough cut to make it lucrative to spend money lobbying. Is that cut smaller than the total extra tax that would be paid due to mistakes in the auto filing system? I'm skeptical.

Tax preparers usually file federal taxes for free while charging a fee to file state and local taxes. That's where they make their money.

I suspect (but don't know) that they make more off of the various up-sells for people with more complex filing situations. Also, the free filing is marketing. It's their foot in the door. If something like rapid return happened, they would lose that strategy.

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

#642

Post by wycy »

tdeck wrote: post #409
mikestew wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax Act. And as far as "best in class" goes, I find Tax Act to be far less infuriating that that steaming pile of shite Intuit puts out. I would almost go so far as to say it's decent software. As for the lobbying, I have some vague memory of jumping to Tax Act because of someone pointing out that they don't lobby. A cursory bit of searching didn't raise any red flags at the time.

I file with TaxAct as well, but it's worth noting they're a member of this industry lobbying group: https://www.americancoalitionfortaxpayerrights.org/ Interestingly while looking this group up I found this entire report prepared by Elizabeth Warren's staff about these types of industry groups: https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Repor...

The names of these lobbying groups are downright Orwellian. Coalition for Taxpayer Rights. Internet Freedom Coalition. Freedom Online Coalition. All these groups are diametrically opposed to the principles in their own names.

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

#643

Post by crazypyro »

Something1234 wrote: post #373
brianpgordon wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty in line with 18F's mission and skillset.

Didn't they basically get lobotomized and declawed recently? Like they lost a couple people, but due to the hiring freeze couldn't replace them.

https://www.fedscoop.com/rise-fall-18f/

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

#644

Post by jschwartzi »

tathougies wrote: post #628
VSerge wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These anti-tax activists seem to be playing the role of Useful Idiots for the much more substantial reason 1, bearing in mind that the very existence of such companies making tax filing easier does indeed destroy point 2 entirely (in addition to the what OP pointed out which also takes away any credit this idea might have had). From a european perspective, having tax returns that are not pre-filled, and having a tax…

The thing is that the form 1040 is laugably straigbtforwards to fill out. If intuit has had any success, its in convincing people that filing their own tax returns is more complicated than it is

This is only true if you don't own anything, never make any contributions, don't have any investment accounts, and don't have any self-employment income. Otherwise the 1040 is a huge pain in the ass requiring forms within forms and raising tons and tons of nebulous questions about your exact status within the legal definitions.

I wouldn't assume that the people who pay for tax preparation every year are idiots.

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

#645

Post by kyrieeschaton »

tathougies wrote: post #626
ransom1538 wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has the most idiotic tax system. Your employer, your mutual funds, your 401k, your bank -- everyone reports what you make to the government. The government already knows what you owe (excluding those that itemize). They should just print out a summary and hand over a bill / refund.

No they don't. There's a gazillion things you could do or claim to lower your tax bill. Moreover, if you set up all yoyr withholdings correctly then you do not need to file anything. You only need to file if you owe (ie you set up withholding wrong) or want yoyr money back (ie your withholding was wrong)

That is not true. You're generally required to file a tax return if your income is over 12K, depending on your filing status and various other rules, regardless of if you owe money or are owed a refund.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2019/01/30/do-...

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

#646

Post by JDiculous »

First of all this whole movement to keep taxes a pain in the ass to file is extraordinarily infuriating and uniquely American in its idiocy. I'm in South Korea now and filing taxes is as simple as logging into a website, entering your SSN, and verifying that the information is correct. Completely free and takes 5 minutes.

Second, I'm tired of people blaming TurboTax. The headline says "Thanks TurboTax". No, TurboTax does not vote on laws, our Congressmen do. If any Congressman is taking bribes and voting for this bullsh!t, then the Congressmen are at fault and need to be voted out of office.

I decided to take a quick look at the bill to see if it's really as outrageous as the article makes it, but I can't even understand what the bill says. It's like a 30 page document of legalese. Where in the document does it say that the U.S. would be banned from offering free tax filings? Why the hell do laws have to be written like this to be so overly verbose and indecipherable to anyone without a law degree? There should at least be a succinct summary at the top.

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

#647

Post by mlindner »

dosy wrote: post #441
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…

this is stupid. shouldn't free market competition include government services?

You can't have a free market competition of government services. It's not free market competition when its companies competing over _providing_ a service mandated by law. That can never happen. Just as private prisons can't be free market (providing a service mandated by government law) you can't provide tax services in a free market environment because it's required by law.

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

#648

Post by magduf »

u801e wrote: post #573
benj111 wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that be regressive, in the sense that richer people spend a lower proportion of their income? Plus they have the means to spend their earnings abroad. But a fixed credit could offset some of those concerns.

> Wouldn't that be Wouldn't that be regressive, in the sense that richer people spend a lower proportion of their income? The paycheck credit I proposed should address that. Plus rich p eople definitely spend a lot more compared to others. > Plus they have the means to spend their earnings abroad While that's true, they certainly could be taxes on major purchases. For example, I could buy souvenirs abroad without pas…

There's a couple of big problems here: 1) Rich people spend a lot of their money on real estate, so unless you're going to come up with a good way of taxing that (which we don't do now; property taxes are local), rich people aren't going to be paying much in taxes, and 2) Rich people spend a lot on foreign vacations and travel, which is untaxable domestically for obvious reasons. Sure, they still have to pay titling tax on cars, but when they're spending tons of money on foreign hotels and such, cars are a drop in the bucket.

In short, there's a reason that no other developed nation taxes this way, and they all have income taxes. And all those other nations manage to have relatively simple taxes for most taxpayers that don't require paying H&R Block to file for them.

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

#649

Post by brandonmenc »

ljf wrote: post #468
brandonmenc wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A situation worth getting back to, imo.

Which taxes (if any) would you prefer?

I meant that it would be nice if people with low (and even middle) incomes weren't saddled with having to file a tax return. It's a huge pain point for people struggling to make ends meet.

This would probably require some simplification of the tax code.

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

#650

Post by magduf »

tathougies wrote: post #631
guelo wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right because filing your taxes is the moral equivalent of strapping the population to the torture rack

He isn't claiming paying taxes is bad, he's claiming (correctly) that lobbying for a complex tax code and to prevent the IRS from offering a free-filing tool because it competes with entrenched tax-filing companies is evil, and it is.
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