[HN Gopher] Intuit pouring money into lobbying amid push for fre...
___________________________________________________________________
Intuit pouring money into lobbying amid push for free government-
run tax filing
Author : danso
Score : 249 points
Date : 2023-02-17 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.opensecrets.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.opensecrets.org)
| rapht wrote:
| Meanwhile, in normal countries:
|
| - salaried income is automatically submitted to tax authorities
|
| - capital income going through financial institutions is
| automatically submitted to tax authorities
|
| - the deductions that concern most taxpayers are managed
| automatically
|
| And so it for 80% of taxpayers, tax prep is exactly 5 minutes,
| and for the next 10% it is 2 hours.
|
| And then, Americans explain that bureaucracy is quite worse
| elsewhere.
| cpursley wrote:
| It's time for a no-return flat tax. If Russia and Estonia can do
| it, we can too.
| cpursley wrote:
| I'm sure the downvotes are for the Russia comment.
|
| Okay, fine.
|
| For the adults in the room - let's look at Estonia. They are
| known for getting rid of the post-soviet corruption and being
| at the forefront of tech-enabled government. All while
| providing great government services (free healthcare and
| university - at a low taxpayer cost). Why can't America mimic
| that?
|
| - https://e-estonia.com/
|
| - https://investinestonia.com/tax-competitiveness/
| valarauko wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how does a flat tax country like Estonia
| manage incentives? It's the main thing that balloons the US
| tax policy - not by design, but for whatever convoluted
| quirks of history the US has settled on using tax incentives
| as a means of placing the thumb on driving public behavior,
| especially when dealing with a federal structure and 50
| differing opinions of how things should be run. Want to
| encourage more children? Increase the child deductions. Want
| to encourage household solar energy production? Tax
| deductions.
| cpursley wrote:
| A very intelgent question void of political bias (rare
| these days on HN). Thank you for that!
|
| My other alternative suggestion to a flat income tax is a
| progressive sales tax based on what you want to
| incentivize.
|
| Gas guzzlers? First class flight? Tax the shit out of them.
|
| Solar roof? Basic groceries? No tax.
|
| Used/preowned goods? Zero tax (a loophole for opting out).
|
| Etc.
| swamp40 wrote:
| They are already connected to the IRS. I forgot to add in an
| Economic Impact Payment when I filed with TurboTax last year. 5
| minutes later, the corrected 1040 came back to me. They already
| know everything, I don't know why they make us do all the work.
| Maybe in case THEY miss something?
| user3939382 wrote:
| I can't wait for Intuit to go the way of the phone book and
| telemarketing companies. Disappear overnight without so much as a
| whisper and not a single tear would fall. They are a blight on
| the public.
|
| Their existence is a good litmus test/proxy for determining if or
| whether the complete capture of our so-called democracy by
| corporations has receded.
| peteforde wrote:
| In the meta, this article reminds me of what I perceive as a
| surreal disconnect between the amount of influence lobbyists have
| in government(s) vs the objectively small amount of money that
| actually is changing hands.
|
| If Intuit spends (just) $3.5M to significantly impact decisions
| that are worth Billions to them and potentially hundreds to every
| taxpayer (!), I think I'm frustrated that corrupt politicians
| aren't doing more to leverage their corruption.
|
| This kind of illegal influence should cost... at least $100M?
| Selling everyone out for fractions of a penny on the dollar is
| frankly just kind of embarrassing.
|
| Crime harder, elected reps, if you're going to get out of bed.
| afunk wrote:
| I had an idea for a site that allows you to lobby the gov in a
| GoFundMe format after realizing how little money is actually
| moving.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Sorry, I can't tell if it's "I had an idea, but no one came
| to the site" or "I had an idea in the shower which I have not
| yet implemented"?
|
| Because I 100% would meet reality where it is and buy my own
| lobbyist if I could get better outcomes than spitting into
| the wind at the ballot box
| Someone1234 wrote:
| It is an idea, the problem is you'd need to trust the middle-
| men (the lobbyist and brokers).
|
| It isn't as simply as "the smallest piece of the pie the
| better," companies pay a lot of money for well-connected
| people who can get someone to sit down and talk. So while the
| public could pump tons of money into a GoLobbyForMe site, how
| you'd measure success Vs theft is tricky.
|
| Plus there's often other corruption less easily combatted,
| like post public-office jobs, or their spouse/family getting
| a seat on some board, or similar.
| Aunche wrote:
| Most people have a fundamental misunderstanding of how lobbying
| works. Lobbying money is used to pay the actual lobbyists to
| gather evidence, prepare presentations, and draft legislation
| proposals. Only a small percentage of lobbying money goes to
| the politicians. Usually, it's $1000 or so that the politician
| will agree to hear out the lobbyist. What actually gets traded
| at these lobbyist meetings is political capital, not money. "If
| you agree to these tax incentives, you can brag about creating
| 10,000 jobs".
|
| This is why Bill Gates can't just spend $1 billion to lobby for
| a carbon tax, despite advocating for one. This would cause a
| lot of short term pain as the economy needs to readjust with no
| short term positive benefit, which would be politically
| disastrous.
|
| Edit: Here's another more tangible example. Facebook spent
| millions to lobby for the government to establish standards for
| social media. If they can convince the Democrats to formalize
| guidelines of what constitutes as hate speech, they can offload
| some of the burden of their moderation decisions. If they can
| convince Republicans to require social media to become public
| square, that's even better because then they don't have to hire
| as many moderators. Unfortunately for Facebook, such a bill has
| no benefit from either side because now the politicians have to
| take responsibility for an unpopular act of censorship or viral
| misinformation campaign. That's why Facebook tried to establish
| an independent "supreme court" instead.
| thayne wrote:
| That certainly makes sense for some things, but for taxes it
| seems surprising that the political capital of creating 10000
| jobs is more than the political capital of reducing the
| stress of filing taxes, saving citizens significant amounts
| of money on tax services, etc.
| alexashka wrote:
| So in short, politicians instead of receiving input from
| lobbyists, receive verbatim draft legislation proposals _and_
| get to play 'who's gonna pay me more to choose which one I'm
| going with'?
|
| They then use the money they receive from these lobbyists to
| lie to the people regarding what their job actually entails
| and self promote themselves as serving their community and
| country?
|
| Oh _and_ they get to play in the stock market with insider
| knowledge with impunity to further enrich themselves _and_ a
| path to become a lobbyist and get paid millions afterwards?
|
| What point are you trying to make - that there is a
| convoluted game of politics they engage in to enrich
| themselves, rather than the simplified bag of money
| exchanging hands?
|
| If so, you're describing a distinction without a difference
| as far as I can tell.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| A lot of it is also about seeking regulatory capture. If a
| governing body does not directly reflect corporate interests,
| there is usually a lengthy campaign to swivel that governing
| body into what is essentially an element of corporate
| protection. A lot of "pro-business" rhetoric is spun up in
| the revolving door of lobbyists and corporate representatives
| to governing bodies, and members of those bodies to the
| corporate world. That's how you get an EPA that protects
| corporate interests from environmental regulation rather than
| an EPA that protects the environment from corporate
| interests.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This was really insightful, thank you
| pessimizer wrote:
| Politicians are very cheap, but the $3.5M is what was spent
| legally and openly. Most of the iceberg is hidden underwater.
| For example, this:
|
| > In 2022, several members of Congress called for
| investigations into the company's practice of hiring "revolving
| door" lobbyists who previously held government positions
|
| is also bribery.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| The fact that it's legal is also part of the problem
| JohnFen wrote:
| Exactly this. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not
| corrupt.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| that's just the down payment. Politicians make the real money
| when they leave and get a spot on the board of directors or
| some other fake role that pays them 7 figures for doing
| nothing. Or their spouse gets some favorable job or business
| deals. Feinstein and Pelosi are both worth hundreds of millions
| via their husband's business deals
|
| there's also a thriving business of laundering money through
| politician's shitty books they have ghostwritten for them
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Not that I think this change should happen but it's amusing to
| consider a seeming lack of ambition from people in such
| positions.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| Many engineers reading this make a larger salary than these
| lawmakers.
|
| Maybe if the people deciding our laws made enough to not be
| woo'd by practically a $300 gift card we'd at least make
| corruption more expensive.
| ericmcer wrote:
| I think Bill Burr has a joke about how congress members are
| all making ~150k but somehow are multi-millionaires.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Not taken into account that if they're not a millionaire when
| they enter congress, they tend to be by the time they leave.
|
| Because it's not insider trading if you're a congressman.
| It's total crap.
| WesternWind wrote:
| Yeah, though the actual pay isn't always enough to easily
| afford a home in your home state and a place in DC for
| those who aren't already rich.
| RajT88 wrote:
| That's a fair point - DC property is so expensive,
| there's a sort of Democratic senator "frat house":
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-
| house/ind...
| lend000 wrote:
| Why should lawmakers get rich at all? It's a public service
| and honor to hold that power -- an above average wage should
| be plenty reward (not to mention the millions of discretional
| fund most high profile offices come with).
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Maybe _should be_ an honor, but it certainly isn 't treated
| as such by near anyone.
|
| And it's not about why _should_ they get rich. It 's about
| aligning incentives. Relying on good will does not work
| long term.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Neither does normalizing corruption.
| peteforde wrote:
| I don't want you to be left with the sense that I'm arguing
| for corruption. This thread is social commentary on how
| pathetic it is that elected reps can be bought for so
| little.
|
| Sometimes, humor is hard on the internet.
| chucksta wrote:
| High wage didn't stop pharma from getting to doctors
| [deleted]
| nix23 wrote:
| >This kind of illegal influence should cost... at least $100M?
|
| A you not on the complete wrong way to equality and same rights
| for everyone? ;)
| a_e_k wrote:
| There's a particular Calvin and Hobbes strip that always comes
| to mind with articles like this: "I don't know which is
| worse... that everyone has his price, or that the price is
| always so low."
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/04/08
| bena wrote:
| Not only the stuff other people have said about how that money
| is actually spent, but...
|
| The market sets the prices.
|
| Sure, the politicians might want more, but I'm sure there are
| others who would be just as effective who could want less. Then
| the political contributions flow to your competitors instead of
| you.
|
| And there are other factors. If you're too obviously corrupt,
| maybe you get voted out anyway. Maybe you don't even see what
| you're doing as corruption. Things just happen to align. Or
| maybe you see it as a win-win. You get something, you do good
| for your constituents, the lobbying group gets what it wants,
| etc.
|
| The truth is way more complicated than "corpo stooges carrying
| big sacks of dollars to fat cat politicians".
| jaggederest wrote:
| I found it fascinating to see how far a modest individual
| contribution gets you in the political process. Less than $1000
| gets you an unprompted one on one personal call with the
| Governor at some length, ~$100 would allow similar access to
| state-level legislators or local political executives, and
| senators are only modestly more expensive to garner attention
| from, certainly a maxed $3,300 personal contribution would
| absolutely get you direct redress of your grievances, should
| you desire.
|
| At that price we should all purchase access to legislators,
| it's a screaming bargain.
| geodel wrote:
| Think about 99% uptime vs 99.99999% uptime cost for a service
| or next day customer support vs 24/7 phone support. If you
| think it should just a little bit more then, yeah, buying
| legislators would sound cheap.
| ctchocula wrote:
| That's surprisingly affordable even for average Joe SWEs in
| the valley. I can see it being useful for when paperwork gets
| jammed in the USCIS pipeline for instance.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Most Americans see lobbyists as dishonest or unethical [0].
| With that in mind, I think most Americans would not want to
| buy a legislator. After all, at some level, the legislator is
| supposed to represent them anyway...
|
| Even if Americans did, since there's a fixed supply of
| representatives, as demand goes up, so will the price :)
|
| 0 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/103123/lobbyists-debut-
| bottom-h...
| slothtrop wrote:
| By the same token could not $3.5M be raised to lobby in the
| other direction?
| arjunnarayan wrote:
| This disconnect is called the "Tullock Paradox" in Economics,
| after Gordon Tullock who first asked it in "The Purchase of
| Politicians" (1972) [couldn't find an online link].
|
| You'll find a more recent discussion in "Why is There so Little
| Money in U.S. Politics?" (2003). [1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/08953300332116497...
| tomp wrote:
| Much more recent:
|
| TOO MUCH DARK MONEY IN ALMONDS (2019)
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-
| in...
| Natsu wrote:
| Sometimes I think it's like dark matter, it's just out of the
| public eye in, I dunno, art sales or cushy jobs for family
| members that funnel money to one another.
| gnulinux wrote:
| Interesting points, but I'm wondering if you're possibly
| missing the point here. It's not only that Intuit uses their
| "right" to lobby the government and politicians allow Intuit to
| exercise this "right" to make money themselves; it's also that
| politicians ideologically _agree_ with Intuit that Intuit
| should be charging $X to citizens to file taxes. Some
| politicians, either superficially, or truly authentically
| /rationally, think government should not be allowed to do
| anything a private enterprise can do, and therefore
| categorically want Intuit to charge us $X as a middle-men
| instead of government doing the filing, in order for Intuit to
| turn profits. Consequently, although you're right that
| politicians have incentive to extort more money from Intuit,
| they likely _want to_ work with Intuit and come to a balanced
| compromise so that Intuit is able to make huge profits off of
| our tax filings.
| medellin wrote:
| This all makes sense if you ignore that politics are suppose
| to be representing the people who vote for them. I don't
| think I have talked to anyone on any side of the fence that
| think you should have to pay for filing basic taxes.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Uh, no.
|
| A politician is supposed to represent _all_ citizens
| equally, even those which did not vote for them.
|
| In a proper democracy, the voter is assessing candidates
| for a job. Once elected, that job is to do right by all
| citizens, by doing what they believe is the correct choice,
| correct way to do their job.
|
| We are supposed to be electing someone to make decisions,
| based on their beliefs. The election is a job interview.
|
| anudatt
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Man, you haven't talked to enough people then. Come up with
| the most absurd opinion you can about any political topic
| and you will find a small but aggressive group online that
| is convinced it is the only rational option.
|
| Plenty of conservatives genuinely believe, for whatever
| reason, that it's impossible for "Government" to do
| something well. They then elect people who promise to make
| that reality and then point to the obvious, purposeful
| struggles of our government as their reasoning.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| And it's not just the "government shouldn't do it" crowd,
| there are also those that believe that profit motive makes it
| more efficient and costs less overall.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Many Republicans have signed Grover Norquist's pledge, and he
| explicitly opposes making it easier to file taxes on the
| belief that doing so would make it easier to raise taxes in
| the future.
| neilv wrote:
| > _explicitly opposes ... on the belief_
|
| Do we know that's a truly-held belief by this politician,
| or do we only know that it's an assertion or claim?
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| TurboTax has already made it easier to file taxes, so the
| cat is out of the bag. Maybe Norquist didn't know what
| computers are capable of.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Needing to do your taxes at all on TurboTax is the whole
| point of the argument. It's a yearly annoyance everyone
| has to do AND often times you have to pay money to a
| company. Where in many countries you just get something
| in the mail already done for you since the government has
| the information already for most people. You can still
| file yourself if you want to amend something or have a
| special reason. That's how it should work.
| neilv wrote:
| A journalist once told me that, when they were new, they
| weren't surprised to learn that corruption was going on in
| their city, but they _were_ surprised that the amounts of the
| bribes were so small.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| s/illegal influence/protected 1st amendment speech/g
|
| SCOTUS said you can't regulate campaign funding basically _at
| all_ , because money spent to effect speech _is_ speech, and
| thus money spent on a political campaign is political speech.
|
| If you actually were to say "I will pass this bill for $X",
| then that _would_ be a bribe, and you could get kicked out of
| office or go to jail for that. But spending 30 minutes with a
| lobbyist behind closed doors and them just handing your
| campaign a check later on? Perfectly legal. The hush-hush
| nature of the operation means the only way you can squeeze a
| business for money is by getting everyone else angry at them
| too so that the business starts throwing campaign contributions
| around.
|
| From the congressperson's side it's less "I sold my vote to
| this person" and more "If I vote for this, then I won't get all
| these contributions anymore."
|
| The difference between a bribe and a tip is solely in the order
| of operations.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > SCOTUS said you can't regulate campaign funding basically
| at all, because money spent to effect speech is speech, and
| thus money spent on a political campaign is political speech.
|
| Yes, and the SCOTUS is wrong.
| yxwvut wrote:
| Buying senators is surprisingly cheap. This is why I think
| there's a huge untapped market for democratized/crowdfunded
| lobbying. I also think that democratization would expedite its
| demise, which is the end game that would benefit society the
| most.
| jonyt wrote:
| Already done in Israel.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobby_99
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem is it isn't just a money thing. A lot of lobbying
| is about connections, "friends", long time working
| relationships etc. A random person walking up to an opponent
| politician with a large check wont get anywhere, no matter
| how corrupt that politician is. Political funding is absurd
| in this country, and politicians spend most of their time
| raising money for the next campaign, meaning a one time check
| isn't terribly useful to them compared to a long time,
| implied continued working relationship.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think it was George Will that said "The problem with
| politicians in America isn't that they can be bought. It's that
| they can be bought so cheaply."
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| If turbotax was better than the free gov site then I would still
| use it. Good to have a free option though.
| ortusdux wrote:
| We just need to go to prefilled tax forms.
| slg wrote:
| I wish more people would blame the government officials for being
| so susceptible to lobbying and refusing to enact policies to
| curtail the behavior rather than be angry at individual companies
| for lobbying. As the old saying goes, don't hate the player, hate
| the game. Intuit is just operating in the best interest of their
| stockholders and employees. It isn't their job to operate in the
| best interest of society. That is the government's job. This
| situation is a governmental failure not any problem with Intuit
| specifically and it happens in plenty of other areas besides tax
| reporting.
| thewildginger wrote:
| They are players in this game too. They could "lobby" Congress
| to change the laws to allow them not to be shitty. But they
| won't. Part of stopping the game is shitting on ANYONE who
| wants to play that wah
| renlo wrote:
| What's a viable alternative to TurboTax for those who are unable
| to self-file? I know Intuit is an evil company, but whenever it's
| tax season and I'm confronted with either (a) learning how to
| file my own taxes or (b) kicking the can down the road and paying
| Intuit $100, I choose (b). I had an accountant for a couple years
| because my taxes were complicated due to changing states. My
| accountant charged me $1000, which I did not mind paying because
| my taxes were complicated. When my taxes became substantially
| less complicated last year, he still charged me $1000, which I
| _did_ mind paying. So no more accountant! The unfortunate reality
| is that Intuit's software works well and they've priced it at a
| point where most people just accept the fee and move on. As we
| get nearer to Tax Day 2023, I feel that I'm just going to accept
| their fee and move on with my life, even knowing how problematic
| they are.
|
| Is there a viable alternative (cheap tax software)?
|
| Is there a simple source of information where a person can learn
| everything they need to know about filing their taxes in an hour
| or two? Taxes seem to be kept intentionally arcane because so
| many make a living from understanding it without allowing me to
| understand it.
| fragmede wrote:
| If the fee is a flat $1,000, the other way to get more value is
| too complicated the hell out of your situation. Have you ever
| thought of starting a nonprofit foundation?
| cantaloupe wrote:
| I've used FreeTaxUSA and recommended it to many friends.
| Federal is free and state is $15 (if your state has income
| tax). For W-2 plus investments and house, it was a breeze. And
| they cover many more forms than just that:
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp
| valarauko wrote:
| I'd seen recommendations on here in the past for FreeTaxUSA so
| used that for the first time this year - already got my refund
| as well! It's free for federal filing, and $15 for each state
| filing. The interface is easy enough to understand, and I
| appreciated the many options - it does help to know what
| deductions apply to you, so at least a cursory understanding of
| your old filings is probably necessary. I believe it can import
| your old TurboTax filings and figure stuff out from that, but
| it's not something I did and was easy enough to set up and
| finish in the span of an evening. The various deductions are
| laid as a questionnaire, and I appreciated that they were
| marked as rare deductions that most people don't need - but
| there in case you need it.
| LVB wrote:
| Over the years I've greatly appreciated being able to
| _download_ the tax app and save my tax prep work as honest to
| goodness _files_. It does sound archaic, but when I want to run
| a what-if scenarios, it is as easy and duplicating the file and
| editing to my heart 's content. This can be a tricky operation
| with some online options. Navigation and direct form editing
| tends to be a bit better in desktop versions too.
|
| For downloadable software, I've used TT but have more recently
| switched to H&R Block. It works fine, and at a decent discount
| from TT (~$35 for H&R Block "Deluxe", including state return).
| fffernan wrote:
| Considering Inflation its actually a reduction in spending.
| pmulard wrote:
| For anyone looking for alternatives, freetaxusa and CashApp are
| both great. I used the former for one year after I couldn't get
| TurboTax for free anymore. Federal is free and state is $15 per.
|
| Switched to cashapp for the past two years because it is
| completely free. Both are a smooth experience.
| arthurofcharn wrote:
| Why do they even bother? Intuit has skilled coders, that could be
| put to more productive work. Like rewriting our tax code in
| Python. (Ha Ha only serious.)
| MattDemers wrote:
| You gotta love the usage of social justice vocabulary with this.
| Find a way that it'll "impact low-income taxpayers" and suddenly
| it's morally correct to keep things from being more convenient
| for the vast majority of people.
| px1999 wrote:
| I'm really curious how lobbying for something like this works in
| practice.
|
| I work with (non-us) government and while I don't doubt some
| background level of corruption, in experience there's always been
| an emphasis on documented probity and making defensible
| decisions.
|
| How does that $3m of lobbying actually work? Do lobbyists provide
| arguments to lawmakers (are there any except the tenuous one that
| the taxpayer money could be better used elsewhere?), or is it
| literally just spent on wining and dining the right people and
| asking them to block specific legislation?
| foruhar wrote:
| There must be a myriad ways. This was on the front page today
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34835096
| dang wrote:
| Tax season is tax lobby outrage season!
|
| Related:
|
| _IRS builds task force to explore running its own free e-file
| system_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764952 - Feb
| 2023 (199 comments)
|
| _IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34462122 - Jan 2023 (247
| comments)
|
| _IRS will look into setting up a free e-filing system_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32753099 - Sept 2022 (408
| comments)
|
| _The IRS could be on the verge of changing the way Americans
| file their taxes_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32550841
| - Aug 2022 (17 comments)
|
| _IRS will study free tax filing options_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32502321 - Aug 2022 (25
| comments)
|
| _TurboTax's fight against free tax filing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31072202 - April 2022 (394
| comments)
|
| _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 (587 comments)
|
| _Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122
| comments)
|
| _Why do Americans have to pay much to file their tax returns
| when the IRS knows?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30267361 - Feb 2022 (22
| 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)
|
| _California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then
| Intuit stepped in_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28944200 - Oct 2021 (283
| comments)
|
| _The IRS has a big opportunity to fix the way Americans file
| taxes_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177289 - Aug 2021
| (12 comments)
|
| _UsTaxes - open-source tax filing web application_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27998452 - July 2021 (53
| comments)
|
| _Good Riddance, TurboTax. Americans Need a Real 'Free File'
| Program_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27902380 - July
| 2021 (248 comments)
|
| _Intuit will no longer be a part of IRS Free File program_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865625 - July 2021 (140
| 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 stops firms like TurboTax from hiding free tax-filing
| products in searches_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948935 - Jan 2020 (25
| 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)
|
| _Filing Your Taxes Is an Expensive Time Sink. That's Not an
| Accident_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19572917 - April
| 2019 (155 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)
|
| _IRS electronic filing system breaks down hours before midnight
| deadline_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16860086 - April
| 2018 (97 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)
|
| _Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax
| Filing Process_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990391 -
| March 2017 (386 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)
|
| _US Senator Warren Introduces Bill to Simplify Tax Filing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492025 - April 2016 (155
| 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)
|
| _TurboTax Maker Intuit Funnels Millions to Lobby Against Easier
| Tax Returns_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7595440 -
| April 2014 (182 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)
|
| _Intuit lobbies against California 's free tax filing service_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569169 - Aug 2010 (29
| comments)
| [deleted]
| eat wrote:
| Really surprisingly low number here. $3.5 million doesn't seem
| like a lot to spend considering what I imagine they'd lose if
| they lost this tax-prep business. Did we lose a zero somewhere?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| I have yet to see anyone defend Intuit's bribery and corruption
| on any forum. I'm sure there are plenty of Intuit employees on
| HN. Do any of you want to defend the other side? Or maybe a non-
| Intuit employee can play devil's advocate?
| woeirua wrote:
| The real solution to all of this is to just get rid of the overly
| complicated tax code. No more deductions or credits. Everyone
| just pays some % of their gross income. Stop using tax policy as
| a way to pick winners and losers. The tax code is grossly stacked
| in favor of the wealthy. If you want to redistribute money to the
| needy then do so using direct payments.
| foruhar wrote:
| Not only is it not getting simpler the tax code seems to keep
| growing as more exceptions and exemptions get added. I guess
| it's like so many legacy code bases that just keep growing with
| lots of patches for special cases.
|
| According to the Public Law 117-154(06/23/2022), the U.S. Tax
| Code is 6,871 pages. When you include the federal tax
| regulations and the official tax guidance, the number of pages
| raises to approximately 75,000. This zip file (pdf) is 181MB
| [0].
|
| [0] https://uscode.house.gov/download/download.shtml
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We should stop attempting to subsidize desired behaviors and
| punish bad behavior with taxes. It's dumb and purposely
| utilized to put holes in tax law for certain friends.
| notch898a wrote:
| I can't think of a single person who wants taxes to become
| more complicated. How on earth does this happen? This
| overwhelmingly defies the democratic consensus, thus absent
| some special constitutional protections shouldn't be possible
| in a democracy.
| ticviking wrote:
| Because we each individually like the small exemptions we
| enjoy better than we like the idea of directly subsidizing
| those things.
|
| My home mortgage deduction and the solar tax credits are
| great examples of popular policies that would need to be
| changed when we simplify the code
| fragmede wrote:
| Given that the more complicated taxes are, the easier it is
| for billionaires to hide what they're doing, pay less in
| taxes, and even get money back out from the IRS, along with
| giving accountants a job, is it really that much of a
| surprise?
| mdaniel wrote:
| I briefly actually tried to read up on the laws that governed
| me, since I once heard "ignorance of the law is no excuse"
| and also was curious what, exactly, it would take to really,
| no kidding, translate the tax code into python or Mlang
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07966
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34579236
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25208853 )
|
| However, once I realized that -- as you said -- it's not just
| the _law_ it 's the court (and presumably IRS) rulings that
| supplement the law, that was too much for me and I noped out.
| My 2nd idea was to become an Enrolled Agent and then write up
| that experience, but I couldn't readily identify how much
| time and money that would cost
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| TaxGPT is our last hope.
| WesternWind wrote:
| I mean, if you make 10k a year your fixed costs leave less
| money for taxes than if you make 100k or 1m a year, so doing it
| on a simple percentage of gross income (rather than gross
| revenue) is likely to accelerate poverty, which is very much
| picking winners and losers.
|
| Anyway the reason why we have deductions and tax breaks as such
| a big component is in large part because it is one of the
| things you don't need 60 senators to pass.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It would be nice to have this eventually, but this would be the
| political fight of a lifetime, whereas automatic filing can be
| done right now with a penstroke. Don't make the perfect the
| enemy of the good.
| saulpw wrote:
| How about, every year all US public companies must print 3%
| more of their own stock, which is then effectively distributed
| equally to all US citizens as a form of UBI. No more income tax
| for individuals.
| ticviking wrote:
| That's at least interesting.
|
| I don't think it would work but it's definitely interesting.
|
| I'm pretty well convinced as a country basically no one
| charges shareholders enough for their limited liability in
| their corporation, and making the company share the benefit
| as well as the risk isn't the worst way I can brainstorm to
| deal with that
| saulpw wrote:
| I'm not sure it would 'work' either, but I'm curious what
| you think would be broken about it?
|
| It would probably make companies less interested in going
| public, but I like how it changes the meaning of a 'public'
| company to be more pro-social than just 'anyone in the
| investor class can purchase shares'.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Disappointed nobody has yet pointed out that it was Sam Bankman-
| Fried's dad, Joseph Bankman, pushed for a free gov-run tax filing
| in California:
|
| > In 2005,[22] Joseph Bankman worked with the state of California
| to create ReadyReturn, a pilot study with a completed tax return
| prepared by the state (not an individual or tax professional)
| that was available to single, no-dependant, standard-deduction,
| one-employer, wages-only taxpayers for the 2005 filing
| season.[23]
|
| > When the FTB launched the ReadyReturn website, Intuit sued and
| lobbied California legislators to kill the program.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile#ReadyReturn
| peteforde wrote:
| This has been going on for a very long time, and IMO the scale of
| the impact firmly lodges this in the Evil category.
|
| Another reasonable framing is that Intuit is the primary reason
| your taxes aren't automatically filed for you (with an
| opportunity to provide corrections later, if necessary).
| [deleted]
| bastard_op wrote:
| This is the same thing they've been doing for the past 20-30
| years now to stay at all relevant as a business. The only reason
| taxes still cost to file is Intuit and the other scab companies
| that sell software to everyone. Cheaper to pay off politicians in
| "lobbying" them vs. getting a modern business model.
| mochomocha wrote:
| ... To the surprise of no one. That's what regulatory capture +
| corrupted democracy (ie "lobbying") looks like.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Honestly they're terrible people, but their software is okay. If
| they're going to continue to undermine the IRS' efforts - and the
| IRS wants to provide clean modern tax filing software - they
| should just buy the business off Intuit.
|
| You heard it here first folks: I'm calling on the US government
| to nationalize TurboTax.
|
| It's the pragmatic choice.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can't reward this extreme rent seeking behavior, even if that
| means it would cost more for IRS to rebuild what Intuit
| provides. It's not about the money. You have to send a message.
| Otherwise you'll just encourage future poor behavior. Intuit
| has been up to this fuckery for _two decades_ [1]. We build the
| public goods, then we defend the public goods.
|
| I would rather _donate directly to the IRS project to replace
| Turbotax_ [2] before giving Intuit another dollar.
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764952
| warning26 wrote:
| This can be fixed; just make the nationalization a forced
| affair for a fixed price (far below what the company is
| "worth"), with no option to turn it down.
|
| The same should be done with ETS (Educational Testing
| Service) as well.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Was honestly shocked to learn ETS is a third-party vendor
| and that our government isn't producing the (oft poorly-
| designed) standardized exams used in various states.
|
| Absolutely no reason these exams shouldn't be designed in-
| house.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| As a former educator, I actually believe the ETS/college
| board/etc. moats are less durable than they seem. Lots a
| vague but oh so serious testing security concerns. Low
| frequency raises stakes unnecessarily. Big teams doing a
| lot of brute force development work. All of this paradigm
| is predicated on a lack of trust in the accuracy of
| classroom assessments. I believe that is a solvable problem
| with the development of an assistive assessment tool that
| monitors instruction and continuously creates/curates
| assessment items for immediate deployment by instructors.
| Focus initial development on the tool as an instructional
| utility and build broad trust in the data through
| frequent/low stakes/longitudinal assessment over time.
| Assuming broad adoption, attack their moat from below.
| programmarchy wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, but doesn't the IRS already know
| most of the information you're putting into the forms?
| gowld wrote:
| It doesn't know your deducations.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Most people are covered by the standard deduction. For
| those that aren't they'd still file as normal.
|
| This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing. The IRS can send
| you a statement of the tax they've computed for you, and
| you can review it. If you don't accept their computations,
| then file your taxes like you always have.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| "Do you have deductions? Click here for wizard or form."
| JamesSwift wrote:
| And its even more likely that people just click "standard
| deduction" to make it even simpler.
| andrekandre wrote:
| thats exactly how it works in japan, same with "any
| additional income you'd like to report" function
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I actually think this might be a great solution. Buy the
| shareholders out at a fair price, stop the damn lobbying, get
| some pretty good tax software in the process.
| izzydata wrote:
| I don't see the point in the IRS running TurboTax themselves.
| The IRS should simply keep track of everyone's taxes and
| automatically send refunds or bills accordingly. Spend any
| extra money they have on auditing the rich.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's simply insane that this isn't how it's done in the US.
| RileyJames wrote:
| This is how it works in New Zealand. It's not impossible.
| WesternWind wrote:
| In a lot of countries yes. At the very least the IRS could
| let you login and see the information they have about your
| earnings.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You can: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Data for previous year are not available until well past
| April 15.
| sokoloff wrote:
| True, but you also don't _really_ have to file until mid-
| Oct. (You have to pay a reasonable estimate by the mid-
| April date, but the practical filing due date is 6 months
| later than that. See form 4868.)
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The problem isn't that the US government is incapable of making
| a better system than TurboTax. The problem is that TurboTax
| only exists because they lobby to prevent the government from
| doing so.
|
| From that perspective, TurboTax isn't worth buying for anywhere
| close to what someone may evaluate it on the private markets.
|
| The US government should buy it for $3.5MM, since that's what
| Intuit values it at through lobbying.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Now this is an idea I could get behind!
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I'm all for better public services, but the Federal Government
| making the software that states use to collect taxes would be a
| disaster, purely for petty political reasons.
| kristopolous wrote:
| They wouldn't though. It would instead be industry capture as
| intuit is grossly compensated through a back channel that never
| gets allocated a budget to run an audit of.
|
| You'll need actual real socialist legislators who are well
| educated in actual real socialism in order to pull that off
| without some wacky neoliberal private-public bait and switch
| nonsense.
| remote_phone wrote:
| They've been doing this for decades now. This isn't a surprise in
| the least nor do I expect them to stop unless someone speaks up
| for our rights.
|
| I have a very simple tax situation. I get a paycheck twice a
| month and sometimes I buy and sell shares. The idea that I have
| to go through a multi-hour exercise when all of this should be
| accomplished via computers automatically is stupid to me. It's
| companies like Intuit that are trying to protect their moat and
| hurting us when it should be a quick payment or refund form we
| get once a year like a Costco rebate check.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| This year I tried Free File Forms and run into issues ... then
| tried TaxAct for $35 and run into issues ... then TurboTax for
| $139 did the job. There were issues but a live agent helped with
| that. At least I can tell that I didn't resign to evil Intuit
| without some struggle.
| ilamont wrote:
| How has Intuit avoided antitrust investigations? I'm not talking
| about TurboTax. Intuit's Quickbooks is basically a monopoly in
| the U.S. with all of the attendant characteristics of a monopoly
| ... poor performance, huge price increases, taking advantages of
| SMBs and sole proprietors that are forced to use it for their
| businesses.
| throwaway12245 wrote:
| Sounds like an opportunity for some competition.
| colordrops wrote:
| Sounds like an opportunity to get rid of unnecessary
| regulation and eliminate the system that is built to support
| tax filing companies. There's no good reason that taxes
| aren't automatically calculated for basic returns and you
| just need to sign a document. It's done in other countries.
| But their monopoly and lobbying have led to the government
| making the system more rather than less byzantine.
| nielsbot wrote:
| And even if the government "filed" your taxes for you, I'd
| imagine people could always file their own returns if they
| wanted to.
| fragmede wrote:
| Maybe Taylor Swift needs to have a public Twitter spat with her
| bookkeeper. At least, that's what got the ball rolling on
| Ticketmaster.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| Because the reigning ideology of anti-trust until the last year
| has been consumer welfare [0], where a monopoly is basically
| assumed ok unless you can demonstrate definite harms to
| consumers.
|
| [0]: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/peeing-in-the-
| economists-...
| briga wrote:
| Monopoly would imply that there are no viable alternatives,
| which isn't really true at all. There are dozens of companies
| with similar products.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I don't know what QuickBooks market share is, I have seen
| estimates between 60 and 80%. But there are definitely a lot of
| direct competitors as well as indirect competitors gnawing at
| their heels with services like invoicing and payroll and
| payments. I don't see any real barriers to entry created by
| intuit, especially since the QuickBooks export format is an
| open format.
|
| But, there definitely should be a lot of scrutiny for any
| additional acquisitions that Intuit makes, because they are
| definitely big enough to just buy any company that begins to
| challenge them.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| They are like a version of Adobe, but across more industries.
| There are competitors like Xero for small business accounting.
|
| I'd imagine most of QuickBooks' continued market share is
| momentum from CPAs who drive SMBs to QB. One platform to
| interact with for all your clients makes life easier.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Because every market in the US conveniently turns into a
| Duopoly which is never subject to antitrust. Intuit has H&R
| Block.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What product or service does HR block sell that overlaps with
| Intuit? I cannot think of one. Intuit sells software, HR
| Block sells cheap (and probably bad) tax advice.
|
| Intuit has a market cap of $114B and HRBlock has a market cap
| of $6B.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| They both have online tax filing, TurboTax's most popular
| consumer product and what we're discussing in this thread.
|
| The boxed software is a niche consumer product or targeting
| SMBs.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| In this market there is plenty of compeition that is driving
| down prices. me personally i switched from hr block to
| freetaxusa and i saved 50$. As far as markets and antitrust is
| concerned there are no monopoly problems here.
|
| I wish an agency like the CFPB or FTC could step in to say,
| although the market here is "working" there are still consumer
| concerns not being addressed that you must address.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| It's not illegal to have a monopoly. From the FTC:
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
|
| > it is not illegal for a company to have a monopoly, to charge
| "high prices," or to try to achieve a monopoly position by what
| might be viewed by some as particularly aggressive methods. The
| law is violated only if the company tries to maintain or
| acquire a monopoly through unreasonable methods.
| 93po wrote:
| I wish unreasonable methods included taking away the value of
| someone else's labor
| programmarchy wrote:
| Sad that politicians can be "bought" for a measly 3.5 million.
| Especially considering the cost to Americans is probably in the
| ballpark of hundreds of millions, if not more.
| cheriot wrote:
| If Intuit can get results with < $4m in lobbying that's an
| incredible rate of return. They made $2,066m in net income last
| year.
|
| For the influence they've clearly had there's got to be other
| money flows.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Lobbying is surprisingly cheap. We should probably pay our
| politicians way more, uncomfortable as that sounds to many.
| gowld wrote:
| Or we could put them in jail for corruption, for much
| cheaper.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The supreme court's opinion on political spending means you
| cannot just make the current system of lobbying illegal,
| because SCOTUS will just strike that law down.
| dangwhy wrote:
| lobbying isn't corruption.
| firebaze wrote:
| Could you educate me about the difference?
|
| As far as I know, commonly lobbying means funding the
| whole party instead of an individual person. Also,
| lobbyists are usually required to register somewhere,
| which seems to be mainly a ceremonial thing. Until now,
| having looked up on that quite a few times, I haven't
| spotted a to-the-point summary of what's really the
| separating line other than these two points.
| nielsbot wrote:
| It absolutely is a form of corruption: paying money to
| influence our government. Being charitable: it definitely
| _looks_ like corruption and we should avoid even the
| appearance of corruption.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Maybe. A public corruption trial would likely take a few
| years and cost seven figures, then the Federal Government's
| cost to imprison someone is ~$36k per year.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/09/01/2
| 021-18...
| dangwhy wrote:
| > We should probably pay our politicians way more
|
| Lobbying is legal though. I am not sure if thats case because
| we want politicians to make money.
| notch898a wrote:
| I would use sortition instead of elections and then pay them
| 95th percentile salary, plus 4 years of the average of their
| last N years private salary upon returning to the private
| workforce for retraining and reintegration.
|
| Elections are basically a mixture of corruption-fest to curry
| favors and a popular contest and the skills needed to get
| elected have almost nothing to do with the skills needed to
| do the job. Just get a random but large enough sample of the
| populace.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah they need to be:
|
| - paid enough during not to care about the bribe
|
| - paid enough after not to care about loosing the next
| election
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Corporations will just bribe more, they can afford it. I
| don't think the public can outspend them.
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