[HN Gopher] FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax "free" fi...
___________________________________________________________________
FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax "free" filing campaign
Author : Kesseki
Score : 1490 points
Date : 2022-03-29 17:53 UTC (1 days 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
| msie wrote:
| And I just read this story about gun-tracing:
| https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-ma...
|
| Lobbyists have way too much power.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| At some point the tax system will be so painful that filing
| your taxes manually will be considered to be as severe as
| physical assault.
| abledon wrote:
| haha, have it done all automatically in SimpleTax, then
| download the PDFs, run a custom character-to-messy-
| handwriting transformer on all filled fields, then print
| out the paper forms and mail them in
| 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.
| stainforth wrote:
| Your counter to is that the politicians in a different
| country with an entirely different governmental evolution
| didn't arrive at the same thing?
| 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.
| anamax wrote:
| Yup, every major newspaper and TV/Cable network is a
| corporation.
|
| If the NYT can push candidates, why not Sears?
| lokar wrote:
| Sears is free to say what they want on their website or
| distribute leaflets. That's not the same thing as
| donating cash.
| anamax wrote:
| The "work product" of CU was their movie.
|
| Is it okay with you if a corporation donates money to
| Roger Moore to support the production of a documentary
| that said corporation agrees with?
|
| Does it depend on whether said documentary advocates
| for/against a candidate?
|
| How do we define "advocate"? (Is saying "Fred took money
| from Mexican drug lords" advocacy?)
| 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
| savanaly wrote:
| Every time I see this issue brought up I think about how if
| you sum up all the money spent every year on US politics,
| including personal donations, industry lobbying, and the
| budgets of think tanks, you get a noticeably smaller number
| than the amount of money spent every year on almonds. [0]
| It always makes me question if the lobbying is really the
| cause of the tax system being the way it is. Or is the
| money just to grease the wheels and slightly alter the
| course of whatever was going to happen anyways due to a
| multitude of complicated factors?
|
| [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-
| money-in...
| 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.
| autoexec wrote:
| American politicians can be bought off very cheaply by
| corporations, but the minute people try to crowd-fund
| bribes to get actual representation in government
| corporations will just start to offer more. Some
| companies and industries have more wealth than entire
| nations at their disposal. If it comes down to a bidding
| war between you and Google you will lose. If paying out a
| little more to congressmen will keep an industry making
| even greater profits they'll do it.
|
| The only real fix is actual accountability for lawmakers.
| It means massive amounts of oversight to catch those who
| accept bribes in any forms (including "campaign
| contributions") and it means making it simple for the
| people to vote out anyone who refuses to represent their
| interests.
|
| Right now, bribery is effectively legal, there is zero
| accountability and between the two party system,
| gerrymandering, and voter suppression even if you manage
| to get someone out of office you're probably not going to
| like the person you're forced to vote in to replace them.
| We're a very long way from fixing the problem and all of
| the people in power have zero incentive to start getting
| us there because they profit off the system being broken.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| A neat solution is actually public campaign financing. We
| currently say that you can give $3 towards public
| financing on your tax return when you file - why not make
| that $100?
|
| Collectively, people have a lot more money than
| corporations do - the trouble is organization. But
| basically flooding the system with so much money that
| corporate bribery becomes insignificant is the other
| option to banning it
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's too late. Citizens United means corporations and the
| ueber-wealthy can do whatever they want. McCain-Feingold
| represented actual progress in this area, and it's gone
| now. We are going to witness heavy fascism in the US, and
| I wish I knew what to do about it. Other than somehow
| prevent Peter Thiel from escaping to New Zealand, since
| it's partially his fault and he should have to reap what
| he sowed.
|
| (Tangentially, Feingold was one of the smartest people in
| the Senate. Wisconsin voted him out in favor of Johnson,
| one of the stupidest people in the Senate -- the only
| thing that keeps him from the top spot is just the
| fuckload of really dumb other Republican senators.)
| 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.
| calsy wrote:
| So how does someone remain elected if they don't listen
| to their constituents?
| thebigman433 wrote:
| Generally by massively outspending opponents in the
| primary.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| No, this is just the cynic HN perspective and an excuse
| to do nothing about it.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| I dont think its cynical at all, as someone who has done
| some work for political campaigns, follows them closely,
| and studies them. Incumbents keep power within their own
| party by generally massively outspending their primary
| opponents, making it extremely rare for them to lose in
| the primary. The only real exceptions to this recently
| have been Dem stronghold incumbents losing to
| progressives.
|
| After that, its just whether or not the incumbent can
| defend against the opposition party in the general
| election. Primaries are generally where the biggest
| changes are made, and are also where its the hardest to
| oust the incumbent.
|
| Its not cynical, nor an excuse.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If true, then we need to convince those people to
| complain about this. And of course, we may actually be
| some of those people.
| revscat wrote:
| CU will never be peacefully repealed.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _peacefully_
|
| Well, corporations are people, people have the right to
| bear arms, and the country was founded on the idea that if
| you really really don't like your government, violence is
| an appropriate response to change it. Of course the
| Constitution pulled the ladder up behind the founding
| fathers on that bit of political philosophy, but in recent
| years I've heard some rhetoric citing the Declaration as
| inspiration for the path they should take now. Corporate
| personhood adds an interesting twist to things, especially
| considering that Alphabet or Apple could secede and have a
| larger GDP than many countries. Alphabet might quickly get
| labelled a hostile foreign power for all their spying.
| Apple might start a trade war with their extortionate
| tariffs but we'd still probably have reasonable diplomatic
| relations with them.
|
| Maybe 200+ years with only one major civil war is a good
| record under these conditions, and maybe the next one will
| have official corporate sponsors.
| toast0 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.
|
| I'm not a fan of Trump, but the Trump tax changes made it so it
| doesn't make sense for me to do itemized deductions, because I
| won't beat the standard deduction unless I have a lot more
| things to deduct than I normally do, which greatly simplifies
| my tax filing and record keeping. Since I know I won't be
| deducting donations, I don't need a receipt when donating them,
| and that saves paperwork.
| 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...
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Does this system pre-populate the forms with everything
| the IRS already knows about me and then I just modify the
| things that are incorrect? Can people upload their tax
| documents from all the financial institutions in some
| standard format that automatically figures out what form
| to use and populates maybe 95% of the fields and marks
| the empty required fields with yellow? I ask because I
| have an id.me/IRS login and they do not appear to have
| this data until I give it to them.
|
| This is the system I am looking for. I think it would
| make the lives of the IRS employees better and would save
| me time and money.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| UK has PAYG tax, Australia is similar, if you have a job,
| perhaps some shares it is zero work. No max salary to worry
| about.
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| The saga continues:
|
| _Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122
| comments)
|
| _Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H &R Block and
| Intuit Lobby Against It (2017)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18
| comments)
|
| _Killing TurboTax_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330584 - March 2021 (662
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: ustaxes.org - open-source tax filing webapp_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138446 - Feb 2021 (219
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26102695 - Feb 2021 (306
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax's 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes
| for Free (2019)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26060414
| - Feb 2021 (199 comments)
|
| _FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24409093 - Sept 2020 (194
| comments)
|
| _IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete
| with TurboTax_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923220 -
| Dec 2019 (448 comments)
|
| _IRS Tried to Hide Emails That Show Tax Industry Influence over
| Free File Program_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21393758 - Oct 2019 (188
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax's 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes
| for Free_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281411 - Oct
| 2019 (447 comments)
|
| _TurboTax to charge more lower-income customers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461169 - July 2019 (81
| comments)
|
| _Congress Scraps Provision to Restrict IRS from Competing with
| TurboTax_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119916 - June
| 2019 (18 comments)
|
| _TurboTax Uses a "Military Discount" to Trick Troops into Paying
| to File Taxes_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994118 -
| May 2019 (42 comments)
|
| _Listen to TurboTax Lie to Get Out of Refunding Overcharged
| Customers_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19870242 - May
| 2019 (44 comments)
|
| _TurboTax and H &R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810981 - May 2019 (143
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 - April 2019 (262
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File
| Your Taxes_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19718284 -
| April 2019 (274 comments)
|
| _Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free
| Online Tax Filing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725 - April 2019 (696
| comments)
|
| _How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
| (2013)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19392673 - March
| 2019 (253 comments)
|
| _H &R Block and Intuit Lobby Against Free and Simple Tax Filing
| (2017)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18956883 - Jan
| 2019 (190 comments)
|
| _Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17751383 - Aug 2018 (424
| comments)
|
| _Why I 'm boycotting TurboTax this year_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844458 - April 2018 (23
| comments)
|
| _H &R Block and Intuit Lobbying Against Simpler Tax Filing
| (2017)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449 - April
| 2018 (232 comments)
|
| _H &R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling
| Free and Easy_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13922482 -
| March 2017 (234 comments)
|
| _How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
| (2013)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13853150 - March
| 2017 (439 comments)
|
| _TurboTax Takes Aim at Smaller Rival in Fight for Filers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11150694 - Feb 2016 (87
| comments)
|
| _Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9381437 - April 2015 (150
| comments)
|
| _Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9380232 - April 2015 (124
| comments)
|
| _Filing taxes: It shouldn 't be so hard_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5488084 - April 2013 (56
| comments)
|
| _How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 - March 2013 (330
| comments)
| isolli wrote:
| In Europe (in most countries as far as I can tell), electronic
| filing is administered by the government, and it's easy to use
| (often prefilled for simple situations). As mentioned in the
| article, in the US, electronic filing is offered for free only to
| taxpayers below a certain income threshold, and the service is
| offered by private companies. They often pay themselves back with
| tax advances at usury rates. I can't help but think that it is
| another example of how the US tax system is beholden to private
| interests.
| anm89 wrote:
| I wouldn't say I usually get excited about something a federal
| regulator does but I'll make an exception for this one.
| gpm wrote:
| Docket for the case:
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63193711/federal-trade-...
|
| Dang - it might be nice to include this in the "Related" comment
| pinned to the top, it's just the "level up in the filesystem"
| above the courtlistener link you already have in it.
| 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...
| Arubis wrote:
| Good. Fuck them and their predatory business model.
|
| I know this is where we're supposed to decry the system of which
| this is symptomatic, and talk about campaign finance and such.
| And all that stuff is true, sure. But Intuit has been such a
| consistently abusive actor that they're normalizing regulatory
| capture, with enormous financial, time, stress, and legal
| repercussions for the entire population.
|
| Seriously, fuck them.
| 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.
| [deleted]
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Contact your congressperson and encourage others to do so
| too. Also contact their opponent in the upcoming election to
| make it a campaign issue.
| ngokevin wrote:
| I actually did pour blood and sweat to a campaign that did
| have this as one of their policies. I don't think this can
| be solved until lobbyist money and the Senate is fixed.
| Even if there's 90% support for an issue, politicians
| follow the money.
| 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.
| jaguar1878 wrote:
| As others have noted, the IRS doesn't know everything, and
| some things may be to your advantage to report to them.
| They could send you a bill and ask you to fix it, but many
| people wouldn't know where to look to find mistakes.
|
| For example: RSUs and NQSOs (employee stock grants) are in
| my experience handled extremely poorly by default. If I
| have RSUs vest when the stock is worth $10 a share, then I
| pay income tax that year based on income of ($10 x share-
| count). If I sell those shares later on, my brokerage
| reports to the IRS either: unknown basis value or $0 basis
| value. The correct basis value is $10 per share. There's a
| spot in the tax forms where you can tell the IRS that you
| have the corrected basis, but if you don't do this, you
| will pay extra tax, and it's an easy one to miss,
| especially if you're just importing the 1099-B.
|
| At tax time my brokerage does send me additional forms
| beyond the 1099-B that include the corrected basis values,
| so its not that they don't know the right value, they just
| don't give it to the IRS directly. I assume this is due to
| IRS/congress rules and not my brokerage being obnoxious.
| tombert wrote:
| > As others have noted, the IRS doesn't know everything,
| and some things may be to your advantage to report to
| them.
|
| Sure, and I'd be ok with giving people the option to deny
| the default return and file their own using Intuit or
| something. For people like me, who don't have the
| ambition to try and do anything clever with taxes, I'd be
| ok with the default return that they generate from all
| the information sent via my employer and banks.
| nimish wrote:
| This is how it works in a lot of other countries. You get
| a pre-filled return and can accept it or file on your
| own.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > They could send you a bill and ask you to fix it, but
| many people wouldn't know where to look to find mistakes.
|
| The overwhelming majority of people do not have
| complicated taxes. That is the exception and as others
| have pointed out, they could hire an accountant just like
| they do today.
|
| Having the IRS mail out your bill would eliminate the
| need for most people to purchase accounting software each
| year, which is exactly what Intuit doesn't want.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Wait, do brokerages report stock sales to the IRS?
| junar wrote:
| Yes, of course.
|
| > A broker or barter exchange must file Form 1099-B for
| each person: > For whom the broker has sold (including
| short sales) stocks, ... etc., for cash
|
| https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1099b
|
| To elaborate on the GP comment, the issue is not whether
| the brokerage reports, but how they do it. You generally
| compute capital gain income as (sale price) -
| (acquisition price). If you buy a stock on the market and
| sell it, brokers generally report both sale price and
| acquisition price to you and the IRS.
|
| But for employee stock compensation, the broker can
| report sale price without acquisition price to the IRS.
| If you don't report the acquisition price yourself, the
| IRS will think that it's 0, and assume your income is
| much higher than the real value.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I also have to deal with the cost basis issue every year,
| and it's the biggest headache in the entire process for
| me and my partner. I don't understand why the brokerage
| can't provide the correct basis directly -- it would lead
| to way fewer mistakes and more accurate returns.
| viraptor wrote:
| > They could send you a bill and ask you to fix it, but
| many people wouldn't know where to look to find mistakes.
|
| Then people in that situation can do it from scratch like
| they're already required to do now. This is really not an
| issue anywhere else - this change wouldn't make the
| process harder for anyone.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| How did the IRS learn about the stock sale?
| tombert wrote:
| I'm assuming that E*Trade sent them my consolidated tax
| form last year (that I forgot to enter in my tax
| software), but I don't know for sure.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I'm not mad about owing the money, but what annoys me is
| if they have enough information to know that I
| underreported,
|
| There's some chance that they didn't have enough
| information to know that until you filed. Maybe.
| 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The basic elements are not much busywork at all. For a
| person with only wage income, or maybe even a little
| interest & dividend income and perhaps one contracting
| payout, its pretty simple.
|
| The busywork comes mostly from the arcane and convoluted
| nature of US tax code, notably the parts that describe
| deductions and credits. US governments use such things as
| a way to implement policy, and the crap just piles up
| over time. Can you deduct X? How much of X can you
| deduct? Are you eligible for a credit? Or just part of a
| credit? Or none of it? etc. etc.
| 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.
| tombert wrote:
| You know, it didn't even occur to me to try that. I'll
| give it a go tomorrow.
| dominostars wrote:
| It's called a "first time abatement":
| https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
| employe...
|
| General penalty relief:
| https://www.irs.gov/payments/penalty-relief
|
| I just went through this for an honest mistake as well,
| though I didn't qualify for a first time abatement. It
| took months to get a response as well.
| mh- wrote:
| Prepare to wait on hold for hours, probably trying for
| multiple days. They are woefully behind.
|
| I believe your best chance is dialing in right when they
| open, before the call queues build up. Also the folks
| answering the calls are in a better mood then, and you're
| more likely to get the outcome you're looking for.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's too bad they're so far behind now. It used to be
| fairly painless to reach a human at the IRS, and they are
| usually pretty helpful. Kind of the opposite of what a
| lot of people expect.
| orwin wrote:
| Worked as a temp for the IRS equivalent in my country.
| The degree of understanding and professionalism was
| unexpected. We were just overworked, mostly because the
| systems were really not up to date and had a few
| directives that were a bit inhumane (first time asking
| for a delay=> ok in all cases, no explanation needed. 4th
| time=> NOK in all cases, expect interests.). For people
| who couldn't afford the taxes, we had really
| knowledgeable people taking a lot of time finding ways of
| rebating taxes, people who could make 10x working as
| taxes lawyers and making a better job at it than actual
| lawyer (in my skewed perspective, don't quote me on
| that).
| ecf wrote:
| > need to be part of this transaction at all
|
| Because Capitalism, in essence, is the optimization of one
| particular group's ability to alter how people live their
| lives in a way that transfers the most wealth from the
| working class.
|
| America's economy is a house of cards built around
| financial middlemen.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| I think you meant cronyism.
| imtringued wrote:
| Capitalism without cronyism isn't something people would
| recognize as capitalism.
|
| Americans would probably still decry it as socialism or
| communism even though it is very far away from those.
| eropple wrote:
| If you can find an example of the former that doesn't
| devolve in short order into the latter, I think you can
| "I think you meant" him.
|
| I have looked, and I am still waiting.
| naoqj wrote:
| 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.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Most other countries are comparable to US states rather
| than all of US. The US is incredibly diverse (in humans and
| govermental systems) in a lot of ways. So using one system
| is not easy as in other countries.
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if you toss in a 1099 or two taxes are still mostly
| straightforward. I've always had mine done but it's mostly
| only in the last ten years or so that they've gotten
| genuinely complicated.
| recursive wrote:
| One time I had a single 1099 form, and I screwed it up
| badly enough that it took months to resolve, and dozens
| of hours on my part. Someone who understood the process
| probably could have sorted it out in minutes.
| 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.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Do you mean the 1040ez, which was discontinued, & no longer
| a form?
|
| (I agree with the rest of your comment. While I disagree
| with the parent's perspective, I think the FTC's here is
| that Intuit's advertising leads people towards their not-
| free products, instead of the actually free stuff that does
| exist. I don't think most people have the self-confidence
| to do the 1040 by hand.)
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| You're correct, I did mean the 1040ez and was unaware of
| it's discontinuation.
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| TurboTax's dark patterns charge people $50, not $600. How
| exactly did she end up paying that much?
| somethingwitty1 wrote:
| Have you gone through TurboTax's filing process? It starts
| with ~$149 upgrade for me, I believe. They have countless
| add-ons that popup throughout the filing process beyond just
| that (annual audit defense membership, get your refund
| faster, etc). So many up-sells and cross-sells, it is pretty
| disgusting.
|
| I stopped using them last year because it was just too much.
| I can easily see how someone could end up with a multi-
| hundred dollar bill from them. Many of the popups are
| tailored to look like you need to say yes.
| redler wrote:
| So they're trying to completely fill the price shadow
| underneath the $500 or so a very basic "entry-level"
| accountant relationship would cost -- and fill it with a
| zero-marginal-cost roster of non-product products and non-
| service services. Terrible.
| masklinn wrote:
| It makes complete sense if you're utterly amoral, as long
| as you remain below "hire a cpa" threshold any money you
| can scam out is free profit.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Not sure, but I saw a screenshot of her return. (looking it
| up now) It was $539.
|
| The sad part: she didn't think anything of it, and thought
| that's how it was. The reason for the screenshot is because
| last year, her daughter's dad basically stole her child tax
| credit. So she was celebrating getting her return accepted
| before he could pull the same thing.
|
| For reference, her return was also five figures. I'm guessing
| these companies aim for a % of the total return. So perhaps a
| "$149" upgrade was $249 because of her return size. Like how
| online retailers bump up the price for goods based on zip
| code. I'm speculating though.
| peter303 wrote:
| Some tax preparers offer "immediate refund" for a hefty fee,
| instead waiting three weeks for the IRS to deposit it.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| It's more than that, tacks on even more for state. and every
| time you 'finish' a step it tries to upsell some stupid audit
| protection and also another one to get human involved. I
| somehow doubt 'audit protection' would even give you a
| certified cpa or attorney when the irs comes knocking for a
| real audit, it's probably some dumb small print
|
| I personally use it because my taxes are too complicated to
| do it myself on paper.
|
| I hope they are correct, I honestly do a good faith job but
| it's too complicated.... the pdf download for 2020 was 426
| pages... that includes state. and it will be even more next
| this year about to file my 21.
|
| way too complicated I only own a small s-corp (technically 2)
| and do some really small level investing with active trading.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Agreed, I've used turbotax in the past and never paid
| anywhere near that much. You could get a real accountant to
| do your taxes for less than that, maybe depending on the
| state. I know because I've done so.
| 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]
| guenthert wrote:
| Yeah, it's 'free' unless you are unemployed. I believe those tax
| fellows just think _differently_.
| tareqak wrote:
| FTC's own press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-
| events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...
| systematical wrote:
| I stopped using TurboTax after it told me I owed $20,000 to the
| District of Columbia. I went to an accountant and DC ended up
| owing me money. Clearly I entered something wrong in TurboTax,
| but the experience was enough for me to decide paying someone is
| worth the money and frankly saves me much time as it only takes
| me minutes to send my information by email and another few
| minutes to review the results and digitally sign.
|
| Most of my income is from W2 and some 1099 here and there. As
| others mentioned, America is backwards and the politicians and 1%
| keep fleecing it towards Romes fate.
|
| I love seeing those on the top get fleeced for a change,
| unfortunately this will just be a slap on the wrist.
| 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.
| MobileVet wrote:
| Not at all affiliated but Free Tax USA appears to be a great
| alternative. They have been around for quite a while, but I have
| only used them this year as it was the first I heard of them.
|
| Biggest downside is no import from brokerage, so if you trade a
| lot it could be annoying to create your schedule D.
|
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/
| jawshoeadan wrote:
| https://turbotaxsucksass.org/
| jawshoeadan wrote:
| Oh shit didn't even realize this " ntuit has elected not to
| renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program and will
| no longer be offering IRS Free File Program delivered by
| TurboTax" Go to hell intuit. https://freefile.intuit.com/
| 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That is a payday loan that has 100% AAA collateral at loan
| shark rates, on a system that you are trusting like your
| dentist to do the right thing. Nice.
| rudedogg wrote:
| I like how the content and actions/buttons are in the opposite
| order too.
| jader201 wrote:
| I guess? But I think it would also be weird to have the "Pay
| Now" button right below the content for "Pay with Refund"
| (and then the "Pay with Refund" button below that one).
|
| I mean, ideally the buttons would be immediately below the
| corresponding content.
|
| But if both buttons are going to be at the bottom, I can see
| arguments for either order.
| 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.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I think the objection is not that they're charging a fee,
| it's that the fee is $39. TurboTax (just the basic federal
| edition) is what, $30? And yes, this is essentially credit,
| extended for what, a month? So ($39/$30 * 12) is yearly rate
| of like 1,560% for that credit, aka., highway robbery --
| that, I think, is the parent's point.
|
| (I might be a bit off on the price, but not enough to change
| the result. TurboTax's loss if the debtor here "defaults"
| somehow is ... what, even?)
| perardi wrote:
| Yes, the highway robbery of it, that's my point. That is a
| _huge_ percentage of the base price of TurboTax, and it is
| in no way less convenient than paying with a credit card,
| and they hide that fee down in the blah blah text.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Plus they themselves have calculated that you're due a
| refund that will cover that cost already at this point, and
| they're going to directly pull their fees out of it...
| while not 100%, it's got to be pretty near the bottom in
| terms of risk. Especially if they still wait to pay you the
| balance until the refund is actually paid by the Treasury.
| toast0 wrote:
| There's a few risks they're taking still.
|
| a) that you have an outstanding tax bill, or other
| garnishment, and while you overpaid, you will not be
| receiving a refund, and they'll need to find you to make
| payment some other way.
|
| b) the return is fraudulent and they're going to have to
| pick up the pieces when the IRS figures it out and
| reverses the deposit. Plus, they didn't get paid.
|
| Is that $40 of risk? Eh, probably not, but it's
| something.
| pvarangot wrote:
| FreeTaxUSA charges 19.90 for that, so still 20 bucks cheaper
| than TurboTax
| lozenge wrote:
| It's not a good way to present the option. Should be a radio
| button "Pay with refund (fee: $39)"
| beej71 wrote:
| Here's what's worked for me in terms of not paying Intuit any
| money (as a W-2 and 1099 earner):
|
| If there's something you can't figure out, is risky, or a one-
| off, hire someone to do your taxes.
|
| Then use that as a template for subsequent years to do it
| yourself.
|
| Also, use the federal free fillable forms to e-file. They might
| be available for your state, as well.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Just do it by mail.
| beej71 wrote:
| It costs the taxpayers less money to file electronically. And
| it's less error-prone.
|
| But as long as Intuit isn't making any money, I'm fine with
| whatever.
| zw123456 wrote:
| A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic
| audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their
| computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered
| that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I
| had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross
| checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax
| deductions, my stock dividends so on and so on.
|
| Ok, so if they can do all that automatically for an "electronic
| audit" why am I filing a return, just run that thing and send it
| to me and I can file an exception if there is something on it I
| disagree with.
|
| I think the answer has already been identified in several other
| comments here, a heavy lobby effort on the part of Intuit, H&R
| and whoever else to keep it tricky and complex so you have to buy
| their B.S> software or services.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| This is literally how it works here in the Netherlands.
|
| Every year I get a reminder, log into an app with my government
| ID _, click "next" a few times while checking the numbers and
| submit. It literally takes 2 minutes if you don't have anything
| to adjust.
|
| _does the US have a thing like DigiD?
| masklinn wrote:
| > does the US have a thing like DigiD?
|
| Gods no, can you imagine the US having a national, universal,
| secure digital ID?
| neilfrndes wrote:
| This NPR planet money episode explains why tax filing is still
| the way it is:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank
| records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099_
|
| I assumed they did that automatically for everyone -- does that
| mean that if I "forget" to attach a 1099 then they IRS won't
| know unless they do this special "electronic audit"?
| dehrmann wrote:
| At some point this becomes a Fourth Amendment violation, so
| that might prevent the IRS from doing it.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I don't think that's actually how this works - most times
| when you get a 1099, the issuer is also required to file a
| copy with the IRS. As such - no bank account scanning
| required.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| That's what I thought, my SSN is on the 1099, so it should
| be trivial for the IRS to match them up. That's why I was
| surprised when he said that they only caught it during an
| audit.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I suspect the term "audit" is being used loosely here.
| One man's audit is another man's reconciliation - did
| they just send you a notice of deficiency?
| zw123456 wrote:
| Yup, dumb mistake on my part, so I track it better now.
| The point is, do I really have to do all this work
| tracking everything to guess which card they are hiding
| behind their backs. It's kinda dumb IMO.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| They probably just sent you a letter asking you to pay it
| with a smidgen of interest and that was that, right?
| Probably hardly worth doing extra work to be super
| thorough unless it was a large amount.
| zw123456 wrote:
| ya, it was stupid, the interest was about $300 or
| something. I would have paid the original amount but I
| just screwed up and mis-placed the 1099. It was a gotchya
| game. I think this could be why people hate taxes so
| much, of course we all hate taxes but the way you do it
| matters IMO.
| zw123456 wrote:
| ya, I am sure you are right, I get a bunch of them and I
| missed a small one. But whatever, the point is, they could
| just send me a statement.
| ryathal wrote:
| pretty sure everyone gets an "electronic audit." It's really
| just a check to see if you claimed all the income that others
| claimed they gave you.
| refurb wrote:
| It's impossible to automate the tax filing process unless you
| simplify the tax code.
|
| And I've filed taxes in countries with simple tax codes where
| the government pre-fills out the forms. Guess what? You still
| need to go and double check everything because the information
| comes from your employer. I've found mistakes before. So I
| pretty much "do my taxes" myself to make sure what the govt
| sends isn't wrong.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is a misunderstanding of the actual ask from the federal
| government and "automating" is a bit of a misnomer. The
| reason the IRS could theoretically fill out your taxes on
| your behalf is because someone else already submitted their
| part of the forms. Your employer reports your income, your
| broker reports your capital gains and assets, your bank
| reports interest, etc.. The ask is less about automation more
| not having to do those parts twice. The IRS could send you
| everything they've gotten about you and you just fill in the
| rest and/or dispute -- for normal single income wage earners
| there would be nothing else to add so it's effectively
| automated.
|
| The gain is that we can make "doing your taxes" a non-issue
| for most Americans. Sure some people will still need
| accountants for complicated situations but in one swoop we
| can eliminate hundreds of millions of hours of useless work
| every year for basically no downside -- it's pure gravy.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Are there any folks in congress who are interested in mandating
| the IRS switch to automatic tax returns or automated tax return
| form data filling?
| [deleted]
| creakingstairs wrote:
| They've even done a pilot program that literally did what you
| wanted. [1] And yes, it was much better experience:
|
| > Almost all participants said that they would opt to use the
| service the following year.
|
| And yes, as you have said, the answer is lobbying.
|
| > Tax preparation services strongly opposed ReadyReturn and
| have lobbied against its expansion.
|
| [1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-was-
| exper....
|
| EDIT: I can't find the podcast I heard this in, but pretty sure
| the tax professor that spearheaded this pilot got followed by
| people hired by Intuit.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > EDIT: I can't find the podcast I heard this in, but pretty
| sure the tax professor that spearheaded this pilot got
| followed by people hired by Intuit.
|
| This feels somehow like it should be illegal to willfully and
| knowingly make the common good worse in favor of your
| company. Perhaps via antitrust.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Intuit argues that they are working _for_ the common good,
| not against.
| kevincox wrote:
| And once the politicians receive enough donations they
| believe them!
| exolymph wrote:
| The podcast might have been Planet Money: https://www.npr.org
| /sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...
|
| Priceonomics wrote an accompanying article:
| https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-
| fought-t...
| creakingstairs wrote:
| Thank you, it was! The accompany article is really good,
| but it is also really depressing to read too :(
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Republicans want you to hate paying taxes and tax providers are
| greedy.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Oddly enough conservatives see that as a problem. They want
| this to be a big process for two reasons. First, taxpayers
| understanding the process is a good thing. It means they're not
| getting gouged and they're aware of their taxes. Second, they
| don't want taxes to be something we just say "k" to like a cell
| phone bill. That could lead to it being extremely easy to raise
| taxes.
| xunn0026 wrote:
| There is a logic here that's visible with salary talks in the
| EU: people only care about what they receive, not taxes; so
| all salary talk ignores taxes, all raises ignore taxes, all
| tax increases are irrelevant as long as they get in-hand the
| same amount. This is basically a population that sees taxes
| as magical money only the employer pays.
|
| People should definitively understand how much taxes they are
| paying so that they demand some accountability for their
| money.
|
| How do you accomplish that?
| fnord77 wrote:
| > just run that thing and send it to me and I can file an
| exception if there is something on it I disagree with.
|
| basically how it works in Sweden
| swozey wrote:
| I have a $165k notice of defiecency bill from the IRS due next
| month that is a complete joke that I have had to spend days
| figuring out. I almost dropped thousands on a lawyer for it
| until I understood Tax Court better.
|
| Why? They think I sold a house and kept _all_ of the gains.
| Like I didn 't have a mortgage, and like it wasn't my primary
| residence.
|
| It's ridiculous. I can't explain how stressed out getting a
| $165k bill when that's practically my yearly income made me. I
| wonder how many wealthy people get these completely incorrect
| $165k bills and how often they come after the person with $10k
| in the bank.
| toast0 wrote:
| Did you report the sale? When I sold my primary residence in
| 2018, it ended up on Schedule D and Form 8949, and there were
| no questions asked. The IRS does have a tendency to assume
| zero basis when there's a capital sale reported to them that
| doesn't appear in the tax return; which makes for scary
| bills, but can usually be resolved by reporting the sale and
| your basis on the appropriate form. (although I see from
| further replies that you are now having to deal with this in
| Tax Court, so that sounds like a terrible time, and I'm sorry
| for your tedium)
| swozey wrote:
| I don't believe I did, it was my primary residence so
| bypassing a lot of the tax implications from capital gains.
| It was my first house sale so I was really expecting to
| companies involved in it that I paid a small fortune to to
| handle things of that nature, or at least send me
| documentation to send when I did my taxes. Unless something
| got lost in the mail I never received any sort of tax docs,
| which in my obvious-now ignorance might have been very
| wrong.
|
| I did these taxes in the height of the pandemic in March
| after being laid off and living out of airbnbs for 3 months
| so it very well may have just been missed unfortunately.
| I'm not even sure what they need or who to talk to, I'm
| just going to mail them everything I have including the
| Statute stating I don't need to pay capital gains on a
| primary residence house sale under $500k.
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm not a tax person, but probably all they need is an
| amended tax return (1040X) with the sale reported. Grab
| the instructions for schedule D for the tax year you sold
| your home, and follow the section for "Sale of Your
| Home". It says you're only required to report the sale if
| the gains exceeded the exclusion amount or you received a
| 1099-S; but I'm guessing the IRS must have received a
| 1099-S even if you didn't. You might be able to get a
| copy of that through the IRS Tax Transcript service?
|
| They probably don't need a copy of the Statute, but eh.
| :)
| rossjudson wrote:
| I highly recommend that you keep _everything_ related to
| this, securely, for several years _even after it is
| resolved_.
|
| State governments are not necessarily believing the same set
| of facts that the federal government does. I got caught in a
| multi-year cycle one time where the state government kept
| coming after me _every year_ for the same thing, even though
| I had the federal return and the evidence that it was
| correct.
|
| Each year I'd send that thing in, in response, and I'd never
| hear from them...until the next year, when they'd do it
| again.
|
| Felt to me like each year somebody would receive my response,
| decide it was too much work to deal with, and then file it
| away in the "hit them again next year" pile.
| swozey wrote:
| Thanks. Like you, nobody has ever responded to me other
| than them "upgrading" me from being able to prove my taxes
| via fax to having to petition the tax court directly.
|
| I'm sure this will be a nightmare for the next few years.
| As if selling that house wasn't a bad enough experience.
|
| I shouldn't have to spend $5k or whatever else on a lawyer
| to deal with this. Insane. I walked away with $13k after
| paying everyone/mortgage off.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| It isn't just the lobbyists, certain ideologically anti-tax
| politicians desperately want their constituents to think of
| taxes as a Great Evil perpetrated upon them so they can present
| themselves as the solution. Making the process as much of a
| pain in the ass as they can is part of their reelection
| strategy.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| It's absolutely absurd.
| downrightmike wrote:
| That's exactly it.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| That is in fact how it works in many (most?) countries.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/dreading-taxes-countries-s...
| ehsankia wrote:
| It's well known fact that the government can auto-file for most
| people, it's not really a secret. Many other countries do it,
| it's been proven to work just fine.
| gramie wrote:
| In Canada, when I file my taxes electronically, all my income
| (salary, interest, etc.) is pre-filled. I basically enter my
| deductions and hit "Submit".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's just it, when I do my annual taxes (I should do that
| within the next month btw), all the data - from my employer's
| wages, all assets at banks including checking-, saving- and
| investment accounts, and things like mortgage interest (which
| is still partially deductible) etc are all filed.
|
| The only thing I need to manually add is the EUR value of
| crypto assets on Jan 1st of the preceding year (good luck
| figuring that one out, the exchanges are kinda shit), and any
| charity donations I may have done. (my dad will pettily write
| down any speeding ticket cost as charity donations)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| how could America claim to be exceptional if we just did
| things the same way as every other developed nation? /s
| zw123456 wrote:
| Exceptional != Best
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The IRS can't even handle people e-filing.
|
| But don't worry, the project started in 2009 to replace their
| COBOL mainframe systems is kinda, sorta on track for
| completion...in 2030.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I've filed for years using FreeFillableForms. It works. A
| bit more cumbersome than if some ex-Amazon people had
| implemented it, but not too bad.
| gbear605 wrote:
| The funny thing is that Intuit makes FreeFillableForms.
| It could have a much nicer interface, but they choose not
| to, so that you go and pay money to use Turbotax.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| Blaming "lobbyists" absolves the politicians of their
| responsibility. The fault lies with the politicians for
| creating and perpetuating this broken system.
| aj7 wrote:
| Methodology: 1) Download your income transcript from the IRS
| using your IRS account. 2) Make sure all claimed income on the
| transcript is included. 3) Do the puzzle. 4) Print and file.
|
| Be sure you have a copy, either scanned or electronic, of all
| documents on your computer. Ditto all tax return filled in
| forms. Use the fill-in pdf's the IRS provides.
|
| Do not miss a filing date. File a tax return missing important
| documentation if necessary, but file. Similarly, pay the tax
| you owe, or estimate you owe on time. The penalties for late
| filing and owed taxes are severe. You will not make a serious
| error if you work from the income transcript.
| ryathal wrote:
| To add to this even if you can't pay, still file your taxes.
| It's so much better to only be on the hook for not paying
| than both not paying and not filing.
| dguest wrote:
| I know people who have optimized this:
|
| - they fill out their taxes with rough estimates,
|
| - the IRS helpfully corrects their errors, and sends the form
| back
|
| - they sign the corrected form, send it back
|
| - the IRS accepts the second round.
|
| This is basically the same "pre-filled" workflow as every other
| developed country. The difference is that we have a first round
| where you put in a semi-plausible effort to placate the tax
| preparation lobby.
|
| Has anyone with a normal job (not self-employed, regular
| paycheck from a company registered with the IRS) ever been
| fined etc for this?
| legalcorrection wrote:
| Beware: if you owe the government money due to your mistakes,
| you will have to pay penalties and interest.
| [deleted]
| pm90 wrote:
| The main thing in this strategy is that your estimate is
| pretty close to the amount owed. So you may overshoot or
| undershoot, but likely by a pretty small amount, which is
| likely to make the difference owed small. I guess it could
| be considered a cost of filing taxes.
| kristopolous wrote:
| If you overpay they'll credit you next year. They're pretty
| lenient as long as your act promptly in good faith
| dguest wrote:
| How much are the penalties?
|
| If they are charging some absurd (say 20%) interest and
| you're off by 10k, you might pay them a few hundred in
| interest if the process is prolonged a month, which is on
| par with a tax prep service.
| markdown wrote:
| Most people in my country never have to file tax returns. Their
| taxes are deducted at source (by their employer).
| masklinn wrote:
| In every country I know where taxes are collected by the
| employer you still have to file, to square things up and
| settle the tax bill (often you'll get some money back, if you
| have other sources of income then you may have to pay taxes
| on those instead).
| donbrae wrote:
| Not in the UK. Only those earning self-employed income over
| a certain threshold (PS1,000, I think) need to complete a
| return.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Government: You owe us money. It's called taxes.
|
| Me: How much do I owe?
|
| Gov't: You have to figure that out.
|
| Me: I just pay what I want?
|
| Gov't: Oh, no we know exactly how much you owe. But you have to
| guess that number too.
|
| Me: What if I get it wrong?
|
| Gov't: You go to prison
|
| Source:
| https://twitter.com/jordan_stratton/status/11181414550616719...
|
| I dig this one up every April.
| zw123456 wrote:
| ya, so why not just send me a statement once a month, the
| power company does that, the cell phone company does that,
| the city I live in does that, etc.
|
| Just send me a statement, you made this, you get this much
| deduction for the other crap or whatever.
|
| No stupid W2, W4 1040, bunch of mumbo jumbo from the 1950's
| that a few companies are ripping us off over IMO.
| Vespasian wrote:
| That's basically how it works in Germany.
|
| There is a formula in the law that specifies how much if
| your salary gets deducted every month based on specific
| criteria such as your marital status, your religion (yeah
| church taxes), whether it is your primary or secondary job
| etc.
|
| That amount is calculated to be enough (a little bit to
| much in fact) to cover taxes for most people employed with
| a single job.
|
| Unless you have extra income or deductions beyond a certain
| amount you don't have to file any tax return.
|
| If you want to file one (pre filled with what they know)
| the government calculates what you need to pay/are owed and
| you have the right to dispute that.
|
| You can use the free digitalised version of the former
| paper form or you can use a number of (often inexpensive)
| commercial programs
| [deleted]
| zw123456 wrote:
| German efficiency!
|
| I like it, my city government sends me a statement once a
| month, says you owe this amount for police, that amount
| for fire, some other amount for sewer and water, some
| amount for schools. Maybe I disagree with some of the
| amounts, fair to discuss, that's democracy. But they
| don't play that idiotic game the feds do, you owe a
| certain amount, if you guess it correctly, or if you on
| purpose short it but we don't catch you at it, then
| nothing happens. But if we randomly catch you getting it
| wrong then we fuck with you. I hate that.
| blowski wrote:
| In the UK, I'm told how much I owe. A year later, I get fined
| because they told me the wrong amount.
| MisterTea wrote:
| The best part is your employer already sent them the income
| tax money you owe them but you still have to tell them how
| much money someone else gave them. Its an absurdly brain
| damaged system.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| What's crazy is that unreasonable taxes is one of the main
| reasons _why_ the British settlers rebelled against the Crown
| and went on to found America. The fact that nearly 250 years
| later we have an absurd, convoluted tax system, that
| literally requires specialists and companies with absurd
| market caps, for example Intuit has a $137B market cap, shows
| just how broken the system has become.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| "Me and my homies woulda be stacking bodies by now"
|
| - George Washington, probably
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The central problem is the refusal of US governments (state
| & federal) to _pay people money to do things they want to
| encourage_ rather than give them tax credits and whatnot.
| briandear wrote:
| Taxes shouldn't be used to get people to do things or not
| do things. Taxes should be used only to fund the
| essential services of the government: common defense, a
| legal system to enforce contracts, and that's about it.
|
| When taxes are used as a means of control, that's
| totalitarian. Tax policy should always be neutral.
| broptimist wrote:
| So you wouldn't be in favor of a carbon tax? What about a
| tax on tobacco sales in a universal healthcare system?
| (to offset tobacco users' additional healthcare costs)
| sgjohnson wrote:
| I wouldn't.
|
| And "sin taxes", i.e. tobbaco taxes and carbon taxes are
| a logical fallacy.
|
| Tobacco tax won't offset the additional healthcare costs
| for smokers on average, so it ends up just being a
| penalty for having a bad habit, and carbon tax will
| simply put a price tag on high carbon emissions.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Kind of tangential - the tobacco tax is a fallacy in
| another way: without taking into account quality of life
| adjustments, smokers are actually a net benefit for
| society in healthcare costs [1]. The simple reason is
| because they die earlier and most healthcare costs are
| incurred near the tail end of life, so by shortening
| those final years it becomes much cheaper for society to
| pay out.
|
| 1: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/6/e001678
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| How many people die per year of second hand smoke?
| Smokers impact non-smokers significantly.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Technically there's no difference between the government
| deciding to: 1. give everyone who does X
| US$300 2. give everyone who does X a US$300 tax
| credit
|
| Both rely on the collection and disbursement of
| government revenue, which is typically accomplished via
| taxation.
|
| However, 1. does not introduce any new clauses to the tax
| code. 2., by contrast does, and it generally functions as
| a slow steady drip, drip, drip of new clauses.
|
| We therefore end up with an extremely complex tax code,
| instead of a simple tax code, and legislative acts to pay
| people for doing things we choose (via political process)
| that we want done.
| kj4ips wrote:
| The main difference is that not all credits are
| refundable. If you have a $7500 nonrefundable credit, but
| only have a tax liability of $5000, that extra $2500 just
| vanishes.
| Frondo wrote:
| The "essential services" are kind of the big thing in
| dispute -- you say "common defense, a legal system to
| enforce contracts" and that's a typical libertarian
| perspective, but certainly not the only set of essential
| services that reasonable people could posit for their
| government.
| orwin wrote:
| Tax should also control for externalities. Especially
| 'common good' pollution/destruction/captation.
|
| It's too easy to make a company go bankrupt with LLC, so
| taxes are the only way. Unless you have a better idea? (I
| once had a libertarian explain to me the owners/investors
| should be liable for externalities, and in this case,
| taxes shouldn't control for it. I couldn't really
| disagree, but even staunch communists understand the
| issue with that).
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Tax should also control for externalities. Especially
| 'common good' pollution/destruction/captation.
|
| The problem with this approach is all it does is it
| legitimises pollution/destruction/captation if you just
| pay a tax on it.
|
| Not even a penalty for wrongdoing. Pay a tax and you're
| fine.
| quantified wrote:
| Well, Intuit lobbying/bribery has a lot to do with it in
| the last couple decades.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I was referring to the complexity of the tax code, not
| the filing system itself.
| azemetre wrote:
| Complexity of the tax code is just part of the system
| Intuit wants. If taxes were simple you wouldn't have to
| pay for unique software right?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| While I absolute believe that Intuit and others are
| responsible for the lack of (1) free, highly functional
| e-filing and (2) response filing, the complexity in the
| US tax code is beyond their purview and precedes their
| existence.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The alternative is:
|
| Gov't: You owe us money. We took the amount we want directly
| from your income.
|
| Me: But shouldn't the amount be lower because of X and Y and
| Z ?
|
| Gov't: Send us all the right paperwork and we might give you
| back some of what we took if we agree with your claim.
|
| I actually like this version better (and it's also what I am
| used to), but I'd see people being uncomfortable with that
| arrangement.
| Thlom wrote:
| My employer pay taxes for me based on either a table or
| percentage (this is up to me). At the end of the year our
| tax authorities sums everything together (income, capital
| gains, ownership, debt and so on) and sends me my
| preliminary tax report for me to verify and make changes
| to. For normal people it's usually correct with most
| deductibles already accounted for. It's easy to fill in any
| other deductibles or income that is not already accounted
| for. This year it ended up with the government owing me
| approx. $2000.
| supramouse wrote:
| you don't really go to prison unless you're going out of you
| way to do something really nefarious
|
| it's also super easy to setup a payment plan online now if
| you really mess things up
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| zw123456 wrote:
| well, I am walking around free so, for sure you don't go to
| prison but you pay a penalty perhaps. In my case I just
| paid it. It was an honest mistake and they did not bust my
| chops over it, they did charge interest, which is stupid.
| But, fine, if your computer can figure it out why not just
| send me the bill monthly like my city government does?
| supramouse wrote:
| IRS is currently in the MVP phase, waiting on buy in from
| the steakholders on UX improvements
| btgeekboy wrote:
| It's a nice, if overly simplistic sentiment.
|
| It'd be nice if my 1099s were electronically filed with the
| cost basis. But they're not. So the IRS, every year, thinks
| I'm going to owe way more than I do.
|
| The IRS also has zero idea about the $4000+ of sales tax
| deductions I'm filing for this year.
|
| And finally, if you do get it wrong, you don't go to jail.
| They send you a CP2000 letter. (Remember those 1099s? I
| forgot one one year.) You fix the problem or show them their
| error. They'll even waive the penalties the first time. It's
| a somewhat easy process.
| vadym909 wrote:
| Ok- If you have extras you are going to claim- do it. You
| are the exception. Why force everyone else who doesn't run
| a business or claim expenses to do it.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I agree. The IRS definitely does not know how much I owe
| each year.
|
| However, they do have an estimate and the vast majority of
| people would accept this estimate. So I think it's
| reasonable to suggest it ought to be provided.
|
| I think the strongest counter-argument against this
| approach is in regards to bad actors and who discloses
| first. If you're thinking about hiding income and the first
| step is the government telling you what it thinks then
| you're very likely to continue to conceal and/or have a
| defense against a charge of concealment down the road ("I
| just used the IRS figures!")
|
| It's a much more difficult situation for a bad actor if
| they have to disclose first without knowing for sure what
| the IRS knows.
| pc86 wrote:
| "Estimate" implies someone is trying to... estimate
| something. The IRS has partial information. They don't
| have anything approaching something that anyone could
| reasonably call an estimate, and this isn't just an
| example of HN pedantry, it's an important distinction.
|
| They know some of your income, but not all of it. Your
| 1099 income for the year is getting filed by your clients
| at the same time you're filing it, so all they know is
| what your AGI was last year. They know your expenses from
| last year in terms of the numbers, but they haven't been
| checked (last I saw, they were 3-5 years behind on cross-
| checking and validation depending on type of return). So
| they could plug the number in, sort of.
|
| So they have your reported info from previous years, and
| a best guess at _some_ of what this year 's information
| _might_ be.
| fragmede wrote:
| So give me a partially filled out form with the
| information they _do_ know then. Fill in the standard
| deduction, let me do the extra credit work for itemized
| deductions if I _really_ want, eg I find taxes fun to do.
| (Some 90% of filers just go with the standard
| deductions.) Don 't buy into Intuit's nonsense that the
| current system is good for anything other than their
| bottom line.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Standard deduction varies based on your filing status
| (single/married joint/married separate/etc). IRS will not
| know if that changed in the year.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| So the IRS calculates for each filing status, and you
| choose one. This would be a lot to ask years ago, but
| nowadays many citizen-facing government processes are web
| apps. Think TurboTax pre-filled with whatever has been
| reported.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| A best effort calculation done with partial information
| is a type of estimate.
|
| I agree, this won't work for a big class of people. It
| won't work for me. But it will work for the majority of
| tax filers who don't have a 1099 and who don't file a
| schedule A, B, C, D ...
|
| My tax return last year was a half inch thick, printed
| out. I had to file on paper. I very much understand that
| this doesn't work for everyone. But it works for most
| people.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Where I'm living, the government does the taxes for you
| and then sends you a notice to check them.
|
| That last bit? That's important - you get to check them.
| You can adjust if you should need to. Guess what most
| folks don't have to do? Check them. This works because
| most folks have simple returns. They work, might or might
| not own a house, might have a bank account, might have a
| retirement account - and that's about it. The government
| already has what it needs for _most_ people. But you can
| check them and adjust if they are wrong. Of course, you
| can just not bother, too.
|
| Is the system perfect? No, but it doesn't need to be. It
| merely needs to have better overall tax compliance than
| another system. When taxes are easy for the vast majority
| of your population, the governement has a better
| collection rate and can spend manpower auditing those
| that need audited (perhaps audit more complicated returns
| from the well-to-do instead of Ordinary Married Citizen
| that makes 50k jointly) and they can generally spend less
| money doing things like printing forms and manning
| question lines that don't give answers that constitute
| legal advice.
|
| And seriously, in these systems, hiding income is still a
| crime. So those folks that just "used the IRS figures!"
| still have the chance of going to jail. Even if they
| never get caught, the automated system still wins because
| of the other benefits.
| meshaneian wrote:
| I like this argument more knowing it circles back to the
| "guess what the IRS knows" game earlier. :)
| briandear wrote:
| > the vast majority of people would accept this estimate.
|
| And the vast majority of people would then overpay. The
| IRS knows income, but they don't know expenses.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| This would be true if it weren't for the standard
| deduction. Something like 90% of all filers opt for the
| standard deduction, obviating the need for itemized
| expenses.
|
| Almost everyone would be best served by IRS calculated
| taxes. It's the wealthy and those with non-wage income
| who need the alphabet schedules.
| runako wrote:
| > those with non-wage income
|
| This is a lot of people now, thanks to the gig economy.
| Similarly, farmers plus people who work for tips (at
| employers that do not centralize tips).
| trulyme wrote:
| Genuinly curious: do people in US report tips on their
| tax forms? (forgive my ignorance - tips are much less
| common around where I live)
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Not if they are cash tips, obviously.
|
| Because why would anyone do that. But legally speaking,
| yes, you have to.
| softveda wrote:
| This is how is works in Australia. The Australian Tax Office
| will pre-fill your tax return online with income from your
| wages, interests, managed fund distributions, dividends etc.
| That maybe enough for simple tax returns, you can just accept
| their values and submit.
|
| What they don't know is your income from sources like rental
| income or crypto. They also don't know deductions you are
| going to claim. In this case you will have to provide the
| details. Still free to lodge your returns online.
| cmutel wrote:
| Since we're having the semi-annual "how do taxes work in
| other countries" thread, here is my experience as an
| American living in Switzerland. Though I have been here a
| while, I still find it interesting and a little weird.
|
| At the beginning of the year, you get a bill for that year
| based on what they think you will owe. This bill is due on
| October 31, i.e. you need to pay your estimated income tax
| before you have earned all that income. This is especially
| strange because most people will get a 13th month salary at
| the end of October (your annual salary is split into 13
| months, the extra comes in time for Christms presents?).
| You are expected to save adequately to be able by the end
| of October.
|
| Banking secrecy is not dead in Switzerland. There are no
| longer anonymous accounts, and banks share information with
| foreign governments. However, there is banking secrecy
| between the banks and the government. On the other hand, we
| pay a wealth tax each year (it's small), so you need to
| declare each account and how much you had in it on December
| 31.
|
| To create an equal playing field between house owners and
| renters, house owners pay an imputed rent cost for how much
| they would have paid in rent for their house. This is added
| to their income before taxes are calculated. In my case,
| this means my assessed income is around 25k higher than it
| otherwise would be.
|
| There is no automatic form filling in my state, but there
| is free tax software (Java app which runs everywhere), and
| it is pretty easy to use. If you have questions, the local
| tax office will nicely respond via "secure email" in 1-2
| days.
|
| Taxes are very progressive and family friendly. With 4 kids
| and one income we pay 6.5% combined local/state/federal on
| income of around 120k (plus imputed rent).
|
| There are no property taxes. For the wealth tax, most
| people who own houses never pay off their mortgages. They
| will typically have a mortgage for 50% of the house value
| (which can be quite high, a typical house where I live is
| between 800k and 1000k, and more in bigger cities). The
| interest can be deducted, and the mortgage amount from the
| wealth tax.
| sschueller wrote:
| You forgot the part where you need to also file and pay
| US taxes although you may no longer be living there, have
| any income or assets there but you still need to pay as
| long as you hold a citizenship or green card.
| valarauko wrote:
| > you still need to pay as long as you hold a citizenship
| or green card.
|
| wait, I thought this only applied to US citizens, not
| Green Card holders
| sschueller wrote:
| Green card holders are not excempt from this:
| https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/freq...
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Which canton? As I recall, Zug is near Zurich and has
| very low tax rates. Many highly paid professionals make
| the daily commute.
| cmutel wrote:
| Aargau, normally considered higher tax, but we have four
| kids at home.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| Pretty much every other major developed country operates
| like this. Here in South Korea for example filing taxes is
| as simple as logging into some government portal, verifying
| that the information they already have on you is correct,
| and making any corrections if necessary. 10 minutes, done.
|
| The U.S is unique in forcing its citizens to waste
| countless hours and pay hundreds/thousands of dollars every
| year doing the useless unnecessary work of "filing taxes".
| Why is the system still this backwards? Either plain
| ignorance of there being a superior alternative, or a
| broken political system that can't get anything done. My
| guess is it's a combination of both.
| philipswood wrote:
| For comparison, as an example of how other
| developed/developing countries do it:
|
| I'm a South African citizen, I get an SMS that a pre-
| filled-in tax return is available online.
|
| I can then log in to their online portal and accept it or
| amend it and submit it electronically.
|
| Currently I can usually just accept and submit it.
|
| Some years I might need to add or tweak income and
| expenses, but broadly speaking they are pretty correct.
|
| They have all the income and benefit details from
| standard corporate employers, expense and contribution
| info from medical aids (something like medical insurance,
| but a bit more sane as far as I can tell), investment and
| banking contributions from financial service providers,
| etc.
|
| You can opt for extra deductions which require extra
| paperwork from your side. And they don't always have
| income info from side hustles or correct expense info
| from "unusual" arrangements between you and your spouse.
| Sometimes your $BIGCORP's finance department can declare
| your benefits incorrectly which needs fixing.
|
| But for most middle-class income earners I suspect they
| can just log in and click accept.
|
| You can pay money and use a tax consultant to see if they
| can navigate the current rules for a better result, but
| unless you have a complicated setup you don't need to.
| gambiting wrote:
| In the UK it's so streamlined some of my coworkers were
| genuienly surprised when I told them it's the end of the
| tax year - as in, that's something they have never ever
| think about in their entire careers. Taxes are paid
| automatically by your employer, if you only work one
| regular full time job then "filling taxes" is just not a
| thing you'd ever have to do in your life.
| teknopaul wrote:
| For many who don't have an automated tax return it could
| be easily. It amazes me the systems like bizum and bank
| transfers don't have a checkbox for "this ought to be
| taxed".
|
| If you are not getting a VAT refund then you are paying
| VAT and it is in your interest that everyone does, so
| most consumers would select the box. The transfer is
| recorded, consumers would be complicit in the fraud if
| they didn't tick the box and that's enough excuse for
| both sides to want to play ball.
| tylerhou wrote:
| There is another reason: a group of Republican lobbyists
| (Americans for Tax Reform) deliberately want to make
| taxes more difficult. The idea is that 1) if taxes are
| difficult, you will spend as much as your time trying to
| get every deduction and 2) a prefilled tax form from the
| government would look too much like a bill, so people
| will pay it without contesting.
|
| Of course, TurboTax/Intuit also lobbies to keep taxes
| more difficult to protect their profits.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-
| partisan/wp/2015/0...
| noduerme wrote:
| I dunno. _Most_ people I know are 1099 / contract
| workers, and a lot of them get paid cash off the books.
| The government might have a rough idea of what they make,
| but it definitely doesn't know down to the penny. I keep
| very good books, but I have foreign bank accounts, crypto
| trades, subcontractors I paid over Paypal, people who
| paid me over Paypal, and there's no one system I'm aware
| of that could figure out what I actually owe in taxes. It
| still costs me about $800 a year through an accountant to
| file my taxes. (Luckily, you can write it off).
|
| Until or unless everything is centralized and cash ceases
| to exist, I don't know how they'd really do it. In South
| Korea do waiters live on tips? Because in the US, almost
| all money made in the restaurant service industry comes
| from unrecorded cash tips; the actual wages are extremely
| low. The restaurant will attempt to estimate their
| workers tips and cover the taxes out of the fixed wages,
| but... this doesn't even get into all the other cash
| industries like stripping or moonlighting as a
| dominatrix. The US's tax attitude seems to be: You're on
| your honor, and most of the time we won't catch you, but
| not even Jesus can help if we do.
| alistairSH wrote:
| We should keep a broken tax system because many of your
| peers are paid illegally? Or because edge cases exist?
|
| I should be a pretty typical middle-class example. Two
| salaries (me + spouse), a mortgage, limited other
| deductions. Yet every year I have to wait for various
| forms that the government already has, enter the values
| on paper or pay for tax software, hope I don't fat finger
| a value, and wait 7-10 years for an audit. Heck, since
| Trump increased the standard deduction, I'll probably be
| taking that soon (mortgage interest is near that
| threshold now), but still can't just click a button at
| irs.gov that says "yup, that's right, here's my bank info
| for refund/payment"
| noduerme wrote:
| Oh no. I'm just explaining why it's more efficient for
| the IRS to do it this way. I'd personally like to abolish
| income tax and only tax sales, with up to 100% tax on
| luxury goods and no tax on food, etc.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I don't by the "more efficient" argument.
|
| The IRS could generate online forms (or snail mail) with
| what they know and let us add deductions and other
| income. They should know salary/wages, they could know
| investment income (not sure if broker report to the IRS,
| or just send forms to filers).
|
| Even if the filer has to manually enter deductions,
| credits, etc, doing it on an IRS site has several
| benefits... no $50+ fee for H&R/TaxCut/etc, no $500+ for
| a CPA (for fairly typical tax situations), no worrying
| about whether online submission processed correctly
| (because you'd be submitting directly to the IRS instead
| of relying on a 3rd party to submit for you). Multiply
| that time/money/stress savings across the population and
| it's a MASSIVE benefit to society.
| noduerme wrote:
| No, I mean, the efficiency is partly amplified by keeping
| people in constant fear. It costs them less and it
| increases compliance. Like, those fuckers just put a
| question about crypto on the front page this year and I
| just decided not to lie on a sworn document, and
| basically spent 2 months figuring out what the fuck
| ridiculous chain of events led to me selling some bitcoin
| in 2021, to be on the right side of 'em. And they
| probably never would have known. But it's the _fear_ that
| they might 've known, you see, that makes them so
| _efficient_.
| adwww wrote:
| That sounds pretty regressive. A massive tax burdon on a
| low income family so that high earners don't have to file
| income taxes.
| noduerme wrote:
| Well, really it's progressive if it only taxes stuff you
| don't _need to buy_. Here 's what I think:
|
| Fuel and food, no tax.
|
| School supplies, shoes, clothing, any item under $100, no
| tax. Over $100, ramp it up.
|
| Diamond rings, 100% tax.
|
| Alcohol and cigarettes, 20-30%.
|
| Used cars, no tax.
|
| New cars, 10% up to 100%. Credits if they're electric or
| extremely fuel-efficient.
|
| Playstations, high end sneakers, Smart TVs, iPhones,
| rims, jewelry, expensive furnishings, rugs, anything
| better than your basic washer/drier: 100% tax.
|
| Books: Free and subsidized by the government, as many as
| you want, any book ever written.
|
| Healthcare: Free.
|
| College: Free.
|
| Basically under my plan, as long as you get stuff you
| need for your family, you pay no tax. If you get stuff
| you _want for your pleasure_ , you pay tax on it.
|
| How's that regressive?
|
| The only real downside I see is the potential for a
| massive black market in luxury goods, tobacco and
| alcohol. But legalizing and taxing pot and prostitution
| should take some of the sting out of that.
| adwww wrote:
| So low earners are allowed to eat basic food, but pay
| astronomical taxes for any luxuries in their life. Which
| you and I could easily afford.
| noduerme wrote:
| Well, that's a very glass-half-empty way of looking at
| it. I'm saying that high earners have to help subsidize
| lower earners the more luxuries they accrue in their
| life. It's not the _earning_ after all that makes the
| difference between rich and poor; that 's why _the
| wealthiest people in America pay no income tax_. They 're
| not earning anything, officially. But boy do they
| _spend_. So maybe, I don 't know, if you're really
| concerned about people getting that one luxury in life
| then there could be an exemption, like if you make under
| $50k a year you get refunded the VAT on $2k of luxury
| purchases. Ok? But it has to be small enough to prevent
| the ultra-wealthy from using it as a loophole.
| cstoner wrote:
| I think you drastically over-estimate what percentage of
| income the rich spend on luxury goods. People don't stay
| rich by buying things.
|
| I consider myself pretty high income. If I was just taxed
| on consumption, I would bet I'd pay probably half as much
| tax as I do now.
| aj7 wrote:
| Yep. Luxury goods are at least half aspirational. Until
| the shortages, always super buys on BMW's with 15k in the
| Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area.
| gambiting wrote:
| How is that any different right now?
|
| Low earners drive some shit cars, while you and me can
| (probably) afford a brand new Audi. How is that fair? /s
|
| >>Which you and I could easily afford.
|
| That's the key part here. You tax those who can afford it
| the most.
| aj7 wrote:
| An Audi? Heh heh.
| rkachowski wrote:
| > Pretty much every other major developed country
| operates like this
|
| _cries in German_
| thesimon wrote:
| Most employees don't need to even submit a tax return as
| with PAYG your taxes are already collected by your
| employer.
|
| If you do end up filing your taxes, you can access the
| prefilled tax statements. Software to do that is free and
| easy. If you want software advising you on how to get a
| bigger refund, you'll have to pay maybe $10-20, though
| the $5 software from Aldi works fine for me.
| w23j wrote:
| https://www.elster.de/elsterweb/infoseite/belegabruf_(pri
| vat...
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Of course, why would you trust a piece of software
| created by your government to fill out the forms in a way
| that benefits yourself instead of them?
| w23j wrote:
| This thread was not about deductions, but about the
| government pre-filling your tax-returns with data it
| already has about you. Parent was implying that does not
| exist in Germany, which isn't true. Or are you actually
| saying that the government will deliberately fill in
| wrong values, so that you have to pay higher taxes, even
| though the prefilled values are visible to you and
| discrepancies would be obvious (and a huge scandal).
| lexs wrote:
| As an employee doing your taxes is optional in Germany as
| taxes are already deducted by the employer.
| xioxox wrote:
| It can work ok if you're a single person with no
| children. However, you'll potentially have to pay a lot
| more tax if you're married where your spouse earns more
| or less than you. There several other reasons where
| legally you'll have to complete a tax return (e.g foreign
| income).
|
| German taxes are really horrible, in general. They expect
| you to pay in advance for expected untaxed income (based
| on the previous year's return). Working out the taxes on
| the income from some ETF is a nightmare, unless your
| platform does it for you. Unless you really understand
| the system and can file your own taxes, then low-wage
| freelance work just doesn't make sense as the cost of
| doing the taxes can be higher than your income. This
| means people are trapped into not working.
| hnbad wrote:
| The fun part about advances is that in the first year
| they don't have data to set your advances so you have to
| back pay the taxes for the first year in full after
| filing the first year's taxes in the second year in
| addition to now having to pay the advances on that year
| so even if you saved all the money you expected to have
| to pay in taxes during the first year you also need to
| have saved up enough to pay the advances but the more
| money you made (allowing you to set more money aside),
| the higher the advances will be.
|
| You can negotiate to have your advances reduced but the
| government really doesn't like it when businesses
| (including freelancers and solo entrepreneurs) have a
| high difference between their advances and the actual
| taxes. This also goes for declaring your VAT (which
| depending on how much you make you'll have to do monthly
| or quarterly as an advance and then alongside your income
| tax) and while in that case you basically set the advance
| yourself you'll get in trouble if it doesn't match your
| actual VAT (difference between charged and paid).
|
| You can file your own taxes and if you're a regular
| employee there are tons of non-commercial orgs you can go
| to that will assist you in doing that but if you're a
| "business" (even if it's just you and you haven't
| incorporated) they'll often not help you.
|
| BTW the reason you can just forego filing your own taxes
| as an employee if you just want to be taxed on your wages
| (and don't have anything else to declare, e.g. interest
| on savings) is that your employer already had to do the
| taxes on your wages and benefits for you. So it's not
| like the government just does them themselves, it's just
| done by payroll instead of you.
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| > Why is the system still this backwards?
|
| Intuit lobbying hard to keep tax rules complex.
| missedthecue wrote:
| TurboTax is a relatively new product, and they haven't
| been big lobbyists for their whole existence. Why wasn't
| the tax process simple before then?
| Linosaurus wrote:
| TurboTax was first released in 1984, according to
| Wikipedia.
|
| That's ~20 years before Sweden got everything prefilled
| for some of the population. As an example.
| aj7 wrote:
| No. TurboTax has been around for as long as people have
| had their own computers.
| JSavageOne wrote:
| Blaming "lobbyists" absolves the politicians of their
| responsibility. The fault lies with the politicians for
| creating and perpetuating this broken system.
|
| (copy and pasted from another comment)
| jacobolus wrote:
| Like anyone else, politicians respond to incentives. US
| crony capitalism is a large-scale systemic failure, and
| the tax filing system (and under-resourced IRS) is just
| one symptom.
|
| If you want a narrow target, you can blame the GOP
| activists on the US Supreme Court, or if you want to go
| beyond that, blame the GOP senators/presidents who
| appointed them, the Federalist Society, the GOP donor
| base, GOP-aligned media organizations, etc.
|
| Gutting campaign finance restrictions was a vast judicial
| overreach, performed for partisan advantage and the
| benefit of corrupt wealthy patrons.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| There's a word for those incentives.. "bribes"
| jacobolus wrote:
| The #1 most relevant goal for politicians is to get re-
| elected. (Personal enrichment is largely orthogonal.)
| Raising large campaign contributions is of obvious
| benefit to that effort, and is not directly a bribe per
| se. But it does have some of the same problems that
| bribery has.
|
| It's undoubtedly true that some US politicians have
| gotten bribes, defrauded partners or constituents,
| embezzled money from their campaigns or the government,
| used inside information to trade stocks, etc. But even if
| all of those were impossible, the nature of the US
| campaign finance system would create plenty of perverse
| incentives.
| aj7 wrote:
| Yes. This is well known. They became so rich and powerful
| they had lobbyists (bag men) to protect their interests.
| briandear wrote:
| Intuit isn't the problem. Politicians are. See Milton
| Friedman on this subject. A complicated tax code is used
| to reward and punish people. The tax code was complex
| long before Intuit came around.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8
| [deleted]
| masklinn wrote:
| That has nothing to do with the issue at hand. All tax
| codes are complicated, and you can always spend days
| minmaxing your taxes (or hire someone to do that for
| you).
|
| But the US is unique in the developed world as making
| filing taxes hell even if you don't try to minmax them,
| and that is primarily due to tax filing companies
| lobbying against the IRS doing what everybody else does
| (and secondarily due to the GOP very much wanting filing
| taxes to be as painful and error prone as possible, and
| for it to be as expensive as possible for the IRS).
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > All tax codes are complicated,
|
| But the US tax code is an order of magnitude larger than
| the Swedish one. Which probably means that it is several
| orders of magnitude more complex (however that might be
| defined).
| bpye wrote:
| And yet as mentioned earlier in this comment thread, the
| IRS has already managed to automate this on their side,
| as they can do an "electronic audit".
| AceyMan wrote:
| efitz wrote:
| "Capitalism" does not mean "every use of money that I
| disagree with".
|
| It also does not mean "greedy immoral bastards who sell
| political influence to the highest bidder".
|
| There are lots of corrupt things about the US government.
| That's not capitalism; it's corruption. It can happen in
| any form of government; in the US it just happens to be
| much more visible.
| imtringued wrote:
| However, Capitalism inherently rewards corruption. If you
| are a corrupt politician and earn $10 million through
| corruption you can invest your money and the capital
| gains alone will exceed any politician's salary and this
| is ignoring that you will earn more every single year due
| to compounding.
|
| You can burn the amazon down and then invest the earned
| or saved money and economists will tell you, you are
| doing well and that you have a god given right to that
| wealth.
|
| Communism doesn't even try to address the root cause,
| it's actually making the problem worse by concentrating
| everything at the top.
| LocalH wrote:
| Almost like all the "isms" are total garbage. The best
| route forward would be to examine all the "isms", find
| the parts of each that can be brought together to make a
| new path forward. Unabashed capitalism is a scourge, just
| like any other "ism" if left unchecked.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why is the system still this backwards? Either plain
| ignorance of there being a superior alternative, or a
| broken political system that can't get anything done.
|
| Neither. There is awareness of the alternatives, and the
| political system can get things done for it's real
| constituents. The problem is a malevolent political
| system that primarily serves a class whose interests are
| opposed to the mass of the citizenry, to wit, a narrow
| capitalist elite.
|
| (People will point to the tax prep industry, it's
| lobbying, etc., and that is part of the problem; an
| bigger part, however, is the political faction favoring
| lower taxes in general for the elites that likes to
| maximize the perceived pain of taxes for the masses to
| generate support for elite-favoring tax cuts; they are
| adamantly opposed to procedural simplification that
| minimizes the pain they leverage.)
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The U.S is unique in forcing its citizens to waste
| countless hours
|
| It may be unusual, but it's certainly not unique; I have
| to fill in a tax-return every year, because I receive
| rental income. Anyone in the UK that receives income that
| isn't taxed at source by their employer has to complete
| one.
|
| The last one I completed was 21 pages long, with notes
| for each page; a lot of the time I spent was scrabbling
| through my filing cabinet searching for my evidence.
|
| That rental income plus my state pension and bank
| interest are the only taxable income I receive.
|
| At one time I was a company director, and had to fill in
| personal tax returns. I folded the company, and returned
| to salaried employment, taxed at source; it took me a
| decade to get the tax authorities to stop sending me tax
| return forms that I was required by law to complete.
| adwww wrote:
| Even rental income has a fairly generous allowance before
| you need to file a full tax assessment.
|
| The first PS1,000 is tax free (presumably the cost of
| admin makes it easier to let that go).
|
| And up to PS2,500 you just have to phone / email HMRC.
| nerdawson wrote:
| The various allowances are certainly helpful but PS1,000
| doesn't really factor in when you're dealing with rental
| income. Almost every landlord will cross that threshold
| and should expect to fill a return in.
|
| Hearing about how taxes work in other countries makes me
| grateful for the system we have here.
|
| Most people never have to file a return. The people that
| do have a more complicated arrangement and probably need
| to summarise expenses, etc.
| aj7 wrote:
| Yes. So see my "methodology" above. It is the systematic
| way for you to do the part that is missing. With various
| weird-ass forms, this is STILL a lot of work. But it will
| be substantially correct, where substantially means that
| the IRS will correct any errors without considering you a
| miscreant.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Having to spend our own time, money and effort in order to
| work out how much money we have to pay the government for
| their crappy low quality services. Just yet another
| humiliation the government imposes on citizens.
| aj7 wrote:
| You do not have to guess "what the government knows."
| Download your income transcript. See the "methodology" I
| replied above in response to this comment.
| singron wrote:
| Obviously it's a joke, but if you get it wrong, they send you
| the right amount and then you pay it (or they pay you). As
| long as you are close with your on-time payment, the interest
| is very reasonable on small differences. It's probably
| cheaper than paying for turbotax if you would have to pay for
| that.
| taf2 wrote:
| The best is the 50 cent check in the mail... literally the
| postage cost more to deliver the return check.
| jahewson wrote:
| Tax is rounded to the nearest dollar though.
| tymekpavel wrote:
| I can confirm I've received a check for $0.01 from the
| IRS. My understanding is it was because of miscalculation
| of interest owed.
| [deleted]
| Iv wrote:
| > Ok, so if they can do all that automatically for an
| "electronic audit" why am I filing a return, just run that
| thing and send it to me and I can file an exception if there is
| something on it I disagree with.
|
| That's how it worked for me in France when I was an employee.
| As a freelancer there is a bit more work, but nothing like the
| puzzle that tax declaration seems to be in the US.
| moduspol wrote:
| I had the same situation once (a missed 1099) and my biggest
| complaint is that they waited almost a year to let me know. And
| of course by then it was quite late so I owed them even more
| money!
|
| Even if they can't tell me what numbers they expect when I
| file, it seems like they could at least let me know within a
| few weeks if they're pretty sure I missed a 1099. Heck, I
| typically file at least a month early. They could let me know
| before April 15 and I could have just fixed it! Ugh.
| zw123456 wrote:
| Exactly my complaint as well!
|
| They could send me a monthly statement like my city
| government does. Instead, they wait a year to let me know I
| slipped up and then charge me interest. Guys, if you know I
| slipped up now you could have told me a year ago.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This is not purposeful but likely a side effect of them
| still relying on ancient COBOL mainframes that seem unable
| to keep up with the growing population (and thus growing
| number of tax filers.)
| adreamingsoul wrote:
| This happened to me, except the IRS calculated that I owed an
| additional 5-figure sum. not all information is sent to the IRS
| and they don't yet have a way to determine a person's
| situation. In my case, a form was missing from my filing that
| provided that context.
| pc86 wrote:
| Lobby certainly doesn't help but "just tell me what I owe" is
| not practical or possible, and is an overly simplistic view of
| everything about the system. Most importantly, the 1099 your
| client filed telling them you got paid more than $600 was due
| the same time your taxes were due, so they didn't know about it
| until after the fact.
|
| The feds have no idea how your deductions (and to a lesser
| extent, your income) have changed from the previous year. They
| don't have a full picture of your finances, but you do. In the
| abstract, with those constraints, the system of "tell us
| everything we need to know, pay us, and you get in trouble if
| you lie so egregiously that you get caught" works pretty well.
| jefftk wrote:
| This is how taxes work in many other countries, and it's how
| taxes could work here if we were willing to make minor
| changes. For example, adjusting the deadlines you mention to
| be sequential would not be a hard change.
| mlyle wrote:
| > but "just tell me what I owe" is not practical or possible
|
| Note that there's a whole lot of countries that send you a
| prepared tax return that you adjust if necessary, and most
| people don't need to. There's no fundamental reason we
| couldn't do this here.
|
| Indeed, California even did it for a couple years:
| https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-was-
| exper...
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| How is it not obvious this is a system designed for abuse
| favoring the most privileged abusers?
| pc86 wrote:
| Pretend it's not for a moment and make your argument?
| shados wrote:
| A pretty damn large portion of people claim the standard
| deduction. They are paid on W2. Their investments are on
| 1099s. The cost basis are in supplemental documents that
| could easily be provided to the IRS in a format they can
| handle.
|
| Yeah, it doesn't work for everyone. So they could offer it to
| you, and you have the choice to click "ok", or to click "add
| additional income and deduction". If your situation is so
| crazy that neither of those options work, you can then do it
| the classic/hard mode way with an accountant.
|
| It's how it works in plenty of countries. The US is a bit
| unique with one of the more complex tax code in the world,
| but it would still work fine for a large portion of the
| population.
| jprd wrote:
| I think we can all agree that discovery is going to be fun and
| lead us places we can only dream of.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| The Turbotax tax.
| soorya3 wrote:
| This is insane and I get PTSD during tax time. You know simple
| task of adding a state refund into turbotax took 2 hours.
|
| I wrote to both of the representatives in my state, let's see
| what I hear back.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| If it is anything like my experience they will just add you to
| their bulk email list, and possibly send you a letter saying
| thanks for your comments. Unless you pay to play, your ideas
| will not influence them significantly.
| iosono88 wrote:
| korginator wrote:
| This is band-aid for a fracture. Suing Intuit does not address
| the underlying problem.
|
| It's not hard to collect income data automatically. Here in
| Singapore (as in many other countries) I get a message reminding
| me to check my tax data before the filing date. I just login and
| click "Submit". If I forget to do this, I may miss some
| deductions, but it goes through anyway.
|
| Tax filing can be made simple enough that a layperson can do it
| without employing an accountant.
| 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.
| sagarun wrote:
| Just be a little careful with the state returns on CashApp.
| It has a bug on handling mortgage interest deductions if
| your mortgage is over $750000 and the state allows
| deduction up to $1000000. Double check by filing with other
| tax software and verify the refund amount is the same. I
| used freetaxusa.com to get this right.
| 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).
| junar wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is not true for most folks, who can use one of two
| exceptions that allow summarizing. Exception 1 allows you to
| simply report totals on Schedule D. Exception 2 has you file
| Form 8949 with summarized rows, as long as you attach a
| statement with the detailed transaction info (the brokerage
| 1099-B generally suffices).
|
| https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8949#en_US_2021_publink100.
| ..
|
| These are the very same exceptions that tax software uses.
| 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).
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > the 1040EZ form no longer exists
|
| That is wild. I remember using it for my first job, and
| yep, it took me all of a few hours to fill it out by hand
| and mail it in.
| astura wrote:
| A few hours? HOURS? The 1040EZ was like 6 questions, it
| shouldn't have to take you more than 10 minutes.
| jfengel wrote:
| Oops. Damn. Sorry for the bad advice. Thank you for the
| correction.
| [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.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| No, Turbotax wants you to pay a taxes to Intuit to pay taxes to
| the IRS.
| 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.
| Jxl180 wrote:
| CashApp Tax is Credit Karma Tax that was bought by
| Square. Everything transferred from previous years and
| Square/Block Inc is publicly traded corporation with a
| ~$85 billion market cap so I'm not sure what you mean by
| "whichever way the startup winds blow."
|
| Furthermore -- it's your tax records. As soon as the
| government receives them they enter the permanent records
| of surveillance valley.
| mindslight wrote:
| "Cash.app" had no name recognition for me and frankly the
| name sounds gimmicky. I hassumed it was some fly by night
| thing, but okay, thanks for informing me it has a longer
| history and large company behind it. Still, being free,
| it either presently has a revenue strategy (ie commercial
| surveillance), or it will inevitably pivot to one down
| the line.
|
| > _As soon as the government receives them they enter the
| permanent records of surveillance valley._
|
| Uh no, US tax records are not public data, nor available
| for the surveillance industry to buy AFAIK. It's
| unavoidable that the government gets them, but the fewer
| parties that get mine the better.
| 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.
| ..
| peter303 wrote:
| Note quite all. The IRS wont accept a downloaded 1096.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep, though arguably the base turbotax is helpful in
| filling them out (but after the first year or so you could
| just imitate the previous year's filings).
| 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.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The web 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.
| foxyv wrote:
| To be honest, I think I may just do it all myself like I did
| back in the early days. I'm a single, high income, earner
| with few complicated investments and no state income taxes. I
| may as well just fill out a 1040 myself at this point.
|
| TurboTax tried to double count my Benevity sales anyways and
| I had to catch it when it messed up the 1040. Why am I paying
| for software? If I get to the point I can't handle it myself
| anymore I'll just start paying an accountant.
| 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/)
| pilom wrote:
| Cash app also couldn't file my ev credit correctly. Support
| was significantly worse than useless. Ended up going with
| Free Tax USA this year but I've also seen bugs with them.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I filed with them last year when it was still Credit Karma
| Taxes. The process was painless and my first time not filing
| with Turbo Tax. I was going to file with them again, but the
| moment I saw I needed to install an app to scan a QR code, I
| bailed. No thanks. I don't need their app on my devices.
|
| So this year, I prepared my taxes with FreeTaxUSA instead. So
| far I love it. It required me to manually input a lot of
| information that was auto-imported on TT and CK, which isn't
| as terrible as I thought. Overall I'm finding the UX to be
| very clean and clear. I haven't had to Google answers to
| vague questions or unique situations like I had to with the
| others. It even caught an error that I'm having to fix with
| my bank, and told me exactly how to fix it. I'm very
| impressed with FreeTaxUSA so far. Hopefully they never sell
| out.
| syastrov wrote:
| I wrote an article [1] a few years ago to vent about how messed
| up and backward the experience has been for especially foreign
| filers. The "free" options provided by commercial companies are
| as TFA states unusable by large portions of the population.
| Besides those, the IRS provides "free fillable forms online",
| which looks like a scam website and also has many limitations
| (one of which, in my case, was that you must provide a US phone
| number). It's all beautifully messed up.
|
| So there wouldn't be this problem with Intuit if the government
| got their shit together. Why not spend efforts to improve the
| system rather than litigation? The answer? Lobbying.
|
| This is all in stark contrast to the system which exists in
| Denmark, where I live, where taxes are all filed online and the
| government automatically fetches most information so that you
| mostly only need to review it and add deductions.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@syastrov/us-tax-system-a-fractal-of-
| bad-...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Turbotax is a tax on paying tax.
|
| I like paying taxes _to the State_ because that money goes to
| military and entitlements, and keeping the lights on. I do not
| agree with every military action, or every entitlement, but it 's
| not my place to decide what direction the country goes in, it is
| my place to push.
|
| I wonder how many orphanages Intuit runs, how much welfare they
| pay, where the bases they operate are, how many men they've put
| on the moon, to have the gall to demand taxes. That is an
| literally an act of sedition, literally a racket.
| 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.
| Arubis wrote:
| Many users of this site aren't especially price-sensitive; if
| you're one of them and in the habit of using tax filing software,
| I urge you to consider hiring an accountant for your taxes.
| You'll pay a couple hundred bucks, which may be offset by the CPA
| finding deductions or credits that your software didn't
| highlight, and that money goes to someone you've picked out and
| hired rather than a corp that'll use your money to lobby against
| your best interests. And you'll save a bunch of time, which may
| be enough to make this worthwhile in and of itself for you!
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| What are some concrete examples of these deductions that people
| keep talking about? I'd actually like to know, so I can perhaps
| convince myself to get a CPA next year. The only deductions I
| have seen as a salaried person with some minor stock trades are
| things for home heating credits and such which I am always
| ineligible for on the basis of income.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Just mail your taxes in with a letter and a stamp, come on!
| macinjosh wrote:
| Pro tip: when I was doing my taxes TurboTax asked me for a
| survey. I complained bitterly about their lobbying. I was
| suddenly able to file fed and state free.
| 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.
| greeneggs wrote:
| That's not exactly true. Free filing is also opposed by
| influential conservatives. The argument goes that if paying
| taxes were easier, then people wouldn't pay as much attention
| and oppose taxes as much. (I'm paraphrasing as best I can.)
|
| Here's an old article from 2013 on it, for example, and a
| letter from Grover Norquist (sponsor of the Taxpayer
| Protection Pledge) and others.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
| turbotax...
|
| https://www.atr.org/taxpayer-advocates-issue-joint-free-
| file...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxpa.
| ..
| 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.
| astura wrote:
| >Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file
| by.
|
| Every single wall or desk calendar I've ever seen has
| "Tax Day" labeled on it.
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| April 15 (ok. Sometimes a few days later based on
| holidays.) is pretty engrained into the minds of adult
| Americans who pay taxes. I have rarely watched tv news in
| years and don't even get it any longer. But I can pretty
| much guarantee if you asked a bunch of middle class
| adults when tax day is, an overwhelming majority would
| tell you the correct answer.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| FWIW, I don't watch local news; I read it online. But
| I've seen studies showing that it's still the most
| popular primary source of news.
| astura wrote:
| Wtf?!
|
| I grew up impoverished. Impoverished people talk about
| tax filing time way, way more than well off people
| because they need the money (refund) much more. A very
| pleasant memory of my early childhood was at my aunt's
| house celebrating her tax refund with her by making
| strombolis.
| 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.
| creato wrote:
| I think most of the fear of the IRS comes from rumors
| like your post.
|
| I think in reality, a way to get the "civilized country"
| (as referred to by another poster) tax experience is just
| file an incomplete return, the IRS will bill you the
| correct amount along with a negligible "fee" (interest) a
| few weeks or months later.
|
| Maybe doing this repeatedly would upset the IRS, I don't
| know. But it definitely works a few times without issue.
|
| That said, I wouldn't do this on purpose :)
| semiquaver wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what monthly tax did you pay to
| Chicago? The city does not levy income or property tax.
| Most people will only ever pay Chicago sales tax or
| things like a yearly "city sticker" car license fee.
|
| https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/reven
| ue/...
| 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.
| bityard wrote:
| People who make more than the median tend to have more
| complicated tax situations due to investing, owning business,
| owning a house, and so forth, and generally have more
| complicated finances.
|
| So it's not totally arbitrary, but I certainly agree that the
| US tax system is messed up.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| free file fillable forms is available to you (I use it). It's
| not a hand-holder, but it does get the job done (and it does
| quite a bit of the math for you).
| peter303 wrote:
| Its possible to miss a form or worksheet with FFFF. A good
| guess uses the previous years forms.
| manholio wrote:
| > Bizarre
|
| Follow the lobby money.
| smordistan wrote:
| *edited for flagging
| thebean11 wrote:
| What's your point though? Does the free file system not
| work correctly or something?
| [deleted]
| neycoda wrote:
| Yay!
| webXL wrote:
| This is about as close as you can get to the government suing
| itself.
|
| Turbotax is the dominant player in an industry created by the
| government. Tax prep fees are just another tax.
| 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.
| throwaway48375 wrote:
| >though I won't shell out for state e-filing when I can
| print and mail.
|
| This is pretty much the only reason I own stamps.
| 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
| junar wrote:
| Would not recommend. If you happen to owe, you would most
| likely incur a 20% accuracy-related penalty. Also, interest
| accrues from the filing deadline on both the unpaid tax and
| the penalty.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/payments/accuracy-related-penalty
| 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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| In slovenia, this is done for "normal people" (people who are
| employed by companies (LLC, etc.), because companies have to
| fill out paycheck reports to the government). If you win
| something (eg lottery), the prize-giver has to report that too.
| You have to only fill out the form if you have any younger kids
| (tax benefit, can be done online on a governments website), and
| you're done. Then you just get the yearly report and a bill in
| the mail.
|
| If you're an eg. independent contractor, you have to fill out a
| full report (income, expenses, income tax already prepaid,
| benefits paid, etc.), but you also do it on a governments
| website and sign it using a digital certificate (that is free
| for citizens).
|
| No 3rd party software, no paying anything (unless you have an
| accountant do that for you, but it's relatively simple to do it
| by yourself), and the most time-consuming task is calculating
| all the yearly earnings and expenses.
| 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.
| elihu wrote:
| I've never been audited, but several times I've had the IRS
| just tell me I did my return wrong and give me a bigger
| refund.
| 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.
| physicsguy wrote:
| From an outsider perspective, the US tax system is nuts.
|
| Here in the UK, the tax year runs from April to April. Your
| employer reports exactly your taxable earnings to the government
| every month. You can log in online and see exactly what you're
| taxed on. You do not need to fill out a self-assessment at all -
| it's all done automatically, except for under certain
| circumstances which don't affect most of the population, but
| roughly:
|
| * You have earnings over PS1000 a year from outside of your
| normal employment (e.g. from interest on savings, selling things
| on eBay, whatever). * You are earning above PS50,000 per year but
| want to continue claiming child benefit (which phases out between
| PS50,000 and PS60,000, so some needs to be repaid). * You earn
| over PS100,000.
| smcleod wrote:
| Hasan Minhaj on TurboTax: https://youtu.be/7xQQkzWhMOc?t=1290 &
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210130180334/https://www.turbo...
| bigjoedeez wrote:
| What's the problem? I file for free each year.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| About. Damn. Time.
| 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!
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Thank you so much! I used it this year and really appreciated
| it.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Glad to hear!
| 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
| formerkrogeremp wrote:
| Huh, as an aspiring tax professional how do I get in on
| this?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Go to the GitHub link above, read the README, and pay
| special attention to the "CONTRIBUTING" section.
|
| If you have questions and the README and CONTRIBUTING
| documents do not specify a way to communicate, then open
| Issues on GitHub with your questions. Try to avoid asking
| questions unless you've read everything and cannot figure
| out how to proceed: remember that everyone working on the
| project is volunteering their limited time, just like
| you, and try to be respectful of their time and energy.
|
| I am unaffiliated with this project, this is just the
| general procedure for contributing to open source
| projects.
| zakpatterson wrote:
| Awesome
| ehsankia wrote:
| I assume the amount of changes is much higher for the more
| complex tax forms, which 99% of people don't need. If this
| free software can even just handle the free tier or semi-
| complex tier filing, it's still a huge step.
| singron wrote:
| The 1040 changes just about every year although it's
| usually just updating line numbers and various amounts
| (e.g. standard deduction). The 1040 schedules often get
| updates too.
|
| IME everything else stays the same (e.g. the 8000s forms),
| but there are so many of them that it's a lot of work to
| just see which ones have changed and if you have to care
| about them. The forms also become less formulaic. E.g. If
| you file 6251, you need to keep your own records about
| Alternative basis, so you can't just fill them out based on
| w2s and 1099s.
| 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.
| zakpatterson wrote:
| This is actually a bit of an annoying problem for us! All the
| 1040 instructions say to round all figures at the end. So it
| is expected that you would have a few cases of 1.49 + 1.49 =
| 3 showing as 1 + 1 = 3.
|
| But the freefilefillableforms supported by IRS rounds all
| input and then does addition based on that. For now we just
| maintain all cents and do math with the precise numbers, then
| round at the end when the numbers need to go into the forms.
| We have some work in the pipeline now to make that user-
| configurable too.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The way it seems it should work is that once the amount is
| entered on the form, it should be treated as the whole
| dollar amount for subsequent calculations. E.g. if the
| number comes from Schedule C, once that form is completed
| and you "enter this amount on line X of Form 1040" then any
| further calculations on the Form 1040 should use the whole
| dollar amount as printed, not the dollars and cents.
| 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
| heavyset_go wrote:
| AGPL just means that users can fork the project if they
| have access to older AGPL code, but CLAs that assign
| copyright mean that the rights holders can change the
| license whenever they want and make it difficult to find
| old AGPL code by removing repositories and scrubbing the
| web of it.
|
| It's entirely possible for the rights holders to say "we're
| going private now" and pivot the project into a for-profit
| business.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| Do know of a better license alternative that prevents
| that from happening? Would be interested!
| cure wrote:
| Your license choice is perfectly fine. If you do not have
| CLA, you have an AGPL codebase with many people owning
| the copyright on portions of it.
|
| In terms of future proofing against the project "going
| commercial" (i.e. changing the license going forward), it
| doesn't get much better than this, because pretty much
| all the copyright holders would need to agree on a
| license change.
|
| Ideally, the bulk of the copyright does not reside with a
| small number of authors - the more authors, and the more
| evenly the copyright is spread among them, the better.
| chungy wrote:
| There isn't one, because copyright holders have all the
| legal right to do whatever they want. The legal owner of
| a copyrighted work is not beholden to the license they
| release the work under.
| lakecresva wrote:
| You don't need a CLA. Github's ToS are set up such that
| contributions you get from other github users are
| licensed in the same manner as your repo unless the
| contributor gets you to agree to accept them under some
| other license : https://docs.github.com/en/site-
| policy/github-terms/github-t.... People should not be
| worried about you "going private"; if you've accepted non
| de minimis contributions from other users, any future
| conveyance or network interaction stuff would require you
| to include the source materials to stay in compliance.
| marcianx wrote:
| You don't need another license. You just need to either
| (1) not require a CLA, or (2) if you do, write the CLA so
| that it prevents you from doing that with others'
| contributions.
| remexre wrote:
| Note that AGPL and _not_ having a CLA means that this
| _isn't_ the case, because... you don't have a CLA.
| 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!
| dheera wrote:
| I'm still using Turbotax because I live in California, have
| crypto to report, and have sick contractor days to report.
|
| Can any free app do all of this?
|
| Better yet is there a free app that can log into my Turbotax
| account, fetch all the data and then generate the forms and
| file them?
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| bdickason wrote:
| This is amazing.
| scrubs wrote:
| Amen to that. I use turbo tax but the sooner I never give then
| another dollar so much the better.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Switch to FreeTaxFileUSA for now if you're not willing to go
| for this open source project.
|
| Not only is it cheaper, more importantly, you're not giving
| money that's going towards maintaining the tax code that
| prevents the government from "competing" with TurboTax.
|
| Obviously the Government already has what it needs to pretty
| much do all of your taxes, and they already must do this
| anyway. They could ask you like 5 short questions and your
| taxes would be done...they already have all your info.
|
| Stop paying the lobbyists to continue lobbying against your
| interests. Start getting in the habit of calling or emailing
| your reps around tax time.
| 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.
| TimSchumann wrote:
| I volunteer to handle all the forms, compliance, and upkeep for
| Washington State income tax filings.
| aidangrimshaw wrote:
| lol so kind! For those not familiar:
| https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/income-
| tax#:~:text=Washington....
| ouid wrote:
| damn it, i live in oregon and california
| dylan604 wrote:
| I know I'm dumb, but I got a visual of your house with a big
| stripe down the middle of it so that part is in CA and the
| other is in OR
| 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
| ehsankia wrote:
| > but registering as an E-file provider is a pretty complex
| process
|
| Sounds like yet another thing the e-filing lobby worked to
| ensure their monopoly...
| formerkrogeremp wrote:
| Intuit and H&R Block have been lobbying for decades
| against tax filing.
| https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-
| fre...
| 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.
| Bud wrote:
| Deceptive is right. I filed using TurboTax today. Federal return
| plus two state returns. Their "free" service ended up costing me
| around $180 even though I suspect my return is much simpler than
| most.
| bick_nyers wrote:
| A dark pattern I just learned about with TurboTax, is that if you
| attempt to downgrade from paid to free when it is time to file
| (even without utilizing paid features), they force you to
| completely start over from scratch. For a lot of people, they may
| not even know they are in "paid mode" until it comes time to
| punch in the debit card.
| chrisfrantz wrote:
| If you want to see an example, I took a screenshot[1] a week ago
| of the massive Intuit ad in Google Ads that blocks the results
| you may otherwise see.
|
| 1 https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1505942638704345094?s...
| 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.
| anonresearcher wrote:
| I'm curious what the original deal was, because Intuit doesn't
| even have the free system anymore. This year, they "elected not
| to renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program." [1]
|
| [1] https://freefile.intuit.com/
| josephd79 wrote:
| Allegedly the government had plans to make a completely free,
| simple way for you file your taxes electronically. Tax
| software companies knew if that took place their cash
| machines would die. They made an agreement with the
| government that they would provide a completely free simple
| way for individuals to file taxes electronically if the
| government wouldn't build their own. They technically did,
| they just made it pretty much impossible to find it. Broken
| links, hid it from search indexes etc.
| mikeInAlaska wrote:
| My last CPA had a dart board on his wall.
|
| The outside was NOT DEDUCTIBLE.
|
| The inner, smaller ring was DEDUCTIBLE.
|
| The bullseye was DEDUCTIBLE UNTIL AUDIT.
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| Nit. But the 1040-EZ form was discontinued. I don't
| disagree with the basic point that simple taxes could be
| more automatic--though the reality is that simple taxes
| are pretty simple.
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| It's pretty obvious if you do your own taxes, even without
| fully understanding the tax code. The last few lines include
| "Add up [lines]; this is the total you owe for the year:
| ____" and "Add up [lines]; this is how much you already paid:
| ____".
| 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.
| sofixa wrote:
| As has been said numerous times, this is a bullshit
| excuse. If the register is capable of calculating the
| taxes, an electronic price tag system ( which is the norm
| in all big chain stores in Western European countries,
| which have multiple geographic locations and have locale-
| specific prices) would too.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| If you're referring to the digitally updated signage at
| the shelves (e-paper or otherwise), none of the stores I
| go to in NYC have that except Best Buy.
|
| It may be weird for you when you visit, but, as we all
| grew up with it, it's just normal here.
| [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.
| perardi wrote:
| That is, in fact, Grover Norquist's position.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
| turbotax...
| twiddling wrote:
| Well if you work from an assumption that taxation is theft
| and gov't is an existential threat to liberty then it makes
| sense why filing for taxes is terrible.
| imtringued wrote:
| By that very same logic living in a community without
| paying for public infrastructure is theft as well which
| would turn a lot of land owners (frozen property taxes)
| into thieves.
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| That's highly ineffective and ultimately pointless. I don't
| want income taxes to be abolished because I think taxation
| is wrong. I want them to be abolished because there are
| better taxes than income taxes cause dead weight losses in
| the economy and tell people to work less than they want.
|
| Abolishing income tax because it is hard to file is quite
| absurd. You can have a flat percentage income tax and then
| you wouldn't have to file. Then you could implement an
| automatic deduction via tax credits ala Milton's negative
| income tax. For me that would be an acceptable compromise
| if my goal was simplifying taxes.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Thank Grover Norquist for that. Arguably he has had far more
| effect on this than the pittance Intuit has spent buying
| politicians.
| anitil wrote:
| What did Grover Norquist do (not-American here)?
| adfgadfgaery wrote:
| Grover Norquist wants to cut government spending. It's
| difficult to do that directly because people often like
| government services. Instead he suggests cutting taxes.
| This is easier to sell to the public because no one likes
| paying taxes. This will drive the government into debt,
| forcing spending cuts due to the risk of default. This plan
| is called "starving the beast".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
|
| For this plan to work, people have to really hate paying
| taxes. So, despite the fact that Norquist and his allies
| often talk about things like "reducing the burden on the
| taypayer", they have in fact acted to make paying taxes as
| unpleasant an experience as possible. This means
| deliberately underfunding the IRS and ensuring filing taxes
| is slow, complicated, and expensive.
|
| He is also the architect of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge,
| which is endorsed by the vast majority of Republican
| politicians currently in office. The pledge prohibits them
| from supporting any legislation that would increase taxes
| on people or corporations. The idea of "starving the beast"
| has been endorsed in as many words by a number of
| politicians, including George W. Bush.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Taxp
| a...
|
| Any time a Republican politician starts talking about
| reducing the deficit, know that they are lying. Over 95% of
| them have publicly signed a pledge meant to deliberately
| _increase_ the deficit. This isn 't a conspiracy theory.
| The plans are public.
| refurb wrote:
| This seems like an internet meme and a "just so" story
| that once you dig turns out not to be true (the "let's
| make it more complex" part).
|
| Sources would be nice.
| adfgadfgaery wrote:
| I don't have a source of him saying that's why he opposed
| return-free taxes. This article has links to the
| statements of his organization:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
| turbotax...
|
| His stated reasons are so fantastically stupid that I
| can't imagine them being legitimate. Return-free filing
| is the best tool we have to achieve his claimed goals of
| reducing the complexity and confusion of tax season. Can
| you think of an innocent explanation for his opposition?
| imtringued wrote:
| > Grover Norquist wants to cut government spending. It's
| difficult to do that directly because people often like
| government services.
|
| Reminds me of Grafton where the population didn't care
| about cutting government services and only cared about
| lower taxes. Liberals all over the country moved there
| and it ended with bear attacks because everyone was
| disposing their trash incorrectly and the only policeman
| in town had a broken down car.
|
| https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-
| state-...
| nimish wrote:
| eFile could be free too but it's an enormous pain in the ass to
| even get registered as an IRS developer.
|
| IRS provides docs: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-
| year-2021-modernize...
|
| but hides them from the public.
| mike503 wrote:
| Amusing. They lobby to keep the government and IRS complex, get
| sued back, but ultimately it'll always be a net gain.
| musicale wrote:
| Amazing it took them this long.
|
| So when will Intuit be returning all of the bait-and-switch
| money?
| 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.
| briandear wrote:
| Let's not blame Intuit for this. Blame the politicians.
|
| Here's Milton Friedman on the reason the tax code is
| intentionally complicated:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8
| 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.
| assuringllama wrote:
| In my country, we rarely use software or professional services
| for filing personal income tax. Not for most people unless you
| have special circumstances which are usually reserved for super
| high networth individuals.
|
| What my local IRS did is sensible default. Employment income are
| submitted electronically to my IRS from most employers.
| Deductions and reliefs are automatically factored in if it
| relates to other government services (e.g. reliefs for child).
|
| What I love most is for information that they don't have
| information on, such as deductible expenses for rental income,
| they suggest a default of 15% expenses where we don't have to
| provide any proof or documentation. It is a 15% deduction over
| the rental income that's just given to you. Of course, we can
| challenge it if we feel we should have higher deductions,
| providing them with the necessary documents.
| 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.
| jxi wrote:
| mwexler wrote:
| ProPublica has been hammering on this since 2019. Their series of
| investigations at https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-
| trap is very eyeopening, and teeth-gritting.
| 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!).
| bschwindHN wrote:
| Seems like you should combine forces with ustaxes.org?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848936
| csb6 wrote:
| Here is another similar project that has been around a while
| for anyone interested
|
| http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net
| aclindsa wrote:
| Perhaps so. Though I found structural things with each of
| those projects that I did not like. For example,
| opentaxsolver's logic is a bunch of 'monolithic' C code,
| and I haven't been able to find any tests. UStaxes is
| better in that respect, but there I couldn't get past
| typescript, honestly, and they have code like https://githu
| b.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes/blob/master/src/forms/Y20... where
| they're relying on position of an item in the array to
| indicate which field it is. Not trying to disparage anyone,
| but I did not see evidence of an attention to detail I felt
| I could trust (and maybe that's just me and NIH syndrome).
|
| What I would _really_ like is to somehow extract out a
| representation of the tax logic into something separate
| from the business of collecting the data from the user, or
| even calculating the results. I 'm not entirely sure what
| that would look like, maybe it would have to be some
| domain-specific language (eww) in order to be able to fully
| express the relationships and dependencies between
| different fields/forms.
|
| But I think that tax logic portion is the difficult-to-
| maintain part, and also the portion different projects
| would benefit the most from sharing.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Finally!
|
| First Intuit lobbies to prevent free tax returns by claiming that
| can provide their own (very sketchy) free service for that. Then
| they have the gall to opt out that very program which they used
| to prevent free tax returns in the first place.
|
| I wish they would just go away.
| 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.
| eropple wrote:
| In my experience, somebody who has tax preparation as a
| primary job is often _not_ a CPA. A CPA usually offers a
| suite of services, and is also usually a lot more useful.
|
| My CPA is great, and I save money through using his
| services.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| "Primary job" as in "not a side gig."
| eropple wrote:
| Gotcha. Still worth noting that going to somebody whose
| sign says "tax preparer" often isn't the same thing as
| "accountant", and one conflates at their peril!
| 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.
| astura wrote:
| Not GP but I've been using TaxHawk/FreeTaxUSA (same
| company runs both sites) for more than a decade with no
| problems, no upsells, and no dark patterns. Filing
| federal taxes is completely free with them for everyone,
| so there's no harm in giving them a shot. If you want to
| add your state tax filing in at the end (if applicable)
| it will only cost $15. There's no obligation to buy
| anything, you can file your federal taxes for free
| without purchasing the state tax filing option.
| 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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