[HN Gopher] FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax "free" fi...
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FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax "free" filing campaign
Author : Kesseki
Score : 369 points
Date : 2022-03-29 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ftc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ftc.gov)
| flerchin wrote:
| Freetaxusa is so great.
| rhexs wrote:
| Love the product as well. Great pricing, handles my complicated
| return fine. I do miss Turbotax auto importing everything, but
| doing it manually helps me understand what I'm doing better.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Do you know if Freetaxusa supports declaring international
| income/taxes?
|
| Edit: I looks like they don't :(
|
| Items Not Supported Foreign employment income
| (Form 2555)
|
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp
| belval wrote:
| I know that ship has sailed, but I really wish politicians would
| go back to making promises that have an impact on everyone like
| abolishing tax fillings.
|
| It might be different in the US, but in Canada I file my taxes
| using the CRA's data directly. TurboTax even fetches it directly
| from their website. What's the point? They have my T4, my T2202
| (studies) and everything else. Just send me a letter telling me
| how much money I owe/I am owed and that's it.
| crooked-v wrote:
| In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally
| pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people
| to hate the idea of taxes in general.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| That's why I do my taxes manually and mail them in. I want it
| to be as painful as possible.
| belval wrote:
| I don't think it's a Republican thing, the Liberal party and
| the NPD in Canada are both left-leaning and they have a
| majority yet they aren't pushing for this.
|
| Pretty sure it's just run-of-the-mill lobbying and corruption
| unfortunately. A typical "think of the jobs!" type of thing.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| What parent is referring to is not just lack of pushing for
| it, but _active_ campaigning against automatic filing. Not
| a "think of the jobs" but "automatic filing is
| intrinsically bad."
|
| See e.g. http://reason.org/files/ba148cd5babdda39f9ebb43b33
| 6b01d4.pdf
| monetus wrote:
| I wouldn't say its _not_ a republican thing, just also a
| many other people /groups thing. You're right, just wanted
| to emphasize that.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Republicans and the Liberal party in Canada are both
| neoliberal when it comes to their economic policies, they
| mostly only diverge on social issues and social services.
| slavik81 wrote:
| It kinda already had been addressed. SimpleTax was released
| as donationware and the CRA introduced NETFILE and
| Autofill. Filing a return today is way easier than in, say,
| 2011. Buying TurboTax has been unnecessary for a decade.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I've heard that too. And the idea is disgusting to me. I
| assume those who genuinely espouse this idea are those who
| are rich enough to have an accountant do all their taxes for
| them.
|
| Is it really necessary to "encourage" me to dislike taxes? Is
| not the money leaving my pocket sufficient?
|
| I've also heard Republicans claiming that IRS-provided tax
| bills/refunds is equivalent to a tax. I guess the implication
| is that the government is going to intentionally charge you
| more.
|
| Having to use TurboTax or someting like it is equivalent to a
| tax, but it's paid to a corporation instead of the
| government. If I had to choose between my money going to the
| government and Intuit, I'd choose the government.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Intuit and HR Block spend way too much on US lobbying for that
| to change. The first step has to be repealing Citizen's United.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
| anamax wrote:
| > The first step has to be repealing Citizen's United.
|
| Citizen's United was a group that made a political-advocacy
| movie and the FEC wanted to treat it as regulated political
| activity.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| It was. And the consequence of this ruling was nearly
| unlimited amounts money being spent on the reelection
| campaigns of various lawmakers by corporations, with the
| obvious intent being to install friendly legislators.
| wnevets wrote:
| The sad thing is its not even a lot of money if you consider
| how much profit they make. Politicians are surprisingly cheap
| jeffwask wrote:
| True. Large on people scale not corporation scale which is
| why treating corporations like people is a terrible idea.
| wnevets wrote:
| maybe the rest of us should start a gofundme so we can
| pool together our funds and buy a few politicians.
| munk-a wrote:
| This has actually been done rather often in the past, you
| can start a donor driven PAC that can compete with
| corporate lobbyists with crowdfunding. It's generally
| quite a bit cheaper too because while we all love to
| criticize politicians for only listening to monied
| interests if they can raise some campaign funds _and_ get
| brownie points for their voting base they 're happy to
| dramatically spurn the corporate funding they'd otherwise
| accept with open arms.
|
| Honestly though, actually reaching out to your
| representatives and talking to them is far more effective
| than most people assume.
| rch wrote:
| I'm considering starting a 501(c)(4) to advocate for
| state level legislation, but I wonder if something like a
| PAC might be more effective.
| istjohn wrote:
| Take 5 minutes to complain to your elected representatives
| every time you file taxes.
| ratsmack wrote:
| The only people that your representative listens to is the
| ones that fill their political war chest with a lot of
| money.
| revscat wrote:
| CU will never be peacefully repealed.
| xtracto wrote:
| In Mexico if you are an average employee earning less than
| around $50000 usd (I.e. most workers), your employer can "do"
| your taxes (very simple, they report what they have withheld
| from you).
|
| If you have some amounts you want to regain from losses, etc.,
| you can still do your taxes manually.
|
| That means logging into the free MEX IRS platform, which shows
| all your tax info preffilled. Most likely the stuff you want to
| input is already there (all invoices in mexico are signed by
| private/public keys through the IRS system).
|
| So you just enter your bank account to get your money back. Or
| get your reference to pay your taxes.
|
| The system is really beautiful.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| What would be required for the US to adopt this solution?
| lupire wrote:
| Congress passes a law to amend the Free File program.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-
| taxes-f...
| goosedragons wrote:
| I missed including my T2202 one year and thought I owned a ton.
| They then sent me a letter saying lol, no we owe you. So
| pointless.
|
| What annoys me now is that if you want a paper booklet you have
| to request one in advance if you did not use one previously but
| otherwise there is no free to everyone option to do it. You
| either request a paper booklet or use 3rd party software.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| Everyone should listen to this Planet Money episode [0] going
| into some of the politics surrounding making taxes easier.
|
| [0]
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
| a1371 wrote:
| Intuit is one of the few companies that I don't hear any good
| things about them. They always do something shady, last one I
| recall was sharing employee salary info with Equifax.
|
| That's why despite my bookkeepers protests, we moved to another
| accounting service and when they bought MailChimp I pulled my
| whole company out of that too.
|
| I understand workplace is not always a place for activism, but I
| could switch with reasonable effort and it made me feel good not
| to fund this sort of behavior.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I found out from a friend that she paid $600 to have her taxes
| done because (presumably) she falls for the dark patterns that
| TurboTax uses. She's a low paid service worker whose tax return
| can probably be done for free. And it is a sizable portion of her
| income because of things like Earned income tax credits, child
| tax credits, etc.
|
| Fuck these companies.
| ngokevin wrote:
| The government has enough information to process the taxes for
| most of us or at least publicly make it super easy. TurboTax
| just lobbies the government to not do so.
| amelius wrote:
| We need some FOSS freedom fighters to talk to the government
| and fix this with or without free software.
| tombert wrote:
| About two weeks ago, I got a letter from the IRS telling me
| that I owe an extra eight-thousand dollars from my 2020
| return, with a $1000 fine and $200 interest as a result. [1]
|
| I'm not mad about owing the money, but what annoys me is if
| they have enough information to know that I underreported,
| then why am _I_ part of this equation to begin with? Clearly
| they have enough of my tax data to know I screwed up, so why
| don 't they just send me a bill once a year? I don't see why
| Intuit (or HR Block or TaxAct or Jackson Hewitt etc) need to
| be part of this transaction at all.
|
| [1] It was an honest mistake on my end, I forgot to report a
| sizeable stock sale I did in 2020.
| thepangolino wrote:
| lupire wrote:
| You can file taxes without a software package, if you want.
| You have to file because they want you to report things
| they don't know about, and also if you want to claim
| itemized deductions.
| mattnewton wrote:
| It'd be great if they just billed me and I was on the
| hook for correcting them however. The current method is
| doing math homework under penalty of being fined.
| NeutronStar wrote:
| codetrotter wrote:
| Here in Norway, the government fills out our tax forms
| for us with all of the information that has been reported
| to them by our banks, our employers, etc. It is then our
| responsibility as tax payers to look over the tax forms,
| add anything not included, and adding any additional
| claims for deductions.
|
| By comparison, the needless busywork that the IRS puts
| the tax payers through is nothing short of ridiculous
| really. It only serves to waste time and effort, and
| there is plain and simple no reason whatsoever why the
| IRS could not do it like Norwegian tax authorities does.
| Our system here in Norway is not perfect either, but the
| citizens of the United States, and the US government,
| would benefit hugely from a tax filing system built to
| help you file taxes the way that ours does for us.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If it's the first time you've screwed up the return, you
| might try calling them and ask to have the penalty waived
| or reduced. That works pretty often on first-time
| penalties.
| naoqj wrote:
| Darwin approves.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Realistically, how would you do your tax return for free?
|
| Keep in mind that every service worker is terrified of an
| audit. The cost is much higher when you don't have resources.
|
| EDIT: I think I didn't phrase this very well. My point was that
| the average service worker is trained to be terrified of the
| IRS. These people are already usually paying hefty fines
| because they missed their returns in prior years. That's why
| they take the path of least resistance, and just pay someone
| else as a shield against this.
|
| So it's not particularly surprising that TurboTax has swindled
| this person out of $600 with their upsells. Nor should she be
| condemned as a fool. If you were in her shoes, you might do the
| same thing.
| andybak wrote:
| Maybe look how other countries do it?
|
| Like with your health system, a lot of us are slightly
| baffled by how broken things are in the US.
| rurp wrote:
| There are many free filing options for anyone with an average
| salary from a straightforward W2 source. I went years without
| paying to file, until I got into freelancing and a higher tax
| bracket.
|
| Being audited isn't much of a concern if your only source of
| income is a typical W2 job. The average service worker isn't
| throwing money around in stocks, crypto, blackjack, and
| corporate entities.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| 1090ez, or any of a dozen free-file options? State returns
| are cheap if not free almost everywhere.
|
| The vast majority of the people who qualify for free tax
| filing have nothing to audit. The government makes enough
| money off their deductions, not to mention what they generate
| having to spend >50% of their income to stay afloat, to
| overlook a few unreported tips or sneaker sales.
| tonguez wrote:
| I would get rid of the tax return process as the only purpose
| for its existence is to waste the time of poor people and
| thus keep the government boot on their face.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Heck I'm a high skilled, non-essential employee and I fell for
| this trap for years. Next year I'm using Cash App. But it's
| wild what brand recognition can do.
| [deleted]
| tareqak wrote:
| FTC's own press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-
| events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...
| alephnan wrote:
| I'm curious how independent the FTC is from political pressure
| and lobbyists?
|
| In the way there is a revolving door with the SEC, is there a
| revolving door at the FTC?
| usednet wrote:
| Yes. The FTC, BigLaw, and tech are highly interconnected.
|
| > Public Citizen found that just over 75 percent of top FTC
| officials (31 out of 41) over the past two decades have either
| left the agency to serve corporate interests confronting FTC
| issues, joined the agency after serving corporate interests on
| these issues, or both.
|
| https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-...
| alephnan wrote:
| Right, so when an agency like the FTC flexes their muscle,
| I'm a little bit cynical.
|
| Are they reminding BigTech that hey, they have political
| power and some palms needs to be greased.
| perardi wrote:
| I know, I know, there's so many dark patterns in TurboTax that
| it's cliche to point them out...
|
| ...but man, this was a particularly egregious example I came
| across this year.
|
| https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW
|
| You can pay for TurboTax using your refund...with an _additional
| $39 processing fee_. That is just wild.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I think that's actually somewhat standard- even FreeTaxUSA (my
| personal choice) does this because they're essentially letting
| you use their product on credit.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Doing them yourself is an option, but I prefer to be guided by
| software.
|
| Credit Karma has an option to do taxes that is completely free,
| but I tried it once a few years ago and didn't care for it.
|
| I use FreeTaxUSA which offers free federal and $7 state taxes.
| Cheaper than a meal at Taco Bell.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| For most folks, CashApp Tax works fine. Its 100% Free. I have
| used it since it came out (originally Credit Karma Tax).
| Jxl180 wrote:
| I own an LLC, traded stocks and crypto and CashApp handled it
| all flawlessly.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org, an
| open source tax filing webapp
| https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes.
|
| Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax
| filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and
| California is under development!
| Someone1234 wrote:
| In theory, yes.
|
| But few people actually do because it is a painful experience.
| The IRS' documentation isn't actually bad, it is just that the
| tax system itself is incredibly (and needlessly) complicated.
|
| For example, you'd need to hand-enter every stock trade (even
| automated re-investments) even though your broker likely
| already electronically sent this information to the IRS. Using
| a digital solution they can often log into your broker and
| auto-import everything.
|
| For how under-budget the IRS is and how bad the tax system is,
| they do ok, but the whole thing needs a massive overhaul but
| there is money in politics keeping it bad in order to profit
| private companies (plus there's a certain demographic that
| "hating taxes" is a political position that needs to be kept up
| with, essentially self-reinforcing-itself).
| crooked-v wrote:
| Also, one might ask "why doesn't the IRS just send you a pre-
| filled copy of the forms, and you only correct them if
| they're wrong?".
|
| The answer is "because Congress passed a law saying they
| can't".
| zentiggr wrote:
| Doing the next step of the root cause analysis leads to
| "Intuit lobbied Congress and the IRS hard enough that they
| passed a law, and the IRS conspired to change their
| procedures".
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Except Intuit hasn't paid anywhere near enough in
| lobbying money to have that kind of effect. Grover
| Norquist is the last step in your root cause analysis.
| paulpauper wrote:
| what is to stop someone from just underreporting and blaming
| laziness or the process being too complicated. either the
| govt. audits it themselves or does nothing. the benefit of
| the doubt is on your side.
| LanceH wrote:
| Late fee interest and penalties are on their side. It's
| statutory that you get it right, intent doesn't matter.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| We used to have to hand enter everything anyway. The auto-
| import stuff is fairly new for all of the tax filing
| products. TurboTax also fucks up the auto import for my RSUs.
| Every single year there are a handful of people on the
| financial planning groups posting "wtf I got a letter from
| the government saying I owe $80,000" and it is uniformly
| because one of these services' autoimport system set all of
| the cost bases for RSUs to $0.
|
| The end result is that I hand-enter anyway, even when paying
| $120 to Intuit for the privilege.
| jfengel wrote:
| If you made under $100,000 from salary and don't otherwise have
| any complications (like dependents), a form 1040EZ really is
| simple. There's no reason to use software for that. It's quite
| straightforward.
|
| If you have deductions, stock sales, a nanny, a business, etc
| then you need the regular 1040 and various schedules, and those
| are all complex enough that you'd probably benefit from
| software. It's not absolutely required, but there are enough
| ways to do it wrong (like adding up the wrong lines) that the
| peace of mind alone is probably worth it to you.
| drdec wrote:
| FYI, the 1040EZ form no longer exists. It was eliminated in
| the name of simplifying the forms (don't ask me how that's
| supposed to work).
| [deleted]
| ohples wrote:
| bombcar wrote:
| If your tax situation doesn't change much from year to year,
| you can have a CPA or even TurboTax do this years, and next
| year fill out the new forms based on the new numbers.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You can go marry an Air Force officer. Military installations
| offer free professional preparation services to anyone
| stationed at the installation.
| mindslight wrote:
| Just pirate TurboTax. Torrent it, set up a fresh windows VM
| with Internet access via VPN, install/update turbotax, crack it
| to get the state version, make sure it's got live versions of
| all the forms you need, disconnect Internet access (never to be
| reconnected), copy previous year's data files to VM, do taxes,
| print out and file by mail, copy data files off to long term
| storage, save VM image in case you need to revisit any time
| soon.
|
| Sure, it's a bit tedious. But short of a privacy-preserving
| libre solution or just doing them manually with fillable PDFs,
| you'd have to do most of that isolation prepwork anyway. So
| fuck 'em.
|
| P.S. The directions for modifying .NET assemblies to crack
| TurboTax are simple and easily followed by anyone with basic
| programming skill. So if you're fine trusting Intuit you could
| obtain the installation files from them directly, crack it
| yourself, and even have e-filing capability from what I
| understand.
| Jxl180 wrote:
| Or just use CashApp Tax. Your procedure makes it sound like
| Turbo Tax is the only game in town. Turbo Tax isn't worth any
| of the effort you mentioned.
| mindslight wrote:
| TurboTax is one of the few pieces of tax software meant for
| offline use, thus letting you keep your personal
| information from entering the permanent records of
| surveillance valley.
|
| Just quickly looking at CashApp Tax, it appears it is an
| Android app that likely will want network access to
| function. If that meets your requirements, good for you.
| But it doesn't meet mine. I'd also rather use the same
| software year to year so that information is carried
| forward, rather than being subject to whichever way the
| startup winds blow.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?_
|
| Do them yourself. The IRS has guidance and resources for those
| who are interested [1].
|
| [1] https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-
| taxes-f...
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| You can absolutely do your own taxes, either on paper and
| mail the forms or (possibly) via the Free File Fillable forms
| mentioned on the page you linked (as long as you don't hit a
| corner case). The Free File Fillable forms page [0] says
| "Make sure we fully support the forms you need" and links to
| another page with a lengthy list of limitations [1].
|
| So yeah, we're in a place where the IRS says taxpayers
| "should file electronically with direct deposit if at all
| possible" [2] but also informs taxpayers that not everyone
| can use the IRS's forms to file electronically.
|
| 0: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-
| form...
|
| 1: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-
| form...
|
| 2: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-begins-2022-tax-season-
| urge...
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| Among unsupported forms, the validation step in Free
| Fillable Forms also has a number or bugs that prevents
| filing due to phantom arithmetic errors. It's beyond
| frustrating filling out everything on FFF, then needing to
| copy everything onto a third party service just to pay for
| the privilege of having my data harvested by a shady
| company and electronically filed exactly as it would have
| otherwise. The current situation is unworkable.
| robotcookies wrote:
| Yes, I used to file taxes with paper forms from the IRS years
| ago and this is free. There isn't even an income limit to do it
| this way as far as I know. But of course it's more of a hassle
| than doing it online as you have to buy stamps, go to the post
| office, etc.
| munk-a wrote:
| It is quite possible to do them yourself especially if your
| taxes are relatively simple - and in a lot of other countries
| you'll just be mailed a bill or credit depending on how much
| your withholding was along with a receipt to review if you
| think they messed up somehow. American and Canada are held
| hostage by tax software lobbyists though.
| foxyv wrote:
| Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some
| stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax
| "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a
| racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This
| has gone on too long.
| bombcar wrote:
| Dirty secret: all versions of TurboTax have all the _forms_ -
| you can just switch to form mode and enter the values yourself
| into the forms.
| munk-a wrote:
| Even dirtier secret - the government is legally required to
| publish all the forms in an accessible manner. You can just
| download them without ever even installing any Intuit
| software.
|
| Just to back this up with facts - here are the braille and
| spanish language offerings which took all of two seconds of
| googling:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/irs-tax-forms-in-braille-
| and-...
|
| https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsPublications.htm.
| ..
| bluGill wrote:
| Let me know if you find anyone that is better. I'm sick of
| TaxAct premium for the same reason.
|
| I'm ready to go back to doing my taxes by hand and mailing them
| in. (I'm old enough to remember doing that - it is faster than
| doing it on the computer except for the one year I forgot to
| copy line 13 of form 1234A to line 56b of form 9876B) So many
| dark patters where the software is pretending to take time
| doing a complex calculation that takes a computer a couple
| nanoseconds, not to mention all the time to skip over things
| that don't apply to me.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'll second free tax usa. Quick process, $10.
| rajup wrote:
| FreeTaxUsa is great for most usecases, including stock sales.
| It is free for federal filing, state is a bit extra ($10)
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I used them for the first time and it was fine. But it
| doesn't look like they support the state form I plan to use
| for this year. Already contacted them asking for it next
| year, but didn't receive a concrete answer.
| davchana wrote:
| Plus until now they always have 10% off with code FTUSA10
| 1991g wrote:
| I also would vote for FreeTaxUSA, they have served me well.
| I do however note the irony of them being named FreeTaxUSA
| and in the same breath, mentioning that it costs to file.
| Especially given the context of the thread in general.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| FreeTaxUsa forced me to manually enter my stock last year,
| I had to provide a supplemental PDF form outlining each
| transaction.
|
| Obnoxiously, this year TurboTax's integration with Binance
| is broken. I haven't checked in a few weeks but it won't
| accept Binance CSV's either. This needs to be fixed soon.
| pvarangot wrote:
| TuboTax web or the desktop application? Last year their
| Schwab integration was broken on the web version but not
| on the desktop version.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I like them for the most part, but FTU tricked me this year
| by forcing me to upload certain forms for a state EV tax
| credit, and then just completely ignoring those uploaded
| forms and not sending them to my state tax agency. I only
| noticed it because I went over the final packet of state
| tax forms and noticed the ones I uploaded weren't included.
| Osiris wrote:
| I use FreeTaxUsa.com. It's free for federal filing.
| tzs wrote:
| I used Cash App Taxes. I sold some mutual fund shares in 2021
| and it handled it fine.
|
| Here's a page describing forms and situations it does not
| handle [1].
|
| One thing that might annoy some people is that to login to the
| Cash App Taxes website you must use their mobile app. The
| website shows a QR code which you scan from the mobile app.
|
| It uses the approach of asking you various questions in order
| to figure out what forms it thinks you need to file, which is
| an approach that some people do not like.
|
| If there is a form you know you have to do that it missed or
| you have a 1099-something that it has not asked you to enter it
| took me a little while to figure out how to deal with that.
| What you do is type the name of the form into the help search
| box. One of the results will be a link to take you directly to
| the page that deals with that form.
|
| [1] https://taxeshelp.cash.app/s/article/Forms-and-situations-
| Ca...
| sagarun wrote:
| Cash App taxes has a bug where mortgage interest deduction is
| not handled properly with state vs federal. If your mortgage
| is more than 750000$ and your state is California or a state
| allows deduction up to a million $ in mortgage interest then
| you will end up getting a lower refund.
|
| I'd double check by filing with another software just to make
| sure (i.e https://www.freetaxusa.com/)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.39...
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/turbotax-maker-s...
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884, but we've
| merged the threads)
| pianoben wrote:
| Fucking _finally_!
|
| Someday our descendants will have sane and automatic filing like
| the rest of the developed world; I can only hope to live long
| enough to see the death of this stupid industry.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > "In some TurboTax ads, "almost every word spoken is the word
| 'free.'"
|
| Really? There are some TurboTax ads where _every_ word spoken is
| the word 'free.' ;)
| MBCook wrote:
| Wait, it's NOT free free free free?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Almost. I thought that was hyperbole too, but... holy shit,
| they aren't kidding:
|
| 1. https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU
|
| 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc
| kn0where wrote:
| Good, but the situation is so much worse than just this. Most
| Americans could just use the IRS Free File system, which the
| article mentions, instead of ever giving money to Intuit or H&R
| Block ever again. But we don't heavily advertise that system,
| because that would encourage people to use it, and if you're
| going that far, you might as well let the IRS build its own tax
| software with all your information prefilled like they do in
| civilized countries.
|
| As long as the job of Congress is to kiss the ass of every
| powerful industry lobby, we won't have good things.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| .... and just to be completely clear, this is only the way it
| is because of HUGE lobbying spends by Intuit.
| saddestcatever wrote:
| IMO: The mind blowing element, is that in the grand scheme of
| things _It 's not actually that much money_.
|
| I'm not sure if anyone knows the true amount, but estimates
| put the number spent on lobbying around a few million
| dollars. Opensecrets.org estimated ~$3.2m lobbying in 2021.
|
| https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-
| lobbying/clients/summary...
|
| For a company that makes $2 BILLION dollars a year, the
| amount they actually spend lobbying and otherwise influencing
| governments is shockingly small.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| That is called the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox .
| _jal wrote:
| Politicians are surprisingly cheap, so long as you're
| talking about topics that don't get a lot of press.
|
| And thanks to _Citizens United_ and similar decisions that
| have driven up the cost of US elections, US pols are very
| expensive compared to their counterparts in other
| countries.
|
| It does make me wonder about the efficacy of standing up a
| lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right Thing about
| something. This would be a prime example - I would happily
| pay $100 to compete with Intuit's lobbying here. I'm also
| certain there are 31,999 other people in the US who feel
| the same way.
|
| I just don't have the energy to do the work of learning how
| to set up the corporate structure around that to make it
| legal.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > standing up a lobbying fund to lobby to Do The Right
| Thing about something. This would be a prime example - I
| would happily pay $100 to compete with Intuit's lobbying
| here. I'm also certain there are 31,999 other people in
| the US who feel the same way.
|
| Congratulations, you just independently invented the
| concept of a Political Action Committee.
| glenstein wrote:
| I completely agree that politicians are not cheap at all.
| The reality is that so much of the money that's invested
| in influencing politicians is through means other than
| campaign contributions.
|
| It's through season tickets to the network of friends
| that know the politician, it's through donations to the
| university that gets their child into college, it's
| through pacs and issue groups, it's through lining up and
| bundling donors to max out their individual donations to
| a politician's preferred presidential candidate, it's
| through flying them out to special events, it's through
| hiring their best friend, it's through investing in their
| brother in law's new business, it's through buying things
| at their husband or wife's charity auction, it's through
| arranging a job for them after they retire from politics,
| it's through finding them a buyer for their investment
| property, it's through an entire network of investments
| one or two degrees removed from the politician.
|
| The only sliver of that that people typically cite is the
| amount directly spent on campaign contributions which (1)
| mistakenly makes it seem like politicians are cheap and
| (2) is underwhelming, to people who cite those numbers
| sincerely believing that that's the only economic
| dimension to political influence.
| lelandfe wrote:
| TurboTax and H&R Block aren't part of Free File as of 2021, so
| the supported software under the program are now things most
| Americans wouldn't recognize, either.
|
| The problem truly is advertising, like you said. The government
| just cannot out-advertise companies that are doing $9 billion
| in revenue.
| dboreham wrote:
| Of course the government could out-advertise them. It'd be
| like Google advertising its own products on its search engine
| -- the government controls all end-user tax related
| communications.
|
| They just don't want to because someone bribed them to not do
| so.
| lelandfe wrote:
| _Everyone_ uses Google. How many more people see TurboTax
| 's ads vs. government "tax related communications?"
| notwedtm wrote:
| Every single tax payer when they get paid, or when they
| pay their tax bill each year.
| lelandfe wrote:
| The years in which I've had a refund, I have had the
| amount directly deposited. The years in which I've paid
| have been through a software portal that supports credit
| card payment.
|
| I, personally, have no idea what the government's
| "communications" have been regarding taxes outside of
| news articles.
|
| Either way, though, this is no competition for a year's
| worth of massive advertising campaigns.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I tried to make this point in the other thread, so let me take
| another stab at it here.
|
| You say this like it's just a thing that people can do. But the
| people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been
| trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently
| paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years.
| Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished,
| precisely because you don't have any room for error.
|
| "Most Americans" is an umbrella that contains mostly service
| workers. The people that serve you food, bag your groceries,
| drive your amazon purchases, and so on. If you've spent a lot
| of time with people like this, I encourage you to ask them
| "Hey, do you pay someone to do your taxes, or do you do it
| yourself? Why?"
|
| I'm pretty sure the conversation will go "I pay. I just don't
| want to worry about it." And that "worry" is because they've
| been hit hard in the wallet, because the (American) government
| is not friendly when it comes to messing up your taxes.
|
| If I am mistaken about this, I would like to know. But this is
| true of my extended family, and I'm pretty sure it's true for
| most of their friends.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This is quite true, even excluding service workers. Every tax
| season I have conversations with bright, well-to-do, college-
| educated people who seem to live in terminal fear of the IRS.
| They're absolutely terrified that if they get one tiny thing
| wrong during the tax filing process, they will immediately be
| arrested and shipped off to prison. So they always pay
| someone to file their taxes, even if they're simple. It's
| mind-boggling.
|
| The irony is that -- as you said -- the IRS hits people of
| modest income harder, because the IRS doesn't have the
| resources to take on many battles with wealthy people who can
| afford lawyers. This means the IRS mostly goes after easy
| targets who won't fight back. Yet another tax on being poor.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have
| already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them
| are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns
| in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're
| impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for
| error.
|
| Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were
| terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are
| paying "huge fines"? AFAIK, the IRS's audit capacity is
| greatly underfunded.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though,
| admittedly.
|
| It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of
| people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset
| for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of
| doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really
| an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago
| will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many
| thousands of dollars from you as possible - it was still
| one of my worst financial decisions of all time. And that
| wasn't even taxes.
|
| The broader point is that "dealing with the government" is
| a big messy bucket that people usually want to pay a
| janitorial service to dispose of. Even things like "being
| reminded to file your taxes right now" is valuable in that
| situation. Most people don't have a clue what day they need
| to file by. They don't learn it in school, and their
| parents either don't know or didn't bother to teach them.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Most people don't have a clue what day they need to
| file by.
|
| That does not at all match my experience, it's widely
| discussed every year, and I wonder how many returns are
| late.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Alright. Thanks for the data point.
|
| But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users
| tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't
| impoverished.
|
| I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the
| fact that you have a stable, fully functional family.
| Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate.
|
| If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle
| class or higher, then that's an important data point
| though.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm not talking about my family discussions. Just turn on
| the local news and you'll see them discuss it, including
| the annual segment about the lines at the post office.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Ah.
|
| For what it's worth -- and it's possible I'm living in a
| bubble, but -- the only family member I know that watches
| the news is my dad. Everyone else quietly switched to
| netflix long ago. The news mostly comes from the drama of
| the day; things that show up on facebook. (The recent
| Chris Rock drama, and other nonsense like that.)
|
| I recently followed CBS on TikTok though, to my surprise.
| They had some of the best coverage of the Ukraine war
| I've seen. I even joked to my wife that the circle of
| life was complete: not only have I never watched the news
| in years, and not only does my dad have no clue what
| tiktok is, but now I'm watching the news on tiktok.
|
| Thanks for pointing out that the news is sometimes a
| valuable thing to keep on one's radar.
| creato wrote:
| What are you actually referring to? In my experience, it
| takes a pretty serious mistake to get charged a fine (it's
| never happened to me despite mistakes). The IRS just charges
| (fairly reasonable) interest if a mistake results in
| underpayment. And IIRC, they pay interest to you when you
| overpay too.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Much of my experience may have been shaped by my
| experiences with Chicago. I vividly remember how painful it
| was to have to call them up every month in order to pay
| them. It was 2016, and I forget exactly what the reason
| was. But autopay was somehow sufficiently painful to set up
| that the path of least resistance was to set a reminder in
| my phone of "Pay taxes to city" and deal with sitting on
| hold.
|
| If it sounds unbelievable, I don't blame you at all. I
| wouldn't have believed it myself until seeing just how
| Kafkaesque "dealing with the government" can be. Especially
| when penalties are involved.
|
| For the rest of my family, it's a little awkward to find
| out. It's mostly on my wife's side; my father was always
| very fastidious about taxes, as most families of most HN
| readers probably are. I only wanted to point out that
| there's a large number of people where this isn't true.
|
| I'll try to dig up direct answers for you. Thankfully most
| of this pain has been not-mine for many years now.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Isn't the free file system simply asking e-file companies to
| offer a free program to qualifying customers? I thought that
| the IRS didn't actually run their own filling system/website
| for citizens.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Yes, here's the list ->
| https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/
|
| However, those options aren't advertised and these companies
| like to do "Free" but then upgrade you as you fill out
| options.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I was not allowed to use the free file because I made >70k if I
| recall correctly. It seems really stupid and arbitrary to not
| allow people above a certain income to access software that
| helps them fill out govt. forms. Only lower income people
| deserve help filling out their taxes??! Bizarre.
| manholio wrote:
| > Bizarre
|
| Follow the lobby money.
| smordistan wrote:
| The middle class actually has something to lose by not filing
| correctly.
| thebean11 wrote:
| What's your point though? Does the free file system not
| work correctly or something?
| smordistan wrote:
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Not just TurboTax, H&R Block does this shit as well.
|
| "File your taxes free! Oh, you have to file an HSA contribution?
| Sorry, you'll have to buy H&R Block DELUXE ($79.99) to do that!"
|
| Kinda feels like blackmail, really. If I _don 't_ file my HSA
| contribution I'm technically committing fraud, right?
| zaphod12 wrote:
| Not sure why you're including the word 'technically,' in there
| - you are clearly and definitely committing tax fraud if you
| knowingly fail to include all of your financial information.
| bombcar wrote:
| You could do it the hard way by doing the taxes in the app,
| printing it out, and then modifying the forms as necessary.
|
| But the companies know exactly how much to charge you so you
| avoid the hassle; though I won't shell out for state e-filing
| when I can print and mail.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > If I don't file my HSA contribution I'm technically
| committing fraud, right?
|
| The IRS will send you a corrected tax return, you sign it and
| mail them a check and you'll hear nothing from them again.
| Maybe you didn't get the form, or didn't understand the
| software, etc, etc. There are lots of honest ways to screw up
| your taxes. The IRS isn't going to assume fraud unless you
| refuse to pay them when they point it out.
|
| I've screwed up my taxes a lot of times. Not maliciously, but
| not having all of my forms, I've had clients report paying me a
| different amount than they told the IRS, forgot stock trades I
| made, etc. Every time, they've sent a letter asking to pay a
| balance, plus maybe a small fee, and all is good.
| pkulak wrote:
| I wonder if this is a backdoor into having the IRS mail you
| your completed form to sign and send back, like many other
| countries do. Just file a 1040-EZ every year with only your
| personal details and everything else zeroed out, and then
| look over what comes back in 6 months. :D
| notch656a wrote:
| The fact that our government doesn't have the collective
| intelligence to just mail the tax bill using the information it
| already knows, with the option for the recipient to submit
| corrections/deductions, is a testament to the utter failure of
| governance in the US. Fortunately having an ineffective
| government can often be a feature instead of a bug.
| bombcar wrote:
| The IRS wants to do it, they already have all the software
| internally to do it, they're legally barred from doing it.
|
| It's nuts. Intuit isn't worth that much.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| My understanding is that most Western European get what
| amounts to a "final bill" for the previous year sometime
| early on each year. It shows what you owe. If you don't want
| to contest it, you just pay it and you're done.
|
| The fact that our government has made such a process for
| fulfilling a legal obligation speaks volumes about the mafia-
| like nature of our federal government.
|
| I pay lots of property tax where I live. But its just a bill.
| I can and sometimes do dispute the amount owed. But imagine
| if each year instead of that process I had to hire an
| independent team to determine what I owe, make a case for
| that, then submit that to my local tax authority. That's
| basically what the IRS does with individuals.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Blame Intuit for that one too. They're the ones that have spent
| millions to lobby to keep it this way.
| dudul wrote:
| Or blame the people who take the money and bend over in front
| of lobbies.
| parineum wrote:
| You're dangerously closing to blaming voters for electing
| these people. I don't want it to be my fault...
| tomrod wrote:
| > Fortunately having an ineffective government can often be a
| feature instead of a bug.
|
| Not in a free society. An ineffective government is a
| conspicuous drain.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here.
| They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more
| than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them
| less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the
| difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood
| of winning)
| cmelbye wrote:
| If you are audited by the IRS and they find that you
| overpaid, they will issue a refund. It's not a one-way
| street.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| you can also claim refunds for years back; like an audit
| this is a 2-way street as well.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| It isn't equal however. If you underpay, the IRS has
| seven years to get the money. If you overpay, you have
| three. (Simplified of course)
| ryanianian wrote:
| Does the IRS start an audit if they suspect you massively
| overpaid? They certainly do if you massively underpay.
| _jal wrote:
| Not an audit, but they corrected a mistake I made in my
| favor once. It was a trivial amount, like $30 or
| something, but they sent me a little packet explaining
| what they did, why, and a check.
| antsar wrote:
| Sure. But why in the world would they audit you if you
| overpaid?
| function_seven wrote:
| Whatever indicators they use to select audit recipients
| may _correlate_ with under-payers, but it 's not a
| guarantee. I'm sure there's some fraction of those they
| audit that turn out to have paid too much.
| smitop wrote:
| They have some data on this (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
| pdf/p55b.pdf, pages 33-35). Out of 509,917 examinations,
| 18,988 resulted in a refund. There was $7.0 billion of
| tax refunded in 2020. For comparison, there was $17.2
| billion of additional tax generated with additional
| recommended and unagreed amounts.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this is not how taxes work with the IRS. If you make a
| calculation error in their favour they will correct it and
| issue you a refund. If you make a compilation error in their
| favour and get reviewed or audited, you will get a refund.
| They also audit based more on discrepencies vs. "likelihood
| of a big payout".
|
| If they precalculated your taxes and sent you a bill (or
| refund) it would (a) be easier, (b) be more accurate and (c)
| encourage simplification of the entire system. I consider
| that both more effective and more fair.
| jtc331 wrote:
| You're missing the point. The point is that the IRS isn't
| aware of a good amount of income (trivial example is tips)
| unless you tell them about it.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Also income from illegal activity is taxed like any
| other. If you get caught for doing illegal things and not
| reporting it on your tax bill, you're in trouble for that
| too. Harder to prove you're stiffing the IRS when you pay
| the bill they send you.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org, an
| open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes.
|
| Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax
| filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and
| California is under development!
| freedomben wrote:
| That's really neat and I'm glad you're doing it. That said I
| worked on tax software once and the amount of changes each year
| are huge and often require expert analysis. Sometimes they get
| dropped on you with very little notice.
|
| How does the project plan to keep up with that? Will it require
| volunteers?
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Absolutely, yeah the project has a loose group of contributor
| volunteers but longer term we would probably have to have a
| larger, more formal structure.
|
| Right now, we're focusing on tooling to make onboarding new
| tax forms simpler and require a lower threshold of project
| understanding to allow a larger, less technical group of
| people to contribute
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Very cool. Will give it a look, I am about to start my taxes.
|
| Last year I used http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/
|
| It did the job, mostly, but had some quirks and didn't quite
| get everything right with the rounding when I set it to use
| whole dollar amounts, so I had to correct a few totals that
| ended up being $1 off, which was annoying. Probably won't use
| that one again.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Is there a CLA? If so, does anything prevent the rights
| holder(s) from closing the project and pivoting it towards a
| for-profit business?
|
| I'd like to contribute, but don't feel like building someone's
| business for free.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| The project has an AGPL license if that's what you're
| wondering. We figured many people would feel the same way
| candiddevmike wrote:
| This is an interesting situation for FOSS licenses. AGPL
| doesn't necessarily prohibit commercial behavior. I think
| if all the maintainers truly wanted to prevent anyone from
| commercializing it, you'd go with a source available
| license like BSL or creative commons.
|
| It's interesting because having a group of disparate humans
| come together and say "yea, we hate the current thing,
| let's build something better and not commercialize it"
| doesn't typically happen. Kudos to you folks!
| xbar wrote:
| Your work is needed.
| myroon5 wrote:
| How are states prioritized? Population and complexity? Or
| personal priorities of contributors?
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Currently, it's states that contributors live in because our
| resources are limited
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Fortunately, state tax returns (in my experience) are
| pretty straightforward to do by hand once the Federal
| return is done. I'm sure some states are more complicated
| than others, that might be the prioritization to use if
| more resources become available.
| sitkack wrote:
| Seems like one could setup an org/corp and get funding from
| those states to implement tax filing code.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Yeah, we have been considering setting up a nonprofit
| org. I'm not sure if we have the scale to justify it yet,
| but it's sort of an open question.
| EnderWT wrote:
| Many states already have ways to file online for free.
| For example, Illinois: https://www2.illinois.gov/rev/prog
| rams/mytax/Pages/il-1040.a...
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Definitely true. The goal is to unify the filing so that
| the user doesn't have to refill in their information for
| separate state and federal tax application websites.
| paxys wrote:
| This is fantastic. I'm curious if you have any tax lawyers or
| accountants involved with this effort. Doing some amount of pro
| bono work is standard in the legal profession, and I can't
| think of too many services that would be more impactful to the
| average American than this one.
| dataflow wrote:
| This sounds awesome. How does the user handle the actual
| filing? I assume you don't have any way to provide e-filing, so
| would people have to print this out and mail it?
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Yeah, currently the user would print out the PDF generated by
| the site and mail it in to the IRS. E-filing is on the
| roadmap, but registering as an E-file provider is a pretty
| complex process. One of the options we were thinking about is
| scraping and automatically filling in fields on the free
| fillable forms site https://www.irs.gov/e-file-
| providers/free-file-fillable-form...
| dataflow wrote:
| Cool! Autofilling those forms sounds like an _awesome_
| thing if you can manage it! Best of luck! And thanks for
| doing this!
| freedomben wrote:
| I worked on designing and implementing e-file a few years
| back for a startup. Happy to answer any questions or give
| any advice if y'all want it
| tormock wrote:
| Doesn't H&R block do that too?
|
| And they try to trick you at every step to "upgrade" to the paid
| version...
| ModernMech wrote:
| Intuit was begging to be sued though. Literally the only word
| in the ads is "free", and they say it like 100 times to
| emphasize just how free it is. And _of course_ it 's not free
| at all. It can't get any easier than this.
| josephd79 wrote:
| Government: You must provide a free way for those that qualify.
|
| Intuit: OK.
|
| Intuits exec to its employees: Make this free system, but hide it
| from the public. Provide links that are broken, make sure it
| doesn't show up on search indexes.
|
| Scott Cook and all those involved should have all of their assets
| seized. About as slimy as you can get as a person. Made billions
| off of scamming United States citizens.
| sofixa wrote:
| As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American
| things that really don't make any sense after spending more than
| a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things
| to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being
| hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the
| government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it
| doesn't really make sense either.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842175
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how
| much money you give the government
|
| Wouldn't it be the opposite? Having a complicated tax system
| makes it _harder_ to find out how much you 're paying. If
| things were simpler it would be much more apparent.
| sitharus wrote:
| As a non-American who's not self-employed or a business owner
| I get a monthly payslip with my gross pay and the tax
| deduction. I see that every month, I know exactly how much I
| pay the government. All my investments also have tax deducted
| by the provider as well, when applicable.
|
| I never have to think about calculating or filing tax, but I
| always see it and know exactly how much it is.
| caymanjim wrote:
| This is also the case for most Americans, but we're still
| expected to file every year. For most people, it's
| verifying what the government already knows. Filing a
| 1040-EZ with no itemization should be unnecessary.
| arebop wrote:
| The exact amount doesn't matter for this, all that matters is
| that you vote against taxes. It is sufficient that you
| suspect you may owe some amount and realize that you are
| required to figure it out. If it's hard to figure out, that
| serves the purpose of those who want you to associate
| negative emotions with taxes so that you'll vote against
| taxes.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| That sounds like an incentive to vote against _complexity_
| , not against taxes. Paying a larger _amount_ doesn 't make
| the calculation any harder to figure out, nor does paying a
| lesser amount make it easier.
| nickff wrote:
| As a counter-example, sales taxes (and VATs) are very simple,
| yet almost nobody knows how much they're paying.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Europe VAT is a line item on every invoice. And
| apparently in the US you have to do some mental gymnastics
| to manually add sales tax to the listed price to figure out
| how much to pay in the first place.
|
| Of course most people have no idea how much VAT they pay
| for Amazon purchases in a year, but that's mostly a product
| of them not knowing how much they spend on Amazon in a
| year. If they know the latter, the former is trivial to
| figure out.
| drdec wrote:
| FYI, in the US, depending on the jurisdiction, some items
| are exempt from sales tax. E.g. necessities like food and
| clothing. In my jurisdiction, clothing is taxed by the
| county but not by the state.
|
| Which is a long way of saying that even if you knew the
| total you spent at Amazon, you wouldn't be able to derive
| the total amount of sales tax paid.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > apparently in the US you have to do some mental
| gymnastics to manually add sales tax to the listed price
| to figure out how much to pay in the first place
|
| FWIW, usually in the US it's just a line item on the
| receipt or checkout screen.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| In the US, it's still a line item on your receipt. Most
| places don't include sales tax on the shelf tag or price
| sticker due to complexity. You can have state,
| county/area, and/or city taxes that apply. In NYC, for
| instance, we have a 4% NY State sales tax, a 4.5% NYC
| sales tax, and a 0.375% NYC metro area sales tax,
| totaling 8.875%. Clothes aren't taxed in the metro area
| sales tax so are 8.5% unless they're under $110 and then
| they're exempt. Most food is exempt except prepared food.
| Then there's the issue of fractions of a cent as the
| sales tax is calculated on the total bill not each item
| individually. There's also the fact that taxes change now
| and then... they adjust what food it applies to or what
| the cutoff is for clothes, etc. Some organizations have a
| sales tax exemption certificate (if they are a business
| planning to resell for instance) and that must also be
| taken into account.
|
| Due to complexity, all larger stores with multiple
| geographic locations would never have separate pricing
| signage for every single store, so they don't. Other
| stores do the same. It's all calculated at the register
| as things are scanned in the computer.
| [deleted]
| rurp wrote:
| I've heard a slightly different version of that rational, which
| I think is more more plausible but cynical. Tax collection is
| deliberately painful to justify cutting IRS funding and passing
| tax cuts (mostly for the very wealthy). It doesn't really make
| a lot of sense rationally, but might be effective as a
| manipulation tactic.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good
| because it reminds you how much money you give the government,
| so you are more attentive how it's spent
|
| The argument I've heard is that so righteous indignation over
| the "staggeringly high" taxes "stolen from the hardworking
| American people" or whatever. This is one of the same arguments
| as to why sales taxes shouldn't be included in the shelf price
| of an item or service.
|
| Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes
| regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file. ( _Paying_
| taxes is straightforward; the vast majority of us have it done
| for us from our paychecks every interval.) And where I live,
| public votes to raise the sales tax for various projects, often
| public transit, rarely if ever fail.
|
| It seems to me just to be an excuse to not actually deal with
| our busted as hell tax collection system because that system
| benefits people who themselves have an excuse to rile people up
| about taxes.
| nickff wrote:
| I think there is room for a reasonable agreement which could
| result in a simplified filing system, without making it
| opaque. My modest proposal would be that each voter's
| registration card (or equivalent voting voucher) be attached
| to a statement showing all the taxes they've paid since the
| last election, and where they went, along with some
| information on how many taxpayers there are, and the amount
| and percentage of income and payroll taxes paid by income
| decile.
|
| I think this would provide the transparency that
| conservatives want, along with the simplicity that liberals
| want. My only concern is that the data would be fudged, like
| the social security "statements" are.
| paulmd wrote:
| > The argument I've heard is that ...
|
| > Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes
| regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file.
|
| "that can't possibly be a fair representation of that
| ideologue's position, there's huge gaps in the logic!"
|
| look, positions way out on the fringes don't have to make
| coherent sense to the rest of us. PETA runs kill-shelters
| that euthanize millions of animals every year, sometimes
| multiples of other kill shelters. It makes sense to them,
| they have their own logic why that's good.
|
| Making Americans hate every aspect of taxes - the amount,
| having to spend a couple quality hours with a tax program
| every year, getting sales tax rolled on top of advertised
| prices, everything - is the goal here. Just make taxes suck
| so that people hate them. Because then people will oppose
| taxation.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Thank Grover Norquist for that. Arguably he has had far more
| effect on this than the pittance Intuit has spent buying
| politicians.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| I hate TurboTax with a passion. At this point, the only benefit I
| see from it is the fact that because my taxes are boring, I just
| update the information from the last return. Which is something
| the IRS could do EASILY. Because of all the 'tax freedom' which
| has been lobbied in America, I now have to pay a private
| corporation, navigate countless dark patterns to make sure I
| don't accidentally sign up for Super AuDiTProTec(tm) at every
| step of the way (God forbid I sell stock or do something soo
| complicated), to do something the federal government is more than
| competent to do on their own.
|
| Every piece of news in which Intuit gets slapped is good news to
| me. I just hope legislators start doing their jobs at some point
| and spare the taxpayer of this bullshit.
| [deleted]
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion over here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884
| Melatonic wrote:
| Credit Karma had a free tax filing application as of last year
| but as they were purchased by Intuit who knows what is happening
| with that....
| tengkahwee wrote:
| It's now Cash App Tax here https://cash.app/taxes as part of
| the acquisition agreement.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| A well deserved twist of the knife to do this right before the
| tax rush.
| munk-a wrote:
| And it couldn't have happened to a nicer company. These guys
| have been begging for some false advertising prosecution for a
| while.
| JRKrause wrote:
| I manually filed a revision to a previous tax year in which I had
| accidentally double-payed state taxes on a schedule K-2
| disbursement two years back. Without any background in this I was
| able to follow the IRS and state-gov websites to get everything
| together and ultimately received my check for the difference
| (many thousands of dollars). All without paying a dollar.
| kaitai wrote:
| I manually filed taxes on paper (federal) last year and they
| still have not been processed. Got a letter that the IRS is
| sitting on my 5-figure tax payment but haven't gone through the
| 1040 yet.
|
| There is an institutional (mainly Republican) commitment to
| strangling the IRS here in the US. Filing taxes should be free
| and easy.
| cranekam wrote:
| > Filing taxes should be free and easy.
|
| Or, ideally, not needed at all. In the UK having an average
| financial situation like a job (one that doesn't pay
| megabucks, anyway), a pension, a tax-efficient savings
| account and a student doesn't require any filing at all.
| Everything happens through payroll. If you do earn a lot or
| have other things that trigger the need to file it's free and
| not overly onerous -- certainly within the grasp of a mere
| mortal.
|
| (And before someone chimes in with "how do you know the
| government gets the figures right?!": because the tax code,
| or at least the parts that face most people, is
| straightforward and most people have a bog-standard default
| configuration that is easy to verify.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Same in Finland.
|
| They get my income, loans for future capital gain
| deductions, have calculated in the basic deductions and so
| on.
|
| I wanted some extra deductions this year, so I simply went
| and inserted those on their own web site with simple boxes
| to fill. Even before the tax season. No problems...
|
| It is great when the tax agency isn't actually adversarial,
| but instead ready to help and even work with you if you are
| having troubles.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| And of course they won't be paying interest on a delayed
| refund, but they definitely want interest if you are slow in
| paying _them_.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you're gonna be mad at the IRS, at least be mad about
| something real.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/select/what-to-do-with-late-tax-
| return-...
|
| > A long-standing law requires the IRS to pay interest to
| those who received their tax refunds late -- notably 45
| days after the typical filing date of April 15. Just as
| taxpayers must pay interest on any outstanding obligations
| they owe to the IRS, the rule works both ways if the IRS is
| late on the money they owe back.
|
| They pay 3% interest currently, which is pretty nice.
| aclindsa wrote:
| I recently started an open-source tax solver, partly because I'm
| not a huge fan of Intuit: https://github.com/habutax/habutax
|
| It isn't perfect since its a young project, but I've attempted to
| simplify and modularize the process of creating/maintaining forms
| to allow for that part to be crowd-sourced as much as possible
| (and I'd love your help!).
| markc wrote:
| I was 80% done with my taxes this year when TT suddenly demanded
| an additional $119 to list deductible expenses on income. That's
| on top of $140 to file Federal plus 1 state. I've been using TT
| for 20 years. Never again.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I'm not confident in my ability to get my taxes right (mostly
| due to my wife and I having owned small businesses plus my day
| job's stock awards and ESPP), so I've paid a local CPA to do
| our taxes for years now. He always did an incredible job, was
| happy to answer my questions for me (tax-related or not),
| helped us refi our house at an amazing price, and so on. His
| fees were something on the order of $400 or maybe even as high
| as $600 some years. But [a] I knew he always had our back, [b]
| his services partially or entirely paid for themselves in
| savings I probably wouldn't have caught, and [c] I was paying
| an individual who earned his keep as compared to a company like
| Intuit.
| vuln wrote:
| Hiring a CPA was one of the best decisions I have made in my
| entire adult life.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I mean, I agree. Especially in the US. I was forced to hire
| a CPA because of some complicated international stuff.
| Until then I filed it myself. I have used TaxAct and Credit
| Karma taxes (which is now Cash app tax). TaxAct is cheap
| and fully functional. Credit Karma was also
| straightforward, easy to use and accurate.
|
| CPA can also be useful beyond just tax filing. My CPA does
| a half year evaluation to see if I'd owe any additional tax
| and plan accordingly. They also makes sure I get all the
| deductions I can.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| My experience with CPAs has been poor. "I dunno, just put
| what you think is right" is how the last person I paid told
| me to handle a mismatch between my wife's actually grant
| payments and her 1098-T.
| junar wrote:
| 1098-T forms are notoriously unreliable. Schools will
| often misclassify or omit scholarships and payments. And
| you might have additional educational expenses like books
| that aren't listed in the first place. It doesn't excuse
| your experience, though; that tax preparer should have
| made a better effort to understand the figures.
|
| Out of curiosity, was the tax preparer actually a
| licensed CPA, or just someone with no professional
| credentials? If they were a CPA, did they prepare
| individual tax returns regularly or only as a side job?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > 1098-T forms are notoriously unreliable. Schools will
| often misclassify or omit scholarships and payments. And
| you might have additional educational expenses like books
| that aren't listed in the first place.
|
| Worse, virtually all of the 1098-T guidance exists for
| undergrads. The problems with the form are entirely
| different for graduate students and basically nobody can
| help.
|
| > Out of curiosity, was the tax preparer actually a
| licensed CPA, or just someone with no professional
| credentials? If they were a CPA, did they prepare
| individual tax returns regularly or only as a side job?
|
| It's been a bunch of years so I don't know for certain,
| but they weren't just a desk worker at H&R Block. Tax
| preparation was their primary job.
| pkulak wrote:
| I could probably do my taxes with a 1040-EZ most years, but I
| still pay a local CPA $300 to do it for me. I'm just happier
| without $300 but with taxes done.
| zentiggr wrote:
| Your situation sounds like one that a CPA would be perfect
| for - especially with business taxes involved.
|
| Our household has just the basic salaries / expenses / 401k /
| IRAs. THe year I received some temporary additional benefits,
| Intuit decided that I had to pay premium in order to enter
| that single additional 1099.
|
| I left, found a much simpler, straightforward service with
| which I filed legitimately free, and have never looked back.
|
| Plus, I've read about Intuit's history with the whole market,
| and I will never willingly give them a damn cent.
| rurp wrote:
| > I left, found a much simpler, straightforward service
| with which I filed legitimately free, and have never looked
| back.
|
| Which service is that? I haven't filed my taxes this year
| and am willing to spend some time switching to an app
| that's less scummy than Intuit's offerings.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's not like an honest mistake is the end of the world. I've
| made tax mistakes. You get a letter from the IRS, with the
| amount you owe or are due back, and you settle up. There are
| no draconian penalties or full audits unless they suspect
| intentional fraud.
| bombcar wrote:
| The IRS will even send you "you screwed up and paid us too
| much, you forgot X" letters at times.
|
| What they can't do for you is know about deductions
| sometimes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I was once on an IRS payment plan, and a) the interest rate
| was remarkably low and b) the folks I talked to when I
| needed to adjust it were the nicest customer service reps I
| think I've ever encountered.
| rurp wrote:
| Yep, that has been my experience. I got pretty freaked out
| once when I received a large packet from the IRS in the
| mail. Turns out I forgot to report a stock sale and just
| owed them a few hundred bucks. The only penalty was having
| to pay interest on the amount at a rate that was a little
| high but not egregious.
| kstrauser wrote:
| They're usually shockingly pleasant to deal with, too.
| Having owned a couple of small businesses over the years,
| our taxes can get complex. There were a couple of times
| where the IRS had questions about our filed returns, and
| the clerks we dealt with have always been genuinely nice,
| helpful to work with, and authorized to exercise decent
| human judgment.
|
| Them: It says here you spent $X on healthcare expenses.
|
| Me: I've got 4 kids. I always hit my deductible.
|
| Them, literally laughing: Yeah, kids are expensive. OK,
| moving on...
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| taxact.com did the same trick. Raised prices for a few
| consecutive years for no apparent reason.
|
| They have your previous filings so switching to another
| provider can be a pain since you need to know last year income
| when submitting your filing. I always make sure to at least
| download the PDF's.
|
| As a consumer we're always free to vote with our wallet and
| I've been happy with freetaxusa so far but I'm also waiting for
| the "rate hike" to come...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840861
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