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H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

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Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#91

Post by jeffdavis »

djsumdog wrote: post #61
koolba wrote: post #30

> But the legislation would also permanently bar the IRS from offering its own free alternative. Why should we as citizens of this great country be forced to give up the right to form a public option? Not quite 1:1 but the analogies to health care do come to mind.

Australia has their own tax software. It's not pretty, but it's pretty straight forward. In NZ you don't even have to file. You login to the IRD site and it shows you your earnings, similar to this proposal. Jobs will disappear and some industry will go away if we had a unified federal run tax system. Most likely though, these two companies will turn into contractors for the government to make an maintain one standar…

How is lobbying the government to create problems for it's citizens (so you can charge to fix them) related to "capitalism" at all?

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#92

Post by John23832 »

M_Grey wrote: post #63
John23832 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Even though I disagree with it) Many courts interpretations of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC Lobbying is speech. You can't just censor people you disagree with. That's not the basis of our democratic society. The price of being able to speak what you think is good, is having to hear what you think is bad.

That would be the aforementioned fiction I was expecting you'd trot out. You really are just abandoning anything like a moral or intellectual dimension of responsibility in favor of pure legalism, up to and including IG Farben in Nazi Germany ?! That's not really a position, it's a tragedy.

Are you really calling Citizens United a work of fiction? Asked where that right was spelled out, and I gave it to you.

I also didn't make a opinion on IG Farben... I called that argument straw man and ignored it because IG Farben doesn't currently exist.

Some people's appetite for argument and being proven correct is insatiable.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#93

Post by problems »

jawns wrote: post #74

Because of the complexity of tax regulations, I don't think coming up with a competing free/open-source/nonprofit tax preparation service is the right answer to this problem. Let's consider the positions of all sides: * The professional tax preparers are worried that they're going to lose business if the government assumes the bulk of the tax preparation work. * We as taxpayers would prefer that the government pre-fi…

> Because of the complexity of tax regulations, I don't think a free/open-source/nonprofit tax preparation system is the right answer to this problem.

Maybe our taxes are simpler, but in Canada we have many free tools even endorsed by the government for tax preparation and they're quite popular.

Some of them are even offered by Intuit and H&R Block in order to keep people using their software.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#94

Post by M_Grey »

dang wrote: post #90
M_Grey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize, and won't do it again. Is there any way to report something like this?

Sure, you can flag the comment and/or email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind, and follow the rules.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#95

Post by problems »

koolba wrote: post #30

> But the legislation would also permanently bar the IRS from offering its own free alternative. Why should we as citizens of this great country be forced to give up the right to form a public option? Not quite 1:1 but the analogies to health care do come to mind.

Why not just use free tax prep software which doesn't need to be government funded and cost taxpayers.

Maybe the US is different but in Canada at least this is well supported - even endorsed by government.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#96

Post by John23832 »

zhte415 wrote: post #77
John23832 wrote: post #4

It's never wrong for businesses to lobby for their interests. It's wrong when our elected officials bend to those business interest when it goes against the public interest.

Lobbying who? Absolute transparency is needed of any lobbying, and does that happen? Non-perfect?

I agree, transparency is needed in lobbying.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#97

Post by WillyOnWheels »

briandear wrote: post #75
imgabe wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as cynical as the next person, but seriously, how successful could they be approaching legislators with the idea "Make the tax code even more needlessly complicated to support our business"? Short of outright bribery I don't see any benefit to a politician for supporting something like that. There are a lot of complications in the tax code because with 300 million people there are a lot of special cases to accoun…

Actually Milton Friedman gave a speech on that very topic -- the tax code is intentionally complicated because it provides political power.

Milton Friedman partly invented automatic withholding of SSI taxes.

Conservatives want taxes to be as painful as possible, to highlight the fact that the tax exists.

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#98

Post by John23832 »

mtgx wrote: post #62
John23832 wrote: post #4

It's never wrong for businesses to lobby for their interests. It's wrong when our elected officials bend to those business interest when it goes against the public interest.

So two issues with that statement. 1) Is it wrong to lobby politicians in general ? This can be debatable, but I would say a strong democracy should decide that individuals, organizations, and corporations can only make their cases in public hearings and on the record . That way we see where everyone stands and what exactly the arguments are for or against something. So it may not be illegal for an entity to "talk" t…

In the US, lobbyist have to be registered. So there is a definition to "lobbying".

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#99

Post by Maarten88 »

In the Netherlands we have had this for years. You login with the tax agency and download a pre-filled tax form. Wages and Income Tax is pre-filled, as are Bank savings and morgages. The pre-filled form is complete for over 90% of people.

The 10% for who it is not can add or correct things that our IRS may not know correctly (i.e. foreign holdings or bitcoins).

You then digitally sign and submit it. It's quite easy to do yourself and I think most people here do (couldn't find a percentage). I could find that 97% is submitted digitally, only 3% is on paper.

We do have commercial offerings, those are used for the more complex scenario's, mostly by accountants and tax professionals

Re: H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy

#100

Post by atonse »

mabbo wrote: post #52
atonse wrote: post #24

Could we not start a non-profit that builds software as good as H&R block and allows people to file their own taxes?

A lot of what H&R Block sells is experience in filing taxes, not just knowledge of how to do it. I have complex multi-country taxes to file (Canadian living in Canada, but with some income the IRS says is American income). H&R Block have a guy who has handled this exact kind of tax filing hundreds of times before. If I make any mis-steps in filing, the IRS is going to demand I give them thousands of dollars. I'm not…

Yes but you wouldn't benefit much by this simplified filing system anyway.

The point is there are millions of people that just have 1 or 2 W-2 incomes and don't itemize, and can file a straight up 1040 which is what H&R block is fighting.

In addition to you, people like me (S-corp owner) have complicated taxes and that's fine. We'll always pay. But doesn't mean there isn't a class of people who wouldn't benefit from this.

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