[HN Gopher] Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
___________________________________________________________________
Intuit sabotages the Child Tax Credit
Author : samizdis
Score : 540 points
Date : 2021-06-30 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| Consider using credit karma tax (run by good guy Jack Dorsey); it
| was forced to be split out from CK when they were bought by
| intuit. It's free, it supports nearly everything you would need
| these days.
| crysin wrote:
| I know you're getting downvoted but I was hoping to get more
| context around the ownership situation of specifically Credit
| Karma Tax? Are there articles anywhere discussing how it will
| be spun off from CK or will it stay within their services just
| run by a different company?
| twostorytower wrote:
| It has already spun off. Square currently operates it under
| the "Credit Karma Tax" brand but it's probably going to move
| under the Cash App branding eventually.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| At least for me, it is a huge pain in the add to have to
| manually type numbers instead of automatically importing from
| my 1098s, 1099s, etc. Until the competitors can do that, I'm
| sticking with TurboTax (even if their software was broken last
| year for anyone who refinanced a home worth more than >$350k)
| aceazzameen wrote:
| This was the first year I used Credit Karma Tax. I found it
| easier than Turbo Tax in some ways. Turbo Tax has these wizards
| that ask various questions. In some edge cases, I needed to
| research how a question applies to my scenario. Credit Karma
| basically just wants raw data. Searching about a form number is
| much easier than an obscure Inuit question.
|
| Both systems output the same result, so I used CK.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Many of the people eligible for CTC don't file tax returns
|
| There is a level of pragmatism that calls for better
| communication of programs and help with tax filings ... but ...
| as a citizen, you do have a responsibility to file tax returns.
| Why is it always hard to make the argument from both sides,
| namely: we should make tax filing as easy as possible AND the
| citizen has a responsibility to file their taxes regardless. It
| seems we, as a society, have a hard time with the latter part.
| kaiju0 wrote:
| Most every other country has the government send a tax sheet to
| you. If you disagree you go to appeal. If you do nothing your
| done.
|
| So much easier.
| barbazoo wrote:
| While I agree that that would be nice, I'm not sure that this
| is really as common as you say it is. Do you have examples?
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The UK is a good example of this -- if you're a regular
| employee and earn under the higher earnings threshold then
| you're very unlikely to be required to fill in any kind of
| tax return, as all your income will have been taxed at
| source and we don't tend to _do_ deductions. You'll get a
| P60 from your employer and you've got until October to
| notice if you either want to or need to fill in a self-
| assessment (hint: you don't). If you earn more, it may well
| be worthwhile filling one in because schemes like gift-aid
| assume basic rate tax and you can claim back the difference
| between basic and higher rate. But even then, as an
| employee you can often ask for any pension contributions or
| charitable donations to be given directly from salary pre-
| tax which means less paperwork later.
|
| Having to fill out self-assessment -- or at least
| complaining about doing so -- is a bit of a humble-brag as
| it's an indication that the person complaining earns enough
| (or has sufficiently complicated tax arrangements) to need
| to.
| TFortunato wrote:
| In this case, no, many of those in question are not required to
| file a tax return.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Before credits like this, filing wasn't required and didn't
| make sense for many people with low income:
| https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501#en_US_2020_publink1000...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But ... as a citizen, you do have a responsibility to file
| tax returns.
|
| No, this is not a general responsibility of citizenship.
| boublepop wrote:
| They put the company who wants the built the bypass in charge of
| storing the building plans, and nobody is surprised they put a
| "beware the leopard" sign up in front of it.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| We had the completely free "click here for a default tax return"
| situation here in Canada, at least in Ontario.
|
| As of last year (in my case) finally the tax authority had all
| the information slips you need to file already in their database.
|
| The freely usable tax software (Studio Tax) was able to download
| and autofill them to generate a valid (as far as the government
| knows) tax return that could then be e-filed.
|
| The only thing that changed was that the donation-based model of
| Studio Tax wasn't enough, so now you have to pay CAD $15 per
| installation (not per return) in order to actually file - but you
| can still try it out and see what your refund will be before you
| pay.
|
| It would still be better if the government had all this on a
| website, but $15 per household is not the end of the world and
| won't ever fund consumer hostile political lobbying.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| You still need to do the cost basis calculation yourself,
| because a single financial institution can't calculate that for
| you (you may have the same securities with another
| institution).
| alkonaut wrote:
| A different institution from what? If all banks, employers
| and other institutions are required to send the info to the
| tax authority, the only "other" things you need to fill in is
| basically income made abroad. But most people obviously don't
| have foreign income or assets, so a tax calculation should be
| 100% correct and simply a matter of accepting?
|
| The Tax authority should also have a very good guess of all
| possible deductions/credits, so that can be filled
| automatically too.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that
| when people think about abusive big tech, they never think about
| Intuit. Their business is literally the idea of creating friction
| in federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in
| exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions (emphasis
| on "some").
|
| A sinister business model in every possible way.
| novok wrote:
| Intiuit is medium-large tech, like a twitter, ebay, paypal,
| square, uber, etc. Also they pay crap and the work is
| uninteresting which is why nobody focuses on them.
| IMTDb wrote:
| Intuit is not "big tech". It's not even "tech". If computers
| and internet were not a thing, Intuit would work mostly the
| same way - their business is scraping money between citizen and
| the sate, and lobbying politician into keeping a broken system.
| That's not tech in any way.
|
| Other "big tech" companies would not even exist.
| tantalor wrote:
| > It's not even "tech"
|
| Intuit most certainly is a tech company. They make web and
| desktop software. This semantic argument is a distraction.
|
| https://jobs.intuit.com/search-jobs/
|
| > If computers and internet were not a thing
|
| Cool counterfactual. Not relevant in this discussion.
| slumdev wrote:
| Doesn't a company have to be at least slightly sexy to be
| called "tech"?
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I was firmly on the side of "Intuit is a tech company",
| and then I read this comment, and then I had a hearty
| chuckle, and now I think I may be on the side of "Inuit
| is not a tech company."
| user3939382 wrote:
| Don't forget the CPA trade associations who are right there
| with them lobbying for the same nonsense tax complexity.
| tzs wrote:
| The tax code is complex because people do not want to pay
| tax, and so anything that is ambiguous or underspecified
| becomes a loophole, the closing of which generally adds
| complexity to the code.
| [deleted]
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Already said in this thread, but I think it's ridiculous that
| when people think about abusive big tech, they never think
| about Intuit.
|
| Because it isn't that big of a deal.
|
| > Their business is literally the idea of creating friction in
| federal and local tax systems so they can extort people in
| exchange of removing some of those synthetic frictions
| (emphasis on "some").
|
| That's a hyperbolic characterization. It's not that big of
| deal.
|
| Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. There are always
| interest groups on every side of any issue that lobby for their
| selfish benefit, frequently to the detriment of the public
| (e.g. public sector union contracts). That tends to make most
| government programs less efficient and more expensive then they
| could be because politicians will balance needs of all kinds of
| interest groups. That will never change. Intuit has a right to
| lobby for their interests. Characterizing this as somehow
| nefarious, or even as an outlier is hyperbolic. Welcome to
| Democracy.
| trhway wrote:
| Marlon Brando look alikes have the right to lobby too. It
| doesn't make them any less evil.
| macspoofing wrote:
| We are talking about inexpensive tax software as an
| alternative to free filing methods. It's not a big deal. Of
| course it could be more efficient and cheaper ... but so
| can many government programs. Are public sector unions
| _evil_ when they negotiate outrageous contracts that the
| public has to pick up the tab for? This is what democracy
| looks like.
| Miraste wrote:
| This very article explains how they're deliberately
| blocking millions of desperately impoverished people from
| receiving billions of dollars. How is that not a big
| deal?
| macspoofing wrote:
| >they're deliberately blocking millions of desperately
| impoverished people from receiving billions of dollars.
|
| They aren't. Those programs don't require Intuit to
| claim.
| Falling3 wrote:
| The problem isn't that Intuit wants to charge something
| instead or nothing. The filing fee is not the harmful
| part. The problem is they can't directly ensure people
| use their service. But they can indirectly make it hard
| to file without using their service by lobbying against
| tax code simplications that would benefit most fillers.
|
| Your argument makes it sound like you do not know what
| the issue in question actually is.
| Miraste wrote:
| Recipients' other options are hire a CPA (obviously
| untenable), find the correct forms, calculate the credit
| themselves, do the rest of their returns by hand, and
| submit those (difficult for the target groups) or... pay
| to use TurboTax. That's the exact dilemma this new site
| would've helped solve if it hadn't been sabotaged.
| trhway wrote:
| > Are public sector unions evil when they negotiate
| outrageous contracts that the public has to pick up the
| tab for?
|
| the question starts to sound more interesting when you
| add the fact that the members of that union have "death
| or life" power over the public.
|
| >This is what democracy looks like.
|
| it is more like a "contract you can't refuse".
| Retric wrote:
| It's fine to lobby for a group say fisherman or "the rich."
| However, when you're getting special laws written to hand
| your company money at the expense of everyone else in the
| country that's corruption not lobbying.
| Retric wrote:
| Bribery isn't lobbying.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Lobbying is lobbying. There is a tendency by some purist to
| label democratic actions like lobbying, patronage or
| campaign donations as 'bribery' or 'corruption'. No no no
| no. Democracy is messy and involves horse-trading,
| negotiation and balancing of many interest groups to push
| political priorities.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't mean campaign donations to support candidates who
| agree with your cause. I mean strait up bribery where you
| hand people cash to do stuff for you.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >I think it's ridiculous that when people think about abusive
| big tech, they never think about Intuit.
|
| I don't know why you think people don't think that. I imagine
| that most people who have been informed will think along
| similar lines. Those who don't think it are likely not yet
| informed.
| whoisjuan wrote:
| If you talk to people outside of tech circles and you bring
| up Turbotax into the conversation, you will notice that
| people have a relatively positive view of it. Most people
| think of TurboTax as something that's helping them to comply
| with their tax duties and navigate a complex tax system. They
| think of it as a helping hand when it comes to dealing with
| government bs.
|
| Not surprisingly, most people think the complete opposite
| about the government.
|
| So where Intuit is diabolically good, it's at arbitraging
| those colloquial narratives and embedding itself in the
| middle as the savior. The good guy who is here to help.
|
| They screw you, so they can later come and help you. As I
| said before, a sinister business model.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| People need to stop calling companies "big tech" because every
| large cap company uses technology in a way that used to be
| exclusive to one tech industry.
| Retric wrote:
| Nintendo wasn't a tech company for a long time but it made
| the switch. The same is true of Intuit, if most of your money
| comes from directly selling software/computer hardware ...
| your a tech company.
|
| That's still not true of most large companies like say
| Walmart or McDonalds which still invest a great deal in
| technology.
| jwoah12 wrote:
| > it made the switch
|
| Nice.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Obviously Microsoft or Apple is a tech company, they sell
| software and hardware. It's hard to say whether Intuit
| sells accounting services or whether they sell software.
|
| Is Google a tech company? Probably, but technically they
| sell advertisements, not software. You could say that they
| make money by operating ad-selling software. Walmart is a
| company that makes money by operating purchasing,
| distribution, and retailing software. An old west General
| Store owner could, if his records were lost, make a good
| guess as to what he should by from which big city
| distributors, when and how much of it to stock, and how
| much to sell it for, conversely, zero people have a
| comprehensive understanding of Walmart's product lines,
| they're just cogs in the software-powered machine that
| makes the corporation work.
|
| Every large company today is dependent on software. I agree
| that it's a bit absurd to suggest that this means they're
| all tech companies.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| I'd suggest that being "tech company" is in large part
| cultural mindset.
|
| Are they primarily dependant on off-the-shelf software?
| Possibly not a tech company. Is their software
| development team bigger than the whole of the rest of the
| company put together? Probably a tech company. Have the
| developers convinced everyone else to form squads and
| hold all the usual agile ceremonies? Don't @ me.
| boringg wrote:
| "Big tech" is such a catchall that it almost completely
| devoid of value.
| boringg wrote:
| I think OP meant - people forget about the large company
| Intuit being a business built on an abusive business model
| enabled by technology. "Big tech" is a pejorative term in
| this case to trigger a reaction.
| conanbatt wrote:
| The monopoly is the government though, not Intuit...There is no
| way you can argue that Intuit has monopoly power over
| government!
| [deleted]
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Have your heard about a little thing called lobbying.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
| smithza wrote:
| The whole "companies get political speech through untold
| millions $$" makes lobbying more like a quid pro quo
| bribery system. Its fine that companies have a vested
| interest in how the gov't runs and policies are put forward
| but the bastard child of "political speech" and capitalism
| is IMHO a lot like corruption. Obviously my opinion is not
| original and a lot of people talk about this... but lets
| not forget how this works.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Lobbying is a fact of life in a democracy. For any
| government regulation, law, program, etc. there are
| multitudes of lobby groups on all sides of each issue. Why
| in this case is this such a big unethical crime? Lots of
| government programs are inefficient and expensive due to
| interest groups - that will never ever change. Welcome to
| Democracy.
| oneplane wrote:
| No it's not a fact of life, it's a known quantity but not
| a fact and not life-related. And you can definitely ban
| it as well. It's not a requirement, and it's not the
| best, only or 'current' way. It's just a weak side-effect
| of the status quo (yes, technically that means 'weak' and
| 'current' but that is besides the point).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's just a weak side-effect
|
| Isn't it literally a constitutional right? It's not a
| side-effect of anything - it's a right by itself.
| oneplane wrote:
| Perhaps from a US-centric perspective. I don't know for a
| fact if a company or non-person is universally allowed to
| direct the facility that is the government to do
| something or not do something everywhere in the world.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Lobbying isn't directing the government. It's presenting
| your point of view to the government. What the government
| does with the information you give them is then up to
| them but sometimes they're obligated to show they've
| considered it. It's a super-basic part of democracy
| everywhere. It's usually a right and also actively
| encouraged through consultation periods while legislation
| is drafted.
|
| I can't understand anyone suggesting that we should not
| be allowed to present our opinions to the government.
| What are you in favour of? Just voting once every four
| years or so and never saying anything else the rest of
| the time? Bizarre.
| treeman79 wrote:
| What form of government is not going to have lobbying?
|
| Even an absolute monarch is going to have have various
| people/groups petitioning. For reasons both good and
| selfish.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Lobbying is bad when it creates outcomes I don't like.
| Falling3 wrote:
| Lobbying is bad when it helps a single company at the
| expense of tens of millions of citizens. The situation is
| far more objective than you're pretending.
| gwd wrote:
| https://www.theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-
| powered-l...
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| You mean the tax authority has a monopoly on collecting
| taxes?
|
| That would be one way of looking at it yes.
| lazyweb wrote:
| There's a very good Patriot Act episode [1] regarding devious
| patterns in the US tax industry. In fact the whole show is well
| worth watching. It's cancelled now, presumably because Netflix
| felt some heat since every episode stirred/kicked another wasp's
| nest.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xQQkzWhMOc
| WisNorCan wrote:
| Intuit is consistently one of the least ethical actors in tech.
| They have a monopoly position in many of their products and take
| advantage of some of the poorest people through misinformation
| and lobbying.
|
| Facebook & Uber have received most of the heat over the past few
| years. Intuit has strangely avoided the same level of scrutiny.
| dhosek wrote:
| Around 2009 my taxes grew complicated enough that I could no
| longer do them by hand and had to start using tax software for
| them. I've consistently refused to use TurboTax because the
| company is so evil. H&R Block is not necessarily a more ethical
| company, but at the very least, there's not more unethical.
| (And I'm vaguely aware of there being some open-source tax
| software of some sort out there, but when I looked it was kind
| of janky and didn't seem to give me much of an improvement over
| filling out the forms myself. I'd love to learn that things
| have changed.)
| lvspiff wrote:
| does H&R Block handle investments and cost basis year over
| year information? That's the only tripping point im finding
| with whatever product I look to in comparison to Turbotax.
| Once your tax situation starts down that path I'm noticing
| getting a product that can pull from multiple investment
| accounts and keep track of cost basis correctly really
| narrows it down to Turbotax so far for me.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Yeah, it did for me. But I only used it to make sure it
| matched Credit Karma tax and filed through there.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| At that point why not engage an accounting firm? Yes it
| would probably cost more, but you're supporting your local
| economy and have a human being to discuss any questions
| with (as well as be responsible for any mistakes).
| ryandrake wrote:
| There's still a big jump in cost between, for example
| TurboTax Premier tier ($90 federal + $50 state = $140)
| and a CPA (where I've been quoted $400-$600). I don't
| think the level of service justifies the cost. I tried a
| professional once in my life, and he basically just asked
| me all the same questions the software would have asked
| me, and typed them in to his system for me. 3X-4X the
| cost for the services of a typist doesn't seem like a
| good deal.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| A CPA takes a risk doing your taxes. They are responsible
| if something goes wrong. That is probably $400 an hour.
| If you are paying less than that make sure it's actually
| a CPA doing your taxes. There may be a CPA at the firm,
| but unless they sign and do your taxes you aren't
| protected by their liability.
| threatofrain wrote:
| An accountant with a CPA could have ten or twenty
| seasonal temps working under them, but at the end of the
| day they will review and sign the outgoing product. They
| are liable and will be on top of your case if the IRS
| comes to bother you, but don't expect the personal
| attention of the CPA.
|
| Also, personal accounting is an increasingly niche
| industry.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| That's only if the CPA is in that position. My mom has
| worked at places where they had a CPA on staff, but they
| were only doing here for consulting. They never reviewed
| or signed anything.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The last time I got a quote from a local accounting firm
| it was for $3,000. My tax situation is more complex than
| most but the difference between $150 for some paid
| software and an accounting firm is a _lot_. And the
| people working at the budget firms are basically just
| using TurboTax-equivalent software anyway.
| [deleted]
| daxelrod wrote:
| The value proposition of a tax accountant is not usually
| crunching numbers. It's instead helping you find the
| optimal choices to make when filing, helping you model
| your situation in terms of tax code, and giving you
| advice about how to arrange your affairs the rest of the
| year to give you the biggest benefit come tax time.
|
| The one I've used has consistently saved me more money in
| taxes than he costs. That said, my tax situation is also
| nowhere near complicated enough that an accountant has
| ever asked the order of magnitude you were quoted, so
| YMMV of course.
| lowercased wrote:
| agreed. it's "more" money, but generally less headache,
| you can ask questions, and get answers specific to your
| situation, especially questions that may include
| state/local tax concerns as well.
| shadilay wrote:
| Last I checked state governments have links for the free tax
| software that taxpayers are already paying for but the
| companies so desperately hide.
| [deleted]
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I still do my taxes manually. I've looked for open-source
| software to assist. I've tried OpenTaxSolver, it is OK for
| what it does (basic 1040 and a few schedules like SE income
| and Schedule C). It does not come close to handling all
| possible scenarios.
|
| It's possible that you could write your own modules to handle
| any mising forms, in fact I tweaked one calculation that
| wasn't handling some edge case properly. But that's more than
| most people would want to do, and would certainly be _more_
| work than just doing those forms manually with pen and
| calculator. But like any open-source project, it relies on
| individual efforts like that to build something that 's
| useful to more people.
|
| The UI itself is extremely minimalist and would not be
| regarded as "user friendly" by a user from the general
| public.
|
| Edit: it also only attempts a few state returns. Mine is not
| one of them, but fortunately in my state the tax forms are
| pretty easy assuming the Federal return is done.
| cbhl wrote:
| Is H&R block actually an independent code base? The last time
| I opened it, it looked like a page-for-page copy of TurboTax,
| which made me wonder whether it was just a white-label reskin
| of the same.
| verall wrote:
| I've went through both H&R block and turbotax's flows this
| previous year, and although heavily inspired, it did not
| seem like a reskin. Certain info was organized differently,
| etc.
|
| After being completely ready to spend $40 or whatever it
| was for the "Basic Premium" offering of each, BOTH H&R and
| turbotax silently upgraded me to "Self-employed" (I am not)
| and said I was free to pay the ~$100 or delete my account
| and make a new one.
|
| "TaxSlayer" finally let me file for like $30 or something.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| It's even worse - if you don't opt-out of the data sharing,
| they have an absolute field day with all your financial data.
|
| They soak up a lot of the tech talent in San Diego, and every
| person I've met that works there on the TurboTax team has
| admitted to me that they feel ethically torn about what they
| do.
| cmckn wrote:
| For sure. The IRS needs to offer a tax preparation platform,
| the grift in this industry is astounding. I've always had
| decent experiences with TurboTax, but they've gotten extremely
| good at making your taxes hell if you want to avoid giving them
| $89.99.
| jandrese wrote:
| This year we tried doing our taxes using both TurboTax and
| FreeTaxUSA.
|
| TurboTax has a much worse interface, it took almost twice as
| long to complete the taxes despite having an identical
| return. TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us
| somehow despite having entered the same information into both
| sites, but that amount is less than the fee TurboTax would
| charge so we ended up submitting through FreeTaxUSA instead.
|
| Next year I don't think I'm even going to bother with
| TurboTax.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > TurboTax did find about $50 more return for us somehow
|
| Don't you have to sign to say that you're entitled to that
| return? How are you doing it if you don't understand where
| it's coming from?
| adrusi wrote:
| The person paying the taxes is not always expected to
| understand exactly how the tax code applies to them.
| IANAL but I think that when you hire a human tax
| accountant, their saying that your return is legally
| sufficient for you to testify that you are entitled to
| your return as filed. I don't know how that would apply
| to tax software, but I imagine that for purposes that
| TurboTax is appropriate for, saying "well TurboTax, a
| widely used and generally respected accounting tool
| generated this return, so I believe that it is correct,"
| would be sufficient. Of course if it turned out that you
| were not entitled to the full refund you filed for, you
| would still be liable to pay back the difference, but you
| wouldn't be assessed an additional fine.
|
| Again IANAL, this is how I expect the law would work, not
| necessarily how it actually works.
| notshift wrote:
| I did the same this year, but found that FreeTaxUSA's
| support for crypto transactions was basically non-existent.
| Filing through TurboTax was way less work than what I
| would've had to do with FreeTaxUSA.
| xyzelement wrote:
| This is the sort of critical thing. You do your taxes once
| a year but the impact could be hundreds, thousands or even
| tens of thousands of dollars. In your case it was only 50
| but thematically this says that TT is better because it
| found you more credits/deductions. You don't know it's
| gonna "only" be 50 ahead of time. And the more
| complexity/money is at stake, the more important it is to
| get right. Once you are talking about potentially real
| money, the quality of the UI becomes quite secondary in my
| opinion.
|
| Don't get me wrong, would love for the IRS to offer a
| standard free filing solution. But short of that, I want
| the thing that is most likely to get me the biggest legal
| return
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I got totally screwed last year job wise. 2 of my employers
| have not reported my tax contributions to the state. I
| never received a W2 from one of them. TurboTax was able to
| find all my W2 from the HR companies, but I was unable to
| access those HR websites for my W2s. Because my
| contributions weren't reported to the state I have to get
| all my W2 (luckily it was in my federal return) and resend
| them to the state. I hate TurboTax, but I wouldn't have
| been able to file my taxes this year without them.
| missblit wrote:
| You would have been able to but it'd be a bit painful:
| https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc154
|
| The basic process is to: 1. Contact your employer and
| have them send you a W2 2. If your employer does not send
| you your W2 by the end of February, contact the IRS and
| they'll send you a Form 4852 3. If you still haven't
| received a W2 in time to file taxes, then you can file
| using the Form 4852 instead 4. If you receive the W2
| after filing and the actual numbers differ from your
| estimates, then you have to file an amended return.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I'm not doing that under any circumstances. I'd rather
| get audited
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It may be apocrypha, but supposedly Intuit years ago
| realized that people don't think the system "worked hard
| enough" if results returned immediately. (These kind of
| calculations are what computers do well and generally
| return immediately.) Supposedly Intuit has been A/B testing
| for decades how many artificial delays to give people the
| impression that the system is "working harder" for them.
| They intentionally want their interface to be worse and
| "slower" because of the idiot dark pattern that our dumb
| monkey brains think that "serious things" like taxes need
| lots of "calculation time".
| jandrese wrote:
| It wasn't even the stupid "spinning numbers" thing that
| slowed us down. Mostly it was being locked into wizards
| asking us one question at a time.
| Dialog: Do you have foreign bank accounts?
| Y/N Next dialog: Do you have
| foreign investments? Y/N Next dialog:
| ...
|
| For every single damn thing. FreeTaxUSA put them all in a
| list so we just clicked on the applicable ones. It was
| much more efficient.
|
| And if you have to go back and double check/change
| something TurboTax makes you go through the whole damn
| wizard again.
|
| TurboTax is supposedly able to import my W2 automatically
| (I work for a large corporation that use a large
| professional third party company to do W2s), but this has
| never worked. I always have to enter the information by
| hand.
| perl4ever wrote:
| I always go to the forms and ignore the interview.
|
| I haven't found any other software that is practical to
| use in this way and has all the forms I need.
|
| I tried H&R Block's free software one year, I think,
| because I was mad at Intuit, but it was useless because
| there were big gaping holes in the functionality.
| spinax wrote:
| H&R Block wanted to upcharge me additional $$ just to fill
| out a Schedule D on top of the $$ tier fee (the past few
| years these forms were included in that tier price). They
| lost a long term (10yr?) customer by trying to grift me this
| year.
|
| I used https://www.taxslayer.com/ instead this past year, a
| bit more DIY but if you've done your taxes for years and
| they're generally the same year after year it's not that hard
| to read your docs and type them in the boxes. You pay for
| Support level, not tax form access with this service.
| dole wrote:
| I'll second TaxSlayer (2nd year) after being a online
| TurboTax user for 12+ years, desktop app user years before
| that, and afraid and skeptical of jumping ship and losing
| "history", tired of the fake delays and dialogs.
|
| Relatively stripped down UI/UX and few "waiting" dialogs
| and I have to assume a good savings of clicks vs. TT. I
| have a relatively easy joint return with little audit risk
| and basically in the "generally the same year after year"
| boat as well.
| acomjean wrote:
| the IRS has actually partnered with the "Free File Alliance"
| which is a group of companies that partner with the IRS (Free
| tax filing for incomes < X).. So Saddly I feel the hope of
| the IRS just sending you a bill is slim.
|
| Intuit is one of the members:
|
| https://freefilealliance.org/free-file-alliance-members/
|
| https://freefilealliance.org/about/
|
| Its a little weird. One would hope they would just send you
| the bill.. I filed my taxes late with an extension. I could
| go to the IRS site and get all the documents they had filed
| by banks and my employeer, for me. They have that info...
| CRConrad wrote:
| > I could go to the IRS site and get all the documents they
| had filed by banks and my employeer, for me. They have that
| info...
|
| As Robotbeat says, this is literally because Intuit lobbied
| to ban the IRS from being able to do it for you -- which is
| also literally _what TFA is all about._ YTF do people
| comment on stuff they obviously haven 't even read?!?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This is literally because Intuit lobbied to ban the IRS
| from being able to do it for you.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| This is so bizarre looking in from the outside. I've
| spent my working life in two European countries, one
| where if you're just a regular employee and not doing
| anything special you just approve and submit your
| prefilled tax return, and one where you under the same
| circumstances literally have do to nothing.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
|
| https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap
|
| "ProPublica has long detailed how Intuit, the maker of
| TurboTax, and other companies have worked against making tax
| preparation easier and less costly. They have lobbied to ban
| the IRS from offering free, simple tax filing. And they have
| deceived customers who should qualify for the Free File
| product."
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| I find this criticism somewhat weird. It is very common for
| companies or even individuals to promote and support
| policies that benefit themselves. Intuit is seeking self
| interest here. But why would IRS and our elected
| representatives cave in ? Are these people so clueless or
| unethical that they do not care about their constituents
| anymore ? And if that is the case I don't see how anyone
| can bell the intuit's cat.
| caslon wrote:
| By your logic, here, an independent actor doing something
| to terminate the employees and stakeholders of Intuit
| would be completely blameless, if not celebrated by the
| people of the United States.
|
| It's not even a slippery slope to imply that acting in
| self-interest is always excusable: By the time you've
| gotten to that point, you're already at the bottom of any
| and every slippery slope. There are lines that we as a
| species have collectively are inexcusable to cross in
| self-interest, and without them life gets a lot worse for
| nearly everyone.
| jfengel wrote:
| They're capitalizing on a generalized anti-government and
| anti-IRS sentiment. It's not difficult for them to
| convince representatives that the IRS would do it badly,
| and it should be left up to the free market.
|
| They made, and basically broke, an agreement with the
| IRS. But it's really not easy for a government agency to
| say, "No, you broke the roles, so our agreement is void".
| It would basically take a lawsuit, which would be ugly,
| expensive, and time-consuming.
|
| It's not so much a matter of simply "caving", as that
| Intuit has gotten itself entrenched and it's difficult to
| dig them out. In theory it's not impossible, but it would
| require a ton of work, time, and will. Such things are
| very hard to come by, especially when you're the IRS and
| everybody already is predisposed to hate you.
| burkaman wrote:
| You accept that Intuit is lobbying for unethical policies
| in order to enrich themselves, but you don't understand
| why anyone would criticize that?
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| Hypothetical: I make kerosene.... we made a bad batch
| that doesn't burn just right and could hinder products
| it's used in...
|
| We're located in California.
|
| We've paid politicians to look the other way while we
| drop it over forests, in fire zones. It's a lot easier
| than getting rid of it other ways.
|
| We're enriching ourselves which is the American way, so
| there's definitely no problem with this, even though it
| may make fire season a major bitch for some people,
| luckily all our CEO's have homes in safer areas that
| won't be affected....
|
| ^ Are you saying you'd say to the above scenario: I have
| no problems with this.
|
| If the answer to the above question is you would say
| that...
|
| What's it like to be devoid of morality? Is there
| anything resembling a conscious at all?
| WisNorCan wrote:
| It is a simple bargain. US representatives are dependent
| on fundraising and endorsements for re-election which
| lobbyists are happy to offer in exchange for help with
| their agenda.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > why would IRS and our elected representatives cave in?
|
| money.
| not2b wrote:
| The IRS has almost no say in this (because they've been
| denied funding to fix it); it is entirely Congress's
| doing.
| bingidingi wrote:
| i reckon people hate filling out tax forms by hand more than
| turbotax... and within good reason, even if you're educated it
| can be frustrating to simply read tax regulations (which
| turbotax translates to simple english), and there's a lot of
| anxiety around messing it up
|
| unfortunately turbotax is also one of the major players trying
| to prevent tax simplification... so they've got a great scheme
| going
|
| anyway there are more and more free options every year so let's
| hope that can start hurting them... I've used creditkarma for a
| couple simple years and it's great
| alkonaut wrote:
| I really don't get the money side of US politics. How do
| these companies use money (presumably) do sway politicians?
| Just openly contribute to individual politicians/think
| tanks/PACs?
|
| How do they launder the money Is that what the PACs do? Make
| sure Joe Politican can get the money, but isn't seen handed a
| bag of cash from a company?
|
| Or is it simply that accepting campaign donations from
| corporations isn't seen as corruption by voters, so
| politicans can do it in the open?
| bingidingi wrote:
| Here's one example: I've called my congressman to complain
| about his support for the Taxpayer First Act (which enables
| Intuit), his campaign received $16k from Intuit and H&R
| block. They spent a combined $6 million or so on lobbying
| to get it passed.
|
| The act, among other things, removed the requirement for
| the IRS to report on their development of return-free tax
| filing.
|
| Direct PAC donations are allowed up to $5k. Super PACs are
| meant to be independent, can't work directly with
| politicians or campaigns... and therefore have to such
| limits. They're very often used for "indirect" lobbying.
|
| It's a scam and everyone knows it. The people empowered by
| the scam are the only ones who can change it.
| SamBam wrote:
| It's utterly insane. It's insane how much influence money
| can have on politics, when it's basically entirely spent on
| election campaigns. (And some fancy fund-raising dinners,
| and stuff, but I think that is less important.)
|
| It's insane that election campaigns are such an important
| and expensive part of politics. Accepting millions of
| dollars, and for what? To keep your job for another few
| years. Where the biggest part of your job is getting more
| money for the next campaign to keep it for another few
| years.
|
| Real campaign finance reform could do so much.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > even if you're educated it can be frustrating to simply
| read tax regulations (which turbotax translates to simple
| english)
|
| Not sure I agree with this statement. My experience with
| TurboTax is that the actual tax regulations are not that hard
| to read, and that TurboTax's translations do nothing to
| resolve the ambiguities of the tax code.
|
| For example, the tax code might allow "deduction of
| reasonable expenses for blah blah blah" and the TurboTax
| "explanation" will be "You can deduct blah blah blah, but be
| sure the expenses are reasonable". Ok, what is "reasonable"?
| Oh, well, you know, _reasonable_.
|
| It's like a high school student plagiarizing something they
| found on the internet by rearranging each sentence _just
| enough_ that it isn 't googleable.
|
| Turbo tax is great if your income comes from one or more W-2
| jobs (that pay cash) and a simple stock portfolio or
| investment properties. As soon as you start dealing with
| RSUs, stock options or (horror! ESPP), it starts becoming
| more trouble than its worth.
|
| The ESPP thing is especially weird. Every office job I've
| ever had offered ESPP (so it's not some edge case). TurboTax
| will double tax your ESPP, unless you know the trick to enter
| your real cost basis[1]--and TT won't ever prompt you with
| "Hey, looks like you have some ESPP! Want a step-by-step
| guide to enter your cost actual basis so that you only pay as
| much tax as you actually owe?"
|
| [1] https://thefinancebuff.com/adjust-cost-basis-for-espp-
| sale-i...
| throwaway98211 wrote:
| >The Child Tax Credit is a seriously good piece of policy...
|
| Maybe in intent, but certainly not in implementation. Fine if you
| want to give money to the poor / people with no income, but
| enacting that through our tax system (designed to collect tax
| dollars) seems like a particularly poor proscription to achieve
| the ends. Here's another take (that I'm sure will be
| unpopular)...
|
| 'In 2021, progressives cloaked an expansion to our entitlement
| programs through a tax cut to get the bill through Congress. This
| has been hard to implement, and company's like Inuit aren't
| helping as much as they could.'
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Just like Obamacare... income taxation is the foot in the door
| to basically allow the government to arbitrarily meddle in the
| personal finances of every single citizen.
| vmception wrote:
| Tl;dr Intuit made a bad outreach website, so here's a bunch of
| other stuff we don't like about Intuit unrelated to the Child Tax
| Credit outreach
| grayhatter wrote:
| Well yeah, if you're trying to prove it wasn't a simple mistake
| from ignorance, you want to prove they have a pattern of making
| this mistake. That's when it turns from accidental to
| intentional malfeasance.
| vmception wrote:
| except it reads more like "I could have made that website,
| grrr I didn't apply for the government contract (or I lost
| the bid)!"
|
| It could read that and say "by the way Intuit has a history
| of poor performance"
|
| it doesn't really say they sabotaged it. when I read that
| headline, I think that their flagship software is
| miscalculating it. But thats not what this article is about
| at all.
|
| The article is about how a tax credit has always failed to
| address the needs of those eligible for the tax credit, and
| Intuit has only made a small dent in that in a contract that
| hoped it would make a bigger dent.
|
| People can still have gotten that tax credit for free before,
| can get it for free after, can use Intuit's poorly crafted
| free system, or not. They can also use Intuit's paid systems
| the whole time. The article then points out that Intuit
| always crafts circumstances to make their paid system the
| desired path.
|
| The Child Tax Credit is fine, its the people you are worried
| about.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| How do we know that this is actually Intuit itself & not the IRS
| trying to reduce CTC payouts. After all, their enforcement budget
| keeps getting squeezed & they keep struggling to prosecute high
| dollar issues. Reducing their tax credits is a good way to
| improve the balance of the federal government.
| greedo wrote:
| Reducing the tax credit disbursements won't help the IRS
| budget. They have no incentive to do so.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply it would somehow help the IRS budget
| directly. I was saying it helps the Federal Government's
| overall deficit. The IRS isn't some body immune from
| political pressure. The leadership is appointed by POTUS &
| confirmed by the Senate.
|
| Regardless of which political party is responsible, the
| Federal government has a lot of benefits programs that have a
| lot of roadblocks to actually take advantage of. That isn't
| an accident. You could look at it as the GOP tending to send
| up roadblocks (e.g. they famously forced the IRS to strike a
| deal with Intuit) OR you can look at it as a class divide
| where the GOP are just the "baddies" everyone can scream
| about without actually needing to hold the government
| accountable.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| I have a hardtime taking an article seriously that makes wild
| claims such as "But the IRS has been starved for decades by anti-
| tax extremists". Show me the evidence.
| burkaman wrote:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
| callmeal wrote:
| >https://www.atr.org/trump-budget-cuts-irs-
| funding-239-millio... President Donald Trump's
| 2018 budget blueprint is out, and it wisely cuts IRS funding by
| $239 million.
|
| Compared to pretty much any metric where increasing their
| budget will increase tax collection. Mainly because most tax
| fraud happens where no one is looking.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-shrink-defic...
| The number of IRS revenue agents -- the auditors qualified to
| examine complex returns -- has plummeted 43 percent over the
| past decade, according to a report from Syracuse University's
| Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Audit rates of
| those filing these complex returns have also sharply declined.
| For example, the number of millionaires who were audited in
| fiscal 2020 was about a quarter of the number from fiscal 2012.
| Accordingly, these IRS audits turned up unreported tax bills of
| $1.2 billion last year, about a quarter of the $4.8 billion
| found in fiscal 2012.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| That doesn't show decades. The tone of the article sets up to
| divide readers.
|
| IRS spends 11 billion, 300 million is barely a speed bump, is
| the money being spent correctly?
|
| IRS has been used as a tool of intimidation and oppression to
| target political enemies of the ruling oligarchy.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/irs-scandal-fast-
| fac...
|
| They have deep corruption, the tax code needs reform, and
| justice deferred is justice denied.
|
| Gas lighting and blaming the victims of political
| intimidation is not acceptable.
| modshatereality wrote:
| Who approved that domain name?
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| > When I say "sabotaged," I'm not speaking hyperbolically. The
| tax-prep industry, led by Intuit, led the fight for 20 years,
| with their cultlike leader Brad Smith at the forefront of a
| bribery and intimidation campaign.
|
| I just finished reading the Snowden article about conspiracy
| practice, and this is a stark example of it. A group of people
| acting against the democratic interest, subverting the legal and
| political system to their interests, and leaving the public
| feeling powerless.
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| I'd previously got about 3/4ths of the way through filing my
| taxes using TurboTax, only to find that I wasn't able to deduct
| student loan interest on the free product. Intuit also regularly
| deletes threads of people who go on to ask why an expected
| feature isn't in the free tier, advancing the dark pattern of
| needing to pay for the feature on both the federal and state
| level returns. This is likely a systemic problem- the self
| employed through platforms like GrubHub & freelancers have less
| simple tax structures and even if they're only making a modest
| wage; spending $80 just to fill out your own return definitely
| acts as a regressive tax that disproportionately affects lower-
| wage groups.
| robertofmoria wrote:
| Intuit is not without blame, but the IRS in genrral is at fault
| and allows these problems. One cannot go to or ask the IRS for
| help on taxes as the IRS is not responsible legally for anything
| they say. Which means the IRS can tell you how to fill out a tax
| form and then penalize you for filling the form out wrong. Here
| is a solution to the tax problems... no income tax.
| recursive wrote:
| That warning is terrifying.
|
| > Do NOT use this online form if you're required to file a tax
| return. Use of this online form creates a simplified 2020 tax
| return. If you're required to file a tax return but file a
| simplified return instead, you won't be able to e-file your 2020
| Form 1040 or 1040-SR tax return. This will delay the IRS
| processing your return and issuing any tax refund.
|
| So... what?
|
| Do not use this site if I'm required to do the thing that this
| site does? If I use this I won't be able to e-file Form xyz? No
| information what those are, or why it would matter?
| mattb314 wrote:
| Free fillable forms is hard to use for taxes in general, but
| this page is specifically for people who want the CTC without
| having filed taxes (presumably you otherwise would have gotten
| the CTC when you filed takes). You can see the screenshot says
| "non-filer sign up tool", where as the main page of the website
| (for people who want to actually use it to file taxes) has no
| such warning: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/#/fd
| majormajor wrote:
| My reading is that if you _aren 't_ required to file a tax
| return, this thing creating a dummy simplified one won't hurt
| you.
|
| But if you _are_ required to file one, you are likely to need a
| real one, and the dummy one will conflict with it. But it
| sounds like if you file a real one, you don 't need this form,
| and this form is only for people who wouldn't otherwise file.
|
| But the gist of the article - that the website is implausibly
| bad - seems correct.
| recursive wrote:
| That would require that a "simplified tax return" is not a
| "tax return". If that's the intention, it seems to fly
| directly in the face of the common use of the English
| language. Generally {ADJECTIVE} {NOUN} is a specific category
| of a {NOUN}. If they're using some domain-specific jargon
| that violates that, it strains credulity that they would
| expect anyone to understand it.
| dnautics wrote:
| I'd love to see a turbotax alternative that
|
| 1. imports your previous turbotax years
|
| 2. charges $10 less than turbotax
|
| 3. offers a free version gated by income
|
| 4. squirrels away some percentage of profits each year to a big
| "F U" fund, half of which goes to lobbying for permanent income
| tax simplification, half of which goes to directly paying out the
| shareholders in the company on dissolution.
| alexlmiller wrote:
| This is basically https://www.taxact.com, minus #4
| dnautics wrote:
| #4 is the key part! I mean maybe I have an irrational
| obsession with the idea of a corporation chartered with an
| expiration date, heh.
| beambot wrote:
| Sounds like a good project for Intuit. Create a new competitor
| to TurboTax for the low-end market. Upsell into TurboTax. And
| for #4, they could become the defacto IRS tool with perfect
| regulatory capture funded by government subsidies.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Yet another case where letting the free market handle things
| results in bad outcomes.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| Lobbying has nothing to do with free market.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's a weird thing to say considering how lobbying is
| justified: As the free expression of speech by companies
| towards their elected representatives. So is limiting
| corporate speech necessary for a free market? Most free-
| market backers I've heard would say otherwise.
| vkou wrote:
| This kind of lobbying is just paid free speech driven by
| market incentives.
|
| So, yes, having a society-critical service provided by a for-
| profit market actor, that then uses that money to pay for
| speech that results in a worse situation for everyone is a
| market failure.
| avalys wrote:
| This is not the free market, it's a perfect example of what's
| wrong with government. The fact that the IRS rules are set by
| politicians and bureaucrats, not accountable to market forces,
| are what allows this corrupt situation to persist in the first
| place.
|
| You can't say "the IRS makes this too complicated in order to
| funnel money into Intuit's pocket so I am going to pay my taxes
| elsewhere."
|
| And it's a perfect example of why accepting broad government
| power provides an avenue for this sort of corruption to exist,
| especially in areas that people don't care enough about to
| spend time influencing government policy.
|
| In a free market, it requires very little effort for you to
| make your opinion felt - you give your money to the people you
| think have the best product. Done. Those people see that they
| are making money - the people with lesser products see they are
| losing money. This requires very little effort on your part
| other than forming an opinion on what product you want to use.
|
| In the government, what can you do if you think the IRS is
| doing a shitty job? Write a letter to your Congressmen? Vote
| for another Congressman in 2 years (what if you agree with
| their position on the IRS, but disagree on something more
| important, e.g. guns?) Run for office yourself?
|
| The result is that relatively little attention is paid to
| public policy around tax preparation. There are no single-issue
| voters around IRS Free-file policy. There is too much else
| going on in national politics that is inarguably more
| important. And because no one really cares about this other
| than the tax preparation industry, the tax preparation industry
| is left largely unchallenged in pushing government to enact
| regulations that favor them.
| fleddr wrote:
| Just to give a counter example here:
|
| In my country (Netherlands), the IRS itself provides the
| software. Once a year, you download and run it. Everything is
| prefilled: income from work, bank accounts, mortgages.
|
| So if you're a boring, financially stable person, the entire
| process is literally next -> next -> next -> submit.
|
| Filling out tax forms is not a value-add economic activity,
| so I have no idea why you'd insist on free market, nor do I
| understand the classic American anti-government stance.
|
| If we have solved this a decade ago, why can't you?
| avalys wrote:
| Your question is, why isn't the federal government of the
| United States, a country of 330M people, as efficient and
| effective as the government of the Netherlands, a country
| of 17M people?
|
| Large organizations are less efficient than small
| organizations. This is true even in private enterprise.
| Large bloated, centralized government bureaucracies are the
| most inefficient of all.
|
| Part of the "classic American anti-government stance" comes
| from the realization that American society is too large and
| too diverse to be effectively governed by a centralized
| bureaucracy. This is why you hear people complaining about
| "state's rights".
|
| However, for people who explicitly wish to control society
| and don't care about efficiency, centralized power is
| great. It means they only have to win one argument to
| impose their will on 330M people, not 50 separate
| arguments. This is why so much attention is paid to the
| federal government in the US, as opposed to state or local
| government.
| fleddr wrote:
| Population size doesn't matter for taxes, yet having many
| different types of rules (perhaps at state level?) could
| indeed be a complicating factor. If that's the case, I'll
| take your word for it.
|
| But do hear me out once more. The dutch tax system is
| anything but simple. It has an extremely complex rule
| set.
|
| And because it is so complex, leaving the understanding
| of it to citizens has led to an enormous burden of
| processing and correcting faulty entries, staffing
| massive support desks, and so on.
|
| So they solved complexity, centrally. The rules are just
| as complex as before, but the process and UI make it a
| breeze for a good 75%.
|
| With this I mean to say that complexity is in fact
| another reason to solve things centrally. Why would you
| want to spread complexity around?
| avalys wrote:
| I'm not talking about taxes in particular, I'm just
| talking about government in general.
|
| The US federal government is 20x larger than that of the
| Netherlands. The US is also more economically, socially,
| and ethnically diverse than the Netherlands. Larger
| systems are harder to manage.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I pay a CPA several hundred dollars to do taxes ... they do so
| much more than file the taxes.
|
| They create detailed financial records which are useful beyond
| filing taxes.
|
| I don't know if Intuit is helpful in this regards.
| willio58 wrote:
| Add this to the reasons I would never consider working for
| Intuit. This and making taxes harder to do for everyone in the
| US.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| This year I paid TurboTax extra to get their "professional
| advice". I didn't get any. Had to find a real accountant to solve
| the problem. This was my last year of using TT.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I did this once.
|
| The "professional" they connected me with turned out too _not
| actually be a CPA_ , and was an IRS "Enrolled Agent" instead,
| and did all of my taxes wrong. I don't mean "the math was a
| little off", I mean "used all of the wrong forms" because he
| was was unaware of the criteria to be considered a Resident
| Alien for tax purposes.
|
| Further, when I tried to contact this individual again (through
| Turbo Tax), Turbo Tax had shut down the program and was
| blackhole-ing all of the email without notice.
|
| It cost me thousands of dollars after-the-fact to get fixed.
| vfclists wrote:
| If the article is right the people most affected by this don't
| read Hacker News or pluralistic.net for that matter.
|
| The readers on Hacker News are also less likely to follow up the
| issue with their representatives.
|
| So why don't the authors find a way to directly target the most
| affected people and get them to complain to their
| representatives?
|
| PS. Why do some people tend to blame corporations for the corrupt
| behaviour of their congressmen and senators? If lawmakers are
| corrupt they should be the ones who should be targeted.
|
| Companies are simply doing what they can do within the law to
| gain an advantage. They deal in "legality" not "morality".
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Further evidence of the "Conspiracy Practice" discussed yesterday
| on HN.
| lokar wrote:
| I know Intuit has legislators at the federal level in their
| pockets, but I would think that in a place like California it
| would be harder. Has there been any progress to have simple
| automatic filing for state taxes?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| California has its own tax website fairly similar to TurboTax
| called CalFile. One of the devs is even here on HN.
|
| Unfortunately CalFile seems to be intentionally gimped e.g.
| only usable if you're under a certain income threshold and
| technically you're not supposed to use it if you have capital
| gains or loses (but since cap gains are treated as regular
| income in CA it works fine if you still use it)
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Lol. No.
|
| State Legislators are really cheap. Donate <$500 and you'll be
| able to get in-person meetings.
| throwaway413 wrote:
| All of the people supercritical of Intuit in this thread make me
| wonder, do they think the government would truly be providing a
| service on par with TurboTax? When has the government ever done
| Internet right...looking at you, Healthcare.gov.
|
| $90 bucks a year to ensure your taxes are right, with a
| streamlined interface that almost anyone can follow, that returns
| you back significant value in time and tax return...
|
| Intuit legally cannot sell your information like other companies
| can, because they are in the business of taxes.
|
| People here LOVE to tell founders, "oh, you should be charging
| for your product! Otherwise it isn't sustainable!"
|
| I'm sorry, would you rather TT be free and them be slanging your
| data like Facebook and Amazon? Or alternatively, the government
| just in charge of replacing it with a congruent service? I didn't
| think so.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| In Canada (Alberta) but recently used their health link portal
| and was very impressed with almost all of it. I don't want the
| government competing with private organizations in what are
| clearaly market-driven domains, but income tax preparation
| against a few oligopolistic predators? Absolutely!
|
| >> $90 bucks a year to ensure your taxes are right
|
| Did you read the article? This is about how Intuit defeated an
| effort to provide credits to very poor people who might not
| even file a return by saying "we'll take care of this for you"
| then creating an obivously sub-par product. This market doesn't
| have $90 for this specific service, or likely a computer beyond
| their phone.
| throwaway413 wrote:
| I was commenting on the generic complaint you hear about
| Intuit's fees for tax preparation, not on this article's
| content specifically.
|
| The website from the article is pure crap, I'll say that.
| stouset wrote:
| The government literally already computes the number they
| expect you to owe. It's how they send you a letter if your own
| calculations come up short (or long, in which case they will in
| fact contact you to issue you a refund). If the government
| simply sends you their calculations ( _which they are already
| computing anyway_ ) and you disagree, you would still be able
| to file an amended return with a company like TurboTax.
|
| Why do you think it is--specifically--that a multitude of other
| governments can manage to accomplish this feat, but the United
| States government shouldn't be able to?
| throwaway413 wrote:
| To be honest, I don't know much at all about how taxes work
| in other countries, including those at or greater than the
| population scale of the US.
|
| It's a good point, I will learn more about it.
|
| Regarding the first point. You trust the government to do
| that for you? Genuinely asking. I have no stance formed on
| that yet.
| caseyross wrote:
| What's telling is that TurboTax's UX is _really, really, good,_
| deceptive pricing aside. Like, so good I almost enjoy using it to
| do my taxes.
|
| The very fact that Intuit has clearly invested money into making
| a beautiful interface for a tax program, a program that people
| use _once a year_ , just goes to show how profitable the current
| arrangement is for them, and how determined they are to keep the
| average taxpayer from switching to any competing tax filing
| ecosystem.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| I disagree that their interface is good, even in the simplest
| tier.
|
| I get absurd cosmetic delays and animations, text that's
| tweaked to be so pale and thin that it disappears in some
| browsers, and tedious wizard-style workflow that you have to
| traverse half a dozen times when the vague language doesn't
| match the data on your forms. And don't get me started on
| confusing between "activities" (that's the official term, not
| Intuit's fault) because there's no way to see where you are in
| the process or show an overview until the end, and the final
| result is in a different format that I can't reconcile with
| what I filled in.
| throwaway413 wrote:
| Do you think if it was a government program that it would have
| the same level of UX polish and ease of use?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Their other big (maybe bigger?) cash cow for Intuit is
| Quickbooks. It's _the_ system most small businesses use,
| because their accountants are integrated with it and push all
| their clients to use it.
| ilamont wrote:
| Yep. Accountants don't want to try anything else.
|
| And it's shocking how bad some of the QBO integrations are,
| especially for newish technologies. Intuit even screwed up
| PayPal in a way that some accountants don't want to use it
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT5zKWBXtQU), forcing a
| labor intensive manual process.
| SamBam wrote:
| Strongly disagree.
|
| It _is_ well designed to hold you by the hand if you just go
| down the happy-path of what a user who has all their documents
| in hand when the right question pops up on the screen.
|
| It's poorly designed for people who want to go back, people who
| just want to input their forms, and people who value their
| time. There is no reason each question needs to take up its own
| screen, instead of being a list. There is no reason it needs to
| pretend to calculate for 15 seconds after every few questions.
| minikites wrote:
| >TurboTax's UX is really, really, good
|
| It's really not. It's hard to keep track of where you are in
| your return and easy to get lost. You can't paste into any
| credential field for fetching information from your bank or
| other outside data source.
| slg wrote:
| I wish people in the US would stop blaming specific bad actors in
| a system for acting in their own best interest and start blaming
| the system that empowers them. ExxonMobil and Intuit lobby the
| government in their own best interest just like FAANG companies
| and basically everyone else that has the size to do it. That is
| how our system is designed. It isn't Intuit's fault this works,
| but since it does work, they would be stupid not to do it. Blame
| the legal and political system for allowing what they do to work
| and/or go unpunished. Don't blame individual actors for
| responding to systemic incentives.
| burnished wrote:
| So just.. leave the bad actors out of the narrative?
|
| It feels like if one does that, then you come back and say "but
| who is doing [bad thing]? where is the evidence?". You can't
| just leave the people causing the problem out, as if it were
| some how rude to name the people pissing in the pool.
| slg wrote:
| I never said we need to leave the bad actors out of the
| narrative. I am simply talking about not placing the blame on
| them.
|
| It is the equivalent of a blameless postmortem. We are in a
| constant cycle of firing interns for pushing costly bugs into
| production without ever wondering why we are allowing interns
| to push to production without supervision. We just fire the
| intern and think the problem is fixed. We have learned that
| isn't a good way to run a company, but we haven't learned
| that isn't a good way to run a society.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Would you fire an intern who intentionally and repeatedly
| pushed broken code to production because for whatever
| reason it was in their best interest? We fire bad actors
| all the time.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| How do you propose to garner support to fix the system
| _without_ drawing attention to the bad actors? "A multi-
| billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so it can
| steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far more
| compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they have to".
| slg wrote:
| >How do you propose to garner support to fix the system
| without drawing attention to the bad actors?
|
| Is there any evidence that drawing attention to bad actors
| actually garners political support to fix this? Look at the
| comments here, almost everyone is talking about the problems
| with Intuit and not how to fix this systemically.
|
| What we need is grassroots political change. This specific
| issue regarding tax prep is a symptom of larger systemic
| problems caused by two main issues. First-past-the-post
| voting means that people generally only have two viable
| choices when voting. Anyone who is a single issue voter and
| their single issue is the tax prep industry is extremely rare
| and frankly in my opinion crazy. This means that no one has
| any incentive to change the status quo. The second problem is
| how US's free speech laws (or perhaps more accurately the
| current interpretation of these laws) basically create a near
| free-for-all in terms of campaign financing. Since there is
| almost no strong motivation for change, the only people
| involved in the discussion about tax prep are the people who
| are already invested in the industry. They obvious have a
| huge incentive to lobby against the death of their industry.
| So you have an issue in which we have little public
| motivation for change versus an entire industry that would be
| willing to dedicate all their profit to fighting change. It
| isn't surprising we see the results we see.
|
| >A multi-billion dollar company has been lobbying the IRS so
| it can steal money from the most vulnerable taxpayers" is far
| more compelling than "poor people pay more taxes than they
| have to".
|
| I am not making the second argument. I am generalizing the
| first argument to "multi-billion dollar companies have been
| lobbying the government to steal money from everyone, let's
| adjust our system to stop that".
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> What we need is grassroots political change.
|
| I'd argue that someone drawing attention to specific bad
| actors is implicitly saying "stop these people from doing
| this" which is far more actionable than your generic "What
| we need is wide-spread, bipartisan support for change".
| What am I supposed to do with that?
| intrepidhero wrote:
| I think its fair to blame both.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Intuit is a perfect example to me of the flawed reality in a
| libertarian ideology. We know they're terrible, we know their
| products aren't great... yet where are all the meaningful
| competitors? People who are at least meeting their bar if not
| substantially exceeding it? It's not like this is a new industry
| that takes time to bake. Where are the YC startups trying to take
| them on? Meanwhile they continue to make live expensive and
| complicated for the rest of us just so they have a guaranteed
| revenue stream!
| syshum wrote:
| Aside from the fact you are wrong about there being no
| competition, In the libertarian ideology income based taxation
| is unethical theft, thus under libertarian ideology Intuit tax
| software would not be needed at all, thus no reason for them to
| lobby congress, etc
| vlunkr wrote:
| If you looks around other comments, people are suggesting
| alternatives. freetaxusa has my vote. Also I would bet that
| every town in the country with more than a couple thousand
| people has an office downtown where someone will file for you
| and probably charge less than H&R Block would. That doesn't
| cover all of their products, but certainly in the filing space
| they are not the only option.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I think their software is good and I usually have a very easy
| time filing taxes. In comparison, I remember filling out my
| FAFSA application and that being long ordeal. I don't think
| government has the willingness to create a seamless tax-filing
| experience.
|
| Who is stopping the IRS from making a competing easy to use tax
| filing website? Are people suggesting Intuit is stopping a good
| product team from operating within the IRS?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> Who is stopping the IRS from making a competing easy to
| use tax filing website? Are people suggesting Intuit is
| stopping a good product team from operating within the IRS?_
|
| Yes. The IRS signed an agreement with a coalition of
| companies called the Free File Alliance (including Intuit)
| stipulating that if the latter would provide free filing, the
| IRS wouldn't create a competing product. [1] Intuit then
| delisted the TurboTax Free File page from search engines [2]
| so taxpayers would only be able to find the version that
| directs users to pay. Only 3% of taxpayers took advantage of
| Free File products -- remember, these are products _made by
| tax prep companies like Intuit_ -- even though over 70% are
| eligible. [3]
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
|
| [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-
| hid...
|
| [3] https://www.propublica.org/article/free-file-online-tax-
| prep...
| krferriter wrote:
| They're a corrupt, profiteering company that does everything
| it legally can to stop people from filing taxes for free.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
| runawaybottle wrote:
| But listen to my argument, I'm willing to pay to have an
| easier time filing my taxes. I'm not going to use IRS's
| tool if it doesn't make it a painless process like
| TurboTax.
|
| So I ask again, will the IRS make a painless tool? If the
| answer is yes, but Intuit is lobbying them not to, then I
| understand your point.
|
| If it's just about free vs non-free, I could care less.
| Filing taxes or filling out anything for the government is
| usually an awful experience and I'm willing to pay to not
| have to deal with it.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Most other first world countries manage to offer some
| form of return-free filing. In that instance you wouldn't
| have to fill out anything at all.
| hairofadog wrote:
| > So I ask again, will the IRS make a painless tool? If
| the answer is yes, but Intuit is lobbying them not to,
| then I understand your point.
|
| Exactly this, yes. It's well documented all over the
| place, but here are a couple of examples:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-
| fre...
|
| https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-
| america/2013/04/02/it...
|
| In any case, thanks to the folks in this thread
| suggesting alternatives. I was going to switch to Credit
| Karma last year, but literally the day after I created an
| account I woke up to the news that Intuit had bought
| them.
|
| Edit: I see down-thread someone says they had to spin out
| the tax-filing portion of the business?
| alteria wrote:
| Square acquired Credit Karma's Tax business, probably
| folding it into CashApp
|
| [1] https://squareup.com/us/en/press/credit-karma-tax
|
| [2] https://www.pymnts.com/news/partnerships-
| acquisitions/2020/c...
| callmeal wrote:
| >So I ask again, will the IRS make a painless tool? If
| the answer is yes, but Intuit is lobbying them not to,
| then I understand your point.
|
| Yes, IRS would have made a painless tool, but for that
| lobbying.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-
| block-sp...
| Wavelets wrote:
| The problem isn't that the IRS won't make a painless
| tool. The issue is that Intuit actively works to make
| sure the tax code stays as complicated as possible.
| Ideally the tax code is so simple that complicated tools
| aren't necessary for your average filer.
| [deleted]
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's more than that: they stopped the potential practice
| of the IRS sending you a pre-filled out tax form with
| what they know that you could then just sign and accept,
| as is done is many other countries.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Their software is _not_ very good and a legit accountant
| costs about $200 if your taxes are relatively simple. Said
| acccountant will save you more than $200 over TurboTax
| because TurboTax is not very good -- this goes double if
| you're in a more complex tax situation. And the accountant is
| even more seamless since all you do is hand over your
| paperwork and let them do everything else.
|
| And the great irony is that said accountant is likely using
| an Intuit product anyway. So it's not like they don't have
| the ability to make good products for the consumer market,
| they choose not to.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I often help my friend who is also my accountant with his
| systems. He has to use various Intuit Pro Tax products. These are
| straight out of 90s boxed software land. Installing and using
| them in this day and age of polished software is like taking a
| step back into a timemachine especially when networking is
| involved. He pays thousands of dollars /year for these products
| and the technical issues with data sharing, networking, printing
| are just incredible.
|
| Another thing that is jarring is the regard that Scott Cook, the
| founder of Intuit is held in the valley. He was apparently a
| mentor and coach to many founders Jobs? Page/Brin? and others.
| But the disconnect with his sterling image as a coach and leader
| and the general dark patterns/crappiness of Intuit products is
| something that is interesting.
| hydroxideOH- wrote:
| What should I use to file my taxes if I want to move away from
| TurboTax?
| niij wrote:
| A local, independent, tax preparer. There's plenty of
| individuals who are partially retired that help file simple tax
| returns for ~$50 during tax season.
| 4d66ba06 wrote:
| I like TaxAct
| organman91 wrote:
| If you are willing to do ALL of the leg work yourself,
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > ALL of the leg work yourself
|
| Every year, I go ahead and self-prepare my taxes, and then
| type all the data into Turbotax to see if they find something
| I missed, and every year they do, and it's in my favor (and
| always worth more than the Turbotax fee). OTOH, I've seen
| suggestions that Intuit themselves have had a hand in making
| the tax preparation process so complex that humans can't
| possibly get it right without them.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I've had great luck with freetaxusa.com, personally. I've been
| using them to file taxes for like, 10 years now.
|
| E-filing the federal tax form is free, and state tax form is
| only like $14 I think, really cheap, and the website does a
| good job taking you through it step by step in an easy to
| understand way.
| jwond wrote:
| Yeah, I use FreeTaxUSA also. It doesn't have all the
| integrations that Turbo Tax et al. have, so you have to spend
| a bit more time manually entering your figures, but I had no
| issues.
|
| You can also double check the numbers if you want by going
| through another service like Turbo Tax but stopping before
| the payment step.
| somehnguy wrote:
| +1 for freetaxusa.com
|
| I used them this year after getting screwed by Intuit again
| last year and swore it would be the last time. Their UI isn't
| quite as shiny but still very straightforward and easy to use
| for someone like me who knows almost nothing about taxes
| besides 'I need to do them'.
|
| I'll use them again next year too, was very happy with the
| service.
| black6 wrote:
| Pen and paper. I've been doing it for the past several years.
| paulproteus wrote:
| I work at Code for America on the Tax Benefits team, and we're
| working on a different website to apply for the Child Tax Credit.
| (See https://www.getctc.org/ and https://www.getyourrefund.org/.
| ) From the original article: > Alas, all [People's Policy
| Project's website] can do is funnel users into Intuit's terrible
| [child tax credit] site. Today at work, I'm learning how to use
| the IRS's e-File SOAP API in the hopes that we can build a flow
| that is easier to use than Intuit's. Feel free to subscribe to
| our newsletter. :) https://info.codeforamerica.org/newsletter See
| also https://www.codeforamerica.org/news/meet-code-for-
| americas-n... for how we're thinking about this work.
| nimish wrote:
| How did you get access to the SOAP api? Doesn't it need a bunch
| of verification and special dev accounts with IRS ? Would be
| great for the docs to be public.
|
| >To receive the distribution of schema packages, you must have
| an active e-services account and be listed on an e-File
| application with the provider option of Software Developer.
| Your role on the e-File Application must be Principal,
| Responsible Official, or a Delegated User with MeF authorities.
| If you are a registered user in e-services and are listed on a
| State e-File application, you will receive this distribution.
| krferriter wrote:
| Given how much H&R Block and Intuit have unethically and
| corruptly leeched from the government and the taxpayers directly,
| I think the should literally be nationalized and have their tax
| software platforms absorbed into the IRS. Their company
| activities over the last few decades are so flagrantly,
| indisputably bad for the country. There's literally no upside,
| none at all. They have intentionally sabotaged tax filing and
| leeched off the people by corruptly inserting themselves as
| middlemen. At least the tax prep portions of the companies.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| I wish that our government (the people who allowed them to be
| the middle man) would take some accountability. But I guess
| that would be uncharacteristic.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Citizens voted these people in, the blames lies with the
| electorate.
| hanniabu wrote:
| They get elected on one thing and do another. They should
| be held liable for misleading their base at the very least.
| Also misinformation and propaganda is rampant so it's very
| difficult to make educated decisions, now more than ever.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The citizens without the ability to directly recall the
| elected are to blame? There is a serious power and
| attention imbalance here, and the laws to do not leave the
| power in the hands of the citizens outside of a single day
| every few years.
|
| It's hard for me to believe they are the source of the
| problem, particularly with such a shabby fourth estate.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| The citizenry elects the people who could overturn the
| laws preventing a recall. It's just not that important to
| the citizenry.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The citizens cannot police the federal electorate. At best,
| they can police local politicians and maybe a few big
| ticket federal items. They have too much going on in their
| own lives to police federal politicians passing hundred
| page bills every week.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you. A small minority of
| politicians can prevent progress, and there is little
| recourse for the rest of us. The buck has to stop
| somewhere.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Unfortunately that seems to be the case. Outside of a few
| changing hot button topics they have basically free
| reign,and 99.99% of people will never hear about their
| actions.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Every weird tax rule that makes your tax filing harder is a tax
| break for someone and that person will fight to keep it.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Corporate death penalty. If corporations are people, and the
| USA insists on keeping the barbaric death penalty, at least
| they should use it on companies.
|
| Exxon would be another nice target.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Corporate death penalty_
|
| Corporations are legal fictions. If you're wiping out
| shareholders and creditors, who do the assets go to? If you
| aren't wiping them out, what are you doing? Corporate death
| penalties are ultimately meaningless without an expropriation
| component.
|
| Better: massive fines and/or pulling critical licenses.
| Arthur Andersen and Enron were felled through these
| mechanisms. They are legal. They are proven. They are
| precedented and they work.
|
| If you wantonly break the law, you should not be a going
| concern. But "nationalization" and "corporate death penalty"
| are political hot potatoes. (I'm entirely sidestepping the
| argument as to whether that's reasonable.) If you want these
| companies shut down, or fearful of being shut down, credibly
| threatening to break them up, fine them into bankruptcy or
| suspend their licenses ( _e.g._ for Intuit, their tax
| preparation license) is more effective.
| minikites wrote:
| I agree wholeheartedly and I think health insurance companies
| should receive the same treatment, they act in the same way and
| cause the same problems. The incentives of these companies are
| at odds with the interests of society and they should be run by
| society, not for private profit.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _should literally be nationalized_
|
| Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American
| politics, is a gift to the other side. It lets one paint the
| opposition as extremists without grounding in U.S.
| Constitutional law or the economic history of countries that
| regularly expropriate property.
|
| I get the impulse. But literally any other phrasing--massive
| fines, criminal prosecution, open-licensing requirements, _et
| cetera_ --is more productive for any aim other than blowing
| steam.
| bestcoder69 wrote:
| Allowing "nationalization" to remain a dirty word (and not
| "privatization") is a much bigger gift.
|
| Why should it be off the table? Does the average person even
| give a shit about the public/private status of Intuit? I get
| conservatives will complain but they will (and do) literally
| call ANY improvement to the IRS Communism. Is the hope that
| if you play language games they'll see the light?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I guess it would be easier and better to just strangle them
| by simplifying the tax code, sending pre-filled returns to
| _everyone_ and making a simple and accessible web app for
| people to file theit taxes with a few clicks.
|
| Intuit aren't alone in this scheme. There must be people
| who think taxes should be complex and scary, so would be
| against making it easy and convenient. What I wonder though
| is: aren't there any such people in the rest of the
| developed world where filing taxes IS simple?
| maxmamis wrote:
| > Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American
| politics, is a gift to the other side.
|
| Perhaps you should rephrase this as "calls for
| nationalization run counter to my own free-market ideology"
| rather than a) assuming you know what everybody else thinks,
| and b) suggesting that conventional wisdom should dictate the
| bounds of acceptable discourse.
|
| Not to mention, plenty of countries -- the US included --
| have successfully nationalized companies and entire
| industries.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| A practical understanding of the country's political
| messaging isn't the same thing as free-market ideology. I'm
| not especially free-market, but I recognize that poor
| messaging gets picked up by Fox News (for example) who beat
| their drum over and over and over again such that the
| underlying ideas have a huge uphill battle to fight.
| Miraste wrote:
| Unless you go back to FDR, the US has only "nationalized"
| (bailed out) companies when they were on the verge of
| collapse with catastrophic economic consequences, and
| because of 9/11. Nationalizing a functioning company, no
| matter how evil, would be unprecedented and immediately
| fail after being labeled communist. I'm not commenting on
| the merits of the idea here, only the political reality.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > labeled communist
|
| Its so crazy to me that some Americans label abstract
| ideas as evil. Communism == evil. Socialism == evil. Many
| welfare programs == evil. Immigrant labor == evil. High
| minimum wage == evil. Some languages, religions, cultures
| == evil. Stop subverting the English language because
| you're too lazy to check a thesaurus. None of those
| things are evil.
| syshum wrote:
| I can not think of a single company or industries the US
| has nationalized that I would consider a "success"
| tyre wrote:
| The comment you are replying to is not assuming that they
| know how everyone else thinks, _nor_ are they saying what
| is "acceptable discourse".
|
| They are, rather, making a statement about strategy and
| messaging in American politics; a point which has borne out
| in countless political contests over the past decade alone.
| There is a reason why Republicans try to say
| "socialis(t/ism)" as often as possible. It works.
|
| One example off the top of my head is Florida during the
| most recent presidential election. The Republicans beat the
| drums of socialism broadly and especially targeted at
| Cuban-Americans who immediately think of Castro. Voters who
| might otherwise skew towards Biden went Trump.
|
| Again, that's one example, but the point is about
| _messaging_ and how the electorate in America broadly (not
| 100%, everywhere, etc.) responds to "socialism".
| (Nationalization being, of course, clearly tied to
| socialism.)
| minikites wrote:
| >It lets one paint the opposition as extremists
|
| This happens regardless of how extreme or radical the
| proposal is, so why start from a position of compromise? This
| is what happens when one party cries "wolf" for 40 years.
| slumdev wrote:
| > Political note: calls for nationalisation, in American
| politics, is a gift to the other side.
|
| Populism changes the equation. Populism blurs the left/right
| split.
|
| Populists of all political persuasions can get behind
| nationalizing Intuit.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Because as we all know, privatization never leads to perverse
| incentives and anti-competitive or anti-consumer behavior.
| Just look at the American telecom industry, which is famous
| for high satisfaction and low prices with no price fixing,
| tying, market segmentation, or any other cartel-like behavior
| to be seen.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| American telecom industry has done much better after US
| government ended government granted monopoly to bell labs.
| Plenty of literature on that topic actually. Same for
| aviation.
|
| Whatever bad things you see with ATT and Comcast are
| actually a direct result of city granted monopolies which
| will likely be ended by Musk's Starlink sooner or later.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| How have they done better? Prices have risen
| substantially as quality of service stagnates or
| deteriorates unless the companies are given grants and
| subsidies by governments to compel them to upgrade
| infrastructure at the taxpayer's expense. All the while
| they reap ever growing profits and lobby to get their
| employees onto regulatory boards to prevent any pro-
| consumer regulation.
|
| "city-granted monopolies", are you kidding? The
| monopolies exist because of non-competition arrangements
| between companies. A city can't have anything but a
| monopoly when only one company willing to run cable
| because they've made everybody else agree to keep off
| their turf.
|
| And starlink won't save anybody. For one thing, satellite
| internet already exists, you can buy it from providers
| like Viasat, DirecTV, and Hughesnet: it's expensive and
| the latency is outrageous because of the speed-of-light
| distance to satellites.
|
| I get that you're just reciting the propaganda talking
| points that you've heard from news organizations and
| media properties (which are all now owned by telecom
| monopolies thanks to all the cash they have to spare from
| the extremely profitable telecom business, funny how that
| works), but a person can hope.
| ShroudedNight wrote:
| > And starlink won't save anybody. For one thing,
| satellite internet already exists, you can buy it from
| providers like Viasat, DirecTV, and Hughesnet: it's
| expensive and the latency is outrageous because of the
| speed-of-light distance to satellites.
|
| Starlink latency is materially improved from traditional
| satellite internet providers. 20ms vs 500ms. Conflating
| them borders on equivocation.
| KorematsuFred wrote:
| > I think the should literally be nationalized and have their
| tax software platforms absorbed into the IRS.
|
| This is an extremist view and basically advocating theft. I do
| not think IRS has competence to build and run a complex
| software system.
|
| > Their company activities over the last few decades are so
| flagrantly, indisputably bad for the country
|
| That is debatable.
|
| > There's literally no upside, none at all. They have
| intentionally sabotaged tax filing and leeched off the people
| by corruptly inserting themselves as middlemen
|
| They have not inserted themselves anywhere. You are free to use
| CPA or do all the paperwork yourself and save yourself $70
| bucks.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| This is the group you think will defend the little guy? "IRS:
| Sorry, but It's Just Easier and Cheaper to Audit the Poor"[0]
|
| [0]https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-
| ea...
| specialist wrote:
| TLDR?: IRS can't feasibly inform beneficiaries of CTC. Because it
| doesn't have a relationship with them. Because Intuit cock
| blocks.
|
| Right?
|
| Doctrow always baffles me. By the end of any article, I can't
| remember what we're talking about.
|
| Where's the call to action? Doctrow had me at "Intuit sucks".
| Just tell me where to shoot.
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