[HN Gopher] Open Source Tax Software
___________________________________________________________________
Open Source Tax Software
Author : aidangrimshaw
Score : 495 points
Date : 2021-10-05 02:59 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ctskennerton.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (ctskennerton.github.io)
| avodonosov wrote:
| Until policy makers puplish the tax rules in an executable
| algorithmic form, I am afraid open projects like this will have
| difficulty to keep up with the regulation changes.
| oauea wrote:
| Just move to another country that hasn't made deals with tax
| companies. Believe it or not, the government is perfectly capable
| of doing your taxes for you. There is no reason to waste your
| time on this every year other than corporate greed.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts.
| Noble, yes. Short lived, yes.
|
| It's relatively easy to make a free 1040 file. The real problem
| comes from all. The. Edge. Cases.
|
| 1) do you support xyz state? 2) what if I lived in multiple
| states? 3) what if i...
|
| And on and on.
|
| And it's not just one and done. Every year IRS and states are
| changing their shit so you have to go thru and make all kind of
| updates and verifications every year.
|
| It takes an army to build and maintain. Generally not the kind of
| thing for open source (unless they're paid). But then what's the
| point? One may say it's more transparent, but TurboTax etc are
| transparent with their formulas - you can check every box they
| fill in for you.
|
| I think the only thing that can really disrupt this dynamic are
| "free" commercial software (like credit karma now cash app), or
| government provided.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Plus complex corporate taxation is one of these domains where
| the venn diagram of domain skills vs programming skills is
| completely disjoint. Tax specialists will model it in
| unnecessarily convoluted way in Excel, and the domain will be
| forever opaque to people who can produce software efficiently.
| U8dcN7vx wrote:
| Then just personal. Yes business might finance development if
| business taxes were handled, so perhaps personal first or as
| an additional intention.
| qzw wrote:
| > I think the only thing that can really disrupt this dynamic
| are "free" commercial software (like credit karma now cash
| app), or government provided.
|
| That's why it was worth $7B for Intuit to acquire Credit Karma.
| They're pretty aggressive about buying up potential disruptors.
| tzs wrote:
| Intuit didn't get Credit Karma's tax filing business. That
| got spun off and went to Square.
| qzw wrote:
| They don't need it. The danger was always Credit Karma's
| users + the tax business. The tax business by itself means
| little. Spinning it off even makes the deal look better to
| regulators.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| > It takes an army to build and maintain
|
| Perfect for open source - if decomposable, so each issue can be
| dealt with in isolation (or many can). e.g. using a "plug-in"
| architecture of some kind.
|
| And somehow recruit non-dev folk - if you go to the trouble to
| understand some specific tax point, you often would like to
| share it, and also record it in some "easy to use" form, for
| next time (and a starting point for amendments).
|
| Maybe a "tax DSL", "business rules"? Or a user specs it, and a
| dev codes it?
| ghaff wrote:
| >Perfect for open source
|
| Not really.
|
| The software as a whole needs to be verified across a wide
| range of everchanging rules, some of which are going to be a
| judgement call even among experienced accountants.
|
| Why would people be interested in working on this project? It
| certainly doesn't break any new ground. It's just a long and
| ongoing grind to implement tax code rules. If for some
| reason, I have a lifelong ambition to work on accounting
| software, I'm sure Intuit, SAP, and Oracle pay reasonably
| well.
| tobias3 wrote:
| The German tax system works this way. German authorities
| specify the rules in a DSL and e.g. https://www.elster.de is
| generated from them where you can fill out all the tax forms
| (also e.g. companies). Stuff that they already know can be
| pre-filled.
|
| Sure it would be great if that was Open Source, but it does
| its job this way as well?
| snackematician wrote:
| > I worked on tax software and have seen these kind of efforts.
| Noble, yes. Short lived, yes.
|
| I've been using excel1040.com for several years now (2017
| iirc), and I think it's been around for awhile before that as
| well -- so I don't think it's fair to call it short lived.
|
| It's pretty amazing how thorough it is. Not perfect, but I
| found it much more comprehensive and flexible than the
| free/cheap version of Turbotax.
|
| That said, it is maintained by one crazy guy in Kansas. I doubt
| the project will survive after he stops working on it.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Disruption could also come from tax reform. Some countries
| don't make you figure out things on your own: That's a bit like
| making a shopper put in the correct prices on each item they're
| buying and penalizing then for mistakes. A "Price is Right"
| game-show version of a tax filing system.
|
| Some other countries just tell you where you stand because for
| the vast majority of people a standard filing is all that's
| required. In those circumstances, _only_ the edge cases need to
| deal with complexities. In the US, _everyone_ does.
|
| But I am of course pessimistic on tax reform since that general
| populace just accepts "oh yeah filing taxes sucks" at the same
| time that tax service providers lobby congress who, absent a
| strong outcry from their voters, just follow the corporate
| money trail.
| wahern wrote:
| > Some countries don't make you figure out things on your
| own: That's a bit like making a shopper put in the correct
| prices on each item they're buying and penalizing then for
| mistakes. A "Price is Right" game-show version of a tax
| filing system.
|
| The U.S. doesn't make you do this, either. Most people don't
| itemize deductions. You just plug in the data from your W-2.
| The percentage of people itemizing was 30%, but with the
| Trump Tax Cut which _capped_ state and local deductions (i.e.
| lowered the maximum allowable deduction, effectively
| increasing taxes on a large number of people) this was
| predicted to drop to 10%.
|
| If you're itemizing, you're in a minority of tax payers, and
| in most cases a voluntary minority seeking to minimize your
| taxes in a way that simply wouldn't be possible elsewhere.
|
| The U.S. also has one of the highest rates of voluntary tax
| compliance, and hypothetically that _might_ have something to
| do with 1) ability to itemize and 2) having to sign on the
| dotted line every year.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Even plugging in your data from a w-2 can be an
| intimidating process with a a lot of conditionals and a few
| referals to other forms where you might need to give more
| information. In turn, those forms may reference still more
| forms, along with explanatory documents to further define
| the terms used and provide practical examples. A person may
| not know that supplemental forms aren't required for their
| situation until they have gone down that rabbit hole.
|
| As for itemizing, again, you may not know if you should
| itemize or not until you actually go through the process
| and see where the numbers fall.
|
| Meanwhile the IRS is held out as a boogey man who will ruin
| your life financially if you get something wrong.
|
| For most here on HN who deal with interlocking blocks of
| logic, tech documentation, etc? It's fine, and probably for
| a plenty of other people too. For a very large number of
| people though, it's the common paradox that it's only easy
| once once you already know what you're doing. And for a few
| weeks/months a year the tax prep industry works hard to
| convince people it's not something they should try to
| navigate on their own, and if they do then they're a sucker
| throwing away refund money because of hidden secret tricks
| to get more refund money back.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > You just plug in the data (..)
|
| Here in the Netherlands I don't have to plug in _any_ data,
| everything is pre-filled. Income, bank accounts, mortgage,
| advances on deductions, etc. All you have to do is verify
| it (you can change things if necessary, but I 've never had
| to do that). Takes about five minutes max.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| If that were to happen in America, an entire industry
| would be put out of business.
| LocalH wrote:
| So?
| brynjolf wrote:
| Sounds like the industry is sustainable only due to it
| being an industry in the first place. Good riddance.
| ghaff wrote:
| The vast bulk of the accounting industry (including tax
| software) is not supported by consumers with very basic
| taxes taking their paperwork down to the mall or typing
| some numbers into this year's TurboTax.
| Taniwha wrote:
| Same here in NZ - the main thing that makes it easy is
| that we have absolutely no deductions, if I have one
| employer my tax will likely be done perfectly. If I want
| I can go online with the IRD and fill out my tax form (my
| W2 equivalents are available), it's probably worth doing
| if I've had 2 jobs, if I don't the govt will do it for me
| and send me refund if I have one coming.
|
| I run a small biz, I do PAYE on a simple spreadsheet,
| then type the results onto an IRD web page, takes me less
| than 10 minutes a month.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Italy, same.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The percentage of people itemizing was 30%, but with the
| Trump Tax Cut which capped state and local deductions (i.e.
| lowered the maximum allowable deduction, effectively
| increasing taxes on a large number of people) this was
| predicted to drop to 10%.
|
| 11.4% of tax filers itemized in 2018:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-tax-stats-
| at-a-...
| kmonsen wrote:
| Funny you should call it the Trump tax cut since mine went
| up substantially for the reasons you mention.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If it went up for the reasons mentioned, it means that
| your (previousl) itemized deductions put you in a rather
| small percentage of Americans. Also an unfortunate group:
| rich enough to have deductions at this scale, but not
| rich enough to have wriggled out of a large chunk of tax
| obligations.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Or it could have been increased taxes due to the cap on
| SALT exemptions.
| cranekam wrote:
| > You just plug in the data from your W-2.
|
| This is still a lot more work than in many countries, and
| you still need to either fill in a paper 1040 (plus state
| taxes where appropriate, and some of those (cough CA) are
| far from simple), use tax prep software, or someone like
| H&R Block.
|
| In the UK, if you're in the majority of people who have one
| job and straightforward finances (e.g. not renting
| property, no CGT, etc) you need to do nothing at all for
| your taxes. Your employer deducts tax from your wages and
| that's it. I guess technically you should verify that your
| "tax code" (the mechanism used to inform employers of what
| needs withholding) is correct but again, unless your
| situation is more complex that is a standard figure shared
| by the rest of the employed workforce.
|
| My parents never filed a return in their entire lives.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > This is still a lot more work than in many countries,
| and you still need to either fill in a paper 1040 (plus
| state taxes where appropriate, and some of those (cough
| CA) are far from simple), use tax prep software, or
| someone like H&R Block.
|
| Not in my experience. The online options the IRS provides
| free of charge is pretty easy, and many states have
| similarly simple online forms for free.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-
| form...
|
| Although I do not dispute other countries do have it
| easier, and do it better than the US.
| syshum wrote:
| I am 100% opposed to this model. I am even opposed to
| Automatic Deductions
|
| People should have some "skin" in the game of taxation,
| if we allow the process to become seamless overtaxation
| becomes a real problem.
|
| Even today people do not treat their Gross income as
| their income, they look at net. This is the wrong way to
| look at it.
|
| I believe people should have to physically pay the
| government every month just like you do your water bill,
| your groceries, etc.
|
| If people had to write a check, or trigger an electronic
| payment to their local taxing authority every month there
| would likely be more focus on where that money is going,
| and why the government things they deserve a huge chunk
| of my income (hint they do not)
|
| This prevents the government from just raising taxes and
| hiding these increases.
| [deleted]
| gpderetta wrote:
| If their take home goes down because of increased
| taxation, people will notice.
| syshum wrote:
| depends but I would say they would notice less, and would
| not have as strong reaction to it as they would if they
| had to write the check themselves.
|
| We have history of this as well in the US, a prime
| example of this is property taxes. When a state raises
| the income tax rate there are a few grumbles but hardly
| anyone actively protests, however if property taxes go up
| people can be found literately in the street protesting
| because it causes their mortgage to go up (as most people
| pay property taxes via escrow with their lender)
|
| This is direct payment of taxes monthly where the person
| received the money, then has to pay it out, has a vastly
| different psychological effect than if the money is
| seized before ever being received by the person
|
| I maintain that the ONLY way the government can get way
| with the MASSIVE amounts of taxation everyone pays is for
| 2 primary reasons
|
| 1. Distributed collection 2. Automatic Collection
|
| If either was not in place the government would have huge
| amounts of civil unrest because by an large most people
| would instantly recognized they are being fleeced by the
| government no different than a mugger on the street
| maxlybbert wrote:
| Each country has a different idea of what matters for tax
| purposes. The IRS doesn't necessarily have all the
| information that would be relevant to calculate taxes for
| most people (you have to include that information when
| you file, so they are in a position to check). They know
| your income and could probably figure out other wage-
| earners in the household based on their addresses. They
| don't necessarily know all the people you provided more
| than 50% of their support for the year, or how much you
| paid on interest for mortgage payments (assuming you pay
| a mortgage), or how much you spent on deductible medical
| expenses, or deductible business expenses, or whether a
| child was born (presumably you're paying 50+% of the
| baby's expenses) and which month that happened, or
| whether somebody moved out and you no longer pay 50+% of
| their support, etc.
|
| The IRS does a terrible job with the information it does
| have. One year, I had a typo in my daughter's social
| security number. The IRS sent me a note that her number
| didn't match the previous year's return. I assume that
| they believed the previous year's number was right, but
| instead of saying "we've amended the return by using the
| social security number that appeared on last year's
| return," they said "we've amended the return by removing
| that dependent and recalculating taxes; if you disagree
| with your higher bill, you'll need to send us the
| following paperwork with the correct social security
| number" (of course, "correct" meant "the number we
| already have on file" more or less, but I had to figure
| out what that number was by looking at my own copy of the
| previous year's return). Luckily, the previous year's
| number was correct; otherwise I would have had to amend
| the previous return and then refile the current year's.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| A lot of this comes from the US aversion to explicitly
| re-distributive federal policy (i.e. sending people
| checks), and a preference for implicit mechanisms (i.e.
| tax credits, refunds and deductions).
| gpderetta wrote:
| and even if you have to fill up a tax return it is very
| straightforward to do it online.
| 6510 wrote:
| We could evolve to requiring laws to be implemented as FOSS
| before they go live. I suspect the right tests could reveal
| all kinds of bugs, weird edge cases and exploits.
|
| Sadly law makers don't know how to code. If they did they
| would see what bloated monstrosity of complexity a few simple
| sounding sentences with some simple sounding exceptions
| produce. Perhaps a large bill and months of delay could
| provide enough of a clue.
| wahern wrote:
| AFAIU, the French Tax Code is effectively defined in terms
| of an algorithm. There was a recent HN thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208853) on a new
| open-source compiler for the tax code
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966). The paper for the
| compiler references some interesting literature on the
| computability of legal codes. For example,
|
| > [U.S.] tax law drafting style follows default logic, a
| non-monotonic logic that is hard to encode in languages
| with first-order logic (FOL).
| 6510 wrote:
| Fascinating. I thought Estonia was the only one who kept
| an eye on difficulty of implementation.
| qzw wrote:
| Tax laws are hundreds to thousands of pages each. The
| complexity is intentional and not accidental. Many carve
| outs are specifically created for special interest or to
| target certain constituencies.
|
| Edit: referring to the US
| syshum wrote:
| >> I am of course pessimistic on tax reform since that
| general populace just accepts "oh yeah filing taxes sucks"
|
| That is not the hold back for tax reform, any efforts to
| simply the tax code gets push back from every special
| interest that to keep their deductions, and they point to
| "the others" as "unfair" deductions, so it never changes.
|
| People with kids want to keep the massive deductions for
| having kids, even though childless people believe that is
| unfair, people with homes want to keep the deductions for
| home ownership even though renters believe that is unfair,
| and so it goes down the line for 1000's and 1000's of loop
| holes and deductions...
|
| Never a one shall be expunged from the code
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Deductions should not exist period. The more transparent
| way for a government to subsidize something would be to
| give cash. This would force the government to recognize the
| costs of the subsidy and who is benefiting from it clearly.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. We need tax reform, not software. The
| returns should be file automatically, if we disagree we can
| fill out paperwork with what we should be getting.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Roughly 7% of the US population is self-employed (a little
| over 10 million people).
|
| It's not clear to me what "the returns should be file[d]
| automatically" means for this group of people.
|
| In addition, there are many non-employment based events in
| the US tax code that change your tax liability. Last year I
| received a roughly US$3k tax credit because I installed a
| 6.6kW solar PV array on my house. There are dozens or even
| hundreds of cases like this in the US tax code.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > It's not clear to me what "the returns should be
| file[d] automatically" means for [the self-employed].
|
| The employer files the income forms and handles
| withholding. If you're self-employed, that means you are
| responsible for that part. And of course anyone with more
| complex taxes (e.g. non-W2 income) would still need to
| file, though they could start with the pre-filled forms.
|
| > Last year I received a roughly US$3k tax credit because
| I installed a 6.6kW solar PV array on my house. There are
| dozens or even hundreds of cases like this in the US tax
| code.
|
| Yes, and all those special cases should be removed as
| part of the reform. If they want to hand out money as an
| incentive for installing a PV system (for example) then
| they should make that a separate application and payment,
| since this has nothing to do with collecting taxes. For
| business income you can subtract legitimate business
| expenses (since this is about income, not gross
| revenues), for capital gains you obviously subtract the
| cost basis, and for personal income you subtract the
| official poverty level for your household. (If there are
| multiple filers for one household then they split the
| deduction.) If the sum is less than zero then you simply
| pay no taxes--there are no refunds. That's it. No special
| surtaxes or exclusions. Apply a flat percentage to the
| total and you're done.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I agree absolutely [0]. This would fundamentally upend
| American policy making, but that's OK. Our elected
| representatives would have to decide to actively people
| money for doing things they want to promote rather, which
| would improve the transparency of legislative goal
| setting.
|
| [0] I don't agree about the flat percentage. The USA has
| had a progressive tax structure in various ways since its
| founding, and given the concept of marginal utility, I
| stronly believe that this is the right way to tax income.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > The USA has had a progressive tax structure in various
| ways since its founding...
|
| The system I described is still modestly "progressive" in
| the sense that those with more earnings pay a larger
| percentage than those with less, due to subtracting the
| poverty level. (Up to the poverty level, nothing is
| taxed; at 2X the poverty level, only half your total
| earnings are taxed; etc.) It starts at 0% and
| asymptotically approaches the flat rate as earnings
| increase. To be sure, it's not quite so heavily biased as
| the current tax tables, but then we also have this
| principle that the law is supposed to apply equally to
| everyone and not discriminate on the basis of wealth or
| status, in _either_ direction. The current political
| environment targeting a small number of individuals for
| special taxes or punitive rates based on either their
| income or wealth practically amounts to a bill of
| attainder-which would obviously be unconstitutional, and
| for good reason.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The concept of marginal utility says that taking
| different amounts from people with different levels of
| income/wealth is treating them the same.
|
| To a person who earns $10k/yr, $1k is huge (whether it is
| extra income or owed tax). To a person who earns $1M/yr,
| $1k is basically pocket change. The utility of that
| marginal $1k varies for them both. Ergo, to treat them
| equally, we tax them differently.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > The concept of marginal utility says that taking
| different amounts from people with different levels of
| income/wealth is treating them the same.
|
| Marginal utility says that--most of the time-the utility
| of one more of an item _to the owner_ is less than or
| equal to the utility of each item they already possess.
| (The exception would be where you need multiple items to
| do anything useful, but this is generally treated as a
| different kind of good rather than another of the same.)
| The concept of marginal utility says _nothing_ about the
| relative utility of the same amount of money to different
| people. Utility is subjective, and there is no coherent
| concept of utility which applies across multiple
| individuals. It makes zero sense to say that some set
| amount of money is worth objectively more or less to
| different individuals based solely on how much they
| already own, much less on their earnings for a single
| year.
|
| > To a person who earns $[X]/yr...
|
| And here we have another issue: the assumption that
| earning some amount in _one_ year--which is all the tax
| rules consider--is equivalent to earning that amount
| _every_ year. Receiving ten years worth of income as a
| lump sum of $1M up front vs. $100k each year should not
| affect your tax rate, but in practice it does, which has
| various perverse implications. The law is biased in favor
| of regular, even income (W-2s), and against situations
| where you may earn a lot in one year and very little in
| others (e.g. running a small business).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It makes zero sense to say that some set amount of
| money is worth objectively more or less ...
|
| I think this is nonsense. We can't put a precise worth on
| it for different people, sure. But I think it's
| indisputable that there's a curve, we know it's rough
| shape, and that it's a reflection of marginal utility.
| The lack of labels or positions on the axes doesn't make
| that graph useless.
|
| > The concept of marginal utility says nothing about the
| relative utility of the same amount of money to different
| people.
|
| Sorry, but this is just completely wrong. Here's the most
| relevant paragraph from: https://commons.lib.niu.edu/bits
| tream/handle/10843/22650/12-...
|
| >The linchpin of The Uneasy Case is its rejection of the
| principle that income has diminishing marginal utility.'
| Diminishing marginal utility of income (DMUI) means that
| the greater a taxpayer's income, the less an additional
| dollar of income is worth to him. If DMUI holds, the
| government exacts a lesser sacrifice from a higher-income
| taxpayer, with each dollar taxed, than from a lower-
| income taxpayer. Moreover, any redistribution of income
| from a higher-income tax- payer to a lower-income
| taxpayer tends to increase aggregate welfare: The lower-
| income taxpayer derives greater utility from each dollar
| gained than 4 the higher-income taxpayer derives from
| each dollar surrendered.
|
| Now, to be fair, there are arguments against the DMUI
| case for progressive taxation. For example, here's Donald
| Boudreaux writing for the American Institute of Economic
| Research:
|
| https://www.aier.org/article/rich-man-poor-man-comparing-
| the...
|
| The fact that it's a terrible argument doesn't diminish
| the fact that it clearly recognizes that there _is_ a
| case to be made for progressive taxation based on DMUI.
|
| Here's another one, equally bad:
|
| https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/04/the_uneasy_case.
| htm...
|
| The key point here seems to be that even though DMUI is
| true, we don't know the actual numbers, and thus we
| should not act on it.
|
| As for your remarks about $1M in 1yr vs $100k for 10yrs
| ... well, sure the tax code is necessarily imperfect.
| Optimize it for people with one income patterns and
| you've made it worse for people with a different income
| pattern. Such is life ... perfection is not an option
| here.
| netcan wrote:
| >>Disruption could also come from tax reform.
|
| I'd say that's the most appropriate place, really. It's a
| designed system, sort of. It's malleable, in that changes
| occur regularly. The obvious place for bug fixes is here.
|
| I get your pessimism in the sense that the same dynamics,
| politics and systems that have shaped the present problem
| seem unlikely to have the desire/capability to fix it. OTOH,
| things stay the same until they don't. There have been a lot
| of tax systems invented over the last N thousand years. 99.N%
| of those tax codes are currently extinct.
|
| Also... we're due a shift of reigning economic religion,
| periodically speaking. Maybe the next one will take a
| differing view on efficiency.
|
| Stuff like taxes were always enigmas productivity-wise. For a
| mill, product-out/labour-in = labour productivity... or
| product-out/capital for capital efficiency. Either way,
| efficiency is self evident. For a tax code, legal system or
| whatnot, there's no way to measure output and no "economists
| agree" way to know the value of the output even if you could.
| It could be negative.
|
| Well... This now also applies also to JPMorgan, Pfizer,
| Alphabet, FB and such. Just like it's not obvious that more
| legal procedures = more justice, measurements of most of the
| economy's output is increasingly ethereal and unrelated to
| obvious scarcities.
|
| That don't mean nothing definite, but we are in times of
| change... which means don't bet on long term saminess of most
| things.
| EvanDotPro wrote:
| Around 2007-2008, as a "side project" I tried to build a web-
| based payroll software for a single state. Me and the developer
| I employed were able to get to 80% real quick, with ACH and
| everything. But as you say, the final 20% (edge cases) are
| nearly endless and ever-changing. Even a single state ended up
| being way too much for two developers.
| peteri wrote:
| Way back when I wrote accounting software in the UK. I had a
| conversation with my boss about us writing our own payroll
| software so we didn't have to a pay a third party to white
| label their software.
|
| I then went and found out how many folks one of our
| competitors (a bit more mass market than us) had writing
| payroll software.
|
| The answer was it was a six person team just to keep up with
| the government changes every year. We never bothered any more
| with that idea.
|
| Payroll is surprisingly hard.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I switched payroll providers a few years ago away from
| Quickbooks Payroll. They hosed up my stuff so bad I was
| dealing with the fallout for close to 2 years afterwards -
| overpaid, underpaid, refunds, fines, it was a mess.
|
| The new company I switched to did not allow me to do
| payroll on the days that I'd wanted. They only offered 2 or
| 3 options, none of which matched what I'd done before.
| "That's all we offer" was the reply. There've been a couple
| other 'restrictions' (lost flexibility) on some behaviors -
| nothing horrible, of course.
|
| I've no doubt removing some of that flexibility has reduced
| their overhead - there's enough changing regulations every
| year in multiple jurisdictions - keeping the main stuff
| under their control as simple as possible seems to have
| worked out for them. I've had... 4 years with them without
| incident, but 2 years of pain with QB before.
|
| FWIW, QB hosed up dealing with my state. Federal was fine,
| but they created so many problems with my state filings...
| bserge wrote:
| Why not just say "sorry, it looks like your situation is too
| complicated for us at the moment" to edge cases? Would still
| help many people.
| silisili wrote:
| Funny you mention that, the first time I tried to use Credit
| Karma Tax, either last year or the year before, they punted on
| me for having lived in two states.
|
| I agree with your sentiment, but not resolution. The truest
| resolution is in simplifying the tax code, which Intuit and co
| do not want.
|
| Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried
| FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top
| notch, and cheap. Highly recommend.
| aorth wrote:
| > Edit to add: When CreditKarma gave up on me, I tried
| FreeTaxUsa. It sounds like a scam I know, but they are top
| notch, and cheap. Highly recommend.
|
| Ah! I remember FreeTaxUsa. They have this silly verification
| thing in their signup. Your email address must be on an
| "American" domain. Mine is self hosted on some other domain
| and they literally say it's "foreign". Just checked again and
| it's still there. Hah... sigh.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If getting an email address is too big a barrier for you...
| you might not be the target market.
| mro_name wrote:
| did you contact them on that? What does an email prove
| anyway?
| aorth wrote:
| Ah, I just checked my records. I contacted them in
| 2021-02. Their response was:
|
| > _We prefer customers to attach email addresses from
| widely recognized providers for security purposes.
| Additionally, our servers have a hard time communicating
| with private email servers._
|
| > _You may create a new email address to handle your tax
| returns through FreeTaxUSA with a major provider._
| mro_name wrote:
| thanks for asking them - it's really important to give
| feedback. Otherwise they just continue to not know.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| Honestly, the best solution for all of this is use the local
| CPA or Licensed Tax Preparer. No, I don't mean HR Block or
| chain tax preparers. I have my own and it is the best money
| spent since my CPA know the state and the federal taxes
| further than Intuit software (Intuit use dark patterns to
| take advantage of everything).
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| In most countries in Europe (not only in the EU) you can
| download the official software from the corresponding tax
| authority. In many places you don't even need to send
| hardcopies of most documents - at most some printed page with a
| code and your signature. You must of course keep all the
| documents on which you based your tax returns in case they ask
| you specifically for them.
| ggrrhh_ta wrote:
| oh, I forgot to say, in some countries you even received them
| already filled in.
| netcan wrote:
| >> Generally not the kind of thing for open source
|
| Hard to know in advance, if OS communities can do something
| well or not. There are examples of taking on pretty sprawling
| problems successfully. On multi Language, portability and such
| they can often beat the "armies."
| saberdancer wrote:
| Yes, but the problem with taxation is if you are couple of
| months behind the change in regulation, you are in violation
| and depending on the country, you need to pay fines.
|
| It's easy to have open source project where the stakes are
| "bad translation" or something that doesn't result in fines
| or problems with IRS/law.
| netcan wrote:
| Same answer, I suppose.
|
| I take the point that this is complex, but that doesn't
| discard OS/community by default. It's not impossible that
| community built OS could produce software trustworthy
| enough to be widely usable. FOSS has played in high stakes
| arena successfully before.
|
| I would say that the point you and GP make demonstrate that
| "move fast and break" or "MVP" stuff can't be applied
| easily. That's not specifically something that impacts OS.
| It's just a difficulty of the space.
| reidjs wrote:
| That's sort of the risk you take when using open source
| software in general. You can put in a PR to fix that edge
| case if you feel so inclined. In my experience the IRS can
| be surprisingly understanding about mistakes on your tax
| forms (ONCE you get a human on the line...).
|
| The question is, do you think the potential penalty will
| cost more than the tax software? It comes down to managing
| risk, and some people may prefer to take the risk,
| especially if they have relatively simple tax situations.
| shireboy wrote:
| Came here to say this, except the real fix is to simplify the
| tax code. It's like app dev - over the years has built up lots
| of bloat, some due to legit social interests, some due to back
| room shenanigans with special interests. Needs an overhaul and
| mass simplification, but pointy haired ones not willing to take
| on the project.
| shkkmo wrote:
| TurboTax in made by Intuit which is an evil company that has
| long worked to make sure that the US tax code is unnecessarily
| complicated and prevented the government from providing a free
| alternative.
| vimsee wrote:
| I feel like this is a kind of XY problem that could be solved
| theoretically by agreeing on a more streamlined tax-regulation.
| It will take away the ability to fine tune tax deducts and so
| forth, but in return we can more easily design software to
| handle our taxes. I find that not having this automated
| nowadays with the advancement in computing resources that we
| have at disposal today is surprising.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Yes, software can be much simpler if the real world wasn't so
| complex.
|
| The reality is that governments use taxation as one of their
| tools to reward certain behaviors and population segments and
| to discourage/punish others. Simplifying taxation is taking
| that power away from governments. Why would any government
| choose to divest itself of those powers?
| aniforprez wrote:
| I don't think any other country does taxes as awfully as
| the US. Where I live, there's a government provided portal
| that has most of the stuff already filled from my employer.
| It gets "complicated" if I earn income from the side such
| as investments, contract work etc and even that is just a
| matter of filling forms on their website in a similar
| manner to how the author suggests filling fields in an
| Excel sheet and other fields get the values automatically
| calculated. If I have refunds pending, I pay nothing. If I
| have taxes to pay, it redirects to my bank, I pay my taxes
| and I'm done
| umeshunni wrote:
| Sure, but the US also generates about 40% of it's income
| from personal income taxes, compared to ~25% average
| across OECD
|
| https://files.taxfoundation.org/20210217111150/Sources-
| of-ta... from https://taxfoundation.org/us-tax-
| revenue-2021/
|
| My guess reading this (and my experience growing up in
| India) is that many countries simply ignore income taxes
| (if you're the average schmoe with a regular job and
| salary, you pay taxes. If you are a business person of
| some sort, you simply accept cash, hide your income and
| pay no taxes) and the country makes for this shortcoming
| with a 20% VAT.
| Closi wrote:
| Well the UK is at 40% too if you also include national
| insurance contributions, but both income tax and national
| insurance are calculated by employers and paid
| automatically out of your payslip (PAYE). This means most
| people never have to think about doing a tax return, and
| also means it's harder to hide earnings for most people.
|
| There is then a process where people with more complex
| tax affairs then fill in a government questionnaire on a
| website which instantly calculates the tax rebate/payment
| required and adjusts your tax balance.
| whakim wrote:
| I'm not sure the OECD is the right comparison point
| because many OECD members (the Latin American and Eastern
| European countries, mostly) collect far less in tax
| revenue than the "more developed" OECD nations like the
| United States, France, Germany, Sweden or Japan. To use
| your example of India (I know India isn't in the OECD but
| it has good tax data, has been studied extensively, and
| its tax regime isn't miles away from the "less developed"
| OECD nations) - India collects somewhere on the order of
| 10% of its national income every year in taxes; the other
| countries mentioned are in the 40-70% range. For a
| country that only wants to collect 10% of its national
| income in taxes it's easy to get away with the
| (relatively simple) mechanism of consumption taxes; to
| collect more revenues increasingly progressive forms of
| taxation, such as income taxes, are required.
| whakim wrote:
| In many cases we could encourage/discourage the same
| behaviors by simply spending money on those things instead
| of using tax deductions. That's how most countries do it,
| and as a result their tax systems are much simpler.
| ajdlinux wrote:
| Or you could just have the government itself develop the
| software in tandem with the tax regulations. Obviously, even
| that would still be easier and cheaper with a less complex
| tax code, but in this thread we're talking about "open source
| tax software" that shouldn't even really need to exist when
| the government could just provide a fully functional web
| portal where the corner cases have been tested exhaustively
| by the organisation that knows those corner cases better than
| anyone.
| lbriner wrote:
| This has to be the most sensible thing. The UK used to say
| that "tax doesn't have to be taxing", very pithy but then I
| tried to make a zero return for a dormant company and had
| to use some horrific software from the HMRC (tax office),
| which was some weird XML thing that was impossible to
| understand.
|
| If the government had to make the software we all had to
| use, as well as it being free, it would force the
| government to consider the cost of modifications when they
| decide in their infinite wisdom that some new tax-break
| should be created.
|
| Inertia can be good to slow-down knee-jerk politics.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| We could change the system with a focus on making it easier
| to file, process, and confirm.
|
| OR... Intuit can keep shoveling money into campaign funds. We
| know what it'll be.
| nn3 wrote:
| Excel1040 has been around for quite some time, long enough to
| already have long crossed the "short lived" threshold.
|
| It avoids the state problem by not supporting states at all.
|
| It's done by a single retired person. I always donate a few
| bucks and I suspect he's making enough off the donations for it
| to be worthwhile for him.
|
| But yes eventually it might be abandoned if he doesn't find
| some successor, but so far it's very alive.
| bregma wrote:
| I can't believe so many commenters here are crying out for a
| nannier nanny state where all of their financial transactions
| are monitored by the government and once a year they have to
| sign a paper agreeing that the government has watched them
| correctly.
|
| That flies in hte face of the usual comment torrent decrying
| centralized spying from any agency, government or otherwise.
|
| In the 40 or so years I have been doing taxes I have not once
| seen the amount deducted as taxes match the amount owed. After
| various deductions (retirement savings, medical expenses,
| charitable donations, political contributions, governmental
| program incentives, etc) and jurisdictional disagreements
| (employer in one province, residence in another), I and those I
| do taxes for always get money coming back.
|
| Requiring every financial (and otherwise) transaction I
| undertake to be registered with some central government
| authority to they can (in theory) correctly prefill my tax
| forms is anathema. Be careful what you wish for you might just
| get it.
| danShumway wrote:
| Nobody here is asking for that.
|
| I don't know if you're just not aware of this, or what, but
| most of the data on your taxes is stuff that already gets
| reported to the government. There's no reason for consumers
| to fill out a W2 every year, the government as it exists
| today already has that data. The same is the case for a lot
| of investment information, it already gets reported to the
| IRS today.
|
| You don't need to build an expanded government surveillance
| program for the IRS to stop requiring filers to fill in
| information that the government already has. This has nothing
| to do with having a "nanny state", and everything to do with
| a coordinated campaign from bad-faith actors like Intuit to
| try and pretend that it's pro-freedom or pro-privacy or some
| crud to act like the government doesn't already have your W2.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| The IRS already gets this information. They'll get even more
| with the changes to 1099-k reporting for transactions made
| next year.
| zakpatterson wrote:
| Open source can solve this problem.
|
| Any service you choose might be missing your edge case. But if
| you can see all the code and figure out where to plug in your
| edge case, then you can contribute it for all users in the
| future to enjoy.
|
| We've already seen people show up and implement features we
| hadn't researched yet. I encourage you to check it out.
| qzw wrote:
| It's not just fixing problems though. The tax code has
| changes every year, so the software must be updated
| accordingly, which is a lot of drudgery. Open source can
| handle drudgery if there's a big, passionate community. So
| you'd need a lot of people who are passionate about the tax
| code and about OSS. I'd like to see that Venn diagram.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The consequences of botching it are high, so taking commits
| from external contributors requires detailed and time
| consuming reviews.
|
| Further, people don't know what the edge cases actually are
| at scale. If I go do my taxes and it doesn't account for some
| weird thing, I simply don't know that this weird thing even
| exists in the first place to justify a PR to the tax service.
| zakpatterson wrote:
| Can you elaborate about consequences?
|
| You might not know the edge case exists, but out of all the
| people that have that edge case hopefully there is one that
| does know about it and can implement the fix.
|
| Also I'd be curious to know what edge cases you're thinking
| about. Many people just have a W-2 and a few 1099s. If
| someone has a complex business or some other concern
| they're probably at least partially aware.
| lbriner wrote:
| I think this only makes sense to an outsider dev who thinks
| everything is relatively easy. Tax and accounting is
| definitely not.
|
| What happens if you fall under two different tax-breaks or if
| a payment was taken on a certain date which falls before or
| after a cut-off point? A lot of complexity, that the
| developers could solve but will not necessarily know how to
| handle. At least when you submit this to the relevant tax
| authority, they can spot alarms like this and decide in a
| reactionary way how to handle it, adjusting tax codes or
| providing rebates.
|
| There are just way too many things that change too quickly.
|
| That said, I am all for simplification but then you wouldn't
| need open-source software, you could just do it in a
| spreadsheet ;-)
| zakpatterson wrote:
| It's hard for me to understand what you mean.
|
| First of all I'm one of the maintainers on the project.
| Handling people between two tax-brackets doesn't seem like
| a problem.
|
| A spreadsheet might be simple for you dealing with your own
| taxes, but you can't email your spreadsheet to tens of
| thousands of people and have them all improve upon it and
| share it amongst each other so all of them can benefit.
| That's the vision here, I don't know if it will succeed,
| but that's what we're trying to accomplish.
| amelius wrote:
| > what if I lived in multiple states?
|
| You just pick the state that gives you the smallest tax.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A state tax auditor just started drooling and they're not
| quite sure why yet.
| zakpatterson wrote:
| Partial year residency is an annoying issue. This is not one
| of the ways we're solving it though!
| toastal wrote:
| Agreed with edge cases. Last year I tried using free (as in
| beer) and even cheap softwares, and they couldn't or wouldn't
| process for Americans abroad or have the Foreign Earned Income
| Exclusion exemption which meant they were all no-gos for me.
| Seems like the tax system should be drastically simpler.
|
| Most countries don't tax expatriated citizens. Even with
| exemptions you still owe for social security and Medicare. It
| sounds good since many people will want pension in retirement,
| but Medicare offers vouchers or exemptions abroad. This was
| likely the precedence used for "historically, we do not offer
| any healthcare services to those abroad" when asked if overseas
| Americans would get access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
| reidjs wrote:
| That is not a typical situation for most Americans. You even
| knew that as an expat you were going to have to deal with
| some pretty nasty tax forms for no taxation on the first
| ~100K for FEIE. Just hire an accountant who knows how to
| handle that, or pay for the commercial stuff (I assume you
| did). OSS does not necessarily have to compete on every
| single feature to help the majority of people. I think as
| long as it's clear about its limitations upfront it can be
| useful.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The french initiative started in 2013 is still alive (last
| commit a few days ago), and passes the gov test suite (they
| keep in touch with our version of the IRS):
| https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france
|
| The way we got this is interestingly twisted.
|
| French citizens requested the software used by the
| administration, and they managed to get it!
|
| But, it was written in Mlang, a proprietary language created by
| the french administration in the 90:
| https://github.com/MLanguage/mlang.
|
| Someone then decided to create an OCaml compiler that takes
| mlang and emits python: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966
|
| As a result, we got Open Fisca. I now think there are other
| techs in the mix...
|
| A slide of the story:
| https://www.slideshare.net/Etalab/opening-up-the-french-tax-...
|
| But I believe it should be mandatory for the state to provide
| the source of every softwares they use internally to manage our
| lives. Also a test suite to allow any citizen to validate their
| own effort to comply with the law.
|
| Just like laws should be published as diff of the previous
| laws, in a VCS repo.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am French and I never heard about this project. I pay taxes
| on the taxes web site where everything is filled in for me,
| so no need to use any software. The whole exercice takes
| literally 30 seconds.
|
| This is not to day that the software is not useful (the API
| looks great after a quick reading), but it will be used by a
| very small population.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I don't use it either, but there is a lot of value in it
| because it forces formalism and transparency, and allow
| reproducibility for something as important as taxes.
| koheripbal wrote:
| France has no State/Provincial level taxes. They also do not
| tax global income.
|
| These add major complexities to the US tax code.
| triceratops wrote:
| The US could stop taxing global income for individuals. US
| companies don't have to pay taxes on their overseas
| profits, why do people?
| jeffdn wrote:
| US companies do have to pay taxes on overseas profits,
| which is why they so often have subsidiaries based
| overseas. _Those_ entities do not have to pay those
| taxes.
| reidjs wrote:
| If those represent major complexities maybe there can be
| open source tax software that serves 80% of people, I.e.
| people in coastal cities that have one job, and then the
| remaining 20% have to pay for their software?
| ghaff wrote:
| So sure. You can write software that can handle a simple
| Federal-only case. (Basically what used to be a 1040-EZ:
| W-2(s), a couple 1099s with all the cost basis info
| existing, standard deductions, etc.) But, at that point,
| your taxes are pretty simple to fill out anyway and I'm
| guessing there are even spreadsheet templates out there
| that let you type in some numbers and everything is
| calculated.
| javagram wrote:
| Moreover, the simple cases are also supported by the IRS
| free fillable forms product.
| https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
| pradn wrote:
| The IRS could not come up with a website and TLD that
| sounds more like a scam if they tried. :)
| javagram wrote:
| Yes, although you can get to it directly from the irs.gov
| site it does seem confusing at first that it's on a .com
|
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-
| form...
| ghaff wrote:
| Note that this isn't "the IRS." It's an IRS public-
| private partnership that people below some income
| threshold can use for free.
| javagram wrote:
| No, it's usable by any income level. You're thinking of
| Free File, which lets lower income users use TurboTax and
| other products for free.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-
| form...
|
| > Free File Fillable Forms is the only IRS Free File
| option available for taxpayers whose income (AGI) is
| greater than $72,000. Taxpayers whose income is $72,000
| or less qualify for IRS Free File partner offers, which
| can guide you through the preparation and filing of your
| tax return, and may include state tax filing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. I misread. Though it's understandable how one could
| confuse Free File Fillable Forms eith IRS Free File
| partner offers.
|
| As a comment upthread said. It's presumably legit because
| it's linked to from the IRS site but almost everything
| else sets off alarms.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My experience of state taxes over 32 years (WA, PA and
| NM) has been that filing these returns is easy-peasy
| compared to my federal return (I'm self-employed).
|
| I'd be happy to have a full federal filing system even if
| it left me to do my state taxes "by hand".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > My experience of state taxes over 32 years (WA, PA and
| NM)
|
| One of those states (WA) doesn't belong in the list of
| states that require personal income tax returns, unless
| you mean something else?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's been 24 years since I was in WA :) I forgot they had
| no income tax. Sorry.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| There certainly can be if you want to develop and
| maintain it.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| The states don't do the taxes manually, either.
|
| Just like France, they could open source their software.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| This is great. Do most French people need to file tax
| returns? When I lived in Britain I only needed to file when I
| was self-employed and when I worked in Norway I got sent a
| pre-filled tax return. Now living in the US I need to file
| every year (both state and federally) even as a regular
| employee with all my income reported already reported to the
| government.
|
| It all seems to be an absurd charade. Attempts to reduce the
| bureaucratic burden are opposed by the tax return return
| companies who bribe heavily to prevent any simplification.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If you are an employee, usually you just have to approve it
| on the internet, since it's taken directly, every month,
| from your salary.
|
| Even as a freelancer, it usually takes me 10 minutes on the
| web to fill my yearly taxes nowaday. It used to be way
| longer, with queue at the tax offices, real papers to fill,
| etc.
|
| But I do have a very convenient status, administrative
| wise.
| elcomet wrote:
| French employees also get a pre-filled tax return, they
| just need to check that it is correct.
| Jugurtha wrote:
| In Algeria, we have "retenue a la source". Taxes are
| withheld and paid by the company on behalf of the employee,
| so you don't need to do any taxes. The company takes care
| of social Security payment and taxes, and it appears in the
| tax returns of the company, and the employee's pay stubs.
| The organization's accountant or accounting firm takes care
| of it.
|
| You don't interact with the revenue service as an employee,
| or fill out forms, or something.
| nwatson wrote:
| In the U.S. this "withholding" happens as well. Regular
| employee paychecks already lose a chunk of nominal income
| attributed to various buckets, federal and state and
| maybe local level. Toward the beginning of the next year
| comes the grand reconciliation though, where what you
| "really owe" gets computed, only roughly matching what
| already is withheld. There are so many rules, exclusions,
| exceptions, additions. They individually make some sense,
| or did at some point, but are very confusing, with
| implications that sometimes stretch over many years.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The US uses its tax code(s) to try to implement policy.
| Increase taxes on something to try to discourage people
| from using/buying/participating in it. Decrease taxes or
| offer tax credits to try to encourage something. On the
| face of it, this is not a bad idea, but cumulatively it
| gets pretty messy (especially when, as you note, some of
| the policy-as-tax-code has implications over more than
| just a single tax year).
| ghaff wrote:
| >some of the policy-as-tax-code has implications over
| more than just a single tax year
|
| Yes, as my finance professor used to say, make all of
| your decisions based on after-tax.
|
| Which is very relevant on a personal level to, say,
| someone buying a house in the US with a sufficiently
| large mortgage to itemize deductions is going to be...
| unhappy if that deduction suddenly gets snatched away.
|
| "Rules" obviously do change but there are good reasons to
| exercise restraint with respect to established rules that
| led individuals to make substantial commitments on the
| basis of that rule.
| xeromal wrote:
| You're not wrong with this take. One of the biggest
| policies is encouraging having children through all the
| various credits and writeoffs you can do with having
| children.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| It's true that tax filing companies lobby to prevent
| improvements to the tax filing system in the US, but this
| is also aided by political parties that argue against
| things like taxation in the first place, which is why there
| is no bipartisan support to address this issue.
|
| Keeping taxes hard to pay is an important carrot in keeping
| the public mad about having to pay them in the first place.
| It's governance through dark patterns.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > Keeping taxes hard to pay is an important carrot in
| keeping the public mad about having to pay them in the
| first place. It's governance through dark patterns.
|
| I am pretty sure the reason most people are mad about
| having to pay taxes is the thousands/tens of
| thousands/hundreds of thousands of dollars of their
| income that is taken from them.
|
| On the high level, I always felt fortunate that I was in
| position to have to pay a lot of taxes. But it's pretty
| ridiculous. Case in point, we just bought a small, 100
| year old house on a tiny lot. New York State didn't
| hesitate charging us a "mansion tax" on it. Believe me,
| it's no mansion. While there's a limit to how mad I am
| about that, it's not the paperwork that's annoying me.
| runarberg wrote:
| > I am pretty sure the reason most people are mad about
| having to pay taxes is the thousands/tens of
| thousands/hundreds of thousands of dollars of their
| income that is taken from them.
|
| Perhaps this depends. In the USA, perhaps. In Iceland,
| not so much (https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/13554
| 90017288867841).
|
| In the USA you have to pay your taxes and then you have
| to pay for your public insurances, where in most of
| Europe these are the same things. And perhaps tax payers
| in the USA are not happy with this. So to amend your
| statement, perhaps a more accurate one is: Most people
| are mad about paying taxes because of the thousands of
| dollars of income that is taken from them _without any
| tangible benefits_.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I bet if high taxes for high level of public service can
| work anywhere, Iceland is it. The population is small
| (350,000 people) and highly homogeneous. One Icelander is
| similar to another so problems are more common.
|
| US is vastly larger. New York City alone has 3X as many
| public school students as Iceland has people. We are
| vastly diverse ethnically, culturally and geographically.
| It is much harder to find "problems and solutions
| everyone agrees to" in the US than in Iceland.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > income that is taken from them.
|
| Taxation exists in every functional modern democracy and
| there are no viable alternatives to it. States and
| municipalities that reduce their revenues through tax
| cuts wind up relying on things like speeding citations
| and civil forfeiture to bridge the gap. Wouldn't you
| rather suck it up and pay once per year than potentially
| having assets seized by a random cop that you then have
| to go through the legal system in order to get back?
| You're gonna pay either way. Even in anti-tax states like
| Texas, people get hit with massive property tax bills
| because it's one of the only ways that the government
| generates revenue.
|
| The real problem is that the vast majority of people
| don't really care once the money leaves their hands. You
| don't like the mansion tax, which makes sense, but have
| you taken the time to look at your state or city budget
| to see where all of this money is disappearing to?
| Because that's where the more of the focus needs to be.
| Just glancing at the executive summary of the latest NY
| budget(0), it looks like $86B of the $212B total goes
| towards Medicaid alone.
|
| So do we just leave the poor to not have healthcare? Why
| does healthcare cost so much and how come despite all of
| these tech entrants into the healthcare space, the cost
| never seems to go down? I really hope for the sake of
| your own argument that you don't work in healthcare,
| because what that industry is doing to communities across
| the nation in terms of cost is nothing short of
| outrageous.
|
| [0] https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/budget/review-
| enacted-bu...
| Omnitaus wrote:
| If they were easy to pay, hard for wealthy
| taxpayers/corporations to avoid, and actually went to
| services you'd expect in a developed industrial society
| (healthcare, education, research) instead of Raytheon
| XJ-9 Knife Missiles(tm) people might not be so salty
| about paying the 4th lowest tax rate (as a % of GDP) in
| the OECD
|
| Put another way, we are at the lowest tax rate this
| country has seen in a century. How much lower can we
| expect it to drop?
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| So what is actually needed, is to transfer law into a computer
| parse-able syntax, so that software can automatically update
| itself?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Genuine artificial intelligence.
|
| Some of the tax rules come down to "humans argued in court,
| and another human decided between their two arguments,
| because the law on paper was vague or poorly constructed".
| lhuser123 wrote:
| I use https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ to submit my 1040
| every year. It's recommended by the IRS if you know what you are
| doing.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| One of the most brutal parts of the US tax system is the
| informational returns you have to do if you have any
| international connections at all. If you're unfortunate enough to
| live abroad and be self employed or own a small business, you
| basically get fucked. Lookup IRS form 5471.
|
| The US assumes that all people who have anything to do with other
| countries are billionaire owners of multinationals with armies of
| lawyers to fill out paperwork.
| Kyragem wrote:
| Unhappy with turbotax I have been using freetaxusa for many years
| which is also free.
| rlv-dan wrote:
| Title should be _American_ Open Source Tax Software.
| thex10 wrote:
| This work excites me a lot, but I can't help but wonder if this
| should be a government-funded rather than volunteer-driven
| effort.
| schiho wrote:
| It can start as an open source project and can end up
| goverment-funded.
| carbocation wrote:
| Government funded efforts can be disrupted by the tax software
| lobby.
| donw wrote:
| Should be, yes. Will be, no. Tax preparation is a multi-billion
| dollar industry.
| jjeaff wrote:
| The IRS has to program all the rules into their system anyway.
| If they could simply standardize those rules into a git
| controlled Yaml file or something better suited, keeping
| software updated could be made rather easy for open source
| projects.
| _hl_ wrote:
| The French tax office for example has created a programming
| language in which the legally binding tax code is defined.
| INTPenis wrote:
| What do people think of GNU Cash? I tried it once when I started
| up my own company and wanted to keep books. Noticed it was very
| much adapted for non-US audiences. Even after adding Swedish
| account codes it was still missing a lot of info. It was
| essentially a glorified spreadsheed. Could have stuck with
| Libreoffice calc as far as features went.
| hankdoupe wrote:
| If you're interested in using open-source tax software for
| analyzing policy changes, here are a few really cool projects
| written in Python:
|
| - https://taxcalc.pslmodels.org/ - webapp here:
| compute.studio/PSLmodels/Tax-Brain/new/
|
| - https://github.com/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk
| - webapp here: https://uk.policyengine.org/
|
| (disclosure: I'm one of the maintainers of Tax-Calculator and
| Compute Studio)
| slownews45 wrote:
| Google link if helpful.
|
| https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home
| la_fayette wrote:
| Is there something like this for Germany?
| 2ion wrote:
| elster.de is the official means to input your tax info
| supported by the tax office. However, it's largely an online
| form with some legalese and dry formal explanations in a
| sidebar.
|
| You can largely use it if you know what you are doing or have
| the most simplest tax case, but it won't offer you suggestions
| how to optimize taxes, and doesn't include large lists of items
| that you could possibly deduct. This service is offered by
| proprietary tax tools like WISO or QuickSteuer which offer
| questionnaires trying to cover more details of your tax
| situation to find out opportunities to optimize, and include
| large help files that contain examples and explanations.
|
| Cost for these proprietary tools can be very low, they go on
| sale for like EUR5-EUR10 at discounters during tax season or
| are like EUR20 for the fully featured versions.
|
| These tools also manage items like long-term deductions over
| the years, so that's their lock in effect.
| sdfjkl wrote:
| There's Elster.de
| city41 wrote:
| > Your options are to do it by hand, pay someone like Intuit, or
| if you are below a certain income threshold get some tax software
| for free
|
| You can also hire an accountant. Our accountant does our taxes
| for just a tad more than what TurboTax's self employed tier
| costs. Even if we could get away with TurboTax's deluxe tier, I'd
| still argue the slight added cost of the accountant is well worth
| it.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| You don't need software to file taxes. You can download the forms
| (1040, etc.) from the IRS website (and your state IRS's website),
| fill them in, print them out, and mail them to the IRS. It costs
| a few (literally a few) dollars for the postage and a certificate
| of mailing from the USPS as proof that you had the forms sent out
| by the deadline.
|
| The forms are not super straightforward but not incredibly
| complex either. For most normal people with a W-2 or 1099/self-
| employed income, retirement savings accounts, and some
| brokerage/investment accounts, you should be able to get it done
| in a weekend of research & work using resources on the internet,
| referencing the IRS's instructions for their forms, and using
| your previous year's return as a reference. And less time in
| future years once you've figured out how it works. You will need
| Adobe PDF software, but it's libre and a Windows virtual machine
| with the network connection disabled will solve that if you use
| Linux on your computer.
|
| It's not for everyone, but if you don't want to support the evil
| tax industry in the US (there have been a number of posts on HN
| about this) then it's a good option.
|
| Additionally, you can create an account on Turbotax and fill in
| all your information (but with fake name, SSN, employer tax
| numbers, etc.) and it'll tell you the amount of remaining tax
| obligation / tax return that it calculates. So you can use that
| to verify that you did everything properly. Turbotax only charges
| money to actually submit the return through them; even if you
| would normally require a paid TurboTax plan (e.g. for
| contractors, living in multiple states, etc.) you can still go
| through the process and get the final number without paying.
|
| I did this for the first time this spring and was able to get it
| done in a weekend. I had W-2 and 1099 income/deductions and lived
| in multiple states last year. From what I can recall, basically
| the form 1040 is the 'root of the tree'; your W-2 income goes
| into that and every other taxable/deductible thing you do ends up
| aggregated into the 1040. The schedules (A,B,C,...) of the 1040
| are like the first level child nodes; each one has a different
| topic(s) like self employment gains/losses, farming/fishing
| income, etc. so you can skim over them and see what applies to
| you, then fill out the ones you need to and enter their totals
| back into the 1040. The schedules will have lines into which you
| aggregate specific incomes/deductions, and the instructions for
| the schedules will have details on how to calculate all of that.
| And for other special deductions there are lines in the
| 1040/schedules that mention them. I'm not a CPA so don't blame me
| if you follow those instructions and something goes wrong.
| mindslight wrote:
| Last I checked, the federal forms are fillable PDFs that work
| with libre software (eg evince). The forms themselves are quite
| straightforward, the problem is everything leading up to the
| forms.
|
| To me, the value proposition of tax software is that it walks
| you through all the topics interview style, so you can kind of
| relax and go with its flow. Otherwise you've got to create that
| structure yourself - determining what's relevant, sorting
| income into categories, figuring out what boxes it's supposed
| to go in, what schedules you need, etc.
|
| I wonder if libre software that only did the interview portion
| would be more sustainable. It could create category tallies and
| supporting statements that don't really change every year, and
| direct you to fill those numbers in on the forms in the
| appropriate box. Then it wouldn't have the maintenance burden
| of creating print-ready forms that haven't even been released
| until taxes are due.
| kamray23 wrote:
| The website addresses that in the first paragraph. You can, as
| they did, do it manually yourself. However, you're very likely
| to make unnoticeable mistakes due to it being a government tax
| form. Using a weekend to do something a computer can do for you
| in seconds is both a waste of time and likely to make you spend
| another weekend amending it after they send it back.
|
| The vast majority of people just want it to work like it works
| everywhere else. Computers handle it, and you overwrite
| anything that the computers can't know so that it's correct.
| That's what tax software is for, and that's what these projects
| try to accomplish in a FOSS way.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| Oops! I went to the article but skipped straight to the
| second half... the highlighted Excel formula caught my
| attention.
| [deleted]
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff. I am Dutch
| and my government makes it (relatively) easy to do taxes. We got
| a website we can go to; it's filled by the government and we just
| need to verify that it is filled correctly and then click submit.
| Some people can make adjustments where needed and if needed. You
| can also let an accountant do it for you but that is optional;
| but useful if you have had a turbulent year that makes takes more
| difficult (like selling and buying a new house). When they did
| not use a website (a few years back) they offered a downloadable
| application that was available under Windows, MacOS and Linux
| (GTK). It worked fine.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Finland has it even simpler. If I don't want to add anything
| they just send me calculation and if I do nothing either I get
| transferred money or they send me a bill.
| globular-toast wrote:
| In the UK, most people don't need to do anything at all.
| Generally only self-employed or those with "unusual" incomes
| need to manually declare and pay taxes. It's your duty to check
| your tax code, but if it's correct (it almost always is) you
| can just let the system work.
| dado3212 wrote:
| Yeah, this kind of thing has been suggested a lot, and then
| TurboTax lobbies to kill it. See
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
| and more.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I think the Linux app was TCL/TK, so it looked hideous and
| quite out of place, but surprisingly was available and worked
| well. Although I think back then the application was only for
| filing though - pre-filling was added later.
|
| Now with the website it's all much easier still though.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Filing taxes in Germany is just as tedious as in the US. There
| are a couple of startups now simplifying the process, but at
| the end of the day, you're still responsible for knowing the
| tax codes or hiring an accountant.
| sofixa wrote:
| Same here in France, there's a website with a multi-stage form,
| with fields for various things ( revenues, deductions, etc.).
| Everything they know (revenues from employment, self-
| employment, investments via French entities, etc.) is pre-
| filled, you just have to check it, and if something is missing
| you add it. For 90% of people it's a matter of next-next-check
| this value with my payslip-next-next.
| amelius wrote:
| At what point will taxes be collected at the EU level?
| aaaaahaaaaa wrote:
| They're not, EU doesn't collect taxes. It can however
| influence national tax policies.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Using the site is easy, it gets much more complicated the
| moment you have something to add (due to the enormous
| complexity of the tax system, even for simple things).
|
| But I agree that almost for everyone it is a 30 seconds
| exercise to do the taxes.
| asciimov wrote:
| > I keep being perplexed by how the Americans do stuff.
|
| Our brand of conservatism is informed by Calvinism and hard
| core Capitalism.
|
| Those in charge believe in using religion to control and the
| purpose of everything is to make someone money.
| paxys wrote:
| The site seems down but I _really_ want to see how someone was
| able to fit the entirety of the US tax code into an Excel
| workbook.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| The excel1040 site is/was just a redirect to
| https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home
| bjarneh wrote:
| Filing personal taxes in the US sounds like filing taxes for a
| company in other countries. A complete nightmare consisting of
| tons of forms that some bureaucrat dreamed up, which nobody
| really knows how to fill out correctly. Software exists to fill
| them out for you, and if you use some well-known software to do
| it, it's just assumed to be correct by everyone; including the
| state.
| drstewart wrote:
| 90% of people in the US could fill out their taxes by hand in
| less than 5 minutes. It's <12 lines on a one page form
| (1040-EZ) and half of those won't even apply to everyone.
|
| Yes, the IRS could do even this for you, but there's a myth
| that US taxes are always monstrously complicated that everyone
| likes to perpetuate:
|
| 1) The tax companies like it because it keeps people scared of
| doing it themselves
|
| 2) Tax reform advocates like it because it's they can cluck and
| shake their head at the corrupt government and tax companies
|
| 3) It _can_ get complicated if you have a complicated tax
| situation
| pessimizer wrote:
| This poster agrees with you. It only took them a single
| weekend to get them done this year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28756358
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _90% of people in the US could fill out their taxes by hand
| in less than 5 minutes. It 's <12 lines on a one page form
| (1040-EZ)_
|
| Even when 1040-EZ was a thing (which it isn't any more), it
| was only relevant for filers with no dependents (e.g. no
| children), and given that something like 40% of households
| have children under 18 I am pretty sure that 90% is a bogus.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| US tax laws are monstrously complicated. There's a couple
| thousand pages of tax code, along with close to 10,000 pages
| of IRS regulations, that you won't understand adequately
| unless you've also studied the many tens of thousands of
| pages of related case law. There is no single person alive
| who fully understands US tax laws, and even a well resourced
| team of people likely won't when combined.
|
| It's possible to understand it well enough to get by, but
| you're pretty much guaranteed to make mistakes in one way or
| another, and some of those mistakes are pretty much
| guaranteed to be criminal offences. You could live your whole
| life without that ever becoming an issue, but the gamble
| you're taking isn't that you're never going to make a mistake
| (you will), it's that the IRS will never commit any
| considerable resources to investigating your mistakes.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There is a ton of tax code, but if you have W2 income in
| one state and only contributed to a 401k then virtually
| none of those pages of laws apply to you. Most people fall
| into this category.
|
| Genuine errors on your taxes are also not criminal
| offenses.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| > some of those mistakes are pretty much guaranteed to be
| criminal offences.
|
| Unless there is malicious intent, the IRS does not give a
| fuck. They will bring it up, and ask you to fix it.
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| The 1040EZ is deprecated. https://www.irs.gov/forms-
| pubs/about-form-1040-ez
| qzw wrote:
| This perception is what keeps a lot of tax preparation
| companies in business. I know people who could fill out their
| taxes in 10 minutes, who would instead pay hundreds of dollars
| every year to have it done by one of those "tax stores." If US
| high schools would spend one day to walk kids through filling
| out a tax return, they'd probably put H&R Block out of
| business. Which is also why it's won't ever happen.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Both you and the parent are right. I actually did get basic
| filing instructions in high school and managed to handle my
| own taxes easily for the first fourteen of my working years.
|
| Eventually my taxes fell into the realm of forms that even
| CPAs can make mistakes on or are unfamiliar with. I am really
| conservative with this stuff and really make sure to pay what
| I owe. I, or my CPA, still make mistakes that result in the
| State or Federal government sending me small "you paid us too
| much" checks every so often. That's been true when I've done
| it myself, used TurboTax, or used CPAs. I have a friend with
| similarly complicated taxes and she just got her first "you
| owe us $XX" letter for this TY2020 and another $XX check in
| her favor for TY2018 and TY2019 making the whole thing a
| wash.
|
| If they can tell you that you paid the wrong amount a couple
| months after filing it feels like for those on a W2 and
| without unreported 1099 income they could just send a
| statement with an invoice if you owe and a check if you're
| owed. The status quo for those individuals really is as you
| say. There's enough complexity baked in that people throw
| their hands up in the air and just pay the $100 for basic tax
| prep that should be unnecessary in the first place and is not
| much more difficult than balancing a checking book.
| qzw wrote:
| Yes, I have also gotten those. Pretty nice to get a check
| that you weren't expecting, from the IRS no less. In my
| experience a lot of CPAs are very dependent on tax prep
| software anyway. It might be more advanced
| "professional"tax software, but still has limitations. A
| good CPA will be more aware of those limitations ahead of
| time, but mistakes are almost inevitable over the course of
| a few years.
| triceratops wrote:
| > If US high schools would spend one day to walk kids through
| filling out a tax return, they'd probably put H&R Block out
| of business.
|
| Lmao no. Look at the number of people who eat out every day
| instead of cooking.
|
| People go to H&R Block because filing taxes is tedious,
| boring and can land you in jail (or at least, serious legal
| hot water) if done wrong.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| No way would I ever trust open source tax software not to mess
| things up somehow. The paid software has a big incentive to get
| it right.
| icelancer wrote:
| Equifax controls as much of our lives as tax software. Possibly
| more. And there are no penalties for screwing up repeatedly.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| What's your point?
| cable2600 wrote:
| Paid software like Turbotax has hand-holding via the web
| interface or helpline chat over the app. Tech support is
| included in the price.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| If it were open source, then somebody else could repackage it
| and sell it themselves.
| bsdnoob wrote:
| Do you not trust any opensource software and prefer only paid
| software to build your systems?
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Obviously not, that's why I specified tax software.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Guess who is going to get pulled into court when someone's
| taxes get screwed up and the IRS comes after them?
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| > the IRS doesn't consider accidental mistakes as fraud. A
| case for intention has to be made before the IRS actually
| charges you with a crime.
|
| It's relatively easy to screw up your taxes by misentering
| a number into the paid software as well. The various
| guarantees the paid software people offer don't cover this
| sort of situation. I don't think this is really a factor.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Do you think if that happened while using Intuit software,
| they are going to pull intuit into court? When you prepare
| your taxes using software, it all looks the same once the
| IRS receives it. It will show up as self prepared. If you
| pay a CPA to do it, then they also sign the return. But in
| either case, you will be responsible for underpaying your
| taxes and will have to make up the difference. I doubt any
| of the software companies offer any kind of guarantee.
| kube-system wrote:
| The big tax companies do offer some guarantees of the
| accuracy of their calculations.
|
| Which is probably not the kind of mistake you'll have on
| your taxes anyway. Basic arithmetic is easy. And if you
| do make these mistakes it's not likely the IRS does
| anything more than correcting it. But it's more than no
| guarantee.
|
| Also they do provide human support.
| renewiltord wrote:
| As far as I know, all the tax software tells you you are
| responsible in the end.
| kiba wrote:
| Open source can be paid.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| No it can't.
| latexr wrote:
| Keka[1] and Textual[2] are both open-source and you can pay
| for them on the Mac App Store or direct purchase. The
| former gives you compiled builds either way; the latter
| only if you pay.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/aonez/Keka
|
| [2]: https://github.com/Codeux-Software/Textual
| kube-system wrote:
| I bought my first Linux distro in a box on a shelf in a
| store.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| My first linux distro was 40 floppies, then an Yggdrasil
| CD, then various Redhat and SUSE (for Reiserfs) boxed
| sets from Fry's.
|
| The guy in my apt. building who loaned me the floppies
| got a full-time linux job the next day. :)
|
| The huge advantage of Linux over SCO (which was
| unbundled) were the free networking, X11, compilers ...
| and multiple virtual terminals.
|
| So I was one of the first serious Reiserfs users - even
| SUSE reps don't believe me when I say I was using it in
| production (for mail server workloads) around 2001. :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Be serious.
| kube-system wrote:
| I am serious. And Red Hat had $3.4 billion in revenue the
| year it was acquired. There are plenty of people getting
| paid to write open source software. The top contributors
| to open source projects are frequently for-profit
| companies. Open source != hobbyist.
|
| There's nothing about paid software development that
| requires source code to be kept private.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Their customers aren't paying for the software.
| kube-system wrote:
| They do make a lot of money from value add services, but
| in some cases, yes they absolutely are paying for
| software. This is fairly common when people want
| features/updates that don't yet exist.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| That's paying for the development of the software.
| [deleted]
| thewakalix wrote:
| Obligatory reminder that libre software need not be $0.
| Havoc wrote:
| Sounds like a minefield. How do you know which formulas have been
| updated for the latest law changes? Hire a tax guy?
| nikkinana wrote:
| Clickbait bullshit blog post. Do some actual code asshole.
| 3gg wrote:
| The real problem here is that Intuit and other companies lobby
| millions to maintain their status quo. The right thing to do
| would be to put every single dollar spent on these corporations
| into a government program that develops this kind of software or
| even does the taxes for you (this already exists in many
| countries in the EU.) Instead, in the US, you pay for Turbotax,
| they make a profit out if it, and then they use part of the money
| to lobby and keep the tax code and system rigged for their own
| benefit. I don't know if open source software is the solution
| here -- and as far as I know, the tax forms change every year, so
| it will be forever playing catch-up -- but it seems to be missing
| the point entirely.
| j_m_b wrote:
| The US government is always honest and most assuredly will make
| their software with the end user in mind. Combined with the
| excellent customer support offered by the IRS and the US
| government's proven track record in creating stable software
| used by millions, this would be the best solution.
| fnord123 wrote:
| Sarcasm aside, the IRS customer support is excellent.
| pkaye wrote:
| 10 years ago I had some special tax situation that the two
| tax preparers I consulted were not familiar with. They took
| the safe route in preparing the paperwork. So I called up
| the IRS support line and a specialist talked with me in
| detail about my situation and told me the proper way to do
| it and it saved me $5k in taxes.
| qzw wrote:
| Absolutely, but wait times have been increasing due to
| budget cuts. There's an unhealthy fear/contempt of the IRS
| in the US. It's one of the most important government
| agencies, and it should be treated as such and given the
| resources to serve the people better, instead of serving as
| a perpetual political punching bag.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I can confirm that. I once had a problem with business tax,
| called them and I was surprised how well they treated me
| and gave advice.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Almost as if their job is to make sure that you pay taxes
| correctly... It really makes sense that they would want
| it to be correct as it is less potential work for them.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You can have a correct expensive tax file and you can
| have a correct not so expensive tax file.
| 3gg wrote:
| I can only assume you're being sarcastic, but this kind of
| attitude only benefits these corporations. It is a common
| tactic by the rich oligarchies to defund and delegitimize
| government institutions so that they are scorned by the
| population and eventually privatized -- a move that only
| benefits them in the end. I would suggest Noam Chomsky's
| "Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of
| Concentration of Wealth & Power."
| [deleted]
| diegocg wrote:
| In Spain the tax filling software provided by the government
| was migrated to a JavaScript browser based interface years
| ago (it was a Java app before).
|
| The interface is responsive. I literally can send my taxes
| while I shit. The biggest hurdle is that the day the tax
| season starts servers can't deal with the load (because
| apparently everyone wants to be Ned Flanders and file their
| taxes the first day).
|
| Thanks to the national ID e-card (which does have a chip with
| a private key and a certificate signed by the government's
| certificate authority) I don't even need a login/password to
| enter the tax agency web site, the card proves my identity.
|
| This is not some advanced e-government shit, it's routine and
| every advanced country is expected to have it (just like
| universal healthcare, clean water or paved roads). Even
| development countries are starting to have these kind of web
| services.
|
| At this point I suspect some people get paid to spread
| bullshit like this.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> even does the taxes for you
|
| This should exist. 80% of US citizens can just have this done
| right now.
|
| >> government program that develops this kind of software
|
| This should not for the remaining 20%.
| 3gg wrote:
| Right. For most people that are on a payroll and maybe have a
| 401k and what not, tax preparation should be easily
| automated. In some EU countries, the government will send you
| a draft that you basically just have to sign and send back.
| For the remaining 20% (likely even less than 10%) of people
| with more exotic investments, it is probably safe to assume
| that they either have the knowledge to handle the edge cases
| themselves or the wealth to pay someone to do it for them.
|
| It should also be noted that the IRS already has all of the
| information about you anyway. Your bank, your brokers, etc
| all send copies of your financials to them. At that point,
| filling in a tax return by hand is basically a potential form
| of punishment for not doing your homework right.
| desas wrote:
| In the UK 80% of the population don't even have to sign
| anything and send it back. The rest have some employment
| income information on a website and have to supply the rest
| of the data, I found it pretty straight forward when I did
| it for the first time.
| umeshunni wrote:
| I see this comment on every single article about taxation on
| reddit and HN, but can you be a bit more specific and identify
| what this lobbying does and actually point at some examples?
| lelandfe wrote:
| https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap
|
| Propublica is the definitive outlet for reporting on this
| stuff. They've spent years digging into bills and the
| millions that Intuit and H&R block spend lobbying around tax
| reform. > "For a decade proposals have
| sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System;
| All were stopped," reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint
| presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The
| company's 2014-15 plan included manufacturing "3rd-party
| grass roots" support.[0]
|
| Also of note was how after they conceded to making a
| government-mandated (bad, hamstrung) free filing software
| alternative for those making below $39k, Intuit blocked it
| from Google with robots.txt:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-
| hid...
|
| ...Which is important because if you start from _anywhere_
| else on their site, they 'll begin hurling upsell dark
| patterns at the user, despite proclaiming "free" in copy in
| many places.
|
| Right now, if I google "file taxes for free usa," the page
| "TurboTax Free Edition"[1] ranks higher - which is _not the
| same software._ And, of course, they do not link to the
| actual FreeFile page from there.[2]
|
| Edit: turns out that Intuit will no longer be offering that
| government-sponsored Free File alternative after this year
| (disclosed in a blog post titled "Accelerating Technology
| Innovation," hah)[3]. Good riddance. The US Treasury
| Inspector General found that only 2.4% of taxpayers (2.5
| million) actually used the free file software, whereas _5.5x
| that number_ could have filed for free, but were likely
| charged for it instead: > TIGTA estimates
| that more than 14 million taxpayers met the Free File Program
| criteria and may have paid a fee to e-file their Federal tax
| return in the 2019 Filing Season.[4]
|
| [0] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f... [1]
| https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-
| editi... [2] https://freefile.intuit.com/ [3]
| https://www.intuit.com/blog/news-social/accelerating-
| technol... [4] PDF: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditrepor
| ts/2020reports/2020...
| junar wrote:
| The story of ReadyReturn in California is a pretty clear
| example.
|
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/521132960
| umeshunni wrote:
| Aha, here's the actual interesting bit:
|
| The intensity of industry opposition to CalFile has not
| gone unnoticed in Washington, D.C. In February, IRS
| commissioner Mark Everson told Congress that he was
| reluctant to set up an IRS direct e-file system in part
| because of the bruising battle he witnessed in
| California...And that leaves federal taxpayers with little
| prospect of a direct-to-government e-filing system anytime
| soon...In fact, the industry already ran Big Brother-themed
| ads in California when tax authorities there were setting
| up CalFile, a direct e-filing system for state taxes. Lenny
| Goldberg, the head of the California Tax Reform
| Association, says Intuit is leading the charge against
| direct e-filing.
|
| But looking at https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-
| file/online/calfile/inde... , it looks like I can file my
| taxes for 2020 via CalFile, so what is this about then?
| ReadyReturn?
|
| Well, according to
|
| https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-
| fought-t... There is one program in America, however, that
| provides some taxpayers with completed tax returns. Since
| 2007, around 80,000 California taxpayers each year have
| paid state income taxes this way under a program called
| ReadyReturn.
|
| ReadyReturn survived corporate lobbying for one reason: Joe
| Bankman decided to make easy tax filing his personal
| mission, and he spent $30,000 to hire a lobbyist to counter
| lobbying by Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software.
|
| but here's something more interesting:
|
| Since 2015, the tax preparation industry has persuaded
| lawmakers to include a line in the annual appropriations
| bill that bars the IRS from offering pre-populated returns
| to taxpayers. The Financial Services and General Government
| Appropriations Bill approved by the Senate last month
| extends that ban another year.
|
| The codification of Free File in the Taxpayer First Act and
| the extended ban on pre-populated returns in the
| appropriations bill are steps in precisely the wrong
| direction.
| adabyron wrote:
| I would be happy if there was just a place to upload the
| form to online. No fancy software needed. I have to mail
| my Quarterly 941 every quarter or pay some overpriced
| software to do it - https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-
| form-941
|
| I think the popular counter argument is worth knowing.
| The TurboTaxes of the world argue that if the Government
| just sent you a pre-filled out form they could mess up
| many of them & you would possibly overpay if you didn't
| do your due diligence. This tends to get support from
| those who like to argue in favor of ideas such as
| "smaller govt" & "govt is inefficient compared to
| businesses where the capitalism market will pick the
| winners". Obviously both of these ideas are highly
| controversial.
| DudeInBasement wrote:
| What will happen first, Open source Tax software, Or Open source
| voting software
| phuff wrote:
| The US government provides this online for free. Only the edgiest
| of edge cases aren't supported. You can e-file your federal
| return with this regardless of how much money you make. You still
| have to do the calculations yourself. But you don't have to use
| paper.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| Right. But doing the calculation is pretty hard for most
| people. Add that to the risk associated to making mistakes and
| most people will probably prefer paying a bit and have a
| """guarantee""" that there are no mistakes. (I don't disagree
| he. Just pointing it out.)
| jjeaff wrote:
| Yes, and it's not just calculations. It's things like, "if
| section F line 27 is greater than the total in section B line
| 12, subtract the amount in section z line 127 from this total
| and multiply the result by the appropriate tax rate (see long
| form instructions for form 478B and fill out Worksheet 12C to
| calculate your appropriate tax rate).
|
| This is not a verbatim quote, but solar to what you have to
| do now to calculate health care insurance subsidies.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I build a spread sheet for all the forms and worksheets
| that require calculations. FreeFillableForms does some of
| the calculations for you, and does not have any worksheets.
| Excel has formulas for everything I have encountered paying
| taxes, and I have a joint account with stock options and
| several rental property LLCs.
|
| As a bonus, the spreadsheets are generally reusable, after
| checking to make sure there are no changes.
| gorbachev wrote:
| FreeFillableForms is great and has saved me a ton of
| time, but it does not do the calculations automatically
| for every field. You still have to manually lookup
| certain things from tables. It's freakin' frustrating,
| because there's no reason why it couldn't automate those
| as well.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Even more frustrating because it doesn't tell you that
| you haven't done the calculation or worse, you haven't
| transferred a field from one form to another.
|
| I failed to copy my self-employment tax back to my 1040
| for 2020, despite having calculated it correctly. No
| warnings, the form filing went smoothly, and 4 months
| later I got a notice from the IRS.
|
| It's insanity.
| ivalm wrote:
| Except it's very useful to be able to import the many many
| forms for the various sources of income automatically. If
| you're just a w2 and a 1099-int then yes, obviously it's not
| hard to file taxes manually.
| junar wrote:
| Those features are really only viable at the scale of large
| commercial tax software, not the efforts described in the
| submitted post.
|
| PDFs aren't exactly used in a standardized way, so trying to
| make this work for even a fraction of the numerous tax form
| issuers requires a lot of work, and a lot of ongoing
| maintenance. You'll need to prioritize the actual tax forms,
| and annual updates to those first.
| ivalm wrote:
| Sure, but this just means open source tax software isn't
| viable. TurboTax integrates with most financial services
| Americans use, to compete with them this functionality has
| to be matched somehow.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I used TurboTax online last year and was pretty happy with
| it's ability to import 1099 data from several companies I
| use like vanguard and Ameritrade. So the PDFs aren't
| standardized but many providers have apis to pull the data.
| In fact, they may be using something like Plaid that
| consolidates all the APIs into one.
| junar wrote:
| Well, TurboTax happens to be the most widely used large
| commercial tax software, and the brokers you mentioned
| are also quite large and popular. Whatever integration
| has been done is almost certainly proprietary and not
| freely reusable.
|
| Hypothetically, even if an API existed, building the
| integration in your own app also costs FTE hours that are
| likely drawn away to higher priority tasks.
| sova wrote:
| It's 2021 and you see no problem with this?
| snackematician wrote:
| I use Free File Fillable Forms together with excel1040.com.
| First I fill in the numbers in Excel, then into Free File
| Fillable Forms, and check that they get the same answers. It
| works well for me.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| All of the IRS forms are in pdf format. The form fields are
| programmable in Adobe Acrobat. One could code in all the
| necessary computations into the form fields and combine all the
| forms into a booklet.
| zoobab wrote:
| Every country has its own tax laws, impossible to implement and
| to use. Plus politicians keep changing the tax laws all the time.
| mbil wrote:
| Here's the GitHub repo of one of the projects mentioned in the
| article: https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes
| leosarev wrote:
| Meanwhile, at site of russian federal tax service:
|
| - https://imgur.com/a/NUZZlJM (file for tax returns)
|
| - https://imgur.com/a/gUGf9wU (all income, automatically known by
| tax authority by electronic data exchange with my employer and
| broker)
|
| - https://imgur.com/a/Nvh5RI8 (all my estates taxes,
| automatically calculated and sent as invoice to my bank)
| alkonaut wrote:
| The effort should be focused on forcing states to standardize
| their tax code and states/IRS to provide a simple filing service.
| If the answer to what's blocking it is "some corporations
| wouldn't like it" then it can't be that big a problem
| tldrthelaw wrote:
| Tax attorney here, these are great resources and should be
| encouraged. A lot of folks (looking at you, Intuit) spend a lot
| of money to make a lot more keeping a lock on the market.
|
| These kinds of initiatives don't get everyone all the way there
| (see: other comments about edge cases) but they can go a long way
| towards educating folks about what filing looks like -- and at
| least some of them will give it a go themselves.
|
| tldr: good post
| davidjytang wrote:
| Taiwan govt prepopulates tax forms for you. Just go to their
| website via smartphone or computer, you just click next next next
| and fill in credit card info if you need to pay more tax or bank
| account number for tax return.
|
| It takes me like 5 minutes to file tax every year.
| wyclif wrote:
| excel1040.com appears to be down.
| trezemanero wrote:
| >Filing taxes in America sucks
|
| Come to Brazil and the Receita Federal will suck you dry
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