[HN Gopher] TurboTax's fight against free tax filing
___________________________________________________________________
TurboTax's fight against free tax filing
Author : xweb
Score : 607 points
Date : 2022-04-18 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| lol1lol wrote:
| I paid $300 for TurboTax to fill two input boxes because I found
| the W2-C form too confusing
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| In Spain I log onto the tax agency website using my digital
| certificate. It tells me what I have been paid during the year,
| what I own, how big my mortgage is, etc. If I agree I click a
| button and pay whatever I owe. If I don't agree, or some info is
| missing, I add it in and then click the button.
|
| It's astronomically easier than filing the same tax information
| in the US and takes far less time even though the tax code is
| less clearly written and user support is almost totally
| nonexistent.
|
| The nonexistence of a national ID system makes digital
| identification unnecessarily difficult. The idea that an
| individual has to redeclare to the IRS what has already been
| declared to the IRS on W2s and 1099s is just stupid.
|
| The US tax filing system is simply primitive.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Maybe it just optimizes for different things? I honestly don't
| see why you'd think your system is superior, we have a similar
| one to americans here in canada and it's just fine. No one
| really complains about it outside the internet, and to me the
| process you described wouldn't fit here as much. Having your
| own business, or side revenues, or not being a salaried
| employee is much more common here. And we (thankfully) don't
| have a mandated ID in canada or in the US, which makes it
| harder for the state to actually track all your income and
| expenses.
|
| Yes TurboTax and the tax filling industry in general are pretty
| shady, and there should be free IRS/CRA tools for people to
| fill their returns directly. Unless you have a more complicated
| tax situation. But to me that does not have anything to do with
| doing away with tax fillings in general.
| kube-system wrote:
| While this is a fair criticism of our federal tax system, it
| still wouldn't be simple for me to file my taxes even if the
| IRS filled out all of my federal forms. Many places in the US
| have state and local income taxes, so for some people, the IRS
| is only one of two or three agencies that they fill out tax
| forms for. There are hundreds of different governments that
| impose income taxes in the US.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Many places in the US have state and local income taxes, so
| for some people, the IRS is only one of two or three agencies
| that they fill out tax forms for.
|
| (1) In many of those cases, state/local filing requires very
| small additional paperwork plus same-year federal forms.
|
| (2) In many of those cases, the same thing the IRS could do
| for federal forms could be done by state/local tax
| authorities for their own forms.
|
| So, solving the federal case both solves most of the problem
| _and_ provides a template for solving most of the rest of the
| problem.
| kube-system wrote:
| ... and all you have to do is get hundreds of different
| organizations to agree to do something that nobody has
| managed to convince any of them to do. The template you
| propose is imaginable, yes, but logistically unlikely.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Part (1) doesn't require any agreement from the other
| entities, just the ability to print the filled form from
| the federal bundle.
| kube-system wrote:
| It makes sense to have a tax authority to fill out their
| own tax forms. I don't think it makes any sense to have
| what amounts to a nationalized TurboTax that interprets
| tax laws outside of their own jurisdiction.
|
| States' tax laws are not just federal taxes on a
| different form. They're independent tax systems with
| different legislation and different judiciary. Maybe in
| some states the tax code is simple enough that it can be
| filled entirely from information on your federal taxes,
| but this is often not the case.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It makes sense to have a tax authority to fill out
| their own tax forms.
|
| That's all that is being talked about with #1.
|
| > I don't think it makes any sense to have what amounts
| to a nationalized TurboTax that interprets tax laws
| outside of their own jurisdiction.
|
| No one is suggesting that.
|
| > States' tax laws are not just federal taxes on a
| different form.
|
| Typically, a component (often the _main_ component, with
| the state firm being smaller to capture special
| situations that cause variations) of state tax filing is
| _exactly_ federal tax documents ( _not_ on a different
| form.)
|
| Getting the state to prefill their own forms is a
| separate policy decision, but it's generally smaller
| impact in time/effort per filer as well as smaller impact
| in # impacted.
| kube-system wrote:
| The acceptance of federal forms by states ranges from
|
| "we don't even have income tax" to "copy over a few
| lines, multiply by this fixed number, and we have 5 other
| possible deductions" to "we have our own forms for
| everything, and you need to file a separate local tax
| return"
|
| And heaven forbid you have any part year returns with a
| couple of states like the latter.
|
| My point is that the whole system is inherently a mess
| and even if federal returns were automated, many people
| would still be spending considerable amounts of time
| preparing taxes.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that the federal system would print
| out the state taxes complete, I'm saying that just having
| access to the federally prepared information would
| greatly simplify the state filing.
|
| Like my taxes are relatively simple, so my state taxes
| are just a few calculations using my taxable income from
| the federal 1040, and then also I have to attach any
| federal schedules I filed. Having the completed 1040 and
| printable schedules would reduce the state filing down to
| a few minutes of work.
| kube-system wrote:
| If that solved people's problems, then there would be no
| need for people to buy tax prep software that does state
| returns... and some don't, but it is an extremely popular
| selling point of TurboTax and similar software.
|
| My tax situation is not complicated and my state filing
| is 11 pages, plus 8 pages of worksheets. Federal
| schedules are not accepted, my state has similar but
| slightly different counterparts.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It sounds like everyone has a complicated situation if
| you have to do 8 pages of worksheets to file your state
| taxes.
|
| I guess I wouldn't want Michigan to not implement an even
| easier system just because some other state requires more
| complicated calculations.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Not an excuse for not automating as much of the process as
| possible.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| We do have several local taxes as well (in France). They are
| all handled by your equivalent of the IRS, everything is on
| the same web site (I do not even know what I pay in local
| taxes, I get an email telling me that it i due, and it is
| then direct debited from by bank account).
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, but you have a unitary government. In the US, states
| have a constitutional authority to independently administer
| taxes inside of their borders, and there is no way in hell
| that they are going volunteer that power away. Also, states
| have the power to tax income that is generated outside of
| their borders where have no power to require reporting. So
| they couldn't legally automate those tax filings even if
| they wanted to.
|
| The US government has zero power to change any of this.
| rycomb wrote:
| Yet there are businesses like TaxDown and TaxFix trying to get
| in the middle (just look at how much they're spending on ads in
| Spanish TV).
|
| I seriously hope they fail, and also that they're never able to
| influence the powers that be / the whole process with Hacienda
| (they surely would like to make it more complex, more like
| filing a return in the US).
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I don't think it's related to national ID system though. The
| Social Security Number (or Tax Identification Number for non-
| citizen non-residents) does serve as a national ID for tax
| purposes. The IRS certainly already does have your W2's and
| does know who you are, that's not an issue.
|
| The main issue is what the OP is about, that the US was
| considering creating such a system, but the tax prep software
| people lobbied against it.
|
| I also wonder how much of an issue is the crazy complexity of
| the US tax code; it _seems_ ridiculously complex to me, even
| for people without complicated or large income, I suspect it 's
| a lot simpler in Spain. But this is just me guessing.
| chucksta wrote:
| It is not primitive, it is intentionally complex and riddled
| with loop holes so it can be manipulate by those who know how
| to creating all kinds of new markets for law, filing, and
| enforcement.
| gst wrote:
| The US system is more complex, but I wouldn't attribute this
| to malice.
|
| The reason why it's so easy to file taxes in lots of European
| countries is because the tax system (for the general
| population) is a lot simpler. For example in Austria you pay
| the same amount of taxes no matter if you're single or
| married, capital gains are taxed at a flat rate and directly
| withheld by brokers, and "social benefits" are typically
| handled outside of the tax system instead of being folded
| into the tax system.
|
| In the United States the tax code is a lot more complex. You
| pay different taxes if you're married compared to if you're
| single, capital gains tax rate depends on your other taxes so
| brokers can't automatically withhold taxes, and there are a
| lot of edge-cases for certain other situations that can't be
| easily automated. Like tax credits if you're affected by
| natural disasters, different tax handling for railroad worker
| pensions, and so on.
|
| With that complexity it is a lot harder to automate taxes,
| but it's also hard to retroactively reduce that complexity,
| as any changes will negatively financially impact some of the
| affected groups. Also I think that it might be easier in the
| US to handle those aspects as part of the tax system (instead
| of handling them independently), as the federal government
| has the authority to collect taxes, but direct payments
| (outside of the tax system) to individual groups might be
| harder? (But I'm not sure if that's true).
| sngz wrote:
| > In the United States the tax code is a lot more complex.
|
| what do you think OP was talking about? they are keeping it
| complex on purpose.
| kube-system wrote:
| Some of the complexity is also due to the design of our
| governments. I don't know much about taxes in Spain, but
| I'd guess the number of income tax jurisdictions there is
| not a 3 digit number.
| gst wrote:
| But all of that complexity seems to be added with good
| intentions. Just look at the "Coronavirus Tax Relief" as
| the latest example which by itself has a long FAQ page
| describing all of the details:
| https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/coronavirus-related-relief-
| for-.... Adding that to the tax code was probably the
| best short-term approach to quickly ship something (and
| lots of people are probably in favor of those changes),
| but that complexity adds up over time.
|
| To me this looks somewhat like the broken windows
| fallacy: In countries where the tax code is simple and
| allow for "automated" taxes nobody is going to advocate
| for a new law if it makes filing taxes a lot more
| complicated. But in countries where the tax code is
| already complex adding one more complex law doesn't make
| too much of a difference.
| chucksta wrote:
| My post does give the tone of malice, and certainly what I
| was thinking about while writing but not my intention. But
| I do recognize there are "good reasons" why it should be
| manipulated as well.
| TheCondor wrote:
| I think that efforts to suppress things like "Easy Tax"
| where the feds would send you a pre-filled-out form that
| you could agree or disagree with are almost certainly
| malice. There have been multiple attempts over the years
| and the anti-tax Norquist crowd comes down. If they can't
| end taxes, they don't mind it being difficult to file
| taxes and they say that it's because they wouldn't mind
| someone accidentally under paying or under reporting
| taxable income and it not getting caught.
|
| Part of the political resonance with the tax issue is the
| cost of doing taxes and the stress it causes. If the
| process was as simple as verifying a document, signing it
| and sending it back (or heaven forbid, docusigning it and
| clicking 'next') then the discussion changes to "what are
| my taxes doing?" and "is this worth it?"
| wardedVibe wrote:
| tax _filing_ in particular is intentionally throttled. The
| IRS looked into doing an internal electronic filing system,
| but was blocked thanks to efforts by Intuit and H &R block
| https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-
| fre...
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| How do you incentivize people to provide missing info if it
| will increase their tax bill?
|
| The US system is intentionally designed so that you don't know
| what the IRS does or does not know. If you leave something off
| of your taxes that the IRS knows about then maybe they'll audit
| you and give you a big fine. So the optimal strategy is to
| report everything and pay the taxes you owe.
|
| In Spain's system, it seems to me that the optimal strategy
| would be to either go with what the tax agency says or to
| report more information, depending in which gives you a lower
| tax bill.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'The US system is intentionally designed so that you don't
| know what the IRS does or does not know."
|
| Sounds a lot like 'it's best for the plebs not to know the
| law is so they don't know what to hide from the police'
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| The US system is intentionally designed for companies like
| TurboTax to make money off of you and to be a political tool.
|
| There's a lot you still have to report yourself, like cash
| payments or sales, crypto currency, dependents, charitable
| contributions, and so on.
|
| It's not like the IRS magically knows everything. You're
| acting as if people only avoid tax fraud because the IRS has
| a general idea as to what you owe and they keep it secret
| from you. People are generally pretty decent. The people
| intentionally committing tax fraud are gonna try whether the
| IRS keeps your taxes secret from you or not.
| trevorboaconstr wrote:
| It's intentional.
| 2ion wrote:
| This sounds like a nice system.
|
| Does it also tell you of its own volition if the tax office
| owes you money instead on a return without you having to
| declare anything? For example, if the tax office knows where
| you work as an employee and where you live, and the tax code
| has provisions that stipulate that an employee gains a tax
| advantage of 0.xxEUR per kilometre commuting distance between
| his home and his place of work, does it factor that in or
| doesn't it? Because that would actually be _nice_.
| midasuni wrote:
| In the U.K. if you've overpaid in a given year (usually only
| a few pounds) you get the option to either roll it over to
| the next year, or a direct bank transfer to the account you
| give.
|
| I've had payments pretty much instant (maybe next day) of
| repayments that are 4 figures, and ones that are just a few
| pennies.
| [deleted]
| henrikeh wrote:
| In Denmark, so not the same as who you reply to.
|
| Yes, if you pay too much in tax and their calculations reveal
| that, then, yes, you get money back on your bank account.
|
| They don't calculate commute deductibles for you, but
| mortgages, pension is something which is calculated for you
| based upon reports from the respective institutes.
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| Never once seen a tax form here in the UK. Your employer deals
| with it. Every year they mail you a personalised table showing
| exactly how much each public service cost you (i.e. what they
| spent your taxes on).
| AviationAtom wrote:
| The reason the US lacks a national ID system ties back to a
| strongly held belief about state's rights, and that a national
| ID system would violate those rights, IIRC. I think it's
| already somewhat happened though, as I understand REAL ID to
| more or less be that.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that SSNs are horribly insecure and
| used as a national ID anyways because it's the only national
| number (almost) everyone has.
|
| I just use a passport for govt identification because it
| usually only requires the passport, where most other ID
| methods require two.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Having a national ID would make it harder for states to abuse
| minorities and low-income communities. That's why states
| object to it.
| noasaservice wrote:
| > The nonexistence of a national ID system makes digital
| identification unnecessarily difficult.
|
| You can thank the Christians in the Reagan years for calling
| damned near everything "The Mark of the Beast", including
| social security numbers, attempted creation of a national ID,
| and more.
|
| So we ended up with a de-facto national ID, being a hodgepodge
| of state IDs, RealID, SSN, credit scores from multiple
| (horrific) credit vendors, legal records, and plenty more.
| slg wrote:
| I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil
| TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued
| existence. Countless companies do that. The real villains of this
| story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully
| lobbied.
|
| The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do
| the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be
| convinced to do the wrong thing.
| burkaman wrote:
| Companies are not alive. The human beings running Intuit are
| lobbying for the continued existence of an unnecessary and
| harmful organization. That is unethical/immoral/evil behavior.
| Accepting their bribes is also evil behavior. There's no need
| to pick the "real villains", everyone involved is a villain.
|
| It's true that some employees would be hurt if Intuit went out
| of business, but paying someone doesn't magically make their
| behavior acceptable. You can't pay someone to harass people on
| the street and then say "sorry, I can't stop or my harasser
| will lose their income, the real villains here are the police
| for letting me do this."
| patrickthebold wrote:
| Why not the voters who voted for the politicians who were
| successfully lobbied?
| oo0shiny wrote:
| I would argue that perhaps both are the bad guys in this
| situation.
| runnerup wrote:
| Truly. At some point, there is a person with far more money
| than their family would ever need, even only counting annual
| interest earned instead of principal.
|
| Current CEO has net worth of >$100 million. In fairness, the
| poorest board member of intuit has half a dozen positions
| earning $150,000 to $350,000 and _may_ not have accumulated
| true financial independence. But other board members have
| over $200 Million.
|
| Those people make the following decision Every. Single. Year:
| "let's try to get the government to make taxes far harder and
| riskier for hundreds of millions of Americans so that I can
| be even more rich than I already am."
|
| It would be more excusable if they merely hadn't lobbied for
| Americans at all, someone else did, and they reacted quickly
| to additionally reap the benefits of the same policy.
|
| But when you are already well past having all the money your
| family could ever need, and choose to try to get the
| government to fuck over hundreds of millions of people, then
| the blame lands on you just as much as the politician.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I think if you are going to be charitable, they aren't just
| looking after their own bottom line. Intuit employs 14,000
| people, so they are also doing as much as possible to keep
| their jobs.
|
| Of course, that is still a drop in the bucket compared to
| how many people suffer because of their lobbying, but it
| isn't about simply one person being greedy for themselves.
| slg wrote:
| TurboTax/Intuit are bad guys for other reasons. Like trying
| to mislead customers like the article details, but I don't
| think lobbying the government to ensure their industry is not
| eradicated is necessarily immoral. They have perfectly
| reasonable motivations there. Most of us would act the same
| way in their position. It isn't their job to consider the
| societal ramifications of those laws. It is the governments
| job to see that lobbying and not let it outweigh the clear
| societal harm in just acquiescing to TurboTax/Intuit.
| [deleted]
| anticensor wrote:
| > They are simply lobbying for their continued existence
|
| Survival instinct.
| Afforess wrote:
| > _I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil
| TurboTax /Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued
| existence._
|
| Fascinating way to reframe this as a natural survival instinct
| of... _checks notes_... a corporate entity. An entity that
| exists at the government 's pleasure, and whose charter can be
| revoked by said government.
|
| Let's reframe your own logic:
|
| > _The real villains of this story are the politicians who
| TurtboTax /Intuit have successfully lobbied._
|
| The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying
| on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would
| you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for
| earning money to continue to survive in politics, no?
|
| You can go in circles with this kind of thinking.
|
| Instead, we should look at outcomes. What do we want to happen
| with taxes? Ideally the government sends you pre-filled
| paperwork. Who is opposing this outcome? Intuit. Hence they are
| villians.
| slg wrote:
| >The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the
| lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or
| law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault
| politicians for earning money to continue to survive in
| politics, no?
|
| First off, I never said anything about a legal punishment.
| Secondly, politicians are ostensibly supposed to act for the
| good of their constituents. Corporations are motivated to act
| for the good of their shareholders. In this situation
| TurboTax/Intuit is operating as it is expected/supposed to
| act while the politicians are not.
| Afforess wrote:
| I'm confused why you are holding politicians to a standard
| that you are unwilling to apply to corporate entities, who
| serve politicians explicitly via the government and their
| corporate charter. Either both are acting according to
| their interests and we should examine outcomes, or neither
| are, and the system is broken.
| slg wrote:
| Because the corporations are acting amorally while the
| politicians are acting immorally. Corporations are not
| obligated to better society. Politicians are. The
| corporations are ignoring something that is outside their
| responsibility. The politicians are ignoring something
| that is within their responsibility.
| lostdog wrote:
| Making the world worse so you can benefit is *evil*. It's
| evil when individuals do it, and it's evil when
| corporations do it.
|
| It doesn't matter that a certain choice is better for the
| corporation. It's still immoral for the corporation to
| harm people.
| slg wrote:
| This weekend I drove to the beach when I could have just
| sat in my house all day. I personally benefitted by
| receiving a relaxing afternoon at the expense of creating
| extra pollution for everyone else on the planet to deal
| with. By your definition that is evil and therefore we
| are all evil.
| lostdog wrote:
| This is not comparable to crippling the efficiency of the
| US tax system for hundreds of millions of people in order
| to fluff corporate profits.
| slg wrote:
| Look back at your previous comment:
|
| >Making the world worse so you can benefit is _evil_. It
| 's evil when individuals do it, and it's evil when
| corporations do it.
|
| You are simultaneously arguing against nuance in one
| comment and then for it in the next.
| Afforess wrote:
| I think this is where you erred in your reasoning:
|
| > _The corporations are ignoring something that is
| outside their responsibility._
|
| Intuit is actively lobbying about tax preparation, ergo
| it is their responsibility, ergo they can be judged for
| their actions on it. In general you are correct, in the
| specifics here, you are incorrect.
| kelnos wrote:
| "Corporations" don't act. The people who manage them do.
| These acts are not amoral; they have real consequences
| for real people, and need to be judged as such.
|
| Corporations may not be obliged to better society, but it
| is entirely reasonable for me to look upon them
| unfavorably when their management intentionally and
| knowingly takes actions that make life worse for most
| people.
|
| It is very strange that you believe that an entity can
| engage with a government but then be absolved of all
| responsibility for the outcome of that engagement.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"this as a natural survival instinct of... _checks notes_
| ... a corporate entity "
|
| There is no need for the glib " _checks notes_ " snark on a
| forum like this. I feel like it undermines the argument and
| makes the post come across as adversarial rather than
| constructive.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > The problem isn't people trying to influence the government
| to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so
| easily be convinced to do the wrong thing.
|
| It's both.
|
| If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every
| company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass.
|
| Also I don't really want to hear about how American citizens
| need to fix their government when they have no time for civic
| engagement. Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned
| priorities to what the people want, and they often have a rock
| bottom approval rating.
|
| Let's start by making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable
| minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane
| world, let that marinade for a while, then let's criticize
| people for their lack of engagement.
|
| Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at
| the moment so trying to undermine this article is also
| undermining progress.
| tonguez wrote:
| "Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities
| to what the people want"
|
| are you saying you think people in power care about the
| people they rule over?
|
| "Let's start by making voting days holidays"
|
| if voting could change anything they wouldn't allow you to do
| it. they literally shot JFK, the elected president, almost 60
| years ago. the idea that everything is not completely fucked
| at this point, is so incredibly naiive.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| That's really easy to say, but not productive.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > if voting could change anything they wouldn't allow you
| to do it.
|
| They don't have to disallow it, just make it difficult and
| inconvenient. The loud part is "election security". The
| quiet part is "voter suppression".
|
| Like, why the hell do so many states only allow a SINGLE
| day to vote? I can understand not trusting the mail-in
| voting that Oregon and some other states do, but
| _certainly_ we can all agree that letting the polls be open
| for multiple days with long hours would be a good thing,
| right?
|
| > "Let's start by making voting days holidays"
|
| I hate that there has been such a push for this. It's not
| going to increase turnout. It will not increase turnout
| from people that work emergency services, and will _lower_
| turnout for people that work customer-facing jobs like
| retail and restaurants. Just ask your cashier how easy it
| is for them to get Labor Day, Memorial Day, or Independence
| Day off of work. They will laugh in your face.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > they literally shot JFK, the elected president, almost 60
| years ago
|
| Are "they" in the room with you right now?
| twoodfin wrote:
| _If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every
| company would lobby against it. It wouldn 't pass._
|
| That's primarily because it would be unconstitutional to
| "fix" lobbying, at least they way detractors of the practice
| would likely consider adequate. It's right there in the First
| Amendment next to freedom of speech:
|
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and _to petition
| the Government for a redress of grievances_. "
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Totally. I've had this argument with some of my lawyer
| friends. I admit that "fixing" lobbying is a complex issue
| that does not have one simple answer.
|
| But one thing it shows is that the American democratic
| process is supremely broken, because we don't seem to be
| able to punish our bad politicians who are accepting
| bribes. All you have to do is look at the average age and
| tenure of the senate compared to approval ratings and it
| tells it's own story.
|
| My last point is that money is not speech, corporations are
| not people, and one person equals one vote. If you etched
| all that in legal framework you would totally still have
| lobbying, but I'd like to think it would help.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Bribery is illegal. Even of the form often presupposed on
| HN threads: "Congressman, if you vote for this bill,
| Exxon will make sure you have hundreds of donors
| contributing thousands each to your next campaign." I'm
| 100% sure such _quid pro quos_ still happen, but because
| they 're unambiguously against the law, they represent at
| most a tiny fraction of the lobbying dollars that flow
| through DC.
|
| Most lobbying is boring stuff like proposed amendment
| drafting, outreach to Congressional and agency staff,
| highly targeted issue & message test polling, ...
| slg wrote:
| >Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle
| at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also
| undermining progress.
|
| I am pointing out the root of the problem is not
| TurboTax/Intuit but instead the government. Your comment is
| effectively the doing the same thing to my comment that I did
| to this article so I don't understand your criticism that I
| was "undermining progress". It isn't like "making voting days
| holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time
| off like the rest of the sane world" is a much easier to
| accomplish political goal than "fix lobbying".
| kelnos wrote:
| I certainly do blame our politicians for bowing to this
| type of lobbying, but I think it's a little weak to claim
| that the companies that do the lobbying deserve a pass.
| Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively
| against the interests of most of the people in the country
| is immoral, regardless of the reasoning behind it.
| moate wrote:
| "It's not my fault slavery is legal and I'm profiting off
| of it!"-Thomas Jefferson, probably
|
| Fully agree with you that saying "This rent seeking
| entity with a will of its own and deep pockets to spend
| on lobbying, is solely a byproduct of a broken system and
| not also fundamentally culpable at this point for the
| continuation of that system". Governments and
| corporations are made of people who make a choice. If a
| company choses to profit off a bad thing the government
| wants to do, we can decry the industry as well.
|
| At some point there was a complex tax code, and TurboTax
| et. al. didn't exist yet and were not to blame for it. At
| this point, they do exist and they must share in the
| blame.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Asking your government to adopt policies that is
| actively against the interests of most of the people in
| the country is immoral, regardless of the reasoning
| behind it.
|
| To solve the problem, you can either liquidate all
| immoral people, or harden government against the desires
| of immoral people. Eliminating Intuit would just result
| in a new company picking up where they left off.
| _Blaming_ and _condemning_ Intuit is a no-op and a waste
| of time.
| slg wrote:
| >Asking your government to adopt policies that is
| actively against the interests of most of the people in
| the country is immoral
|
| My point was that this is something we all do. I have
| never met a single person who was always on the side of
| the greater good for every single political issue. I
| don't think voting or lobbying for your own interests is
| inherently immoral. If it is, basically all of democracy
| and capitalism is immoral.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Being selfish, or: doing something extra for yourself
| that explicitly harms others, is inherently immoral.
|
| No need to add grey space here.
| slg wrote:
| So every time you have decided to drive your car
| somewhere instead of take public transportation you are
| being immoral? The reason we need nuance here is without
| it we are all evil people contributing to the destruction
| of the planet.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Who cares? Complain to the Pope about immorality, and
| he'll make sure they go to Hell. While you work on that,
| hopefully someone is working on making tax filing
| simpler, and preventing lobbyists from blocking that
| effort.
| memish wrote:
| "It wasn't my fault your honor, a lobbyist told me to do it!"
| maxerickson wrote:
| I'm not engaged in directly lobbying the government to do
| stupid things that are profitable for me, so I feel pretty okay
| judging people that are.
| briHass wrote:
| Perhaps the real bad guys are those same politicians, or
| others, that make the tax code so damn complicated that 50% or
| more of the population don't stand a chance of comprehending
| it.
|
| If you're W2, and you have kids or 1099s the gov already knows
| about, there should be no need to file at all. State and local
| governments should tap into the federal feed, and there should
| also be no filing there. Any discrepancy that results in a bill
| or refund gets automatically sent out.
|
| The amount of time wasted to do taxes, even a simple 1040EZ, is
| staggering. The fact that people with relatively simple tax
| situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R)
| or crappy software is criminal.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _...people with relatively simple tax situations are
| persuaded to use expensive filing services (H &R)..._
|
| And when you go to an H&R Block office, you're talking with
| someone who doesn't really know taxes at all. They are just
| filling out forms like you might do yourself.
|
| When my ex-wife and I had separated but were still legally
| married, she went to an H&R Block office and the tax preparer
| told her that she could file single. (No, you can't. It's
| married filing jointly or married filing separately.)
|
| She also said our adult daughter didn't need to file at all
| because her income was below the filing threshold. (Yes, she
| did need to file because at the time she was on an
| ACA/Obamacare health plan.)
|
| It's bad when I know more about taxes than the "expert" at
| H&R Block.
| TillE wrote:
| As an American living overseas, I'm forced to file taxes every
| year even though I pay the IRS $0. It therefore seems very silly
| to pay around $100 a year for tax software.
|
| In previous years, TurboTax's free option was pretty great. This
| year, my only real option was TaxSlayer, since the others
| required a US mobile number. It worked, but it was very primitive
| compared to TurboTax. I could've e-filed IRS forms directly,
| except I also needed to file state taxes, which directed me to
| use private software.
|
| A very stupid system of filing a bunch of paperwork through
| private companies just so I can pay/receive $0.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| I mean the stupid thing there is owing US taxes despite living
| and working primarily abroad. The US is only one of two
| countries that does this.
| umvi wrote:
| Just to play devil's advocate though, there's a difference in
| the information conveyed between declaring you owe $0 and not
| making a declaration at all.
|
| Or to put it into computer terms, IRS doesn't interpret "no
| return" as meaning you owe zero taxes but rather as a null
| (i.e. a person that didn't file a return).
| kube-system wrote:
| Look on the bright side, most of us who pay money for tax
| software get much less than a $108,700 deduction!
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The government's forcing them to give away their software and
| services for free. Why would they _not_ fight against that?
|
| Have the government give a $100 tax credit to all tax-paying
| citizens to pay for tax software. You keep competition and
| private industry and companies get paid for producing their
| products.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby
| against it (2017)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856968 - March 2022 (114
| comments)
|
| _FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax "free" filing
| campaign_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846071 - March
| 2022 (555 comments)
|
| _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)
| jmercouris wrote:
| Couldn't a program just do this automatically?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I'm convinced dang is at least part-machine.
| dang wrote:
| I did the hard work once and now just cons the latest
| thread onto the head of the list.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Due to lobbying from primarily Intuit and others, no, the IRS
| cannot legally file for you.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Do you mean build a list of related threads? One would think
| so, but it wouldn't be simple. You'd need to choose keywords,
| figure out relevancy.
|
| This case is a good example of that actually--the only word
| that (sort of) appears in all these titles is "tax", and
| searching on that would cast way too wide a net.
|
| My sense is that we'd be better off writing software to allow
| the community to collaborate on a list of related URLs.
| That's the plan anyhow.
| beckingz wrote:
| Taxes? Yes.
|
| No reason that most people shouldn't have the government do
| their taxes for them.
| [deleted]
| briandear wrote:
| Not sure why it makes sense to have a group with a
| financial incentive to take more of your money be the ones
| doing the calculating. The IRS can be a nasty, evil
| organization -- In 2013, then Acting Director of Exempt
| Organizations at IRS, Lois Lerner, apologized to a room of
| tax lawyers for the IRS's inappropriate targeting of
| conservative political groups.
|
| If the IRS is in charge of doing people's taxes, there is a
| non-zero chance that the IRS will not be completely
| trustworthy.
|
| The real conversation should be about moving to a
| consumption tax and eliminating the political power that
| comes from income taxes. The current system is
| intentionally complex -- designed to give politicians power
| to favor and disfavor behaviors and industries.
| namdnay wrote:
| Your example of the IRS being evil is their director
| publicly apologizing for overstepping the line? Wow, I
| wonder what you think of the other 3 letter agencies
| then..
| beckingz wrote:
| The IRS currently receives almost all the information
| needed to do taxes for most people. There are not
| technical reasons why they could not share their
| calculations with you and give you the option of
| accepting them or doing them yourself and submitting them
| anyways.
|
| But I agree, the current system is intentionally complex
| and should be simplified.
| Shacklz wrote:
| Seems to work perfectly well in other countries, why
| should it not in the US?
|
| Just make it so that it's only already 'prepared', you
| still have to sign them off or correct them if there's
| something wrong.
| jfim wrote:
| The consumption tax is something that sounds like a great
| idea, but in practice isn't.
|
| For taxes to be fair, people who have more means should
| pay more, as it's less of a burden on them than people of
| lesser means. If you think of someone who's not too well
| off, their entire paycheck is going to food and rent, and
| not savings. For wealthy people, some part of their
| paycheck is spent on consumption of things, but a larger
| part of it goes to savings and investments.
|
| There's a reason why rich people go to tax havens that
| have no income tax and only sales tax.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The amount of code necessary would be pretty significant,
| even the software used by CPAs is somewhat complex and
| changes every year. But yes, software could do all of this -
| especially if the tax code were not intentionally convoluted
| in order to satisfy greedy lobbyists
| twoodfin wrote:
| I kinda wish this particular topic could be banned from HN
| unless and until there's new news. It's just an endless re-run
| of the same outraged conversation approximately every 4 months.
| dang wrote:
| That's mostly true but given that it's tax season we might as
| well have a controlled burn.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| jmyeet wrote:
| This whole situation is a depressing demonstration of the ratchet
| effect [1].
|
| Intuit obviously doesn't want free filing. They'ee engaging in
| rent-seeking behaviour and free-filing would obviously hurt their
| business. Politicans are bought ("lobbied") for a pittance.
|
| But the dirty little secret here is the complexity of the tax
| code. It's truly ridiculous. Everyone fights simplication of the
| tax code because every simplification will remove somebody's
| special exemption, write-off, accelerated depreciation schedule,
| tax credits and so on. Intuit loves this. The tax industry (not
| just Intuit) loves this: the more complex it is, the more money
| they make.
|
| Worse, there's almost an institutional resistance to ANY
| simplification based pretty much on the slippery slope argument:
| well if they come for Acme Co's tax credits for not growing corn
| this week they might come for mine next week.
|
| There's also an awful lot of dishonesty built into the system.
| Payroll and social security taxes are classified as "employer
| taxes" (in part at least). There are no employer taxes.
|
| Simple example: Social Security is 6.2% on the employer and
| employee (up to a cap). So if you have a nominal income of
| $100,000, the employer is really paying you $106,200 and sending
| $12,400 to the Federal government.
|
| Can't we just call this what it is?
|
| And don't get me started on the bullshit that is the standard
| deducation.
|
| In an ideal world, I'd like to see a consitutional amendment for
| universal basic income of $X per US citizen tax resident, a tax
| free income on the first $Y of personal income and just a flat
| rate tax beyond that. Congress gets to play with the values of X
| and Y.
|
| I'm not holding my breath.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect
| dlp211 wrote:
| > Simple example: Social Security is 6.2% on the employer and
| employee (up to a cap). So if you have a nominal income of
| $100,000, the employer is really paying you $106,200 and
| sending $12,400 to the Federal government.
|
| > Can't we just call this what it is?
|
| You seem to be under the impression that in the absence of the
| employer side of the FICA tax, you would be compensated the
| full $6,200. This however is not the case. It is almost
| certainly true that you would in fact see very little if that
| portion went away tomorrow due to how tax incidence works and
| how your salary is determined.
| therealbilly wrote:
| LOL, TurboTax is using every dark pattern in the bag.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| IRS should build its own TurboTax equivalent and make it open
| source so all of us can contribute.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| That thing would be 5x over-budget, take 5+ years to build,
| there'd be a laundry list of contractors/subcontractors
| involved, and one of them would eventually leak customer data.
| anonymousnotme wrote:
| There is open source software that one can use for the main flows
| and forms:
|
| https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/
|
| It seems to work and will produce PDF of the forms with data
| filled in for one. I appreciated it. It will also handle some of
| the states. It took a while, but I did find how to check out via
| subversion:
|
| svn checkout
| 'https://svn.code.sf.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo'
|
| I use subversion so rarely, I always seem to have to figure out
| that the package name is "subversion" and not "svn" to install on
| my OS. Then I need to find a tutorial to know how to check it
| out. Then I just needed to build open tax resolver (no binaries
| are available for my OS). I have gotten way too used to git and
| github. :)
| outworlder wrote:
| I've done my taxes on Turbotax for a few years, and didn't even
| check alternate options because I had the perception they were
| clunky.
|
| I've tried for the first time FreeTaxUSA to prepare my mother's
| tax return. Guess what? It's even better than Turbotax in some
| aspects(the UI is similar, but doesn't waste your time with
| animations), and way cheaper. It only charges you to file state
| but, if you come from the Free File IRS website (and are under
| the income requirements), it doesn't even charge you that.
| There's one upsell for their tax consultants or whatever, but
| it's only done once.
|
| It does not automatically import W2s though, but that saves you
| maybe 5 minutes per W2. Not sure about stock transactions import
| either, it seems they can't import from brokers. I will have to
| check next year. They do seem to have spreadsheet import, so
| maybe that's something we (as in, HN community) could fix until
| they have the feature.
|
| The competition seems to have improved as well, although I don't
| have first hand knowledge (but watched some youtube reviews where
| they walk through the filing with every software).
|
| It's time we ditch Intuit. If we can't have free IRS software,
| then we should at least bleed Intuit dry.
|
| EDIT: it's particularly egregious that Intuit came up with the
| Free File program as a compromise so that IRS wouldn't have their
| own tax software, only to leave the program.
| [deleted]
| nosefrog wrote:
| I also used FreeTaxUSA. It doesn't import stock, but it's easy
| enough to just input the stock summaries yourself, and then
| mail the full stock tax forms from your stock brokers to the
| IRS afterwards.
| techolic wrote:
| I really love the comparison with previous year(s) on some
| pages and that helped me spot a real error. The navigation is
| so much better than turbo tax too.
|
| If anyone is looking to convert from turbo tax, you can import
| your previous return as pdf and that could cover a lot of
| details already that don't change year over year.
| js2 wrote:
| Note that if you do this and then change your mind, you can't
| delete your FreeTaxUSA account. You have to manually delete
| everything you've uploaded and replace your personal
| information with nonsense:
|
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/help/display_faq.jsp?delete-
| accou...
| thechao wrote:
| Hey, so, TurboTax has a 0% chance of _correctly_ importing my
| W2s & stock transactions; so, it's not like I even get _that_.
| This was my last year of using TTax -- if I 'd known about
| FreeTaxUSA, I would've hopped.
| depingus wrote:
| > There's one upsell for their tax consultants or whatever, but
| it's only done once.
|
| It's also worth noting that the upsell is only $7.
| smm11 wrote:
| PAYING to do your taxes is another scam we allow upon ourselves.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Agreed. At least until recently though everyone could claim a
| deduction for the costs of their tax preparation. This
| deduction is now only available to those who are self-employed
| and even that is scheduled to completely go away in 3 years.
| See:
|
| https://www.thebalance.com/tax-preparation-fees-deduction-31...
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| I noticed that if you try to download a previous year's W-2,
| TurboTax will make you select "Why" before allowing you. One of
| the options is "considering an alternative tax software". Such an
| obvious dark pattern for retention.
|
| Just lie and select "I need to fill out the FAFSA"
| atsushin wrote:
| I was heavily considering using Turbo Tax a few years back until
| I learned about the various Free File options on the IRS.
| Previously, I was dumb enough to rely on those tax-preparation
| services despite my taxes being simple enough to do on my own...
| I was worried some of the options wouldn't be 'feature-complete'
| as I had some money earned from self-employment, but they were
| just as good (or better) than Turbo Tax despite the 'older' UI.
|
| Even if you don't technically qualify for Free File, the fees are
| much lower there than what you would pay on Turbo Tax. For
| example on 1040Now filing a federal tax return when ineligible
| for Free File only is about $20. Intuit can crash and burn.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Further both Intuit and H and R Block have now completely opted
| out of the IRS Free File system. See:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/intuit-will-no-longer-partic...
|
| and
|
| https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/irss-free-fil...
| beckingz wrote:
| Going to give a +1 for FreeTaxUSA. Significantly cheaper than H&R
| Block and a user interface that is just as good.
|
| The large tax companies are engaging in regulatory capture and
| ought to be sidelined in favor of a healthy society.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I'd give a +1 for "Cash App Taxes" (formerly Credit Karma Tax),
| which is totally free and has a decent enough web-based UI.
| jetrink wrote:
| They do force you to prove you have their app installed on
| your phone to use it, though installing it and uninstalling
| it afterward isn't that much of a hassle.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That looks pretty similar to Wealthsimple Tax (formerly
| simpletax) that we have here in Canada, which I also
| recommend. I used to hate dealing with the shady tax software
| we have here in canada and as always we had even less options
| than you guys have in the US, so simpletax was a gamechanger
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Interestingly, Cash App Taxes was sold to Square just before
| Credit Karma was acquired by Intuit:
|
| https://finovate.com/square-takes-on-taxes-as-justice-oks-
| in...
| sngz wrote:
| it was required by regulators for them to sell it off in
| order for intuit to acquire credit karma
| ezfe wrote:
| Well, Cash App is part of Square
| jxramos wrote:
| Wow, I wonder if that's a sure route to start a competitor
| company, develop it a bit, and expect a sure buyer down the
| road? Would be a pretty funny game of whak-a-mole for them
| to be playing to keep the competitive landscape mowed.
| [deleted]
| vsskanth wrote:
| Yeah FreeTaxUSA is amazing. They organize their UI in income
| and deduction sections labeled with the form name so it's easy
| to link them to whatever forms you get from various sources.
| Took me a couple hours to file my taxes in a single sitting
| even though I had like 5 different types of forms to put in
| (W2s, HSA, 1099-DIV, 1099R, DCFSA).
|
| All this for like $13.50 federal and state filed online. Can't
| get cheaper than this.
|
| I love how they ask you again if you enter something that's
| "not common" in case you misunderstood what something is for.
| deathanatos wrote:
| One of the big points in the article, and the complaint
| against TurboTax, is that they're positioning their product
| as "free", when it isn't.
|
| And here is this subthread, recommending "FreeTaxUSA" ... for
| $13.50+state.
|
| It might be cheaper, better quality, or better quality/price
| ... perhaps. But is this not exactly the same _thing?_
| (Perhaps with _less_ advertising, e.g., not running a
| commercial to millions of people repeating "free" a
| gajillion times.)
| jandrese wrote:
| Federal is free. State is an upcharge, but they don't force
| it.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| No, it is free for federal filing.
|
| 13.50 is for state filing.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I've never heard of FreeTaxUSA, but with my tax situation this
| year, I'm probably going to look for something else next year.
| In short, my awesome tax guy retired, and the new people to
| whom he referred his clients ended up being less-communicative
| and more expensive ($750 vs $400). I was okay paying my tax guy
| for his amazing services, but I'm not going to pay exorbitant
| fees for crap service.
|
| My concern is that my tax situation, while not extreme, is not
| exactly simple. How well does something like FreeTaxUSA deal
| with small businesses (K1), part-time employment (1099?), stock
| awards and ESPP, and so on? If I can do my taxes in a day and
| be confident that I don't severely screw anything up, I'll
| totally go with that next year.
| outworlder wrote:
| I believe it handles all that. Now if you do a lot of stock
| trading, that's seems to be a problem. Not that it can't do
| it, but in the amount of data entry that has to be done.
| bombcar wrote:
| Another reason to stick to simple index funds, and if you
| want to play stocks do it in a tax privileged account so
| you don't have to bother with the paperwork.
| dmoy wrote:
| You just input summaries (like two per broker max) and then
| mail in your 1099 or w/e to the IRS. Doesn't take that long
| at all
| ryandrake wrote:
| This has always been my excuse for not trying FreeTaxUSA. I
| figured it was only for people who have extremely simple
| 1040 returns + a few stocks or interest. My federal return
| is 20 pages long, including schedules 2, 3, B, D, Form
| 8606's, 8889 and on and on and on. I've always been afraid
| I'll get 85% through and realize I need a more expensive
| tax prep software to file everything I need to file--and
| then have to go back to TaxAct and re-type everything
| anyway.
| kaitai wrote:
| Yeah I did not deal with stock awards or ESPP this year, but
| used Freetaxusa with K-1 and 1099-NEC and it was just fine.
| My understanding of the QBI was a little different than
| theirs but I think theirs is standard (given that I am very
| much not a tax pro, just an excessively literal person).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Used FreeTaxUSA for the first time this year.
|
| I found it MUCH more usable than TurboTax * and TaxAct.
| TurboTax was going to charge me >$300, and TaxAct was also >
| $150.
|
| FreeTaxUSA was only $16.
|
| * TurboTax can auto import your 1099s from most institutions.
| I did have to manually import 6 different forms into
| FreeTaxUSA - but I think the process was still faster.
| ddoolin wrote:
| I run a pass-through entity (S Corp) and also have investment
| sales to list and I've been using FreeTaxUSA for three years
| now. I don't think I've paid for federal yet and state (single,
| CA) is always $15. I used to pay at least $60 for TurboTax for
| many years prior.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| FreeTaxUSA for more "complex" fillings (i.e. multiple states,
| advanced investments, etc.), otherwise save coin and just use
| Cash App Tax (formerly Credit Karma Tax.)
|
| P.S. Use FREETAXUSA 10 for 10% off, and go through TopCashback
| for cashback
| usrn wrote:
| Or just use free form filler. Especially if all you have is a
| W-2 and maybe some stock sales there's no reason not to do it
| yourself.
| akvadrako wrote:
| OLT is another good option.
| pc86 wrote:
| Sad to hear about this after having paid $200-some for federal
| and two state returns last night, but I've already set a
| reminder to use them next year.
| theonething wrote:
| same story here. Next year!
| beckingz wrote:
| This is why I posted the comment! Got burned last year and
| had such a low-pain experience this year that I felt the need
| to share this option.
| neapolisbeach wrote:
| I used FreeTaxUSA this year to file and was happy with them
| except for a pretty dark pattern.
|
| If you google "FreeTaxUSA" and log-in that way, it'll change
| your free-file account to a paid account and there is no way to
| change it back. To free-file with them, you need to always log
| in using the special IRS link.
|
| I thought this was pretty annoying, especially as there's no
| way for customer service to change it back. Their
| recommendation was to make a new account and re-enter all my
| tax info.
| jandrese wrote:
| That's weird, I've never used the IRS link and it always left
| me on the Free path. I'm not low enough income or with simple
| enough returns to qualify for the free filing that TurboTax
| used to offer either.
| selykg wrote:
| I did not have that experience. I went directly to the site
| and my federal was free. State was $15 or whatever it was. I
| did not use the IRS link.
| neapolisbeach wrote:
| The state is free if you make under a certain amount which
| was the case for me. I ended up just paying the $15 rather
| than re-entering anything.
| ezfe wrote:
| Federal return is always free
| deathanatos wrote:
| You say it's "always free", but a cousin comment in this
| thread a few levels up claims it as "$13.50".
| depingus wrote:
| There are 2 parts to tax returns in the US: the Federal
| File and the State File (though, not all states require
| you to file taxes). With FreeTaxUSA The Federal File is
| always free. The State File is $15 unless you make under
| a certain amount and use the IRS link to get to the
| website.
|
| This IRS link issue is something I've noticed with
| TurboTax and TaxSlayer in the past. They hide their free
| file (even the Federal File) from users unless they use
| the IRS link.
| kaitai wrote:
| But this is false. Go check it yourself: federal efile
| through Freetaxusa is free. I did it last night.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Weird, I just go to freetaxusa.com and have never had a
| problem.
| beckingz wrote:
| Huh. That's weird.
|
| At least the paid accounts are cheaper than H&R block's
| gotcha upsells!
| irrational wrote:
| Yes, FreeTaxUSA is terrific. I have fairly complex taxes and
| I've never had an issue with FreeTaxUSA.
| drchiu wrote:
| And not just them, but accounting professional groups as well.
| sfteus wrote:
| I don't have a crazy tax situation, just some freelancing, so I
| usually used freefillableforms.com because I didn't want to pay
| for TurboTax. For some reason it errored out when submitting
| this year and would not let me re-submit it, so I had to use an
| alternative.
|
| Ended up using FreeTaxUSA and was pleasantly surprised. Was way
| easier to enter all my info in than TurboTax, and pulled up the
| same refund amount. I don't see why I would want to use
| TurboTax when the free alternative is free and easier to use.
| linsomniac wrote:
| This is my first year filing with FreeTaxUSA and I'm quite
| happy with them. I bought the upgrade version, it was like $6
| or $7, and then state was $14 on top of that. Quite happy with
| them. One downside, because I had some investment sales this
| year, and they would only let me enter summarized information,
| I have to print, complete, and mail a form with the itemized
| data. Thankfully, it isn't too large in my case.
| crazysim wrote:
| I really hope FreeTaxUSA improves their investment sales
| stuff, maybe with import capabilities or something. If you go
| for the unsummarized information, you don't have to mail
| anything. Unfortunately, you gave to go through a ton of
| screens and enter each trade by hand.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > investment sales stuff, maybe with import capabilities or
| something ...
|
| Consider that this requires cutting a separate deal with
| _each individual brokerage_. Even TurboTax omits some big
| ones e.g. Vanguard. Not on TT 's list -- I checked just
| today.
| ghoward wrote:
| I have a relative that works for FreeTaxUSA. I'll let her
| know about your request.
|
| Edit: my relative says that it's already on the TODO list,
| but it takes a while with all of the other things they
| _have_ to do.
|
| Edit: sanitized personal information because I'm stupid.
| MobileVet wrote:
| +1 for the import. Even if you only do a couple trades a
| year it can be annoying to type that in. If your broker
| does a LOT of trading, it is not possible to use
| FreeTaxUSA.
|
| I LOVE the company and the product though, please pass
| along kudos. what a breadth of fresh air after years of
| using Turbo Tax. I now tell EVERYONE I know to use them.
| ghoward wrote:
| Cool, thank you!
|
| Your +1 and kudos have been passed along.
| selykg wrote:
| Another request for better investment input. It was
| really bad for me this year. I suffered through it but
| improvements here would be super welcome. I paid for the
| deluxe stuff even though I didn't need it just to put
| money into the bucket to hopefully improve things.
| ghoward wrote:
| I have passed your +1 along. Thank you for putting your
| money where your mouth is.
|
| However, I worry that the reason they haven't done it is
| because of lack of time. They spend a lot of time on
| finding and stopping fraud. If they didn't need to do
| that, I'm sure it would get done faster.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Some brokers support CSV download of trade info. If
| FreeTaxUSA could then upload direct from the customer's
| PC, maybe ask for help understanding column names, that
| would be good enough for some of us.
|
| Tangentially, there are all sorts of good reasons for an
| investor to want a CSV available locally anyway. Analysis
| of one's misadventures, for a start.
| FireBy2024 wrote:
| Agreed. Have been using it for 3 years and user experience is
| better than TurboTax.
| navels wrote:
| Does FreeTaxUSA have data integrations for banks and other
| financial services?
| orev wrote:
| No.
|
| And I find it concerning that many people seem to feel that
| this is a make or break feature (as this is always brought up
| in this discussion). It really isn't that hard to sit down and
| focus for a half hour to actually look at your tax documents
| and type in a few numbers.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I find it concerning you assume my taxes look like typing in
| a few numbers that takes 30 minutes. Without Robinhood auto-
| import for stock sales, I'm looking at manually entering 100+
| transactions with cost basis, sale price, sale date, and
| long-term vs. short term entries.
|
| P.S. if anyone knows another tax-filer with Robinhood auto-
| import, feel free to mention.
| navels wrote:
| I am not concerned about much of anything these days but
| some years this would be a non-starter for me, other years
| not a problem.
| WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
| As soon as you have to import any investment data (who does not
| have at least $100 in S&P these days???) and you also have to
| file state taxes, then turbotax ends up begin expensive. I think
| I payed something like $300 or close to that. I used to pay my
| accountant $500. And he was taking care of everything. Now, I
| have to collect data, struggle with turbotax ugly interface. Next
| year, I am going back to my accountant. My time is worth more
| than $200 bucks.
| rodric wrote:
| Lobbying is a two-way street: it would be good if for once the
| reporters that investigated this topic would name the politicians
| on the other end of it, rather than just (albeit deservedly)
| condemning Intuit for the thousandth time
| makecheck wrote:
| The upsells on TurboTax are getting a lot more shameless in
| recent years. I saw the exact same one pop up at least 2-3 times.
|
| The one that really aggravated me though was the one at the _end_
| : _after_ you FILE your taxes, they present this damned progress-
| bar looking thing as if you are somehow "not done" yet, as if
| this totally optional product sale is a required step!! No, no,
| no, that is just misleading garbage, and it is so annoying to
| have to constantly hunt around the page for the magic text to get
| around these things. I mean, I couldn't even reach the page that
| lets me download my forms as PDF until I skipped this upsell.
|
| What's more, the product itself is getting more expensive but
| worse. On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI
| (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?) with all
| kinds of things unnecessarily hidden. On page after page, there
| is more than enough space to show everything but instead it's
| giant white space everywhere; they HIDE things behind disclosure
| arrows, and with no logic whatsoever; e.g. on one page it shows
| the 2020 numbers by default but hides all the 2021 numbers behind
| arrows!?
|
| Guess what isn't an insultingly-small, truncated experience on
| desktop? The ads, the upsells. THOSE are full-page, taking full
| advantage of screen space and even scrolling off the edges.
|
| Really shows their priorities.
| asciimov wrote:
| > are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?
|
| More people than you would think. I have several coworkers with
| kids that don't have a single computer in their house other
| than their phones. If the kids need to use a computer they take
| home their work laptop.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many
| people doing taxes on their phones!?)
|
| Yes. According to Pew, in 2021 there were 15% of adults in the
| US who said they only have smartphone data for Internet access
| and do not have what we know as home broadband. By age, that
| number skews towards younger adults, with the largest share
| being people aged 18-29, however even older adults hover in the
| low teens of percent.
|
| Even if someone does have broadband at home, the number of
| "traditional" desktop and laptop computers have been dropping.
| Mobile phone and tablet devices (but, let's be honest, mostly
| mobile phones) have been replacing regular computers at a
| pretty high clip. And where a household does have a desktop or
| laptop, they may only have one, where almost everyone has a
| mobile phone device so it's probably convenient to just pull up
| the tax prep web site and get to it on the handheld.
|
| Pew data: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-
| sheet/mobile/
| hanniabu wrote:
| I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile....
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile....
|
| It's not that bad. I have this great app that's only $30
|
| /s
| civilized wrote:
| I'm on H&R Block, which I used to be pretty happy with, but
| it's also getting a lot worse. Much slower, pointless UI
| changes always in a bloaty direction, navigation is less
| functional, more upsell garbage, more expensive, etc.
|
| I've kept coming back until now out of habit and because
| they've got a lot of data on me they can prefill, but maybe I
| should look at FreeTaxUSA now.
| astrea wrote:
| This year was a nightmare for me. The UI wouldn't save state,
| going through the same steps would lead me to different
| results ("Your state was e-filed!","Your state isn't
| accepting e-file."), and there was an alleged error but it
| would never tell or show me what the error was. Customer
| service was just as confused as I was and the "Get virtual
| assistance" button eventually disappeared for me. I ended up
| giving up and going to a local CPA to get it done for me. I
| don't think I'll be using HR Block next year after being a
| customer for over 5 years.
| civilized wrote:
| Yes, the "pick up where you left off" was a lot more
| fragile than in years past. And they sent me tons of emails
| begging me to finish filing after I already filed
| everything.
| spear wrote:
| Same here. I couldn't get their discount codes to work this
| year and the IRA Worksheets seem to be broken now.
| SilasX wrote:
| In fairness, that third paragraph is pretty typical
| (horrifying) web UX these days, not something unique to Intuit
| or tax software. Let me open subsections in a new tab, FFS!
| rrauenza wrote:
| Every time I opened it this year it begged me to register. So
| they could capture my personal information to market to next
| year, or try to get me to "subscribe." It seemed to also prompt
| again at exit.
|
| Really irritated me that I couldn't opt out permanently but had
| to click skip every single time.
|
| And I'm tired of the progress bars pretending to be calculating
| in order to make me feel like I'm getting my money's worth.
|
| And yet I buy it begrudgingly every year because it is what I
| know, and it imports data fairly well from my online accounts.
|
| Do the alternative brands import w2's and previous year's turbo
| tax files? Does it integrate with online brokers for pulling
| 1099's?
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI_
|
| Meanwhile, the traditional _desktop software_ version of
| TurboTax remains quite good, and I have been using it year
| after year on Windows. They have several editions; here is the
| one I used this year:
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/
|
| It's much cheaper to buy it on Amazon than directly from
| TurboTax.
| loeg wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "quite good." It's also pretty crappy.
| There are arbitrary sleeps thrown in between pages to make it
| seem like the software is doing something; additional
| upsells, like GP is complaining about; they block paste when
| filling in bank credentials, which is super obnoxious; and
| the UI flow drops you back at "guided or self-service" every
| time you leave a section.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Yes, I stand corrected. What I meant is that it is good
| compared to the web version, and good enough for me to use.
| mike503 wrote:
| Web version was quite annoying by vs desktop. First year
| using web this year. Was "wonky" compared to desktop.
| jrockway wrote:
| Things like this are why I could never write consumer-
| facing software like this. To me, I think software is
| working well when it's fast and responsive. But clearly
| their market research shows that you need a lot of sleep
| statements between screens so it feels like it's "doing"
| your taxes. I can't wrap my head around this thought
| process. Just moving the Turbotax window around is many
| orders of magnitude more computations per frame than an
| entire tax return :)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Personal experience: every year TurboTax gets at least one
| thing wrong per filing, and it's always a different thing.
| Always love getting stopped at the "error check" with a
| question about how some field that's supposed to be a zero
| is blank, or some field that's supposed to be blank is a
| zero, because the guided questions and the tax forms aren't
| communicating properly.
|
| State taxes are full of really confusingly-worded questions
| and things I've never heard of, with little explanation as
| to what means what. At least the federal section has proper
| explanations of things.
| bombcar wrote:
| The state ones are hilarious, because they offer no
| guidance: *Wangled Garbfinkle Reduction of the Belaurtiun
| Disaster Zone* will say "if this applies to you enter the
| amount from form L3O-P4RD"
| bubblethink wrote:
| Why do all these tax companies have a web version and a
| desktop version ? Why isn't it all web at this point ?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why isn 't it all web at this point ?_
|
| They would lose sales if it were. People are sensitive when
| it comes to their taxes. And I imagine a good number of
| accountants use Turbotax in the back. There could be legal
| issues with them uploading clients' tax information to a
| third party's servers.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Actually, no, a good number accountants use Lacerte, CCH,
| or Drake. Some do use ProConnect by Intuit.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| _Competent and legitimate_ tax professionals use those
| products (and also UltraTax, from Thomson-Reuters, is
| quite popular).
|
| However, fraudsters will use DIY software like TurboTax
| but then charge for it, evading all the provisions of tax
| law that pertain to paid preparers. This is not as severe
| a problem as it was say five years ago, since IRS has
| instituted a number of security features to weed out the
| fraudsters who efile.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Is there some regulatory hurdle that deters these
| companies from offering an end-consumer solution to
| individuals?
| butlerm wrote:
| Violations of various regulations aside, who exactly is
| getting defrauded in this scenario? Are you implying that
| the paid preparers in question predominantly commit or
| help their clients commit various forms of tax fraud?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| LaCerte it seems has been swallowed by Intuit.
|
| https://proconnect.intuit.com/lacerte/pricing-main/
|
| Back in 1998:
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB895525787581590000
| kube-system wrote:
| I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can keep
| the software indefinitely and keep my data offline. I'll go
| back to pen and a desktop calculator before I use a web
| app.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I am glad there are still desktop versions where I can
| keep the software indefinitely
|
| That's useless for tax software though, unless they are
| getting updated every tax year.
| markkanof wrote:
| I recently had to go back and file an amended return for
| one state and file a return for an additional state for
| the past 5 years. It made my life a lot easier to be able
| to just install the past 5 years versions of TurboTax
| Desktop which I had saved the installers for. I was able
| to run through this whole process using the tax rules
| that were in place at the time.
|
| Not sure if this would have worked on a web version or
| not, but I was pretty happy to have this option available
| to me.
| [deleted]
| kube-system wrote:
| Older versions of the software are useful for reviewing
| historical records and calculations in context.
|
| Last night while preparing my 2021 return I opened up the
| 2020 software with my old return to review what I had
| done in the prior year.
| bubblethink wrote:
| I don't think the desktop version makes any guarantees
| about data privacy, analytics, or anything of that sort.
| It routinely connects to the mothership from what I can
| tell.
| kube-system wrote:
| In my experience, I have never had an issue running them
| offline after downloading the updates and before inputing
| data.
| mindslight wrote:
| Not everyone has bought into surveillance culture? I have
| an overwhelming preference for local software that I can
| prevent from backhauling my personal information into the
| permanent records of data silos. This goes doubly for non-
| mandatory services that tend to have shameless contracts of
| adhesion falsely purporting consent for such abuse.
|
| FWIW TurboTax is eminently easy to pirate and crack to get
| state filing functionality. Network isolate the VM after
| you get the updates and state forms but before you start
| inputting data, and you can rest easy that no personal data
| is being exfiltrated. There's no need to support these
| regulatory capture parasites.
| bubblethink wrote:
| If you kill network access, sure. I don't think the
| software itself makes any guarantees about data privacy.
| For me, as a linux user, it's more effort to get windows
| vms for these things, but I do them because the desktop
| ones are often cheaper.
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure. Like many things, local software is necessary to
| preserve privacy but not sufficient. Local proprietary
| software can brazenly work against the interests of the
| user, libre software can contain backdoors or other
| antifeatures, a peer-reviewed libre system can be
| cracked. But by heading in this direction, you retain the
| possibility of keeping your personal information as
| private as possible.
|
| FWIW I'm a Linux user that runs most everything in VMs.
| Each year I create a new one for TurboTax, get the
| updates/stateforms, then disconnect and never reconnect
| it to the Internet. It's a little work, but can be done
| mindlessly while doing something else.
| bubblethink wrote:
| I take it that you send the forms by mail then ? Because
| efile would need network access, and that is half the
| reason I'm using the tax software in the first place.
| mindslight wrote:
| Yep. The time of going to the post office is dwarfed by
| the headache of actually doing the taxes and checking
| that they seem correct. Disposing of them into the mail
| is downright cathartic.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > What's more, the product itself is getting more expensive but
| worse.
|
| The product must get more expensive for Turbo Tax to deliver
| growth to its shareholders.
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| One bright spot in all this pay-to-file-taxes game is the "Cash
| App Taxes" [0]. It is just great and seamless to file taxes for
| free even for a bit complex taxes such as RSU, Stocks, Virtual
| currency sales etc. Usually what I do is just progress on
| TurboTax until the end so I could calculate my estimated refund
| and then go ahead and file using Cash App Taxes and it just
| saved me $150 this year.
|
| [0] https://cash.app/taxes
| ajdude wrote:
| I've been using Credit Karma the last few years for taxes
| until they sold to Intuit, at which point their tax division
| went to cash.app. Initially I tried going with them until I
| realized that I had to download their app on my phone to even
| sign into the desktop to do my taxes (it was requesting I
| scan a QR code or something). I couldn't even access my
| previous tax returns that were stored on Credit Karma without
| downloading the cashapp to my phone. Eventually I caved, but
| only to contact their support to retrieve my returns and
| formally cancel my account.
|
| I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for
| something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I
| went with FreeTaxUSA in the end.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| I've been wondering lately why hasn't someone just built an
| open source version of it. It would be less buggy and more up-
| to-date than anything a corporation could build. It would also
| create the incentive to eventually get rid of the industry all
| together
| kube-system wrote:
| It has been tried, but I haven't seen any projects that were
| able to keep up.It takes a lot of manpower to update all of
| the various forms for every tax season. Congress can and has
| done things like pass a 1700+ page bill changing the tax code
| on Dec 20th of the same tax year, and some users will want to
| start filing their returns within a month. And there are 50
| states that can do the same thing.
|
| Also it requires expertise outside of programming for which
| there is not much enthusiasm for open source.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Becoming a CPA sucks. You need 150 credit hours, pass 4
| exams with 50% pass rate, and usually needs 1 year of
| qualified experience to qualify. Programming is so much
| easier to get into.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| There is https://ustaxes.org , an open-source tax filing
| application, but I'm not adventurous enough to use it when a
| mistake could be very expensive.
| beembeem wrote:
| When I'm done filing mine this year I'm going to take a
| serious look at contributing to this project on Github.
| pinkythepig wrote:
| There are already affordable alternatives. The people still
| using turbotax are the same people that spend 0 time looking
| into alternatives or there is some import feature that an
| opensource platform realistically would not have the manpower
| to replicate. Freetaxusa is $15 at a minimum (state fee) and
| $50ish at the max if you opt into everything. UI isn't loaded
| with fake loading screens, and they only try to upsell maybe
| 2 or 3 times during the whole process. My parents complain
| about turbotax every year and every year I tell them about
| alternatives... But they still won't switch because 'its what
| they know'.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| FreeTaxUSA made me manually input my stock transactions
| last year, via a paper PDF I had to print and mail
| separately. For most situations it is probably fine but its
| investments support seemed limited.
| pinkythepig wrote:
| Why would an open source solution improve on that though?
| If anything, that would be way lower on their priority
| list as anyone doing large numbers of investments would
| (should?) have money to pay for a nicer UX solution and
| probably would want to, as the risk of an audit is a
| bigger 'cost' than $50-80 in filing fees.
|
| The sheer number of changes that the Tax code makes every
| year would be hard enough to keep up with for an open
| source project, let alone making integrations with all of
| the brokerages to make this process less painful.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| There is the summary option, though I'm unsure about when
| that is or isn't legal
| sjg007 wrote:
| You have to update these things anyway in turbo tax and
| hr block. 90% have the wrong adjusted basis.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Only if they're RSUs.
| jandrese wrote:
| Turbotax did the same thing, at least a few years ago
| when I used it last.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The IRS has the information to do my taxes. They should just
| send me a bill (or a check) with a copy of their math that I
| can accept or dispute.
| caturopath wrote:
| Not the Wizard format, but
| https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home is a
| pretty popular project along those lines.
| [deleted]
| trianglesphere wrote:
| It's not just federal taxes, but 50 states. I think you could
| get enough oss manpower for keeping up to date with federal
| taxes, but not every state.
| outworlder wrote:
| The tax code is particularly complicated - and then there are
| multiple states to worry about. It would be difficult for a
| single person to do this. Not impossible, maybe there are
| some CPAs which are also software engineers. Once the project
| becomes big enough, maybe more people would help.
|
| The problem is then: are they shielded from liability? If
| there's a mistake and people sue, they won't have Intuit's
| lawyer army.
|
| But let's say we have the perfect program. Would people be OK
| with printing out and mailing their returns? Because you have
| to be an authorized provider to e-file.
| dlp211 wrote:
| I would say that this IS impossible for any single
| individual. The amount of edge cases that software like
| this needs to capture is enormous and there isn't a single
| human in the world that could account for all of them. Not
| to mention the changes in the tax code every year.
| ______-_-______ wrote:
| Can I ask, in spite of all this, why you continue to use their
| product?
| fullstop wrote:
| It depends on how much your time is worth. You can import
| prior returns and compare year-to-year.
| bojo wrote:
| Not the OP, however, I haven't found a product that's easy to
| drop options trading data into. I'd love to switch off of
| TurboTax, but I'm not putting hundreds of trades into a
| system manually - their import function makes it a breeze.
|
| Perhaps it's time to hire an accountant?
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I'd recommend freetaxusa for everyone, I've been using that
| for years now. E-filing federal taxes is free, and state
| income tax E-filing are only something like $15 total. The
| interface is generally the same as TurboTax and is nice and
| easy.
| jandrese wrote:
| What do day traders and quants do? If you regularly trade
| hundreds of thousands of times per day do you end up
| submitting a semi-trailer worth of paper to the IRS every
| year?
| xivzgrev wrote:
| do you have to document every trade?
|
| At the end of the day the IRS cares about your net loss or
| gain, and what's short term vs long term gains.
|
| So I typically sum up my various investments into those 2
| buckets, by broker. if i ever get audited, i have the
| individual trades i can share if needed.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Yeah, I usually recommend freetaxusa but it sucks for
| putting in trade data.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's right in the instructions for a 1040 that you must
| complete form 8949 if you have any capital gains or
| losses, and form 8949 says to list out each sale.
| junar wrote:
| 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_publink
| 594...
|
| These are the very same exceptions that tax software
| uses.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Exception 1, I grant, and TIL. I sort of _presume_ I can
| take that (in my situation), although this directive is
| confusing:
|
| > _The Ordinary box in box 2 isn't checked_
|
| There is no "box 2" on the 1099-Bs I have. It is on the
| standardized IRS one, so the instruction from the IRS
| seems fine ... but this is a great commentary on the
| state of the American tax system and how complicated it
| is.
|
| (Variations on this theme cropped up multiple times
| during this year's prep, too...)
|
| Exception 2 doesn't seem to list out what the conditions
| to qualify for it _are_ , it only lists the procedure for
| the exception. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to
| take it, for that reason.
|
| > _These are the very same exceptions that tax software
| uses._
|
| TurboTax does not appear to take advantage of Exception
| 1. It would appear to have applied to my situation this
| year, and yet, TurboTax filled out a complete Form 8949,
| with each transaction, just like the parent comments hint
| at.
| svachalek wrote:
| Some of the interactions are even too granular to make sense on
| mobile. I can't remember the specifics but there are some
| sequences that go like:
|
| Do you need to adjust the value here? (Yes) (No)
|
| ... new page slowly loads ...
|
| Do you need help calculating this value? (Yes) (No) (I don't
| want to change this value)
|
| ... new page slowly loads ...
|
| What should the value be? (I'll enter it manually) (Help me
| calculate it) (I don't want to change it)
|
| Like other than some basic wording changes, the third page
| already supports what the first two pages did. And depending
| how many stock trades are in your form you might have to repeat
| this loop a hundred times. It's really enraging.
| clairity wrote:
| so just _stop_ using turbotax, h &r block, taxact, etc. try
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/ or any other decent competitor not
| trying to monopolize or regulatorially capture the market. for
| simple returns, just doing it by hand and mailing it in is easy
| enough too. vote with your feet.
| kaitai wrote:
| I used to be able to do a return "by hand" (fine, using a
| spreadsheet). But now between the health insurance stuff and
| the child tax credit there is a whole raft of additional
| forms that did not even exist just a few years back.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. Actually, we used TurboTax, got
| annoyed with the constant upsells, and the $80 fee (it was
| advertised as free), and then my husband redid our taxes using
| another website (freetaxusa). It was actually free.
| conductr wrote:
| I've used that service for a decade and never paid them a
| penny, I think there are a few services they bill for but I
| don't need. The UI gets only minor changes and it still
| basically works as it did ten years ago, so I appreciate the
| consistency as well especially for something I touch once a
| year.
| kaitai wrote:
| Agree, finished taxes with Freetaxusa and figured out
| backdoor roth conversion, included freelancing income, dealt
| with a schedule k-1. So much less obnoxious than TurboTax,
| which I have also used but which makes me angry for all the
| reasons discussed in this thread. Yes, Freetaxusa charges for
| the state return, but it's also the case that I can't file
| electronically for free in my state at all (?????). Spouse
| wants to do paper on principle, which I acquiesced to last
| year, but.... our paper federal return from last year has
| literally still not been processed (check was cashed
| 4/8/2021).
| sngz wrote:
| i just did my taxes last night and checked freetaxusa seems
| like they charge for state though? I ended up using credit
| karma's app which was still annoying after intuit bought them
| and they were forced to sell the tax software to square, and
| it required I download the mobile app first. It was much
| better in the past
| phate wrote:
| I previously used CreditKarma for prior years taxes. This
| year I didn't strictly because the whole thing feels like a
| push to just get you to install CashApp on your phone. And
| that is on top of not wanting to use anything Intuit owned
| anymore. I'll gladly pay $10 to file my state taxes if I
| can avoid them giving it to Intuit.
| trianglesphere wrote:
| They do charge for state taxes. It's like 15 bucks per
| return with not that much up sell. I've used them when I
| had simpler taxes and liked them over other common
| preparers
| everybodyknows wrote:
| What were the complications that FTUSA could not handle,
| if you recall?
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| I help friends and family and I can't recommend
| freetaxusa for simple returns enough. It's so much
| cheaper if you're doing your own taxes. Tax slayer is
| decent as well.
| retzkek wrote:
| I switched to freetaxusa this year (from TurboTax), and
| after such a wonderful experience working through my
| somewhat complicated taxes I was happy to pay them $15 to
| save me the trouble of typing the information into my
| state's free-but-lowball-government-contractor website.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yeah, they charge for state, but much less than Turbotax
| charges for state.
|
| Of course this is a bit of a sore point for me since my
| state used to have free online tax filing but H&R Block got
| their rep voted in and killed the program "to save taxpayer
| money", it cost the state about $40k per year to run and
| now instead we have one of the highest e-filing costs in
| the country.
| jandrese wrote:
| Huge upvote for freetaxusa. My wife was worried that it
| wouldn't be as good so we did our taxes one year on both
| services simultaneously. TurboTax's interface was so bad it
| took almost twice as long to complete the same work and the
| refund was the same.
|
| Why would I pay for a worse interface? We don't have trivial
| taxes either, we have our own business and investment income.
| TurboTax was way worse about not letting us skip over stuff
| we don't have. It creates single question pages one after
| another instead of just sticking them in a list so you can
| skim through them all at once and select only the relevant
| ones.
| sharpy wrote:
| I would love to use one of the free products.
| Unfortunately, for me, TurboTax is the only one I've tried
| that will import all of my brokerages... Seems small price
| to pay.
|
| And they always get me with the "Audit defense"... I am not
| sure how useful it will be if I ever get audited (I err on
| the side of caution when doing taxes), but still some small
| extra amount of money for extra peace of mind...
| mandeepj wrote:
| > TurboTax is the only one I've tried that will import
| all of my brokerages
|
| That's trivial; don't throw your ranch so easily. You
| only have to copy few fields from your 1099 form and the
| instructions are very clear - which fields to copy and
| paste where.
| lights0123 wrote:
| CashApp Taxes provides audit defense for free:
| https://taxeshelp.cash.app/s/article/Audit-Defense-when-
| you-...
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Since I'm not a tax professional at this time, I can tell
| you that your odds of being audited are somewhat random
| and usually very low unless your filing is off by a
| certain percentage in some fields/parameters. Lower
| income folks are more likely to be audited. The audit
| "defense" just means you'll get x hours of professional
| time if you were audited to represent you during an
| audit. On the whole, the odds of being audited are
| usually so small it's usually just free money for Intuit.
| smaddox wrote:
| Nice. I will definitely be giving this a shot next year.
| otikik wrote:
| I agree that all those are bad, but the main problem I have
| with it is that it should be a state-provided (or federal
| government-provided, I don't care) service. If a country wants
| taxes the minimum it should do is tell its citizens how much
| each of them owns. Relying on a private company to provide that
| "for free" (as long as you jump through the hoops) is ...
| shameful.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| In general, ANYTHING mandated by the government should be
| available primarily in minimally sufficient form from the
| government. That goes for insurance, fees, services, etc.
| Spivak wrote:
| And honestly it should just be TurboTax but paid for by the
| government like every other public-private partnership in
| other industries. Boom now the incentives are aligned.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Isn't the tax system still running on cobol?
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-
| cob...
| CincinnatiMan wrote:
| Have you manually filed taxes before? For the average
| person it's quite easy to fill out the required forms.
| burntwater wrote:
| They shouldn't have to fill out the forms at all. For the
| average person it should be a literal "yes, that looks
| correct" online check box. That's exactly what TurboTax
| doesn't want.
| closeparen wrote:
| Mortgages, student loans, ACH and wire transfers... all
| substantially government provided and funded services for
| which the taxpayer frontend is private companies.
| hanniabu wrote:
| I mean, we even rely on a private company to login to the IRS
| now. ID.me is the gatekeeper even though they said they'd
| remove it.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| There's a large group of political organizations apart from
| just tax filing services and companies that believe that it
| is intrinsically bad for the government to just tell citizens
| how much they owe. They are very loud and influential.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848324
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I think you meant to say "owes", but yes I agree with this
| idea fully. When I pay sales tax, it isn't like I have to
| perform some long-form calculation to figure out what I owe.
| I get a bill and I pay it. When I pay property tax, same
| thing. I get a bill and I pay it. I register a vehicle as an
| on-road vehicle, I get the tax amount and I pay it.
|
| Only the Federal government could come up with a scheme where
| you have to prove you made X, then prove you owe Y and pay
| that.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Their competitor TaxAct is being more brash as well. I've been
| filing the same forms for the last 5 years and the filing cost
| with them has risen gradually from $60 in 2017 to $130 this
| year.
| ibdf wrote:
| After reading similar articles in previous years I finally
| decided to switch. After 10 years with Turbotax, I switched to
| the Cash App tax app. It was a bit more work to enter the data,
| but it was actually free. Turbotax free tier barely covers
| anything and they will bug you every step of the process to
| upgrade.
| assbuttbuttass wrote:
| I also used Cash App this year to file. I found it remarkably
| simple and easy compared to completing the forms by hand.
| mattwad wrote:
| freetaxusa.org is a fine alternative
| yetanother-1 wrote:
| This is not 100% free (fanepalm)
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Big props to the state of New Mexico. Their online tax filing
| system was already pretty good last year, with a couple of rough
| edges. I went to file this year, and here was my experience:
|
| 1. login
|
| 2. enter my AGI from my federal return
|
| 3. enter my estimated taxes
|
| 4. done
|
| Postscript: 36 hours later, refund in my bank account
|
| I have no W2 income, am fully self-employed with no 1099's
| either. I had no capital gains/losses to report this year, but I
| have the feeling it would have been very easy to deal with that
| it had it been necessary.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| A lot of people dislike turbotax, but compared to what? HR Block
| which is basically a payday advance company at this point? I've
| done my taxes with turbotax for awhile now and haven't had any
| major issues. Maybe they are evil, but not enough for me to care
| considering I use it for like an hour or two once a year.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Well, the alternative the OP is about:
|
| > ...There's been proposals in Congress on and off for years,
| from people like Elizabeth Warren, to appropriate money to the
| for the IRS to do what it was thinking about doing back in the
| George W. Bush administration 20 years ago, which is to join
| many other developed wealthy countries in having an online
| filing process that's free and offered by the government to all
| of us as citizens.
| missedthecue wrote:
| So Turbo tax spending less than $2 million was more powerful
| than the agenda of POTUS? Boy, Amazon with their $20 million
| in annual lobbying is getting taken for a ride.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| OK, you can disagree with the assignment of responsibility
| from OP (I'm happy to blame the politicians), either way
| that's the alternative we don't have but most similar
| countries do.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Perhaps the tax system in the US is far more complicated
| in than it is in foreign countries. I am trained in UK
| tax law, but not in US law, although I do file taxes in
| the US. The UK system is far more straightforward than in
| the States. On account of this, the US tax system may not
| lend itself well to automatic pre-filing.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| A good example is CreditKarma. They came out with a great
| webapp and TurboTax immediately buys it and puts it behind a
| mobile app. They got rid of the webapp. Personally, I refused
| to even try the new version because I didn't want a mobile app.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It gets harder every year to find tax software that isn't owned
| by intuit... I don't think any of it is free anymore for anything
| beyond basic returns. The IRS' paper returns get more complicated
| every year. It seems Intuit is winning this despite all the
| complaining.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| "Cash App Taxes" is owned by Cash App which is owned by
| Square/Block Inc. It used to be owned by Credit Karma, which
| was bought by Intuit, but they (were forced?) to sell it.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the info. Last I knew Intuit bought Credit
| Karma (who I did taxes with previously) and I didn't realize
| they were spun off again.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Yes, the Justice Department mandated that they jettisoned
| it as part of the sale, as they knew what Intuit would do
| with it if they got their paws on it.
| avrionov wrote:
| TaxCut is probably the biggest alternative. Owned by HRBlock.
| Not sure if the they are better.
| wtf_is_up wrote:
| I found TaxHawk to be really good when I did my own taxes.
| Mainly I sought it out because it took in K-1's where TurboTax
| would need an upgrade.
| briandear wrote:
| But TurboTax does a great job. It's a good product. Happy to
| pay for it. Not sure why all of the hate. The problem is the
| tax system itself, not the software.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'm not normally one to say "Bro, read the room", but...
|
| Bro. Read the room.
|
| The entire comment section answers the question of "why all
| of the hate".
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Intuit lobbies the government to keep the tax system
| complicated so they can charge people to use their software.
|
| The majority of the civilized world spends almost 0 time
| doing personal taxes. Intuit steals our time and money.
| dominotw wrote:
| > keep the tax system complicated
|
| what happened to the original forces that created this
| mess. I am not convinced that if it wasn't for intuit we
| would have a simple tax system.
|
| > The majority of the civilized world spends almost 0 time
| doing personal taxes.
|
| this isn't actually true.
| _jal wrote:
| > Not sure why all of the hate.
|
| .. I take it you have managed to post this without reading
| nearly every other comment?
| et-al wrote:
| > Not sure why all of the hate.
|
| You're being facetious, right?
|
| They have dark patterns every step of the way to try to get
| you to pay more and to share your tax information. Their
| "free" is oftentimes not free. And on top of all this, there
| are countless articles about them lobbying to maintain the
| status quo of complicated taxes.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Intuit has been spending billions to lobby for complicated
| tax filing process and against the government primarily
| filling out your forms for you based on data they should
| already have on hand from mandatory reporting. That's why
| people hate them so much.
| morninglight wrote:
| Founding fathers wanted, "No taxation without representation."
|
| Maybe they should have been more specific.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Shortly after the revolution they put down several tax
| protester uprisings with armed force, this has always been
| happening.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fries%27s_Rebellion
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Any article on this topic is incomplete if it doesn't also
| include a paragraph on Grover Norquist. I'd argue that his
| influence has been far more effective than Intuit's lobbying.
| patio11 wrote:
| Came here to say this. I will try to avoid committing politics
| in the HN comments section, but it is a true fact that one side
| of the aisle has definite policy preferences on taxes and
| _maximally does not want_ them to happen quietly without people
| noticing them. They will say this, at length and on the record,
| when asked about the topic. Their positions _are sincere_ and
| _flow logically from both their political preferences and
| incentives_.
| lkbm wrote:
| Milton Friedman once commented that property tax is
| particularly unpopular because it's the only tax for which
| people still have to write a check[0].
|
| That said, we could make income tax more visible without
| requiring tax professionals. (e.g., end withholding and send
| me a monthly tax bill; show the money go into my bank account
| and then back out, whether automatically or forcing me to
| write a check.)
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/yS7Jb58hcsc?t=120
| ghaff wrote:
| In general, people with significant non-W2 income (e.g.
| dividends, capital gains, etc.) already have to file
| estimated quarterly taxes in many cases.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Grover Norquist is dead.
| 1024core wrote:
| My 2nd biggest[*] gripe with TurboTax (and Intuit) is that their
| software quality is low!
|
| I filed my taxes on January 30, and still can't print out my tax
| return. They tell me that the tax return is not "finalized" (or
| something like that), along with the "helpful" comment that
| usually forms are ready by end of January... it's April now,
| FFS!!
|
| [*] Biggest gripe being their effort to undermine auto-filing.
| FYYFFF wrote:
| Millions of lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers exist only
| because the US tax code is so ridiculously complicated.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| It's job security for accounting folks alright. Just like web
| advertising keeps all of you programming critters employed.
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