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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

#701

Post by mac01021 »

u801e wrote: post #691
mac01021 wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So any income other than as a W-2 employee doesn't count influence your credit? This includes capital gains, rent collected from tenants, AdSense revenue. The right way to handle this stuff is not immediately obvious to me.

Isn't that income also reported to the government via 1099 forms or similar? Do those who make less money typically also have income from sources such as collecting rent or capital gains?

I suppose that reporting does happen or at least could be made to happen under the new system.

I used to make $80k per year in salary(which is far less than most of the top decile in the USA) and in one of those years had over $10k in capital gains. In the same year I thought about buying a house to rent out. I ultimately didn't do it, but if I had, then I would have had to declare the income as part of my tax return filing process. Just as one data point.

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

#702

Post by freedomben »

cobbzilla wrote: post #528
freedomben wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our presidents are alreay paid millions, typically billions. They just don't get it until after they leave office. Just look at the Obama's net worth. And of course Bill & Hillary pulling down 6 figures for giving a speech (that somebody else writes for them). I'd say they are paid pretty well already

Pay received after leaving office cannot by definition incentivize any behavior during the term.

Not sure what you mean. Politicians routinely do things while in office expecting a payoff later after leaving office. It's not always cash (in fact usually not), but certainly lucrative speaking engagements, often times board positions or "consultant" fees paid for very little work, professorships at prestigious universities (with 6 figure salaries despite teaching little or no courses), etc. The options are only limited by people's imagination.

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

#703

Post by conanbatt »

msl wrote: post #667
conanbatt wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard an anti-tax argument in this topic, but this is a main argument between economists and statists. Economists will always say that the tax should be explicit, and it should be placed for the people that ultimately pay for it. But pro-taxes people, mainly the government, want higher revenues first, which means putting a tax wherever you can, and that is about what is politically feasible, not about what…

> Other countries, like europe, hide the VAT taxes, so it looks like you are not paying taxes at all. That is not true at all. In all European countries that I can think of you get to see the whole price, including VAT so that, you know, you can actually tell how much the product is going to cost you. The composition of that price is then shown, often in smaller font. This is true of price stickers, receipts and invo…

It is very misleading: do it the other way around and people would complain about the tax constnatly, which is what people do in the US and in Canada.

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

#704

Post by jppope »

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #396
jppope wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure these arguments wouldn't change if the IRS provided a free service to submit federal taxes. 1) They could still provide free federal tax submissions 2) State taxes could still be submitted through the companies If the companies do in fact provide a service that is valuable the IRS should not be competition for them. Now with that said. Intuit loads up their service with tons of dark patterns, and they spe…

They do provide free federal tax submissions. Everytime I see this stuff come up, I'm in disbelief. I used Free File for over a decade when I had a lower income and 1040 type employment. You seriously click a button here: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f... Pick a provider and fill out the form. It doesn't even take more than 5 minutes. 10 if you're slow. How is it on a site full of highly…

So these (https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/) are all still companies loading their site up with dark UI patterns so that people end up paying money to file their taxes. And sending in the forms via mail has always been free.

...I don't understand what possible value you believe the American public gets by paying companies money to do something that the IRS could/should be offering for free?(not meant to be curt... just trying to understand your perceived value proposition)

What is wrong with an electronic filing system offered by the IRS without a charge?

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

#705

Post by dstroot »

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.

Umm... where do I start? ALL the tax prep companies lobby against free electronic filing. So if I want to vote with my wallet I have to go back to paper forms. Paper forms may be outlawed at some point in the future. Can you solve that issue?

We either need campaign finance reform or we need to accept our government is bought and paid for by big oil, coal, the NRA, the car manufacturers, etc.

sorry for the rant

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

#706

Post by foobarchu »

hannasanarion wrote: post #530
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Conservatives always love when people say "vote with your dollars", because that means the people with more dollars get more votes.

Particularly in the case of taxes, where the benefit one gets from having someone else prepare ones taxes is directly proportional to wealth. The people with the most ability to change this situation are the one's who are have the least skin in the game, because they're probably hiring an accountant anyway.

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

#707

Post by eridius »

basseq wrote: post #697
eridius wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS could develop a system where they list what information they've received already, and you can then validate that this represents the complete set of expected information and request that they go ahead and process taxes now without waiting. If they then receive more information later that would affect your taxes, they can bill you, or otherwise just go through the same process they would if you filed your taxe…

Ideally, you'd want the IRS to be able to reliably populate a tax return, where all you do it sign it (or make corrections). A world where the IRS is pre-populating a return that may not be correct starts getting tough, even with such a taxpayer-warrant system.

Ideally, yes. If you need to preserve the ability to get refunds earlier than April 15 then one of two things needs to happen:

1. Move up the deadline for companies to submit tax information to the IRS, or

2. Allow taxpayers to declare that the IRS will not receive any more tax information than what they already have, with penalties for lying (presumably, the same penalties as what happens today if you submit your taxes early and you yourself haven't received all the relevant information yet).

Or we could just pay the one-time hit of "you can't get your refund early" and have the IRS process taxes once the existing deadline has passed for companies submitting tax information to the IRS. I say one-time hit because after the first time, any refunds for following years would occur 1 year after the previous year's refund, just like it does today, it would just be at a different point in the year (assuming you even submitted taxes early to begin with; if you didn't, then no change).

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

#708

Post by rplst8 »

GcVmvNhBsU wrote: post #658
rplst8 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't so much that people are taxed. It's that they are taxed by a monolithic out-of-control bureaucracy that has grown much to large for anyone's good. To add to this, I'd be 100% ok if my tax bill was flipped such that the federal government got what my local government had gotten and my local government got what the federal government had gotten.

I’m curious as to how you think your proposed structure would be significantly different from the structure under the Articles of Confederation. It seems as though we’ve already tried having minimal revenue raising structures for the federal government, learned that such a structure does not work well at international scales (240 years ago - we’re even more globalized now) and moved onto a more productive form of tax…

The things we are spending money on (besides arguably defense) have next to nothing to do with working at international scale. Furthermore, while I'm not advocating we return to the era of AoC, the power granted via the current Constitution does not bestow the power, size, and scope of things that the current federal government has embraced.

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

#709

Post by tathougies »

jschwartzi wrote: post #644
tathougies wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I make 401(k) and IRA contributions, have been self-employed (and yes, had to file quarterly returns), have several investment accounts. It's still straightforwards. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to fill out these forms. The IRS provides copious documentation and even has a phone line...

Please stop assuming the guy you're talking to on Hacker news is a simpleton.

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

#710

Post by tathougies »

nwah1 wrote: post #634
tathougies wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's the problem. There shouldn't be a gazillion things, and the fact that there are is a major reason why rich, savvy, and unscrupulous people are able to game the system while average people pay full freight.

TFW you learn it's unscrupulous to read the tax code
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