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Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#71

Post by j33zusjuice »

hiddencost wrote: post #43
jimbob45 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like TurboTax. It just works, year after year. The fee is worth the peace of mind that I wouldn’t have by letting a government program lose my submission accidentally.

Gotta be honest, the "government is unreliable" crowd are not people I think of as honest. Government works fine, and for less money, if you actually try to make it work.

They’re not. They take all the funding away, push for our tax money to go toward things that don’t help the overwhelming majority of citizens (and probably a similar number actively disagree with where taxes go, like bombing other countries), and then they create businesses to extract money from private individuals. They use it to create completely absurd and wasteful private industries for the soul purpose of making money. They aren’t solving problems, they’re exploiting problems they’ve created by undermining the government.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#72

Post by nathanappere »

tlb wrote: post #51
janalsncm wrote: post #22

Listening to Congress “debate” this made me unreasonably upset. If you as a sitting politician have received monetary benefits from a tax filing service you should not be allowed to speak.

And, to be fair to both sides, politicians who have received money from taxpayers should not be allowed to speak.

You're mistaking corporations for people.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#73

Post by rufus_foreman »

nathanappere wrote: post #68
rufus_foreman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If you as a sitting politician have received monetary benefits from a tax filing service you should not be allowed to speak Should people who are receiving welfare benefits be allowed to vote?

So for you it's the same than being paid by a private corporation?

It's a conflict of interest.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#75

Post by tootie »

lolinder wrote: post #9
kelthuzad wrote: post #3

wait until turbo tax comes in hot with their lobbying efforts - didn't they manage to prevent or diminish a free tax filing service already a few years ago?

As I understand it, this system exists largely because ProPublica shined a light on how corrupt the TurboTax deals were and the IRS couldn't pretend they thought everything was okay anymore. I'm hopeful that the IRS knows that we're on to it and doesn't get cozy with them again.

I think that was a bit oversimplified, the Free File program was problematic in a lot of ways, but it's not like the US government was just sitting on their own free file system that was locked behind a vault. They had to actually make the thing and it was never a given that they'd be able to do it. When the private companies said they'd offer their services for free to prevent the government from taking on the expense and hassle, it was sensible trade off. When the tax prep industry got greedy and overplayed their hand, they got bitten and are now in deep trouble.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#76

Post by rufus_foreman »

Barrin92 wrote: post #44
thegrim33 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was originally done this way because in the past people actually had some semblance of privacy and the government didn't actually know a great deal about people's income. Eventually, privacy was eroded away year after year to the point where the government now knows an extreme amount about each citizen. I guess I'd refrain the question - instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government know…

>we change the way the government is intimately entangled with our lives? I've lived in Sweden where taxes are not just automatically filed but every citizen can trivially look up anyone's tax returns and nobody ever saw it as the government being intimately entangled with anyone's life. Privacy violation would be to look into how and on what you spend your money, not that everyone pays their share of taxes. That tel…

>> nobody ever saw it as the government being intimately entangled with anyone's life

Is that true? There's no one, not one person in Sweden, who sees that as government overreach?

Scary if true.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#77

Post by alright2565 »

LoganDark wrote: post #57
monero-xmr wrote: post #11

Most Americans don’t do their own taxes. They go to H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt, and if your family makes under $60k you are almost certainly paying no income taxes and are receiving a refund via the EITC, getting a check back. So people think tax preparers are voodoo priests that do their incantations to get free money because the average person can’t understand the jargon, can’t handle forms, and the whole endeavor…

> if your family makes under $60k you are almost certainly paying no income taxes How is this possible? Where I live, you can expect to pay around 30% of your income as tax almost regardless of how much money you actually make (as long as it's above something like $600 a year).

Pretty easy, assuming 2 kids filing jointly. Standard deduction is $29,200, so effectively only $30k of taxable income. Of that, 23k is taxed at 10%, 7k @ 12%, or $3.14k/10.5% effective.

Then $1.6k/kid gets subtracted due to the Child Tax Credit, for a net -$700 in taxes paid.

Keep in mind the cost of living in the USA is higher than many other countries. 60k for a family of four is doable in most places, but it is not a life of luxury.

edit: the family will also end up paying 7.65%/$4.6k in a separate tax for a mandatory retirement scheme (FICA)

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#78

Post by binkHN »

tmountain wrote: post #8

It’s amazing that 54% of adults in the United States have a literacy below 6th grade level, but it is expected for the same population to have the financial literacy to file their taxes accurately. Going further, the IRS already knows the details of most people’s taxes before they file, yet everyone is expected to complete what amounts to a complex task for many people. I cannot fathom why it is still done this way.

The fact of the matter is the tax code is stupidly complex for no good reason. It's used to promote policy and benefits the wealthy (Warren Buffett has noted this numerous times). That's it. If the focus was on collecting taxes it would be stupidly simple.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#79

Post by cess11 »

"Experts say a nationwide rollout could someday disrupt the multibillion-dollar tax preparation industry; Americans spend more than $200 a year, on average, to file a return using software or a tax preparer."

This year it took me five minutes and cost whatever I pay for my bank account, which I used for identification. $30 maybe? I could have waited a bit for papers through the mail and approved with a SMS.

Might be an OK goal for US:ian lawmakers.

Re: Claiming high user satisfaction, IRS will decide on renewing free tax site

#80

Post by cess11 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #73
nathanappere wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for you it's the same than being paid by a private corporation?

It's a conflict of interest.

Right, so anyone using roads or having gone to school shouldn't vote?
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