[HN Gopher] California tried to save the nation from tax filing,...
___________________________________________________________________
California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit
stepped in
Author : dv_dt
Score : 470 points
Date : 2021-10-21 13:41 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| brainwipe wrote:
| Anyone got a tldr for a Brit staring at a paywall?
| Macha wrote:
| Reader mode works, in Firefox at least.
|
| It's nothing new for a frequent reader of HN. California ran a
| trial of automatic tax filings in 2005, Intuit persuaded the
| IRS to adopt no such system, the government mandated a free
| file system run by the commercial providers for eligible
| people, the providers used dark patterns to direct free file
| eligible users to paid options. Current democrats and former
| california republicans are quoted as being for actual automatic
| filing, some anecodotes from people who had been pushed by the
| software companies to paid options.
| Closi wrote:
| Basically, as a fellow Brit you will know that for most people
| your tax just happens automatically (typically through the PAYE
| system, so tax is taken before you get your paycheck, and we
| never have to even think about it).
|
| Then in the UK if you have more complex tax affairs, then you
| have to fill in a self assessment on the government portal
| (where it already knows most of your tax information, and you
| are pretty much just making disclosures).
|
| And it's VERY rare that people have to hire an accountant (only
| for people who own businesses, or individuals with the moxt
| complex tax affairs).
|
| Well in the USA they don't have any of that, and everyone has
| to file their own taxes. The USA has the capability to do
| automated tax like in the UK, however the companies who sell
| the tax software petitioned the government to make sure that
| they didn't implement it so they can continue to get $$$ out of
| everyone else.
| mrep wrote:
| Oh the USA does do automated taxes, they just don't tell you
| what number they came up with until after you file.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Do private tax prep companies have an argument they advance
| about why automatic filing is a bad idea? Or is it just pure
| behind scenes lobbying?
| Macha wrote:
| My understanding is the two pro arguments for manual filing
| are:
|
| If taxpayers aren't forced to confront the details of their
| tax payments every time they do a filing, they're less
| likely to complain about high taxes (this comes with the
| implication that high taxes are inherently bad, which
| depends on your political leaning)
|
| Taxpayers may just accept the automatic deduction without
| realising they're being overcharged in the event of an
| error, for years at a time.
|
| How much they actually care about such arguments vs the
| threat to their business model is subjective, but it seems
| the majority on this site (and myself) don't buy it.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Is there a privacy/surveillance aspect to the argument?
| Or is the data that the IRS will collect the same either
| way?
| Macha wrote:
| They already have the data. Even if they didn't already
| have it, it's the same data they would mandate you to
| send them in the tax filing
| mcherm wrote:
| The argument that they advance is that if we allowed
| government supported automatic filing, then people would no
| longer be able to take advantage of the free filing program
| that Intuit offers to low income households.
|
| What they don't mention is that this free filing offer is
| used by significantly less than 5% of the eligible
| taxpayers. Probably because Intuit advertises it very
| little and within the product very heavily hints that you
| should switch to a paid product instead.
| mike503 wrote:
| Just FYI, in the US there are actually not just accountants
| but tax professionals.
|
| Accountants will tell you "I'm not a tax guy" and tax guys
| will tell you "I'm not an accountant"
|
| Taxes are so convoluted and constantly changing that a
| separate class of number crunchers are maintained for it.
|
| (I'm sure someone could wear both hats, but in my experience
| they don't or can't. Too many requirements for maintaining
| both?)
| junon wrote:
| Intuit is such an evil company. Now that I've moved to Germany, I
| know what it feels like not to have to file every year (I still
| have to for the US but it's trivial now due to FIEC).
|
| There's nobody hounding you here, no stress regarding your taxes
| unless you're filing for a return or have extenuating
| circumstances, and even then there's a government-provided online
| portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt (finance
| department).
|
| Every American should be upset with Intuit.
| brighton36 wrote:
| I don't blame intuit at all. I blame citizens for losing their
| representation in government.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > but it's trivial now due to FIEC
|
| What do you mean?
| junon wrote:
| Foreign Income Earned Credit. Basically since the US is one
| of two countries in the world to still collect taxes from
| people living abroad, you have to file taxes every year still
| but it usually amounts to a net of $0.00 as it's written off
| under double-tax agreements with Germany.
| junar wrote:
| You are conflating two different tax benefits.
|
| The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion essentially sets your
| tax rate to 0% for the first $108k of earned income. It has
| no effect on earned income in excess of this threshold, or
| on unearned income such as investment income.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/fore...
|
| The Foreign Tax Credit subtracts your foreign tax liability
| from your US tax liability. In other words, you only pay US
| taxes to the extent they exceed the foreign tax rate. You
| can use it on any type of income, but you only get a
| benefit if the foreign country actually taxes the income.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/fore...
|
| You may not double dip: So if you choose to take FEIE for
| some part of your income, you cannot take FTC on the same
| part of your income. However, you can take FTC to the
| extent you have income not eligible for FEIE.
| marvel_boy wrote:
| Which is the second country?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Eritrea but somewhere I heard Liberia does too.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Being German it feels weird reading someone praise our tax
| system. The problem here is that you almost always pay too much
| tax and will be reimbursed when filing a return while at the
| same time the German Finanzamt already has the required
| information to do that on its own. But it won't. End of story
| is that tax returns are exclusive to people educated enough to
| take of it. And even if you take care of it in an informed way
| doesn't mean you will be reimbursed fully. For that you'd need
| to hire a tax attorney in many non-trivial cases.
| missinfo wrote:
| "They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a
| decade..."
|
| "The tax preparation industry guided Washington down a
| different path."
|
| Be even more upset with the IRS and politicians. They are
| literally responsible for this. They make the laws. Don't let
| them shift blame. They should have told Intuit to pound sand.
| This is like a kid that gets caught doing something bad and
| blames their friends. They told me to do it! It's their fault.
|
| Here would be the honest translation: I took their money and
| went against the best interests of my voters, and now I'm going
| to shift all blame while accepting no responsibility for my
| actions. Furthermore, I'm going to reframe this as though I was
| the good guy trying to save you.
| terr-dav wrote:
| Why be mad at either party? They are both making rational
| choices given their circumstances.
|
| I don't expect politicians to act on principles more than
| anyone else. They are just trying to keep their jobs, and
| they functionally depend corporate financing to do this, so
| they will naturally go to bat for the same people.
|
| Intuit is a profit-making machine with side-effects that
| include creating a tax-filing product. The people running it
| are acting rationally to keep their jobs too.
|
| This situation is a predictable outcome given the way the
| system works, and is one example of the failings and
| inefficiencies of the system to serve the common good.
| burkaman wrote:
| If I found out my kid's friend gave them $1000 to jump off a
| bridge, I think I'd be equally mad at both of them.
| missinfo wrote:
| Sure, but in this case these are adults and they know
| exactly what they are doing. Intuit didn't force them by
| gunpoint. The politicians have agency here and are
| ultimately responsible. They chose to put their donors over
| their voters. And now they are trying to frame this as
| though they are hapless victims who tried to save the
| nation? No.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yeah I think we're agreeing, they're both to blame. I
| guess the reason it might feel like people are blaming
| Intuit more is that they literally shouldn't exist, they
| owe everything to this bullshit arrangement, so it's
| easier to make blanket statements. I don't want the IRS
| to disappear, I just want it to make better decisions
| about this particular issue. But I do want Intuit to
| disappear because it's a completely worthless parasite.
|
| That doesn't mean the people running Intuit are worse
| than the politicians making decisions about the IRS, it's
| just easier to make a singular judgement about their
| organization.
| nonfamous wrote:
| This reads like a talking point, not a good-faith comment.
| progx wrote:
| But only fur employees! As an independent or small company
| owner you have todo it every year.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > But only fur employees
|
| You mean, most of the people then?
|
| > As an independent or small company owner you have todo it
| every year.
|
| Well, obviously
| junon wrote:
| Right, most people are employees though. Germany has another
| problem though - getting a Steuerberater (tax advisor) to
| help you with the paperwork as a business owner is next to
| impossible.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > getting a Steuerberater (tax advisor) to help you with
| the paperwork as a business owner is next to impossible.
|
| Is it really? Are you talking about an advisor for
| employees or for self-employed people/companies?
|
| I was searching for a tax advisor two years ago and it took
| me exactly one attempt to get one. My parents got an
| appointment within a month as well. Also, unless there are
| very specific circumstances there is little to no reason
| for an employee to get an advisor. Most of my friends just
| use the ELSTER form provided by the Finanzamt or use tax
| software the purchased which makes it slightly less
| painful.
|
| But I have no clue about how hard it is for companies
| Hamuko wrote:
| According to the World Bank, the self-employed in Germany
| account for 9.6% of the total employment. So nine out of ten
| Germans can still avoid filing taxes, which is pretty good.
|
| Interestingly enough, the self-employed actually make up a
| smaller percentage of total employment in the US at 6.1%. So
| if the US were to adopt a similar system, it'd be closer to
| 15 out of 16 Americans.
| distances wrote:
| You only don't have to file if you have a regular job and
| no other income. Add capital gains, rental income, I think
| even state parental leave support, and you need to file.
| masa331 wrote:
| And it makes sense because government might not have all the
| data even for basic tax filling. On the other hand employees
| data are already available from various other systems where
| you have to register them and report and pay social security,
| taxes, healthcare etc.. I co-own an accounting company in
| Czech Republic.
| tanto wrote:
| In most cases your tax consultant does that for you and what
| they charge is regulated.
| yisonPylkita wrote:
| I recommend hiring an accountant. For as low as 50EUR/month I
| don't have to worry about filling taxes (I'm programmer on a
| contract)
| [deleted]
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" there's a government-provided online portal for direct
| communication with the Finanzamt (finance department)."_
|
| A government provided portal?! Surely this is a case of
| government over-reach: directly competing with hard working
| private-sector businesses (tax accountants, tax software
| makers), destroying jobs and stifling innovation? It would
| never be allowed in freedom-loving America!
|
| /s
| notanormalnerd wrote:
| Funnily enough it isn't.
|
| Because you can go out and buy one of the programs that are
| on the market. There is a public interface/api that can be
| used by the companies to file your taxes. We even have
| startups doing your taxes with a questionaire on your phone.
|
| But the government provides you with a free, basic version,
| the same they did with the standard forms. There is little
| help, a bit of explanation but nothing more.
|
| And since you have to hand it in digitally now, they are also
| providing the means to do so. Paper, but digital.
| [deleted]
| tromp wrote:
| Why assign all the blame to Intuit?
|
| > They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a
| decade to pledge in writing not to adopt California's
| innovation or develop any other offerings that threatened their
| business model.
|
| I think the IRS deserves much of the blame for yielding to
| Intuit's persuasion.
|
| Every American should be upset with both Intuit and the IRS.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| This isn't the fault of the IRS. The IRS can only do what
| Congress allows them to do. It's the fault of Congress. In
| fact the 2 key Congresswomen responsible are Zoe Lofgren and
| Anna Eshoo. I currently live in Eshoo's district but I can
| tell you she is completely unresponsive to you if you don't
| live in Atherton or Palo Alto. I have never seen her campaign
| once. Her district is sprawling and includes 3 counties in
| the Bay Area and communities that have almost nothing in
| common. Her district includes Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo
| Alto, MountainView as well as South San Jose and Scott's
| Valley. The district is designed to ensure she never has to
| face a re-election challenge. It's almost impossible to enact
| change with the way this system is arranged.
| tromp wrote:
| How can only 2 congress people be responsible? Surely all
| the other members would have had a say as well in
| legislating IRS policy?
| celeduc wrote:
| How? Fundraising power! Horse trading! Lobbying! The
| entire system of government being corrupted by corporate
| money from top to bottom.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| What your saying implies that the entire congress is
| responsible as everyone is accepting deals to look the
| other way... maybe you need to reevaluate what your
| writing?
| bradlys wrote:
| > What your saying implies that the entire congress is
| responsible as everyone is accepting deals to look the
| other way... maybe you need to reevaluate what your
| writing?
|
| Is that really so hard to imagine?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Eshoo should be voted out.
| https://eshoo.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-eshoo-
| intro...
|
| Unfortunately, editorials favor incumbents too much to
| allow an attack from the left to succeed.
| https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/03/01/why-we-endorse-
| incu... and
| https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/10/28/editorial-eshoo/
| ulfw wrote:
| Geez. She is still there? I remember writing her 16 years
| ago when I was at Stanford and had an issue. Of course
| neither she (nor her office) ever bothered to respond. Wow.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| On the federal level almost every bad thing that happens and
| good thing that doesn't happen is the fault of the senate.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Which necessarily means that every good thing that happens
| and every bad thing that doesn't happen is also the fault
| of the senate.
|
| I don't agree, I'm just logically expanding your statement.
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| There is a strong contingent in Congress that believes that
| it is only moral for it to be annoying and expensive to pay
| taxes, as they believe that taxes should be opposed by the
| masses. If taxes are too easy then people won't think about
| them, and will simply enjoy the services the government
| provides with them, which is tyranny.
|
| This is also why the US keeps sales tax separate instead of
| rolling it into the price of the item like Europe.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-t.
| ..
| wahern wrote:
| Not all states preclude including sales tax in advertised
| prices. According to this website,
| https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-
| sale..., and by a quick count, at least 20 states permit
| combined pricing without any more limitation than a posted
| sign. That count excludes states which only permit it for a
| limited set of products and services, or which require
| sales tax to be itemized on the receipt.
|
| Perhaps you're confusing VAT vs sales tax, which is an
| entirely different issue, and while some politicians might
| prefer a sales tax on the presumption of its
| conspicuousness, the real debate regarding adopting VAT is
| far more complex. VAT does seem to be the darling of many
| economists, but those economists also tend to overlook the
| fact that Europe has significantly larger grey and black
| markets, as well as more tax evasion, than the U.S.; and
| some of that difference is arguably a consequence of the
| mechanics of VAT and the general preference for hiding the
| taxation system from individuals.
|
| It's also worth noting that there are good reasons for
| itemizing sales tax separately. For example, for
| individuals state sales tax can be deducted from federal
| income, but not the cost of the item itself.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > This is also why the US keeps sales tax separate instead
| of rolling it into the price of the item like Europe.
|
| Even in a relatively federalized (by European standards)
| country like Switzerland, the VAT is set nationally. This
| isn't the case in the US, and several states even have
| different sales tax rates in each city. It would be a
| considerable logistical mess to coordinate integrated sales
| tax signposting, both from a business and consumer
| perspective. Amazon already handles this somewhat awkwardly
| by changing store prices if you set your location on
| Amazon.de to Switzerland, with the prices somewhat
| unpredictably changing if it decided to remember your
| location preferences, and no longer following common
| numbering conventions (e.g. x.99).
| slg wrote:
| Intuit is lobbying in defense of their entire industry.
| Almost every company of their size would do the same thing in
| their situation. The people who deserve the blame here are
| the people who are susceptible to those lobbying efforts.
|
| Blame Congress.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I blame the rules that let this happen. In general, people
| are gonna people.
| slg wrote:
| Not coincidentally the people who make the rules are the
| people who I said to blame.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| This is entirely too cynical and pessimistic. In
| particular others have pointed out that other countries
| do not do this, and it's not like they aren't people.
| iammisc wrote:
| I'm just upset with the IRS. The IRS officers hold a position
| of public trust. Intuit does not.
| eropple wrote:
| There is a school of thought, and I tend to agree with it,
| that "a position of public trust" is exactly and
| specifically what is granted to a corporation by granting
| it its special, fictive-person, liability-shielding status.
| The veneration of "corporations as psychopaths" is more of
| a deification of the current state, not an aspirational
| one. It doesn't have to be that way, and so we _absolutely_
| can fault Intuit for acting against that public trust.
| Intuit has responsibilities to the society that grants it
| its charter, and that includes not peeing in the public
| pool.
|
| (That school of thought, yeah, puts most companies in a
| real bad light. And? Well? Yes. They have earned it.)
| iammisc wrote:
| > granted to a corporation by granting it its special,
| fictive-person, liability-shielding status.
|
| There is no such thing. This is such a silly argument
| made by people who have no understanding of corporate
| liability laws.
|
| Incorporating doesn't suddenly shield you from liability.
| If you were negligent or intended harm, you will be held
| personally liable. If you're a shareholder and knew what
| was going on, you will also be held liable. The issue is
| not incorporation, it's a government too timid to enforce
| the law.
| Maarten88 wrote:
| Isn't the IRS just executing the policies that elected
| politicians decide? It seems the IRS wanted to do the right
| thing 20 years ago, but they were stopped by politicians
| who were corrupted by lobbyists.
|
| Maybe US people should elect politicians that represent
| them instead of business. And stop buying the incredible
| amounts of double-speak that is always present in
| discussions like these.
| iammisc wrote:
| Yes. I should restate... I'm not mad at low-level IRS
| employees. Rather the ones nominated and approved by
| Congress, who ultimately make these decisions.
| garmaine wrote:
| It is Converse that makes these decisions, no? The IRS
| just does what it is told.
| iammisc wrote:
| yes, in some regards, no in others.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Yes, in any regard that matters. The IRS cannot just
| decide to start doing this. They have to follow the law.
| equality_1138 wrote:
| I'm not mad at congress, I'm mad at the fools who keep
| voting for them.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I expect Intuit, and every other company where
| responsibility is sufficiently large that nobody feels
| personally responsible for the company's actions, to do
| heinous things to make a buck if the option presents
| itself.
|
| Whereas the IRS, and every other government agency, is
| supposedly trying to help society or at least not hurt it.
| Retric wrote:
| The IRS doesn't get to make these rules, that's up to
| congress and then the president.
| locallost wrote:
| Living in Germany it's difficult to understand somebody saying
| nice things about their tax system :-). It almost caused a
| divorce for me, several times. But ok, if you don't file then
| it's understandable. But you should as you are almost always
| getting money back. For around 200 you can find somebody to do
| it for you and it will still be worth it.
| gigatexal wrote:
| HEY! Fellow US ex-pat here in Germany. I do use germantaxes.de
| which offers a hand-holding experience and all in English but
| the fact that there's a simple government provided solution is
| how it should be.
|
| All this hate towards FB and others but we really should be
| reigning in the likes of Intuit because filing taxes should not
| cost anything for simple W-2's.
|
| I recall reading that in Japan if you have just wage income
| it's more or less automatic. Imagine that!
| junon wrote:
| Thanks for the rec. I've tried so many apps and they all tell
| me "we can't service US expats". I'll give this one a try.
| elthran wrote:
| Not just Japan, also true for the UK with our Pay As You Earn
| system - you get assigned a tax code, and the appropriate
| amount is automatically deducted from your payslip. No need
| to file anything, and refunds/demands get generated
| automatically each year if you've been changing jobs/not
| working/other odd circumstances meaning that the amount you
| paid doesn't match what you were expected to
| philjohn wrote:
| And if you DO need to file a tax return (e.g. earning over
| 100k, certain types of income) you can (in most cases) do
| it for free on the HMRC website with a guided system.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > the appropriate amount is automatically deducted from
| your payslip
|
| Lol I wish they deducted the appropriate amount.
|
| > No need to file anything
|
| Not true - many still need to file a self assessment, just
| like in the US.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| If your income does not change then it's the appropriate
| amount. If your income increases or decreases you may end
| up paying too much or too little. Then there's
| deductibles. It's quite nice getting a cheque at the end
| of the tax year for a few thousand.
|
| Singapore we pay tax for the previous year on a month to
| month basis. It's good but I imagine if you end up with
| less pay than the previous year it could be a strain on
| life.
| gigatexal wrote:
| wow now that's a killer feature that might be just enough
| to get me to move there than somewhere else. More
| governments should be looking into replicating this.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _Not just Japan, also true for the UK with our Pay As You
| Earn system_
|
| It's true for most of the world. It's a bit like metric vs.
| imperial - the US is the odd one out.
| throwaway898989 wrote:
| The "Pay-As-You-Earn" system was introduced in Australia
| and the UK during WW2 lol. The US has the same system its
| just been implemented extremely poorly
| JackFr wrote:
| It's not that it's implemented poorly. It's that 1) the
| federal government collects multiple kinds of taxes out
| out of your paycheck. Social security, medicare and
| regular income tax are different. Income tax rates are
| progressive while the payroll taxes are flat but capped
| at a certain amount. 2) Additionally forty-two states
| have income taxes as do dozens of local municipalities.
| Consider that they also don't treat residents and non
| residents alike.
|
| Consider a couple who live in New York City, where one
| partner works in Connecticut and the other works in New
| Jersey. There are potentially 6 different entities
| collecting income tax there.
|
| That being said - fully agree - tax filing software
| should be free for everyone.
| ghaff wrote:
| Furthermore, a number of states are starting to require
| tax returns to be filed even for short durations of
| working in the state for business purposes.
| atarian wrote:
| https://archive.md/v2lhW
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Going to paraphrase a quote from a podcast that stuck with me.
|
| > What (the left) needs to do is clear out rents. Not just
| housing rents, but rent seekers. The economy is riddled through
| with people who do nothing, but get paid because structurally
| that's who gets paid.
|
| Intuit is one of those companies. They produce a few real
| products, QuickBooks for businesses and Mint, but overwhelmingly
| their money comes from the fact that they charge rent on filling
| your taxes. They're a parasite on our society.
|
| Fortunately the podcaster wasn't talking about the US; their
| country was worse off than America in this area by far. But
| unfortunately it seems like we're on the same glide slope if we
| don't do something about it.
| Clubber wrote:
| >What (the left) needs to do is clear out rents.
|
| Unfortunately in the US the rent seekers have an easy hack to
| make sure that never happens: lobbying.
|
| The system will never change unless we vote out the current
| politicians, and then _maybe_ it will change. We might have to
| clear out most, ideally all of the applicable congress every
| election cycle for a few years before we see any results. As
| long as we keep voting in the same people, nothing will change
| and it will most likely only get worse. The current political
| power structure is great at telling us what we want to hear,
| then conducting business as usual.
|
| The only political power the citizenry has is our vote,
| everything else can be ignored. Emails go unanswered, polls go
| unnoticed, protests get suppressed.
|
| Occupy Wall Street was 10 years ago. Thing are worse today than
| they were back then.
| landemva wrote:
| The federal system in regards to lobbying would change if we
| followed the constitution as written to allow House of
| Representatives to grow with census population count. And
| restore the not direct election of Senators. Then remove
| federal personal income tax. For icing on the cake, shut down
| the 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve'.
|
| This would require a nationwide general strike to show the
| people are serious. Most people are not serious about
| anything beyond TV, social media, and more personal debt.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Definitely expand the house, but we should abolish the
| Senate. It serves no purpose except tyranny of the minority
| and gridlock.
| Clubber wrote:
| The senate is supposed to represent the state governments
| at the federal level, but they stopped doing that with
| direct elections. It was to prevent large states with a
| concentration of population (currently like CA, NY, TX,
| FL) to have too much power over smaller states.
|
| Here's some background on the arguments for and against.
| It's got some partisan hyperbole so try to ignore all
| that.
|
| https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/the-17th-
| amendment-un...
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| ok, but the media would stop any general strike using
| identity politics and or Dem vs GOP polarization already
| existing...divide et impera...divide and conquer...we are
| already quite divided...and therefore quite conquered...
|
| as long as the media & its corporate advertisers can keep
| congress and the white house more or less evenly balanced
| between GOP and Dem over the long term, the people will
| never catch on that congress is bought and paid for...and
| 'throwing the bums out' has not worked yet...so it will not
| likely work in the future...
|
| i don't see how any action by the people is going to effect
| any positive long term change...all we can do is wait for a
| collapse of the US dollar...as long as the dollar holds its
| value, the elites can still control everything and keep
| squeezing us dry...
|
| it's gonna get worse before it gets better...maybe a lot
| worse..
| landemva wrote:
| USA probably has the least worst currency today, due to
| gold being centralized in USA during WW2, along with
| current military spending. Euro will tank before USD.
|
| If China plays it right, they can be the financial leader
| within ten years. 2031.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| >The federal system in regards to lobbying would change if
| we followed the constitution as written to allow House of
| Representatives to grow with census population count.
|
| Sounds good.
|
| >And restore the not direct election of Senators. Then
| remove federal personal income tax. For icing on the cake,
| shut down the 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve'.
|
| I'm curious to know how any of these policies would be
| beneficial.
| charwalker wrote:
| Yeah, that's an odd set of policies to support.
| landemva wrote:
| Those 'odd policies' freed this country from the British.
| People signed their name on the declaration of
| independence and risked their lives. They succeeded and
| created a constitution. You may want to skim it sometime.
|
| Really started going downhill in 1913 with creation of
| third central bank of the U.S. and addition of personal
| income tax.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| > Those 'odd policies' freed this country from the
| British.
|
| That's really not true. Never mind the involvement of the
| French, the current constitution is the result of the
| miserable failure of the articles of confederation, which
| was arguably closer sentiments that drove the revolution.
| Whether or not the constitution as it exists today
| reflects the principles that kicked off the revolution
| was _hotly_ debated by the men that actually fought that
| revolution.
|
| Regardless of the historical claim, I'm fairly skeptical
| of the idea that what the founding fathers wanted is
| inherently the best. Yes, it was better than the British
| monarchy, but that's a low bar. I'd hope that we can
| achieve something as a society that's better than what a
| bunch of slave holders thought was a neat idea.
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| I'm not the GP, but I mostly agree. The principles that I
| suspect we both share are that concentration of power
| will always result in harms, and the only way to get
| ourselves out of the mud is diffusion of power.
|
| 1. Up until 1913 the Senators were elected by the
| Representatives. In 1910 the law changed for
| Representatives to be per 30,000 population, to be static
| count of Reps. There is now is now 750,000 people per
| Representative. Because a Representative can not possibly
| talk to all 750,000, they can not represent them. The
| supply of their time is limited and that pushes up the
| supply/demand curve. They lobby for donors and only talk
| to the richest of the set.
|
| If there were 131 Representatives in CA and only they
| could vote in Senators, the Senators would be beholden to
| them, and would be required to act on the average behalf.
| As the distribution is currently to large, this does not
| happen, and the poorer of the population are ignored and
| harmed.
|
| 2. The only tax that is non-distortionary is a Land Value
| Tax. All other taxes create distortions and should be
| eliminted. A Land Value Tax, if implemented, would be
| sufficient to handle all government spending. The only
| other tax that should be able to be implemented are
| Pigovian taxes on negative externalities.
|
| 3. The core mandate that the Federal Reserve handles is
| the management of the money supply. Austrian economic
| principles state that this is a waste of time, and you
| can do the same job, perfectly, and with less economic
| cycles and harm caused, by simply mandating a static
| monetary velocity.
|
| So you can see in both the Taxes and the Federal Reserve
| example you can work out the exact algorithmic rule that
| should always be applied, and remove the need for
| individuals within the government from mucking up the
| system with their corruptions.
| landemva wrote:
| Nice thoughts. A few comments:
|
| 1) federal Senators were usually appointed by State
| legislature and were regularly recalled by States and
| fired when they voted against the State's interests at
| the federal level.
|
| 2) a consumption tax, excluding uncooked food, might be
| reasonable. Higher tariffs and import duties can work,
| and tends to reduce offshoring for the purpose of
| polluting 'over there'.
|
| 3) surprisingly something better than gold and silver was
| invented in 2008 and appeared in 2009. Bitcoin fixes
| this.
| pydry wrote:
| The left doesnt really have any power in the US.
|
| What passes for the left (the socially liberal corporate elites
| that run most of the democratic party) are pretty much just as
| invested in protecting the rentiers as the right wing.
|
| Rentier money is structurally geared towards destroying any
| populist politicians who threaten their rents. It was a fluke
| that AOC won given her _Democratic_ opponent (when she was
| unknown) outspent her something like 7:1. People like her arent
| supposed to slip through the early stage political filter.
|
| If they do slip through there's also an enormously powerful and
| effective propaganda machine dedicated to character
| assassination.
| twofornone wrote:
| >The left doesnt really have any power in the US
|
| Without debating whether the left has political power (hard
| to question when the administration and majority of house and
| senate are left leaning), there's no question that "the left"
| dominates our media and most of our institutions, and
| controls (often explicitly as with big tech) the boundaries
| of allowable discourse.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| This is so important and I think a lot of people miss it. The
| "left" that has power in the US (establishment dems) barely
| qualify as being left at all. They are very much invested in
| protecting power and wealth.
|
| The only "left" that would push against the rentiers are
| people who will almost never see power. However, I wouldnt
| say AOC winning is a "fluke". Its definitely the exception,
| but progressives have been able to repeat it a few more times
| in democrat strongholds that have historically kept
| establishment candidates.
|
| Right now the only "power" the real left has is withholding
| their votes from corporate dem bills like we're seeing with
| the BBB Act. This only even works because the rest of the
| party is interested in protecting power/wealth and is pretty
| inept at actually winning races.
| jjcon wrote:
| > The "left" that has power in the US (establishment dems)
| barely qualify as being left at all
|
| So when the left does something you dont like, they must
| not be left? Smells of no true scottsman to me.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| It's almost like politics isn't as binary as left or
| right; at least when you get down to the fundamentals and
| not the media's portrayal of things.
| pydry wrote:
| What do you call it when party A and party B were
| strongly in favor of the Iraq war and the opposition (C)
| comes solely from protestors who have no political
| representation?
|
| A is "the left" to most people.
|
| B is the right.
|
| C is (apparently) a logical fallacy represented by 3
| congresspeople and a senator.
| aviancrane wrote:
| I think the "No True Scottsman" fallacy is confusing
| here. It's actually really sly.
|
| The "No True Scottsman" statement must be used as the
| argument. It has to say that they're wrong BECAUSE they
| are not a true Scottsman.
|
| What OP did was say there is The Left and there is "The
| Left". The Left is against rentiers. "The Left" supports
| rentiers. He's dividing the two, but he's not saying one
| is wrong because they're not true leftists, he's saying
| one is wrong because they support rentiers.
|
| But then he additionally says they're not true leftists,
| which is to say that a leftists shouldn't support them
| because they don't align, which is where the smell comes
| from.
|
| The main argument is not a Scottsman fallacy. But there's
| definitely some implied Scottsmanism in the additional
| use of Left and "Left", which if read by the right person
| who is already weak to Scottsmanism will materialize as
| the Scottsman fallacy.
|
| EDIT: I thought you were wrong, but under more analysis,
| I realized you were right, it was just complicated.
| [deleted]
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| > The "left" that has power in the US (establishment
| dems) barely qualify as being left at all
|
| You seem to interpret that statement as an opinion, but
| it is not a subjective statement. [1]
|
| The U.S. isn't the only democracy in the world, and if we
| compare the Democratic party with other political parties
| around the world, they are indeed barely left-of-center.
|
| [1] https://archive.md/PjNEF
| jjcon wrote:
| I'm not sure an opinion piece in the nyt qualifies as
| evidence but that same analysis classified tons of other
| liberal parties as right wing (uk, switzerland etc) which
| seems more like they have a definitions problem due to a
| complete lack of clear criteria.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| The Manifesto Project has its downsides, but it's still
| one of the best datasets we've got [1], and the other
| survey-based datasets like the Global Party Survey [2]
| yield similar results [3]. (Note: You brought up the UK's
| Labor party which appears much more left here, as social
| & economic values are broken out into separate axes).
|
| When viewed from a global perspective, the Republican
| party is firmly right-wing, but today's Democratic party
| is decidedly center-left on economic issues, and more
| closely reflects the values of the median American voter
| [4].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_Project_Datab
| ase#Aca...
|
| [2] https://www.globalpartysurvey.org/methods
|
| [3] https://i.imgur.com/rNeCdnH.png
|
| [4] https://i.imgur.com/WWYHSzx.png
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Liberalism is only left wing if it's being compared against
| actual monarchists. Nowadays it's soft right, since we've
| pretty much run out of monarchists (thank god).
| [deleted]
| e_commerce wrote:
| Intuit is one of the most evil companies on the planet.
| mbostleman wrote:
| I like finding approaches that don't necessarily "solve" a
| problem, but rather don't have the problem in the first place so
| that there's nothing to solve.
|
| In this case, I would suggest dropping income tax altogether,
| decommissioning the IRS, and using the state infrastructure
| already in place to collect an equal amount of revenue from sales
| tax.
|
| No filing. Broader tax base, including criminals and illegal
| activity. Everyone's checking account effectively becomes a 401k.
|
| Sales tax is regressive, yes. But proposals like the FairTax
| suggest the idea of an annual "prebate" or credit up front in the
| form of a check that effectively eliminates taxes on spending up
| to poverty level income.
| lbriner wrote:
| I guess the argument against this is that some super-rich don't
| spent on th emainland or not even at all, just bank a tonne of
| cash.
|
| In that case, the overall income from tax would be lower than
| it is now.
|
| I don't necessarily agree but the idea is normally that "rich"
| people should pay a higher percentage of their _income_ as tax
| because "they can afford it".
|
| I personally like the idea of a fixed rate from 0 to infinity
| like Russia iirc, which gives everyone skin in the game and
| avoids some of the tax avoidance that we see to avoid the
| thresholds.
| mbostleman wrote:
| >>In that case, the overall income from tax would be lower
| than it is now.>>
|
| No, because it's a requirement of the design that the revenue
| be the same. So to the tax rate goes up until the result is
| the same.
| Boltgolt wrote:
| This would have consequences for wealth inequality. Households
| with lower incomes spend much larger percentage of their money
| on goods with sales tax than more wealthy households. This plan
| would increase tax for low income families and majorly decrease
| it for families with where a lot ad money flows into
| investments or savings.
| mbostleman wrote:
| >>Households with lower incomes spend much larger percentage
| of their money on goods with sales tax than more wealthy
| households>>
|
| Right, I addressed this.
|
| However, for the wealthy household, exactly what is the
| utility of all the money they have if they can't spend it?
| The minute any money is spent, the not-taxed argument comes
| apart because it is now taxed. How can you be wealthy if you
| do not have access to money?
| pharmakom wrote:
| Don't forget TurboTax... or is that also Intuit now?
| djrogers wrote:
| It's all good to blame the private companies like Intuit here,
| but what really needs to happen is that the politicians and
| bureaucrats who took their money need to be outed.
|
| A market will always have rent seekers, and people will always
| look for shortcuts. It's the job of our elected officials to
| ensure that doesn't happen.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| This is why I always pirate TurboTax and deleted my Mint years
| ago.
|
| Fuck intuit.
|
| Oh and before someone asks me why I feel comfortable doing that
| security wise...I do it on an airgapped machine and print the
| return out and mail it in. Ezpz
| coldpie wrote:
| I just do it by hand on paper. For folks with just some W-2s
| and maybe some light investing stuff (no, this isn't everyone,
| but it is a lot of people), it only takes an hour or two to do
| by hand and the instructions are actually pretty decent.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| Imagine the productivity boost if an automated system handled
| the W2 + light investing case for "a lot of people"
| sseagull wrote:
| Also why I was disappointed when Intuit bought Credit Karma.
|
| I will never use Turbo Tax, just out of principle. I cannot
| support a company like that.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Credit Karma was really disappointing for me... their tax
| service is quite good for simple filing.
| burkaman wrote:
| FYI the DOJ wouldn't let Intuit buy the tax preparation part
| of Credit Karma, so that service is owned by Square now.
| sseagull wrote:
| I didn't know that. Sounds reasonable.
|
| I had never used Credit Karma's tax service anyway, but
| good to know.
| divbzero wrote:
| I try to avoid QuickBooks and will avoid Mailchimp for the
| same reason.
| crawsome wrote:
| This just reminded me to go back and delete my Mint account.
|
| The process wouldn't complete in Firefox, I had to use Edge.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| For those who can't read it: https://archive.md/v2lhW
| pwned1 wrote:
| I for one am fine with taxes being a pain in the ass. That forces
| people to see what they're paying. If you think they're a pain in
| the ass, advocate for simpler taxes.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Except that I suspect the average taxpayer _doesn 't_ see what
| they're paying but instead sees the size of the refund check
| they get at the end of the process, which has relatively little
| correlation to the amount they paid.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If you think they're a pain in the ass, advocate for simpler
| taxes.
|
| Intuit would lobby against that too.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Not if simplifying taxes was as easy as paying Intuit the
| $89/yr toll to not deal with taxes.
|
| Intuit just wants money, they really don't care about taxes
| or complexity of the tax system. The only reason they care
| about complex tax code is that they can make money from it.
| These large businesses of today don't have visions or value
| creation goals, they have markets, competitors, and revenue
| streams. Everything else they do is tangential.
|
| If Intuit could continue to make their money or make more
| money by advocating for simpler taxes they would. We should
| pass the Intuit Tax Toll bill where everyone is required by
| law to just throw money at Intuit every year until they go
| away, except they'll only come back for more... because this
| is what Intuit and a mountain of existing businesses would
| foam at the mouth for, a world where they were just handed
| money.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Not if simplifying taxes was as easy as paying Intuit the
| $89/yr toll to not deal with taxes.
|
| That's not what "simplifying taxes" means. That's paying
| Intuit to deal with the complexity for you, which is the
| status quo. They need the complexity or there's nothing for
| you to pay them to do.
|
| Compare this with, say, replacing federal income tax with
| VAT+UBI. You get a progressive tax system (because of the
| UBI) with zero individuals having to file income tax
| returns. Actual simplification. You also solve the problem
| of people not realizing how much tax they're paying because
| they see the VAT on the receipt every time they buy
| something.
| [deleted]
| yyyyyyyy111 wrote:
| If IRS provides a portal to file taxes easily, who do you think
| will pay for the infrastructure, support and staff? Government?
| Absolutely but how does government get funds? From taxes. Bingo!
| Now the options are : 1. everyone in the country to start paying
| more Tax so IRS can build and support such system or 2. only
| folks who have higher income pay a private company to file taxes
| easily and low income folks file for free
|
| I'll take option 2, thank you!
| dpweb wrote:
| At the risk of being a non-popular opinion, I don't find tax
| filing to be particularly difficult. Maybe its because my job is
| to solve pretty hard problems all day. But the average
| person/family who doesn't itemize have a Sched C, it's quite
| easy.
|
| The thing to understand about filing is that (particularly for W2
| wage earners) you're not telling the Government how much you made
| and how much you owe. They know that already.
|
| If you make a mistake in your filing, good or bad, they will send
| you a friendly letter correcting your mistake. The filing is just
| acknowledging the debt to them.
| rtpg wrote:
| I had one non-"salary" event one year. I spent so long staring
| at the instructions during filing, failing to get any of the
| software to work for my case, and at the end of all of it I
| ended up overpaying a significant amount.
|
| I later (2 years) found out about some tax exemption I
| qualified for and applied for it. They sent me a refund after I
| filed an amended return. I miswrote my zip code. The check got
| sent and returned. No phone call to me or attempt to contact me
| to my knowledge.
|
| Only after 8 months of waiting did I reach out. Person was real
| nice and resolved it all real quickly (for which I'm grateful),
| but still a bit annoying that this was a thing.
|
| Meanwhile in many other countries you have 1 (one) form to fill
| out if you have to. None of the billions of tax exemptions you
| have to file for correctly (mainly cuz you don't have to give
| tax credits when your social programs are semi-universal) or
| other headaches.
|
| The filing is annoying and can be error prone. The underlying
| system is something right out of Brazil (the movie). The sort
| of bureaucracy that Americans like to imagine infect every
| socialist nation is totally present in the tax system of the US
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > The thing to understand about filing is that (particularly
| for W2 wage earners) you're not telling the Government how much
| you made and how much you owe. _They know that already._
|
| But they don't necessarily know how much you owe. Even many W2
| wage earners are eligible for various credits, including but
| not limited to out of pocket charitable donations, moving
| expenses, child and dependent care expenses, student loan
| interest and post-high-school courses you pay for that improve
| your work skills.
| _jal wrote:
| > I don't find tax filing to be particularly difficult.
|
| That's nice.
|
| You still might care that we collectively waste an enormous
| amount of time doing it, unnecessarily, for the benefit of
| Intuit (and some cranks who want people angry about taxes).
|
| If you still don't care, I'll be taking a few hours of your
| labor per year for my around the house work. It isn't
| particularly difficult work, no big deal, right?
| dpweb wrote:
| I won't argue that the whole system is stuck in the 20th
| century, but there is a little bit of "big companies and
| taxes are evil and I'm oppressed!" going on here.
|
| I understand not everyone has an easy time with it. But
| today, 70% of Americans can file for free. Some version of
| optional auto-filing I have no problem with.
|
| As far as a private company trying to protect it's revenue,
| there are far more egregious examples of that, out there
| right now.
| merrywhether wrote:
| Intuit is just really easy to understand as a cut-and-dry
| example of regulatory capture. They basically maintain the
| need for themselves entirely through laws that create the
| problem they solve.
| jcheng wrote:
| The Free File program may as well not exist. The fact that
| it was mostly delegated to companies whose success depends
| on its failure, means that its lack of adoption should
| surprise no one.
|
| 70% are eligible but only 2.4% use it:
| https://amp.freep.com/amp/4679338002
|
| Here's just one example of Intuit kneecapping its Free File
| offering: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-
| deliberately-hid...
| [deleted]
| Hamuko wrote:
| Cleaning isn't that difficult and yet I keep putting it off for
| as long as I can.
| yankoff wrote:
| The system is very complex and it's very easy to make a mistake
| once you start having more complications like selling property,
| dealing with stocks, handling additional income, etc.
|
| Correcting mistakes is expensive, you'd likely need tax
| attorneys to figure this all out and you will also pay penalty.
| webkike wrote:
| So? Because you find something easy, the rest of the country is
| supposed to be okay with a large company lobbying for less QoL
| for them?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Filing taxes isn't especially difficult. Knowing that filing
| taxes isn't especially difficult is not so easy.
|
| If you have absolutely no clue how it works, you're probably
| going to have to pay someone to do it for you.
| halgir wrote:
| There is considerable overlap between people who have no clue
| how taxes work and people who cannot afford to pay
| professionals to do it for them.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| And yet the taxes need to get done. So many times they do
| despite not being able to afford it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's not that difficult, but as you point out, the government
| already knows the info you have to give them.
|
| That's the crazy part.
| enumjorge wrote:
| > They know that already and calculate it in your account.
| You're acknowledging that debt to them.
|
| But that's part of the problem. What is the purpose of making
| people acknowledge that debt? Why not send a bill showing the
| calculation that the government already knows? Even if it's
| just a few hours, accumulate that for every person that pays
| taxes for every year of their adult life and now you're wasting
| millions of person hours just to let a couple of companies sell
| products/services that are not really needed.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > They know that already and calculate it.
|
| Why waste people's time with this stuff then?
| xeromal wrote:
| Real talk though, how are they going to know that you bought
| an energy efficient AC unit for your house that you can
| deduct off your taxes?
| smallerfish wrote:
| Tax code reform aimed at simplification would just get rid
| of that, and incentivize the behavior of your example via
| e.g. DoE grants to manufacturers to allow lower prices on
| more energy efficient units. The problem is that everybody
| has their own pet deductions (and a good number of them
| have armies of lobbyists backing them up), so a real
| attempt to clean the slate would require a degree of
| political cohesion that congress can only dream of.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| They don't, but the important thing is that the vast
| majority of people don't itemize, especially with the high
| standard deduction there is now. Required filing is just
| pointless for them.
|
| Of course the option to file will remain, no one is arguing
| against that.
| ry4nolson wrote:
| That's a case of ammending what the gov already figures out
| automatically.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You file a form or enter data into some fields in a web
| interface that updates their records?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The vast majority of people are better off with the
| standard deduction. For everyone else, they can file to
| their heart's content.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| They don't know that. The trick is to send you a draft
| proposal based on what they _do_ know, and allow you to
| amend it based on information that they do not. If you aren
| 't eligible for any deductions nor have any other taxable
| source of income of which the IRS was not aware, you just
| accept their proposal. That's how it works in most
| developed countries.
| xeromal wrote:
| It kind of works that way here. You get a W2 from your
| employer which has every bit of info you need. You put
| that into a form and submit to the government. The end.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. For people with super simple tax returns, e.g. a few
| W2/1099s/standard deductions/no cost basis issues/etc., I
| suppose it would be convenient to have taxes auto-filed but it
| really isn't a big deal and doesn't require software. Once you
| get into the complexities that make tax filing a big deal and
| may involve accountants or multiple evenings with tax software,
| auto-filing isn't going to work.
| barkerja wrote:
| You vastly underestimate the number of people that:
|
| 1. Don't even know they have to file taxes.
|
| 2. Don't even know where to begin.
| neural_thing wrote:
| Have you ever had an even minor non-standard issue? Foreign
| dividend paid in stock rather than cash for example.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Intuit is the worst kind of company, but anyone who has dealt
| with the tax authorities in California would probably tell you to
| take the state's stated intentions with a grain of salt, or 1000.
|
| The California FTB would love to tell you how much money it
| thinks you owe them, have you not question them, and make your
| life hell if you think they messed up.
|
| While it's fair to say that lower-income W2 taxpayers are
| probably easier to calculate for, don't assume that the
| California FTB would go out of its way to help taxpayers.
|
| Just a sample of the nastiness and incompetence that is the FTB:
| https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/11/21/franchise-tax-boa...
| Macha wrote:
| > The California FTB would love to tell you how much money it
| thinks you owe them, have you not question them, and make your
| life hell if you think they messed up.
|
| Isn't this already the case? They know how much they think you
| owe. The only difference now is if you will out the form
| differently and they disagree they can also accuse you of
| intentional defrauding them.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Yes it already does this, in error for many people. Example:
|
| https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/state-
| taxes/discussion/why...
|
| The FTB and Intuit exist on the same plane of hell.
| bogota wrote:
| I hate wasting at least a day if not more of my life every year
| filing. As time goes on and i have more assets the time to file
| goes up as well and gathering all the required documents with
| every bank having different timelines is a nightmare.
|
| But what can I do about it? I would imagine if it went to a vote
| overwhelmingly people would say no I don't want to file like this
| every year. But here we are and honestly I don't have much energy
| left these days to be mad about anything as it's wearing on my
| health.
| wincy wrote:
| You could be like me and not file it until the sheriff shows up
| at your door saying you owe money and that you have a month to
| pay. (Don't be like me)
| bee_rider wrote:
| If only there weren't large penalties involved in doing this.
|
| And hey, if we want progressive taxation -- "is it really
| worth it for them to send somebody down to bring me the bill"
| is a great filter that everybody's taxes should be passed
| through.
| landemva wrote:
| You can structure your personal life such that you don't
| qualify to file a personal IRS yearly signed inquisition
| document.
|
| Then be like Clintons and live your life spending through
| foundations, trusts, and companies via speaking payments.
|
| It does require upfront effort to set up everything. An
| unexpected benefit is the financial privacy it brings.
| rmah wrote:
| If you have to spend hours doing your taxes, no gov run filing
| system is gonna help you reduce that. All these "I don't have
| to do anything to pay my taxes" things are essentially for wage
| earners taking standard deductions, minimal interest, minimal
| dividends, no mortgage, etc. And if you were in that situation,
| filing your IRS taxes would take 10 minutes, if that.
| nightski wrote:
| If you have all these assets and your time is valuable I
| imagine you can cough up a few $ to pay a local tax accountant.
| I do this for my single member company, it costs $150 each
| year. Very worth it and a small price to pay. They even do a
| quick review of my books.
|
| At this point I am familiar enough with all the forms that I
| could probably do it myself in less than an hour. But I don't
| mind supporting the accountant, it's fun to chat with him each
| year.
| groos wrote:
| I've always done my own (US) taxes but have been mulling
| hiring an accountant this year. But "doing" the taxes is the
| easy part with software. It's collecting all the needed
| information that is painful. Will I just be paying an
| accountant to use their software? Or is there a real
| difference in using software like Intuit's and a real
| accountant for individual returns? (I have investments,
| retirement funds, etc.).
| vidanay wrote:
| The one and only time I used a "professional" tax preparer, I
| sat in their office and answered the questions they read off
| their "TurboTax for professionals" software. It was the same
| damn questions when I did it myself, except I was charged a
| fee, and I had to do it twice because I had to go home and
| retrieve some info I didn't have with the first time
| harikb wrote:
| My tax person charges several times that amount and I still
| have to scramble to get all the documents _to_ then.
| Remember, all the above mentioned issues still exist. If I
| forget a certain item, it is still my fault
| ericbarrett wrote:
| $150 is a stunning bargain. I think my accountant is up to
| ~$500 just for personal filing.
| silexia wrote:
| I have to pay $6,000 per year for tax. I hire a lot of
| employees in other states which means that I have to file a
| tax return in 30 states.
|
| Intuit is pure evil.
| dionidium wrote:
| This is the first year I've ever hired anyone to do my taxes.
| Got married, sold an investment property, started earning
| some rental income, and had a few other issues I didn't want
| to try to figure out myself. It was closer to $1500 than
| $150, for what it's worth.
| mehphp wrote:
| Same, I have a full-time job and have a small side business,
| and my accountant does it all for $150. It's incredible and
| she saves me a lot of money.
| ValleZ wrote:
| I paid 600 usd last year fora tax accountant. He couldn't
| even do the most easiest part (1040 with stocks and
| dividend), and after struggling with him we didn't even
| proceed with the multistate reports I needed. It was complete
| waste of time and if I didn't check the result it would be
| also a waste of money and potential criminal action.
| cpfohl wrote:
| You need to find a different accountant, my tax situation
| is as _least_ as complex as yours and has involved multiple
| states several times. I've never had an issue with sending
| him a large dump of files photos and notes and he's worked
| it out each time.
| throwaway898989 wrote:
| 1040 filings are not easy at all. incorrectly filed 1040s
| can lead to things like your investments being classified
| as a PFIC and taxed at 39.6%
| ValleZ wrote:
| OMG, PFIC is a nice pitfall.
| ValleZ wrote:
| Sure, if a professional struggles with it it's by
| definition not easy. It was however easier then the
| complex part: I was moving between states separately from
| my spouse when we were both working full time. This could
| not be properly handled by any online service available
| (yes, I tried at least 4 different) and I ended up with
| filling forms manually by myself. It should not be this
| hard in first place. And yes, likely there are a lot of
| pros who can file it easily but finding anyone who is
| good in what he is doing is not easy.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Not a great comment, but I misread the title and was really
| interested in what the Inuit people had against easier taxes.
|
| Edit: I love how this is getting downvoted really fast. I feel
| like everyone is skimming and misunderstanding what I said :D
| failrate wrote:
| Intuit's business model is making tax preparation easier. If
| tax preparation wasn't so deliberately complicated in the US,
| they would no longer have a viable business model.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Well you made the reverse mistake...
| ols wrote:
| I made the same mistake reading the title and felt a rare
| emotional mix of being enraged and puzzled at the same time.
| mring33621 wrote:
| Welcome to Reddit...er, Hacker News
| alecco wrote:
| Why was this flagged out of the front page?!
| sirtimbly wrote:
| How unsurprising that a government wanted to further obfuscate
| how much money they want to take from their citizens.
| m463 wrote:
| Remember that automated tax filing will lead to easy and silent
| tax increases.
|
| This is something IMHO REALLY BAD, and is apart from red/blue or
| intuit's behavior.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| So we should continue to vote for the politicians who do the
| public such a service. I fail to see Intuit as the evil company.
| The politicians that the public votes for are not even
| responsible. It is the public that votes for them that is at
| fault. That is the real harsh truth. No one to blame but
| "ourselves". I would always be baffled by friends who would decry
| outcomes but continue to vote for those who created the outcomes.
| So the politicians are rational as there is no cost to it at
| least in California and the Bay area.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The real problem here is structural. We need approval
| voting/range voting, and for more of the "executive branch but
| really still regulatory" positions to be elected rather than
| appointed.
|
| Right now you say "vote for politicians who do good things" and
| then every politician is found to be doing some good things and
| some bad things with their opponent doing the opposite, and
| someone doing a higher proportion of good things can't get on
| the ballot because first past the post voting results in a two
| party system.
| glitcher wrote:
| This feels like a bit of an oversimplification to me. Big
| lobbying money works, and it seems to me it tends to work no
| matter who you voted for the vast majority of the time. Finding
| politicians to vote for who can't be bought for any price are
| probably rare, and we have a lot of offices to fill across the
| country.
|
| I agree that taking a hard, sober look at how we ourselves vote
| is a good thing, but I doubt it is the magic silver bullet to
| our problems.
| silexia wrote:
| Politicians are directly controlled by special interests. This
| is why we have John Deere using copyright laws to stop farmers
| from repairing their tractors, Intuit using tax law to protect
| it's expensive software, and patent trolls using abusive patent
| laws to extort entrepreneurs.
| mettamage wrote:
| Dutchie here, never had an issue with tax returns in my country.
| You just go to the website, fill it in, done.
|
| I don't get the context at all. Is the ELI5:
|
| CA wanted to create their own tax return software. Intuit said
| no, and now they use Intuit or something?
|
| Normally I understand context and such, but in this case: isn't
| it the obvious thing to do? Does the USA not have the back of
| their citizens?
|
| I'm sorry to say it so charged but this seems desperately simple
| on what ought to be done here.
| failrate wrote:
| California offers the typical international option: they'll
| send you your estimated annual taxes, and you just jave to
| correct them if there's a discrepancy. This was supposed to be
| the default option for Californian state taxes. Instead,
| Intuit's army of lobbyists managed to almost get rid of it. It
| is now an opt in for people that is not advertised or easy to
| find on the gov website. Intuit's business model is making tax
| preparation easier. If tax preparation wasn't so deliberately
| complicated in the US, they would no longer have a viable
| business model.
| slobiwan wrote:
| Can you provide some breadcrumbs to find opt-in ?
| pokot0 wrote:
| A country is made of people AND legal entities. Legal entities
| in the US have a lot of impact in what the country does (for
| example it's legal for companies to pay politicians, which is
| illegal almost everywhere else). Believe it or not, about half
| of the country believes these policies are great and it's what
| makes the usa so succesful. I am not making a stand, just
| trying to explain here.
| kfprt wrote:
| It creates a strange disconnect. Voters in influence policy
| at election time and then lobbyists come in an undo
| everything.
| epistasis wrote:
| > Does the USA not have the back of their citizens?
|
| In the US, at least one party requires its members to have the
| party's back, but not the other way. Which is why we have mass
| delusions about vaccines being bad, or COVID-19 not being a big
| deal. The party has decided its members need to provide blood
| sacrifices and the party members obliged. This is the same
| party that says that government can do no good, then asks for
| your vote.
|
| For a less partisan example, for the past ~3 years, people with
| US phone numbers have been bombarded by spam phone calls,
| making the phone system nearly useless, and congressional
| action has been nonexistent.
|
| When I see what is going on with national media and with
| federal inaction, I feel that the US is far past its peak
| years. We have chosen bad governance, and if we can't get a
| majority of people to even want to advocate for themselves,
| there's no way to get that back.
| [deleted]
| teekert wrote:
| The US is such a stressful country, tax filing, healthcare, none
| of these basic things just work. Add to that the lawyers culture
| and you get a good basis for emotion filled Netflix dramas, but
| not really for real life.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Tax filing takes me a few hours and ~ $100 each year and I have
| multiple properties and businesses. For most people it's not
| that big of a deal but it's easy to jump on the anti-IRS
| bandwagon
| Boltgolt wrote:
| Imagine paying $100 just to be able to pay your government
| and thinking that's "not that big of a deal"
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There are actually less lawsuits per capita in the US than in
| most OECD nations. The "lawyers culture" is a false idea
| created, it seems, by popular media (films, TV, etc.)
| nsonha wrote:
| > lawsuits per capita
|
| try legal transations per capita
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There are actually less lawsuits per capita in the US than
| in most OECD nations.
|
| That's because our inefficient and costly to access and high-
| risk legal system is optimized for resolving conflict by
| legal intimidation rather than actual adjudication.
| shagmin wrote:
| Was curious about this, and from some quick Googling the US
| isn't much of a contender for lawsuits per capita, but a lot
| more of our GDP goes to law firms and litigation than any
| other country and we have one of the highest lawyers per
| capita.
| kgin wrote:
| I'm really curious to dig into this and finding out what
| people in Europe are suing each other for.
|
| It's just so weird seeing the billboards here in the US
| encouraging people to sue for personal injury damages,
| featuring photos of happy people holding fans of cash like
| they just won the lottery. Maybe the celebration of lawsuits
| is the American thing, if not having greater total numbers.
| iammisc wrote:
| If you want to 'save the nation from tax filing', California
| should begin by simplifying its own tax forms.
|
| I'm sorry... you can't say you're trying to save us from tax
| filing while simultaneously having a tax form that would put a
| blank excel spreadsheet to shame.
|
| California and the federal government's willingness to write
| complex, byzantine tax rules, is ultimately what keeps intuit in
| business.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| That is exactly what Intuit stopped them from doing as
| described in TFA.
| mwint wrote:
| Since I've not seen it mentioned yet,
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/. Used it the last few years to do my
| taxes, which include investment and self employment income. No
| complaints. Intuit's stuff would charge quite a bit for my
| "complex" taxes.
|
| They charge a couple bucks to file state taxes, which gives me a
| bit of confidence they're not making money by selling my info to
| someone.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Just added a calendar event for April of next year to check
| these folks out. Thanks for the suggestion!
| MAGZine wrote:
| FTU is great, though startupees should be warned that it does
| not support ISO exercises in the AMT calculation, and you
| probably won't find that out until you get that far through
| your taxes.
| ezfe wrote:
| Yup - I used this last year and it was great. They also charge
| a few dollars to file amendments, which is fine.
| alecco wrote:
| No mention of politicians? Let's search...
| https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/intuit-inc/summary?id=D0000...
|
| That's the first result for
| https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=intuit
| tnli wrote:
| For most Finns (bar the self-employed, business owners, and the
| very rich) filing taxes is like 15 minutes per year when you want
| to add some deductions the tax man wouldn't already know about.
|
| It's literally 0 minutes, if you don't have deductions.
| [deleted]
| runjake wrote:
| I'll just mention https://freetaxusa.com at this point.
|
| I think about 100 commenters mentioned it over the years before I
| finally switched to it and I haven't looked back.
|
| It's a great product and way cheaper and way easier than
| TurboTax.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Any experience using it with multiple LLCs and/or properties?
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Plug for ustaxes, an open source project aimed at helping tackle
| free and easy tax filing https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes
| elmerfud wrote:
| California tried to save the country from gasoline cars, then
| Ford and Chrysler stepped in and ended up bankrupting General
| Motors.
|
| This is a common theme with big businesses. Instead of complying
| with "make people's life easier" initiatives they just pay off
| the politicians.
| nightski wrote:
| Or maybe it's a common theme with California's draconian
| politics being ineffective.
| golemotron wrote:
| The nation is pretty tired of California and NY trying to
| save it.
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| Are you speaking for everyone? I feel like this needs a
| citation.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| The nation is dependent on the money that California and NY
| put in to the federal tax system. You're welcome.
|
| "A 2017 study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government
| found that traditional blue states like Connecticut
| ($15,643), Massachusetts ($13,582), New Jersey ($13,137),
| New York ($12,820), and California ($10,510), contributed
| significantly more in federal taxes, per citizen, than
| traditional red states like Mississippi ($5,740), West
| Virginia ($6,349), Kentucky ($6,626), and South Carolina
| ($6,665).
|
| Not only do some states contribute more to the federal
| budget than others, but some also receive less from the
| federal government in return. On average, each of our 50
| states receives about $1.14 from the federal government for
| every tax dollar they send to Washington.
|
| This is why our federal government runs a deficit every
| year. The traditional red states mentioned above, however,
| receive more -- much more. For example, Mississippi
| received $2.13 for every tax dollar it sends to Washington
| by way of federal taxes, West Virginia $2.07, Kentucky
| $1.90, and South Carolina $1.71.
|
| For some large traditional blue states, California receives
| only 96 cents, Massachusetts 83 cents, Connecticut 82
| cents, New York 81 cents, and New Jersey 74 cents for every
| tax dollar they sent to Washington. The discrepancy is
| significant."
|
| https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/carroll/opinion/cc-
| op-...
| refurb wrote:
| I mean red states are more rural which alone would
| account for more subsidies.
|
| But regardless, seems like you're all for redistribution
| of wealth unless it goes to the political "undesirable"?
|
| You just made a great argument _against_ redistribution -
| it's too fraught with politics.
| depaya wrote:
| > I mean red states are more rural which alone would
| account for more subsidies.
|
| Yeah, duh, that's their point.
|
| We are strong as a country because our wealthy, dense
| state economies support our poorer, rural state
| economies; and that's why it's laughable when red-state
| citizens and politians rant about seceding from the "evil
| communist blue states."
| frockington1 wrote:
| I'm also in favor of returning governance to the stats
| and we're probably in disagreement about a lot of things.
| Seems like an easy political win for Washington would be
| to return power to the states
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If states like CA and NY are getting such a raw deal why
| don't they want to change it?
|
| This tired old trope needs to be taken out back and shot.
| The net in or out flow from any given state is not enough
| to substantially impact anything.
|
| Pretty much every state gets back what it puts in plus or
| minus 10-20%. Considering that each state is putting in a
| number that is only a small fraction of its GDP the
| overall difference is negligible. I think most people in
| the states that are getting paid would consider the
| economic hit to be a cheap price to pay for removing
| federal oversight from the things those dollars pay for.
|
| Furthermore, even the poor states are just fine by
| European standards.[1][2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and
| _territ...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GD
| P_(nomi...
| charwalker wrote:
| The nation is pretty tired of people rejecting reality like
| this.
| s5300 wrote:
| Pretty sure California and New York are tired of paying
| billions of dollars to the Federal government that gets re-
| distributed to all of the failing Federal welfare states.
|
| If they're so tired, I'm sure they'd be happy to give back
| the billions of dollars they receive any time now.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-
| state...
| golemotron wrote:
| It's because of inequality. California and New York have
| a higher GINI coefficient than most countries. If high
| net worth people from those states moved to other states,
| the transfer payments you are talking about wouldn't
| happen.
| dogleash wrote:
| If you want to states to not get federal gov't funds,
| you're in agreement with the people who think the scope
| DC should be reduced and states to do more. So now that
| you're in agreement, get to enacting those changes.
|
| On your other point, I'll just leave this here:
|
| >"How come the white working class uses government
| programs while railing against handouts?" Because you are
| the government. They'll take what they can, but they'll
| be damned if they beg for it. "Why are all these hicks
| voting for authoritarianism?" Exercise some basic
| cognitive empathy, please. They're not voting for
| authoritarianism. They're voting for fuck you.
|
| https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/159702160399/the-
| subp...
| bartart wrote:
| I think the picture is more complex than donor states and
| receiver states. As the article below argues, the
| Rockefeller study that the data comes from has flawed
| methodology.
|
| New York for example benefits tremendously from its large
| financial industry that pays a lot in taxes. But arguably
| the industry is so concentrated in New York today because
| of federal laws that force the federal reserve to conduct
| its financial activities only in New York, among other
| hard coded advantages that the state has lobbied for. In
| addition, retirees who receive billions in benefits each
| year from the federal government commonly leave the state
| in favor of places like Florida, further distorting the
| picture. Unlike more fiscally prudent states, New York
| also has billions in tax exempt bonds outstanding that
| deprive the federal government of revenue but are not
| counted by the Rockefeller study.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-york-is-no-donor-
| state-...
| psychometry wrote:
| Yeah let's run the country like Alabama instead. They're
| doing well! /s
| voidfunc wrote:
| Maybe we should let each state run the way they see
| fit... you know kind of like how the Constitution assumed
| things should be done until the Commerce Clause was used
| by the Federal Government to hammer every state into
| submission.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| States love independence until their power grid fails or
| they get hit by a hurricane or an international pandemic.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And states love the federal government until they can't
| get the legislative buy in to enact their pet policies.
|
| There's no free lunch.
| dionidium wrote:
| Alabama has a higher GDP per capita than Germany,
| Belgium, Israel, France, Japan, the U.K. and...I could go
| on.
|
| Alabama _is_ doing well. We live in such an enormously
| wealthy country that it only looks bad by comparison. But
| not by comparison to basically anywhere else on Earth.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_
| U.S._states...
| oblio wrote:
| GDP is, unfortunately, a flawed metric. Or at least an
| incomplete one.
|
| I greatly doubt the average German, Belgian, Japanese,
| etc. would want to live in Alabama :-)
|
| Edit:
|
| Another flawed metric, but probably closer to the truth,
| tells a slightly different story: https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
|
| Alabama has roughly the same HDI as Cyprus. Cyprus is a
| nice place, but it's quite a bit behind the countries on
| your list.
|
| If we try to use the inequality adjusted HDI (which
| depending on how you look at it, might get us closer to
| the real situation - or might not), things look even
| worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by
| _inequalit...
|
| I can't find the number of Alabama, but considering that
| it's generally in one of the last places in the US, I
| can't imagine it being higher than the US average, so I
| wouldn't be shocked to see it somewhere around Croatia's
| level.
| refurb wrote:
| You realized you just dismissed GDP per capita, a
| quantitative metric, as too "flawed", then instead relied
| on HDI which entirely a made up metric based on
| subjective measures?
| bee_rider wrote:
| In the very least you'd have to adjust for purchasing
| power parity and look at the median rather than the mean,
| to say anything useful about quality of life for normal
| people.
| dionidium wrote:
| Yes, I agree. GDP is a very rough measure. I'd prefer
| PPP, but I couldn't find it for individual states after a
| cursory search. (I still think most readers will be
| surprised by Alabama's GDP, relative to wealthy European
| nations, so it's not totally useless.)
| oblio wrote:
| Yes, because money isn't everything. I know (you seem to
| be American) that this is probably a strange concept :-p
|
| And HDI is still quantitative, it's still a number: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index#New_me..
| .
|
| You might not like the magic numbers in the formula or
| the things they choose to weigh, but GDP is much, much
| too coarse to evaluate anything about the greater well-
| being of a population, especially in developed countries.
| dionidium wrote:
| Agreed, PPP would be better, but my cursory search didn't
| turn up a convenient list like the one I linked for GDP.
| (This is a bit like the old joke about a guy searching
| for his keys 20 feet from where he dropped them, because
| that's where the streetlight is.)
| charwalker wrote:
| This seems like an odd take given their progressive policy
| making an standard setting over the last 50 years ex
| automobile MPG. What policies are you referring to?
| mullen wrote:
| Or maybe you are wrong and California's "draconian politics"
| are being effective and corporations are scared of that.
| frockington1 wrote:
| California's population shrank for the first time since it
| was founded last year. Statistics seem to indicate that the
| "draconian policies" are causing an exodus
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That probably has more to do with the general flood of
| people away from cities due to covid
| widjit wrote:
| Or maybe climate change has something to do with this
| merrywhether wrote:
| Are you really arguing that corporatocracy is a progressive
| form of governance? Or do you just believe that companies
| leeching off society via regulatory capture is better for
| everyone?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Are you really arguing that corporatocracy is a
| progressive form of governance?
|
| He made a one sentence comment about CA's policies being
| ineffective. He made no endorsement of anything or
| comparison to alternatives. If you're going to build a
| straw-man be more subtle.
| dartharva wrote:
| I don't understand what kind of mental gymnastics it takes for
| policymakers to impede _paying taxes_. How absurd is it that the
| government would rather make it difficult for its citizens to
| _give_ it money!? ( deg [?]? deg)
| rland wrote:
| There is a self-aware viewpoint among the libertarian right
| that if the government makes it a pain to pay taxes, then
| people will hate doing taxes, which will in turn direct them to
| push for a smaller government. It's called "starve the beast."
| double_nan wrote:
| There is absolutely no problem to give money to the government.
| Filing in taxes with extra is fast and easy. Filing for the
| exact sum is hard.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| I have "simple enough" taxes that I don't need software.
|
| I recently found out that California has the third WORST average
| IQ as a state (95.5) and that only confirms that 1) I made the
| right decision to leave California, and 2) ANYTHING California
| comes up with is almost certainly NOT a good thing by definition
| that it came from California!!!
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Since the 1950s overall IQ has increased more than the current
| variation between states, so I assume you also disregard
| anything thought up pre-1950 for the same reason?
| rafale wrote:
| We don't mention IQ around here. It explains too much. Too much
| to handle. Enjoy your downvotes.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Hmm, I would actually love (genuinely) to hear more. My
| impression is that standardized testing of Intelligence
| Quotient explains way way _less_ than popular imagination &
| movies think.
|
| Studies like these [1] [2] get a lot of newspaper time, but
| they're largely rebuked on methodological or overreach
| grouns, and honestly, there's sweeping generalizations and
| then there's saying "Anything from California is
| automatically bad due to low average IQ".
|
| As well, the spread across ALL states is barely 10% [3]
|
| edit: Though, by that logic, USA should start mimicking
| everything we canucks do! I look forward to you adopting our
| universal health care and bilingualism and Her Majesty The
| Queen! :-D [4]
|
| 1: http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2012/02/Psyc...
|
| 2: https://theconversation.com/do-smart-people-tend-to-be-
| more-...
|
| 3: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-
| iq-...
|
| 4: https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2019/01/11/ranke
| d-...
| rafale wrote:
| I don't know about correlation between average IQ and a
| country/state performance (e.g. GPD performance capita) but
| there is plenty of research that show correlation between a
| person's IQ and expected income/wealth.
|
| It's also intuitive. The whole path to college, at least
| for hard sciences, partially select for IQ. And college
| education correlates with higher income.
| [deleted]
| boringg wrote:
| And intuit is California company - not lost on anyone.
|
| Im also annoyed the intuit bought Mint -- which I like but now
| feel like it is a risky to have them access all my accounts /
| purchases etcs.
| snihalani wrote:
| Side issue: hate paywalls. pls use advertising to monetize
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