[HN Gopher] IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. fo...
___________________________________________________________________
IRS Direct File to open to all 50 states and D.C. for 2025 tax
season
Author : kjhughes
Score : 386 points
Date : 2024-05-31 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), an accountant and senior member
| of the House Financial Services Committee, told Axios in April
| that he wants to go "way beyond Direct File," calling for a
| "self-populating form." > > "Why in the heck
| should you have to fill out your return when the government has
| all the information. They know what's on your W-2 form before you
| do. They know what's on your 1099 ... Do you know how many
| mistakes people make?"
|
| Yes. Please.
|
| Now fix Workday, too.
| jjcm wrote:
| This was one of my favorite things about living in Australia as
| an American. Taxes were clicking a checkbox and saying, "I
| agree".
|
| It was incredible how simple it was.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Pretty much the same in Canada at this point for many people.
| Your tax software, and there are lots of free ones, pull the
| data from CRA and populate your whole return.
| codegeek wrote:
| I lived in HongKong for about 2 years a while ago. It was the
| same there. They calculate everything and you just have to
| sign it.
| spiderice wrote:
| This works against the governments interest, as they'll lose
| revenue from all the fines they give to people who accidentally
| fuck up their tax return.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| The point of the government isn't to make a profit; it's to
| serve the people.
| mrangle wrote:
| disagree
| mrangle wrote:
| The people who are downvoting my "disagree" are likely
| assuming that I am speaking philosophically. I'm not.
| Philosophically, sure: the purpose of the government is
| to serve the people. A philosophy written specifically
| for the consumption of people. But now I'm speaking about
| its practical purpose. What a system produces is always
| its purpose.
| vel0city wrote:
| Even with your definition of "What a system produces is
| always its purpose" is still usually incorrect. The US
| hasn't "turned a profit" (had a budget surplus) for the
| majority of the past what, 100 years? Lots of places
| don't tend to run long-term budget surpluses either.
| Governments generally don't "turn a profit".
| plorkyeran wrote:
| The US Government operates at a massive deficit, so
| clearly the purpose of it is not to turn a profit.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| It's also possible that people downvoted because a one-
| word comment doesn't contribute anything to the
| discussion.
| spiderice wrote:
| Ideally, yes. What is your point?
| barbazoo wrote:
| What about on the other hand saving all that effort
| associated with auditing, re-filing/amending a return, etc.
| mminer237 wrote:
| 1. It surely costs way more in employee expenses to monitor,
| correct, and collect such small fines. Plenty of times
| they'll just let a $200 fine go because it's not worth the
| effort to collect.
|
| 2. Taxes are a means to an end, as is the government. There's
| no benefit to fining people for clerical mistakes besides
| encouraging them to not make them. There's no value created
| by fines. There's no shareholder greedily pocketing the
| revenue. If they can avoid mistakes for people, that benefits
| government employees by having to waste less time on stupid
| stuff, the taxpayers by not having to waste time on stupid
| stuff and avoiding fines, and the people at large by not
| having to waste public money on paying people to fix stupid
| stuff on people's returns.
| spiderice wrote:
| 1. citation needed
|
| 2. In an ideal world, yes. In practice, citation needed.
| lesuorac wrote:
| 1. Citation is really needed.
|
| EITC makes up 36% of all audits and its for people making
| below 20k.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/earned-income-tax-
| credit-...
| kbolino wrote:
| That revenue isn't even a drop in the bucket. The issue is
| and always has been parasitic jobs: you wouldn't need
| anywhere near as many IRS employees and tax accountants.
| spiderice wrote:
| Agree. I love the idea.
| bombcar wrote:
| It does work against the government's stated interest, but
| not in the way you think.
|
| Tax policy is the government's strongest tool to change
| personal behavior, and if the system is simple and automated
| it doesn't do that at all.
| vundercind wrote:
| Why... not?
|
| If anything it's a great opportunity to put personalized
| suggestions for how to reduce one's taxes (=change
| behavior) directly in front of the eyeballs you want to see
| it. Put it directly on the page where you click "looks good
| to me" on the automatically-filled-in tax form.
|
| "Looks like you've never used your one-off solar panel
| federal tax credit. Click here for information on how to
| save up to $xx,xxx on next year's taxes, while also
| reducing your energy bill!"
| op00to wrote:
| > Tax policy is the government's strongest tool to change
| personal behavior, and if the system is simple and
| automated it doesn't do that at all.
|
| I'm not sure I agree. For example, I used to pay city wage
| tax to one municipality, and I decided I did not want to
| pay that city tax anymore so I took a job in another area
| that no longer had the city wage tax. I would be due the
| wage tax no matter what, and I was aware of exactly how
| much the wage tax was by looking at my pay stub every two
| weeks. Having my taxes prepared for me doesn't really
| change that.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's all the various deductions you can take, both above
| and below the line.
|
| It _is_ possible to do the same societal effect in other
| ways, but the US does a done at the federal level via
| taxes.
|
| Go look sometimes at the list of things you _can_ claim
| in various cases.
|
| It's even more explicit when you look at business tax
| returns and schedules.
| xp84 wrote:
| Most returns are not audited, and most screw-ups don't result
| in fines. The kind of thing that (sometimes) gets big fines
| is sophisticated shenanigans done by rich people, and
| completely preparing such a complex return is (imho) way out
| of scope for the 'tax automation' we are speaking about here,
| where a basic 1040A or 1040EZ (simple forms which a massive
| plurality of Americans are eligible to use) can be populated
| entirely from IRS-known data.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > all the fines they give to people who accidentally fuck up
| their tax return.
|
| You only get fined if you deliberately (and fraudulently)
| fuck up.
|
| If you make a mistake, they give you a chance to correct it
| before fining you.
|
| I forgot a W-2 once (I switched jobs 4 weeks into the year
| and the first employer gave me my W-2 late) and filed without
| it. My return was rejected and I got a letter telling me why
| and requested an amended return. I amended, re-filed, got
| accepted, and got my refund. No fines.
|
| And certainly no jail time like a lot of memes like to
| suggest.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's the way it should be. Even the anti-tax people should be
| for this because it allows people to see what the IRS already
| knows. That would allow them to request changes as needed. I
| know people where the IRS had wrong 1099s and it was hard for
| them to figure out the problem and correct it.
| kindatrue wrote:
| Anti-tax people like Grover Norquist and Republicans who have
| made his pledge have long been concerned that if paying taxes
| were easy, then the American people might not despise taxes
| anymore. So making paying taxes painful is part of the plan.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
| turbotax...
| Laaas wrote:
| I'd rather have them not know than automatic taxes.
| tills13 wrote:
| Why
| jandrese wrote:
| Obviously so he can lie and avoid paying taxes.
| t3rabytes wrote:
| It seemed like the initial Direct File rollout was limited to
| states that didn't have a state-level income tax, or directly
| cooperated with the IRS. Are they forcing all states to play
| ball, or will Direct File not cover state tax submissions?
| xeromal wrote:
| I doubt this will do anything for a state tax form. It's not
| their responsibility.
| jprete wrote:
| Quoting the IRS (https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-
| plan/irs-direct-file...):
|
| > The Direct File pilot doesn't prepare state returns. However,
| if you live in Arizona, California, Massachusetts or New York,
| the Direct File pilot guides you to a state-supported tool you
| can use to prepare and file your state tax return.
|
| > If you live in Washington state, Direct File guides you to a
| state site where you can apply for the Working Families Tax
| Credit when you file your federal return with the Direct File
| pilot.
| larkost wrote:
| From the second sentence of the article:
|
| "will be made permanent for the 2025 tax season with all 50
| states and Washington D.C. invited to participate"
|
| It seems very much that this is an opt-in thing, state by
| state. I would suspect that the results of this will be most
| Democratic-leaning states at least trying to opt-in for next
| year, and many Republican-leaning states refusing loudly during
| this election year, then quietly starting to opt in in a few
| years.
| svggrfgovgf wrote:
| States part of the pilot program (i.e., 2023 tax year):
| Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New
| Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas,
| Washington (state), Wyoming as per https://www.irs.gov/about-
| irs/strategic-plan/irs-direct-file....
|
| Looks like exactly half and half, Democratic/Republican to me
| ...
|
| But, who knows maybe next year ...
| delecti wrote:
| If you look at the tax situation across the states, the
| party split makes a bit more sense. Of the states involved
| in the pilot program, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota,
| Tennessee, Texas, and (to some extent) Washington do not
| have individual income tax. Also, Arizona and New Hampshire
| both have a flat rate income tax, which I readily admit
| knowing nothing about, but which I presume simplifies them
| being part of the pilot. So California, Massachusetts, and
| New York are the only states which have a variable tax rate
| and also opted in, and are also all about as Democrat
| leaning as it gets.
|
| https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-income-tax-
| ra...
| Sivart13 wrote:
| I can speak to Arizona and New York: they both have state
| taxes but didn't have any existing web portal that could
| be integrated with Direct File.
|
| They were in the pilot because the organization I worked
| for, Code for America, offered to build them one:
| https://codeforamerica.org/programs/tax-benefits/state-
| tax-f...
|
| We reached out to other states as well, but those were
| the two that ended up being most impactful + most
| cooperative + easiest to implement :)
| Someone1234 wrote:
| How volatile is this to the political winds? As the article makes
| clear this was largely done with the support of the current
| incumbent, but what if the next one is more amenable to
| TurboTax's ideas?
|
| That seems to be an ongoing headache in the US with executive
| branch created programs, courts can just immediately squish them
| or political winds can change, then they're suddenly gone.
|
| Something like this, in order to be permanent, needs
| congressional approval.
| Covzire wrote:
| Not very, absolutely everyone hates doing their taxes and the
| whole shady process behind it all. The IRS should have to
| declare what they think you owe before you pay or submit any
| paperwork, I don't know if that'll ever happen but any baby or
| big steps towards that reality will win bipartisan support,
| easily. Just have to get past the conflicted-out members of
| congress who are truly being controlled by Turbo Tax and other
| industry lobbyists.
| kindatrue wrote:
| "Not very, absolutely everyone hates doing their taxes and
| the whole shady process behind it all"
|
| That's the Grover Norquist (and Republican) argument for not
| having IRS Direct File to begin with: if filing taxes becomes
| easy, people might not hate the IRS and hate taxes.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-
| turbotax...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| And it's really because they don't know any poor people.
|
| Because if they did, they'd know that filing taxes for low
| income people with kids is a HUGE bonanza, and they'd work
| like hell to implement a system where all tax credits were
| applied to individual paychecks, not lump sums during tax
| season. It's the one time of the year when their pockets
| are flush with cash.
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| > How volatile is this to the political winds?
|
| Very. Had the GOP won the senate in 2022, this would have
| probably been cut already. Depending on how this November goes
| the policy could definitely be reversed.
|
| > Something like this, in order to be permanent, needs
| congressional approval.
|
| This program did come from Congress. It was apart of the
| inflation reduction act.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It's a huge problem that when the opposition comes into
| power, they immediately try to revert and undermine what the
| previous party did. Not because of merit, but just because of
| partisanship. So you end up with a lot of programs that get
| started and after a while get repealed or maintained badly.
| This costs the country a lot of money.
|
| The ACA is a classical example. Instead of improving it or
| proposing a real replacement, they campaign for repealing it
| and some incantations of "free market" without explaining how
| patients won't get screwed over even more than now.
| Alupis wrote:
| Perhaps people should stop treating the president like a
| king, and you know, actually pass laws the way our
| government was designed to work...
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Congress honestly seems to have completely shut down as a
| body able to accomplish anything. The president is all we
| have
| gottorf wrote:
| This is a feature of the US constitutional system, not a
| bug. It's designed such that things move very, very
| slowly. If Congress isn't able to pass laws, it probably
| reflects a division in how the voting populace feels
| about the subject of such laws.
|
| The president may be all we have, but he is
| constitutionally forbidden from acting like a king.
| Though, of course, that hasn't stopped presidents from
| trying.
| Alupis wrote:
| 100% Correct. People all too often look at Congress and
| say "gee, they aren't passing all the things I want them
| to do, therefore Congress must be broken!"
|
| This fails to realize Congress works entirely the way it
| was designed. As you said, inaction == lack of consensus.
|
| Imaging running a country where significant ways of life
| (influenced by laws) change willy-nilly depending on the
| flavor of the day? The legal whiplash would be absurd.
|
| So, people often look to the president as some sort of
| king analog, and demand action via Executive Order - then
| cry foul when the next president undoes the previous
| one's EO's... it's lunacy and not a good way to run a
| society.
| iends wrote:
| > This fails to realize Congress works entirely the way
| it was designed.
|
| Don't really think so.
|
| The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act subverted the
| intentions of the founders and clearly swayed the power
| balance back towards rural areas, even though they have
| equal representation in the senate.
| Alupis wrote:
| And?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| >> This fails to realize Congress works entirely _the way
| it was designed._
|
| >The 1929 Permanent Apportionment Act _subverted the
| intentions of the founders_
|
| Stop playing dumb. The contradiction with your initial
| assertion was clearly articulated. Try addressing it
| instead of baiting other posters.
| Alupis wrote:
| Posting this demonstrates a clear lack of understanding
| of how the US government works - and a gross
| misunderstanding of the founding of the US and the
| framer's intentions.
|
| The "And?" was a prompt for the poster to elaborate on
| their uninformed view. You apparently saw fit to double-
| down on expressing your lack of understanding as well...
|
| Perhaps you would like to take a swing at explaining how
| Congress passing a law somehow "subverts" Congress?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| " it probably reflects a division in how the voting
| populace feels about the subject of such laws."
|
| I don't think that's correct. There is way too much
| propaganda coming from the parties to think that voters
| have made up their minds based on the facts. It's
| actually quite hard to get the facts because the media is
| mostly reporting politics like they report a football
| match.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtPgUrVPXeI
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/mcconnell-
| says-he...
| Alupis wrote:
| Care to elaborate what this partisan propaganda has to do
| with anything???
|
| Some people seem to enjoy whipping up a second pitcher of
| kool-aide before they've even finished the first...
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Sorry but the elected leader of a party openly stating
| his objectives is not "partisan propaganda." So free of
| Koolaid you think simply citing the actual words that a
| grown adult said of his own free will and cognizance is
| "partisan propaganda."
| Alupis wrote:
| Care to explain what happened during the Trump
| Administration then?
|
| It's so easy for people to hyper-focus on "my side good"
| that they lose sight of the overall picture. Resisting an
| administration's agenda is pretty normal and expected...
| the people who voted for Mitch simply do not agree with
| the Biden agenda. Mitch (and other R's) are there to
| enact the agenda their constituents want. What a
| shocker...
|
| Why is this surprising to you? Have you pondered, even
| for a few moments, what Democrats do when there's a
| Republican administration in office?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Surely you can find examples of Schumer saying that his
| party is fully committed to obstructing the Trump
| administration, right? Or Harry Reid saying it during the
| Bush administration?
|
| No, it's _not_ normal. That 's exactly my point. If it's
| normal, cite it.
|
| Believing it's normal for one party to have _as an
| explicit goal_ to simply obstruct everything the
| administration is doing is a symptom of drinking too much
| Koolaid.
| Alupis wrote:
| > obstructing
|
| You are conflating not getting your way with someone
| carrying out the task they were elected for.
|
| In life, we don't always get what we want... normally we
| teach this lesson to children.
|
| I don't know why this is difficult for you to understand
| - but it clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the
| propaganda you previously linked to and people's general
| disregard for anything outside of their small political
| circle.
|
| Do you believe Mitch is supposed to "fall in line" and
| vote to support the Biden agenda? Do you believe this
| sort of opposition isn't present in the Democrat party?
|
| Or are we squabbling over NBC propaganda? "But, but he
| said!"... "prove it!". This is very tiring...
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > "One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this
| new administration"
|
| Actual words stated by Mitch McConnell. His goal is not
| to pass policy that's good for the American people, not
| to prevent the administration from overstepping or making
| mistakes, not to do anything except simply "stopping this
| new administration."
|
| The purpose of our government is to _collaborate and
| compromise_ to find solutions that are good for the
| country.
|
| Consider two children tasked with collaborating on a
| problem. One of them walks up and says "One-hundred
| percent of my focus is on stopping you."
|
| Are you similarly confused about who's the asshole? Is
| that "partisan propaganda" to say that the child who
| states that is an asshole? Are you really so smart that
| this becomes a tricky situation to understand?
| Alupis wrote:
| Clearly by "collaborate and compromise" you actually mean
| "so long as my side gets their way". This is the negative
| result of buying into entirely one-sided propaganda - it
| limits your perspective to, frankly, bullshit.
|
| I do not see a point in continuing since you seem
| unwilling to actually contemplate the entire environment.
| Not only do you have absolutely no response to obvious
| intellecual hypocrisy, but you are indeed one of _"
| those"_ people who links to propaganda to support their
| deliberately narrow and naive perspective of the world -
| and demands others participate in this alternative
| reality.
|
| It's not fun, nor intellectually stimulating to engage in
| this type of debate.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| No, that's actually not what I mean. Note that I'm not
| taking issue with any GOP policies, because I don't have
| a problem with GOP policies. I have a problem with stated
| goals of simply obstructing the people they are supposed
| to be collaborating with, thus I am directly quoting
| statements made that explicitly state their goal of
| obstructing their collaborators.
|
| Again, citing someone's own words cannot possibly be
| considered "propaganda" against them, lol. They said it,
| and to my knowledge they weren't even held at gunpoint!
|
| I mean you haven't even given me an analogous example of
| the problem I'm pointing out, so I'm not sure what "clear
| hypocrisy" I'm exhibiting. Give me an example case and
| I'll tell you what I think and _then_ you can decide
| whether I 'm hypocritical.
| Alupis wrote:
| There was oodles of collaboration during the Trump
| Administration - how did I ever forget how willing to
| compromise and collaborate Democrats were back then! It
| was an amazing time for our Congress - so much
| collaboration was done that we got sick and tired of
| collaborating!
| llamaimperative wrote:
| So again, since obstructing the opposing administration
| is "normal," you can find statements declaring such an
| objective. Right?
| wredcoll wrote:
| I'm impressed by your efforts to communicate something
| that is this basic, and yet depressed by how difficult it
| is!
|
| Normalizing this "current" republican position of
| literally not having policies deserves to be called out.
| gottorf wrote:
| > The purpose of our government is to collaborate and
| compromise to find solutions that are good for the
| country.
|
| > Consider two children tasked with collaborating on a
| problem. One of them walks up and says "One-hundred
| percent of my focus is on stopping you."
|
| The purpose of our government is clearly lined out in the
| Constitution. A lot of people happen to think that the
| federal government has stepped way outside of the bounds
| prescribed therein[0], and that this causing harm to the
| country. If you take that view, then being 100%
| obstructionist at the federal level is in fact acting for
| the good of the country.
|
| [0]: To be clear, this has been going on for nearly a
| century. It's not a recent thing, nor is it specific to
| the parties or presidents involved at any given time.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You're just trolling at this point. Please stop.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| In 1991 the ACA _was_ the conservative proposal, but in
| 2010 when it was passed under the Obama administration it
| suddenly became communist marxism. Sigh.
| chuckadams wrote:
| It's known as Cleek's Law: "Today's Conservatism is the
| opposite of whatever Liberals want today, updated daily."
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I'm actually curious on the reverse. What programs did the
| GOP start that were cancelled by the Dems? Note I'm a
| biased liberal, so potentially the reversals might've been
| propagandized to me as lifting restrictions or some other
| such political language and I might be unaware of the
| actual policies.
| dripton wrote:
| A couple of examples would be reduction of some of the
| Reagan-era defense spending under the Clinton
| administration, and partial rollback of some of the
| Reagan-era tax cuts under the Clinton administration.
|
| Of course these were not complete elimination of
| programs, but adjustments. And you could argue that there
| were other reasons besides partisanship, like the end of
| the Cold War and budgetary issues.
| favorited wrote:
| > reduction of some of the Reagan-era defense spending
| under the Clinton administration
|
| ...you mean when the USSR collapsed, and Cold War ended?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Please provide examples of Democrats undoing good
| policy/legislation just because it was passed by a prior
| Republican administration.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Please provide examples of Democrats undoing good
| policy/legislation just because it was passed by a prior
| Republican administration."
|
| It's going to be hard to argue with people on the basis
| of what was "good". That's subjective, and the very basis
| for why there are separate parties.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _going to be hard to argue with people on the basis of
| what was "good"_
|
| I'd expand this to examples of either party undoing
| legislation the other championed and passed. It's
| exceedingly rare, in large part by design.
| pooper wrote:
| I still hope we can undo the "permanent" tax cuts of 2017
| at some point.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Which ones specifically? I haven't followed how the
| individual elements have played out. Many of the elements
| seem minor, but I don't remember if the CBO broke down
| which portions would create the deficit. I assume it's
| the corporate pieces, but don't know which ones.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Why would you expect that?
|
| We didn't even allow the 2001 Bush tax cuts to
| automatically expire at the end of 2010, despite control
| of the House, Senate, and White House passing from the
| Republicans to the Democrats during the intervening
| years.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was mostly focused on the policy part of their comment.
| A lot of the changes come based on a level or two
| removed. You generally don't see laws fully flip
| flopping. Instead it's quite common for someone to get
| appointed and then their decisions are the ones that
| change policies (especially internal policies at various
| agencies). SCOTUS, both now and in the past is a good
| example of the external law/policies changing based on
| interpretation. But yeah, actual _repeal of laws_ is very
| rare.
| troupo wrote:
| That's not how the opposition is undoes something. The
| opposition reduces funding and scope and passes
| legislation that effectively nullifies previous laws.
|
| The reason Republicans are mentioned above is that they
| have a well documented public history of endorsing and
| carrying out these kinds of shenanigans. Democrats,
| though cut from the same cloth, somehow manage to be one
| step above on an imaginary decency scale.
| gottorf wrote:
| The great increase in illegal entry into the country
| through the southern border is a good recent example.
| Though, I suppose this is predicated upon it being "good
| policy" that illegal immigration be slowed.
| wredcoll wrote:
| What increase? The numbers are very constant.
| gottorf wrote:
| I would love to see your sources; everything I've seen
| across the partisan spectrum shows a large increase from
| the 2010-2020 period to 2020 and onwards.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| What policy/legislation was undone to lead to that?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I think a new policy wasn't enacted because it would make
| the democrats look good.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| That's not a policy. A policy would be reverting
| immigration laws.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I would give the example of the 2001 Bush tax cuts.
|
| Since the Republicans lacked 60 votes in the Senate and
| zero Democrats supported the Bush tax cuts, The law
| enacting them was passed using budget reconciliation
| rules.
|
| > Budget reconciliation is a special parliamentary
| procedure of the United States Congress set up to
| expedite the passage of certain federal budget
| legislation in the Senate. The procedure overrides the
| Senate's filibuster rules, which may otherwise require a
| 60-vote supermajority for passage. Bills described as
| reconciliation bills can pass the Senate by a simple
| majority of 51 votes or 50 votes plus the vice
| president's as the tie-breaker
|
| https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_Sta
| tes...
|
| Using budget reconciliation rules automatically set a
| sunset date for the tax cuts, after which they would
| automatically expire.
|
| When the tax cuts should have automatically expired at
| the end of 2010, the Democrats controlled the House,
| Senate and White House. Despite frequent claims over the
| decade that tax cuts for the rich were morally
| reprehensible, the Democrats did not allow the tax cuts
| to automatically expire, extending them for two years in
| the lame duck session of Congress, and then most were
| made permanent two years later before they should have
| expired again.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Despite frequent claims over the decade that tax cuts
| for the rich were morally reprehensible, the Democrats
| did not allow the tax cuts to automatically expire,
| extending them for two years in the lame duck session of
| Congress, and then most were made permanent two years
| later before they should have expired again._
|
| Isn't that the opposite of "undoing legislation"?
| ohashi wrote:
| Isn't this the opposite of what you're saying? Democrats
| didn't undue policy just because it was passed by the GOP
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Our current border situation...?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But the Democrats haven't made anY= significant changes
| to immigration policy. In fact, they offered an
| bipartisan immigration bill that tilted significantly
| toward the Republicans' wishlist and the GOP rejected
| because Trump wants to run on immigration and giving
| Biden a political win in that area was unacceptable to
| thim (even though many on the left found the proposed
| legislation very disagreeable).
|
| The main change at the border is a larger number of
| _migrants_. Migration trends are up globally, for a
| variety of reasons including climate change.
| xp84 wrote:
| You're totally right that it's especially bad with e-branch
| stuff, but it's not necessarily limited to that. Most
| programs established by congress will be given an
| expiration date beyond which it would require another act
| of congress to reauthorize. I think it's mandatory for
| anything that costs money, basically. I can see the basic
| rationale that if something is not popular enough to be
| reauthorized, why keep doing it, but it sure does
| contribute to instability not knowing if you can depend on
| something important continuing to exist.
| folkhack wrote:
| In good faith, when have the Democrats have done this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _ACA is a classical example. Instead of improving it or
| proposing a real replacement, they campaign for repealing
| it_
|
| The GOP has controlled the government mulitple times since
| ACA passed. That nothing was done shows it's a talking
| point.
|
| Legislation is hard to overturn. Executive actions, less
| so.
| lesuorac wrote:
| You have a pretty loose definition of talking point. It
| was pretty widely televised that McCain broke ranks with
| the party to prevent an ACA repeal [1] but ignoring that
| event there were many attempts over the course of 7
| months [2] to replace it. That time could've been
| invested into literally anything else.
|
| But yeah a lot of things end up being campaign talking
| points. Like Obama saying they'd enshrine abortion rights
| into law and uh didn't.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2017/07/27/539907467/senate-
| careens-towa...
|
| [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Timeline_of_ACA_repeal_and_r
| eplace_e...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Very_
|
| To underscore this, the IRS is _not_ an independent agency
| [1], but a bureau of the Treasury.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the
| _Un...
| pavon wrote:
| > This program did come from Congress. It was apart of the
| inflation reduction act.
|
| The inflation reduction act directed the IRS to perform a
| _study_ on Direct eFile. Implementing an actual pilot and
| then expanding to a permanent tool was based solely on
| executive authority, so either congress or the president
| could choose to scrap the program in the future.
|
| > Inflation Reduction Act SS10301(1)(B) TASK FORCE TO DESIGN
| AN IRS-RUN FREE ''DIRECT EFILE'' TAX RETURN SYSTEM.--For
| necessary expenses of the Internal Revenue Service to deliver
| to Congress, within nine months following the date of the
| enactment of this Act, a report on (I) the cost (including
| options for differen- tial coverage based on taxpayer
| adjusted gross income and return complexity) of developing
| and running a free direct efile tax return system, including
| costs to build and admin- ister each release, with a focus on
| multi-lingual and mobile- friendly features and safeguards
| for taxpayer data; (II) taxpayer opinions, expectations, and
| level of trust, based on surveys, for such a free direct
| efile system; and (III) the opinions of an independent third-
| party on the overall feasibility, approach, schedule, cost,
| organizational design, and Internal Revenue Service capacity
| to deliver such a direct efile tax return system,
| $15,000,000, to remain avail- able until September 30, 2023:
| Provided, That these amounts shall be in addition to amounts
| otherwise avail- able for such purposes
| foota wrote:
| I think once it's been in place for a year it will be very hard
| for them to take it away.
| jandrese wrote:
| Virginia had a dead simple and free e-File system for years.
| It cost the state almost nothing to maintain and worked
| wonderfully. The tax companies were able to bribe a few
| members of the legislature to have it killed with relatively
| little fuss, and now Virginians pay some of the highest rates
| for e-filing at the state level.
| jawns wrote:
| The Taxpayers Protection Alliance spokesperson quoted at the
| bottom says:
|
| > Private tax services "have every incentive to find the
| deductions that will yield them the best return," Zupkus said,
| adding that the IRS wants "to extract as much as possible from
| the taxpayer."
|
| I think it's worthwhile to acknowledge that there are indeed
| slightly different incentives involved when it comes to the
| private sector handling tax prep versus the government.
|
| But it's laughable to argue that the private sector is not in it
| to extract as much as possible from its customers.
|
| ProPublica's series on the nasty ways TurboTax fooled its
| customers to extract more money from them is a clear example:
| https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap
|
| Edit: I think some commenters are missing my point here. I'm not
| agreeing with this spokesperson. I'm saying that it's
| disingenuous to argue that the government is trying to fleece
| consumers when it's clear that the private sector has been doing
| so for some time.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not even correct - the IRS wants to follow their rules as
| closely as they can.
|
| I have had the IRS _unprompted_ send me an additional refund
| because of a _mistake I made_ on my forms, and they caught.
|
| (They also included a letter saying that if I thought my
| mistake was right, I could fight the refund, or file a new
| amended form and go for a bigger one.)
| kbolino wrote:
| I have had the IRS charge me tax and accuse me of lying to
| them over a UTMA withdrawal used to pay for tuition even
| though the fund running the account refused to send me the
| paperwork because the account is in my parent's name first
| instead of mine.
|
| It is a massive organization filled with uncoordinated people
| doing their level best to produce Brownian motion.
| larkost wrote:
| That sounds like you are agreeing with the post you are
| replying to: the IRS is trying very hard to stick to their
| rules. You have a deduction that neither you nor the IRS
| have paperwork for (since the fund is not acknowledging it
| as a covered expense), so they are following the rules.
|
| I can understand how you are frustrated about the
| situation, but this does not seem to me to be random
| behavior, but rather straightforward rule following.
| kbolino wrote:
| If following the rules looks like there are no rules,
| what is the purpose of the rules?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| UTMA withdrawals by the child are not taxable, however UTMA
| income is taxable to the child...
|
| What exactly are you railing against? It sounds like the
| IRS is following the rules here.
| kbolino wrote:
| If the income is taxable for me, but I get no form in the
| mail and can't even request one (because it's not my
| account), then how was I supposed to file a correct tax
| return in the first place?
| iends wrote:
| Isn't that an issue with who provides the UTMA account?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| To be fair, that's also the kind of thing Intuit would love
| to catch since it will make them look good (as they bill
| people for the privilege of filing taxes, of course).
| bombcar wrote:
| The taxes had been filed via TurboTax - I had fatfingered
| some data entry (so it's not really Intuit's fault they
| didn't catch it). The IRS had the data from other sources.
| downut wrote:
| I have done[1] my own taxes most years over the last 4
| decades, but only in the last few years has the Federal IRS
| fixed my errors for me and sent me more money[2] than I
| expected. Pretty cool.
|
| I moved house from AZ to GA in 2022 and _both_ State revenue
| departments refunded me more than what I expected from
| filling out the partial year forms. GA was almost double[3].
| The move included a corporate 6 figure relocation package,
| with all the fraught income tax issues with that. A lot of
| anxiety... just dissipated.
|
| [1] I download the pdf forms and instructions and just fill
| them out, and if I have to I print 'em out and mail 'em in.
|
| [2] I try hard to keep refunds to a minimum, certainly less
| than $1K.
|
| [3] My partner and I puzzled over the GA instructions for
| quite some time, which are impressively ambiguous. I could
| make an argument for 3 different scenarios given the
| instructions, and we decided to go conservative and use the
| middle strategy. However the refunded amount did not match
| any of the scenarios I myself calculated!
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Similar story here. I had quit my job to return to college
| full time, but I worked for a few months that year. Turns out
| that qualified me for the Earned Income Tax Credit.
|
| This credit is supposed to encourage poor people to work
| instead of living off government assistance. I would have
| never thought to claim the credit because I didn't think of
| myself as low income. On a monthly basis, I wasn't. But
| because of working for part of the year, on an annual basis,
| for that tax year, I was.
|
| One day I got a letter from the IRS saying essentially, "Hey
| dummy, why didn't you claim this credit on your return? We
| fixed it for you. Here's a check."
| danans wrote:
| > Zupkus said, adding that the IRS wants "to extract as much as
| possible from the taxpayer."
|
| The IRS doesn't want your tax dollars, they are just the
| mechanism by which the federal government enforces tax
| collection according to the law.
|
| I've gotten refunded by the IRS for taxes they found that I
| overpaid years ago. Neither I nor my accountant did anything to
| initiate that. I'm not alone in getting an unprompted refund.
| kindatrue wrote:
| I've met people who thought that the IRS makes money from
| collecting taxes - like that employees there get a cut.
| causal wrote:
| Yeah, private H&R Block and Intuit have built empires on
| upselling their products to taxpayers.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The IRS has no incentive to collect more than what you owe. If
| you overpay and the IRS discovers it, they will send you a
| refund.
| axus wrote:
| It would be a real problem if IRS employees were promoted /
| rewarded based on extra dollars collected. As far as I know
| it's all political & unionized.
| nly wrote:
| As a Brit it's baffling that this is even an issue. I filed my
| taxes online with HMRC for free this year (we call it Self
| Assessment), it took 20 minutes, and I received a 4 figure refund
| in ~2 weeks directly in to my bank account.
| swozey wrote:
| The tax system here (usa) is an absolute joke. I owed $5k this
| year and I literally did nothing different except receive a
| small 5% raise last year. I have the most basic taxes you can,
| single, no kids, no house. Literally just a salary paycheck
| every 2 weeks. Had _no_ idea I would owe anything, much less
| that much money until I filed 2 weeks prior to our tax date in
| April and you 're expected to pay everything you owe to them on
| that date.
|
| I sold a house in 2019, I walked away with only about $15k
| profit after paying everyone. Bought the house for $335, sold
| for $370ish. I think my principal was around $310k at the sale.
| I got a letter in 2022 that I owed the IRS something like $150k
| or so, some shocking amount of money. Freaked me the hell out.
| I had to dig out all of my paperwork from the sale and send it
| to them. All of it but, I forget, maybe $100-1k was dropped. I
| have no idea what their deal with that was. I had a mortgage,
| paid the mortgage to my mortgage broker, and when I sold it
| paid the mortgage off to that mortgage broker. Don't they
| handle that? I don't know, it was my first house sale.
|
| I'm 40, I've never had the IRS annoy the hell out of me until
| the last 5 years and now I get a letter from them and my heart
| stops.. Like, what is it now, masters of my w2? Where I have
| erred today? It feels like they're practically targeting me at
| this point. I get letters from them and wonder if they're even
| legitimate so I call in to verify. When I go to the irs.gov
| site that tells you what you owe, it doesn't even match what
| any of my letters say. Right now it says I owe money from I
| think 2016 that was sent to collections and I've _never_
| received a letter for that. Collections! For my taxes? That you
| pull out of my paycheck?? I don 't have ANYTHING about that on
| my credit report. I also have no way to pay it because it's "In
| collections."
|
| Seeing all of the rich assholes skate by with tax evasion and
| all of the loop hole work they do, then knowing they're on my
| ass when I'm just a dude getting a salary just pisses me off so
| much.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Your company fucked up by not taking withholding from the
| bonus.
| swozey wrote:
| I do get a 20% bonus at this company and I think it is
| attributed to that. It was my first time getting that
| bonus. What do I even do here? Talk to HR? I don't think I
| can do anything and just suck it up and pay it and expect
| it next year? I dunno.
| tekla wrote:
| Yes, you got a big bonus and it wasn't taxed when you got
| it. I don't know why you would be confused as to why your
| liability went up?
| swozey wrote:
| It absolutely was taxed. I also have never received a
| paycheck that wasn't pre-taxed. It was something like a
| $30k bonus and I received about $17kish of it.
|
| Be more condescending though, that's helpful, wise one.
|
| I didn't say I KNEW it was the issue, I said it was
| potentially that. The IRS doesn't say "Hey you messed up
| here, fix this, that's the problem." They just send you a
| bill, which sucks. I had NO information on my $150k house
| sale tax and had NO idea what information they needed to
| rectify it.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| so you made 25% more than you usually do and are
| wondering why you have to pay more in tax?
| swozey wrote:
| Yep, here we go, the condescension of Hn. The point is
| they know my exact income and should be able to handle
| it, not make me figure it out at the end of the year. I
| have no idea why I got a random $5k bill. It could be
| something else. And that's the annoyance.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The problem is that you are blaming the IRS for something
| that _your employer_ messed up during the year.
|
| The IRS doesn't know about your income until the end of
| the year, when it gets reported to them by your employer.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Keep in mind that they _could_ handle it if they weren 't
| deliberately hamstrung by republicans like grover
| norquist.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| It might be worth a conversation with HR and reveiwing
| your tax withholdings just to make sure there is not an
| error and misunderstanding as to how your company or the
| HR software is handling it. I ran into a somewhat similar
| situation early on at my current job, but we were able to
| find an issue and correct before I got hit with a nasty
| surprise at tax time.
|
| My issue was that my with-holdings and everything looked
| fine. But I was not having _any_ federal taxes taken out
| on my paychecks for federal with-holdings. Turned out to
| be a software issue that the company who makes it was
| able to correct.
| swozey wrote:
| Thanks! I'll speak with them. I know everything is
| through Bamboo/whatever software nowadays so I wasn't
| sure if they really had any control/input on these
| things.
| frutiger wrote:
| > I owed $5k this year and I literally did nothing different
| except receive a small 5% raise last year.
|
| This is a common gripe I hear from US tax filers, and I fall
| into the same psychological trap myself. After all, it always
| feels bad to have to pay a 4 or 5 figure sum to anyone.
|
| Instead, you should see this as a benefit -- you had the
| opportunity to extract gains from the stock market (or other
| investment) on money you rightfully owed to the government;
| they only came to collect it at the end of the year instead
| of with each paycheck. Conversely, a tax refund should be
| seen as a disadvantage, as the government withheld more money
| from you than it was entitled to.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I don't remember what all the limits are but the first time
| you underpay beyond a certain amount the government looks
| the other way but the second+ time you have to pay
| penalties. Penalties for a situation wholly in control of
| the government. They wrote the withholding tables your
| employer is abiding by to withhold _not enough_ to avoid
| you having a penalty at the end of the year.
|
| Although I suspect this only matters to FANG where the
| changes to withholding from the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act meant
| you had to modify the supplemental withholding rates so you
| wouldn't get penalized.
| junar wrote:
| Default federal income tax withholding on bonuses is 22%. If
| your marginal federal tax rate is higher than that, then you
| underwithheld, meaning you owe more in taxes than you paid
| over the year.
|
| https://pburgoscpa.com/managing-your-bonus-in-nyc-a-high-
| inc...
|
| For your home sale, the person responsible for closing the
| transaction files Form 1099-S with the IRS, reporting the
| sale amount (which they're responsible for) but not how much
| you paid for it (because you're responsible for that). You
| should have gotten a copy of the 1099-S, which was your clue
| that you needed to report it on your return.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Millions of people manage to properly report the sale of
| their home every year. Don't blame the IRS for this mistake;
| this was entirely on you.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| the tax difficulty in the US is overstated, we have plenty of
| services that will let you do it for 20 minutes for free. the
| most popular one is obnoxious and tries to upsell you often,
| but there are alternatives and you don't need to pay
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| This is true, but up until recently, tax filing companies
| would also do all kinds of underhanded tricks to make free
| filing difficult. For example, Turbotax had two different
| tiers of free tax filing software, one with a much lower
| income threshold than the federal mandate. You only find out
| you're in that tier when it comes time to file. Guess which
| one they bought tons of google ads for?
| demosthanos wrote:
| I finally tried FreeTaxUSA this past year based on
| recommendations on HN and it was a huge breath of fresh air
| compared to TurboTax! They treat you like a person and not a
| wallet, and it was also just way smoother and easier to
| understand than TurboTax's nightmarish interface.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I can't speak for the UK, but in many other countries, the
| tax forms _are already filled out_ and you simply need to
| verify the numbers. You don 't get that in the US.
| resource_waste wrote:
| In the US, its basically that simple if you arent a business
| owner. Might even be simpler.
|
| You type in like 14 numbers, each very clearly delineated.
|
| But... if you are a business owner, it takes like 2-3 weekends.
| (I say weekends, because we work all day during the week)
| BeetleB wrote:
| There's a big gap between the two, with many individuals in
| between.
|
| Do you participate in SPP? Then the form you get will have an
| incorrect cost basis and you need to manually correct them. I
| guarantee it.
|
| Do you trade individual stocks (e.g. RSUs)? A bit more work.
|
| Got a K-1 form from an investment? Could be straightforward,
| or if it's real estate, a major pain to fill out those tax
| forms.
| tekla wrote:
| Taxes are simple if you have a single W2. People just don't
| like reading the piece of paper in front of them.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| US government services are bad almost across the board. Most of
| us would pay a premium to use a private version over a
| government version of almost anything.
|
| I'm guessing you would find it equally confusing if I told you
| we'd pay a premium to use a private DMV or private post office.
| Here in the US, that statement wouldn't be controversial at
| all.
| op00to wrote:
| I recently renewed my global entry, and it was a piece of
| cake. I occasionally interact with the FCC because of my
| amateur radio license, and the FRS is super easy to use. I
| recently got passports for my kids, and that was super easy
| to do as well and the passports came much faster than
| expected.
| lotsoweiners wrote:
| > I recently got passports for my kids, and that was super
| easy to do as well and the passports came much faster than
| expected.
|
| Interesting. I am currently renewing my and my spouse's
| passports while also trying to get first time passports for
| my children and I couldn't find the process more outdated
| and borderline kafkaesque. If you told me the website was
| built in 2003 and hasn't been updated since then I would
| believe you. I can only renew my passport by snail mailing
| everything including my existing passport. I can only get
| my kids a passport by physically taking them to an approved
| location for processing. I could not get an appointment for
| about a month at any location near me. As a bureaucrat
| myself, I just find this level of hoop jumping to be
| ridiculous.
| wredcoll wrote:
| I'm in the US and I find your statement confusing. With the
| exception of the irs which was deliberately made hard to use
| by the republicans, most government services are fine. I
| certainly doubt a corporation would do any better.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| Turbotax and other like companies lobby for more complex tax
| law and to restrict access to government services that would
| assist citizens with filing taxes. The more complex the tax
| code is, the more people need Turbotax. It is not a healthy
| dynamic. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-lobbies-
| lawmakers-t...
| colinb wrote:
| Anyone know if this covers foreign earned income etc? I.e. can I,
| who hasn't lived in the US for many years, make use of the
| service?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Some more discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40526225
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Is this only for people who have "simple" taxes? Does it support
| Schedule K-1 for example?
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| The IRS is taking an agile / minimal viable product approach.
| So for now it only supports very basic W2 only tax filers. My
| guess is that K-1 is low on their priority list for now.
| burkaman wrote:
| The pilot didn't support that, but there isn't any detailed
| information about what the expanded version will support yet. I
| would guess K-1 will not be supported for a while, here's what
| the announcement says:
|
| > The IRS is also exploring ways to gradually expand the scope
| of tax situations supported by Direct File. Over the coming
| years, the agency's goal is to expand Direct File to support
| most common tax situations, with a particular focus on those
| situations that impact working families. Announcements about
| new state partners and expanded eligibility are expected in the
| coming months.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's pretty dumb that this has an upper income limit that covers
| plenty of regular W2 wage workers
| demosthanos wrote:
| What is the income limit? The IRS's publication describing the
| program for 2023 lists a 1099-INT income limit but no W-2
| income limit:
|
| https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5917.pdf
| whimsicalism wrote:
| "You can't use Direct File if your wages are more than
| $200,000 ($160,200 if you had more than one employer)." from
| https://directfile.irs.gov/income
| demosthanos wrote:
| Thanks! It's also weird that that's buried on a webpage
| that they really don't want you to find anymore and not
| prominently displayed on the flyer they put out.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| it might have been this limit only existed for last years
| pilot (but i guess still should have been in the flier)?
| i was also surprised i was having trouble finding
| reference to it but it's definitely a thing
| khuey wrote:
| Based on those numbers it sounds like the limitation is
| more "Direct File can't handle the Additional Medicare Tax
| or overwithheld FICA yet" than a baseless exclusion of
| higher income taxpayers.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| good to know, thank you! totally support excluding
| features if it helped them get to an earlier release for
| most taxpayers - but hopefully they go to it eventually
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| $200k puts you in the top 5% of earning, FYI.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Interesting because in Sweden there is a turnover limit of
| around 284k USD/year for using their simplified tool for
| financial statements.
|
| Which covers most sole-proprietors who have 1-2 contracts,
| like myself.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So 20 million people then.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| No, it's probably closer to about 12 million people
| (children don't usually declare income).
| bagels wrote:
| Why does that mean they should be excluded?
| stalfosknight wrote:
| Nice complainbrag.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| thank you, had to draft a few times to make sure it was
| appropriately subtle so only you could pick up on it
| MarkSweep wrote:
| Some forms like 8959 and 8960 kick in at $200k. So I assume
| limiting to below that was to limit the scope of their MVP.
| yndoendo wrote:
| I would argue that having to file taxes through a 3rd party
| accountant or service is not only forced commerce but also broken
| glass economics. Looks like it helps the economy by creating jobs
| but the job is redundant and does not create anything of value.
|
| Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or 1
| million? Where are financial crimes more likely to occur, people
| that make $10,000 a year or people that make $1 million or more a
| year. I rather have these accounts move into forensic work and go
| after the wealthy tax evaders.
|
| IRS is an enforcement agency that specializes in tax collection
| and fraud. People that are clamoring for reduced IRS staffing are
| ultimately support of defending the police. I rather have a well
| staff IRS going after those that evade paying their taxes,
| probability speaking the wealthy.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Of course that's precisely _why_ "people" (Republicans) want to
| defund the IRS.
|
| Note that it's also totally incompatible with their idea that
| the government should be run more like a business... so you're
| going to strangle the one part of it that actually _generates
| revenue?_
| londons_explore wrote:
| Conventional wisdom is that if one can fund the IRS with one
| extra dollar, and they use that dollar to collect two dollars
| more taxes (from evaders), than that was a good way to spend
| taxpayers money.
|
| Many economists don't agree though. If you care about economic
| success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes
| as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in
| real terms.
|
| Effort your citizens put into tax collection is 'dead weight',
| and doesn't contribute to exports etc. However, effort your
| citizens put into trade that (for various reasons) ends up
| under-taxed, usually does add to the economic wellbeing of
| citizens.
|
| Therefore, it's only necessary to collect mostly-correct taxes
| from most citizens, if doing so let's you redirect labour from
| tax collection into other work.
|
| Is it unfair? Yes. But it's still good economic policy.
| vundercind wrote:
| Very easy to draw extremely wrong conclusions from this line
| of thought without factoring in the long-term cost of
| declining trust in the rule of law.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Only if you're under the false premise of the people
| serving the government rather than the government serves
| the people.
| vundercind wrote:
| I have no idea what connection you're drawing there.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| What is the confusion? You're the one bringing up "rule
| of law" as if I live to be the government's personal
| slave along with millions of others.
| vundercind wrote:
| The confusion is that that doesn't follow, at all.
|
| [edit] it occurs to me that this is a term of art you may
| be unfamiliar with, so reading it in an unusual sense:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
|
| Basically, it's a super-important thing to have if you
| want to live in a "developed" country that doesn't have
| all kinds of very-bad problems, and isn't some proxy for
| level-of-authoritarianism, which is how it seems you've
| read it. It's about actual and perceived equal treatment
| under and efficacy of the law, not how _much_ law (if you
| will) you have. A minarchist libertarian state would
| sensibly seek to have high rule-of-law, for instance.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I'm not confused at all about the concept. Your stance is
| incomplete. "Rule of law" does not stand alone either,
| you've also mixed in a few concepts that frankly do not
| apply, but we'll ignore that for now.
|
| "Rule of law" requires government (and it's officers) be
| above all, both in practice and in theory. Just on the
| basis of who can violate rights, perceived or otherwise,
| and who in turn pays for the consequences, it fails in
| the test of "equality". And in reality, it's enshrined in
| multiple jurisdictions varying levels of immunity.
|
| Even if you think tax money, once assessed and collected,
| belongs to the government.
| vundercind wrote:
| Ah--you know the sense in which it was intended but,
| unusually (I intend this descriptively, not
| pejoratively), reject its definition as self-
| contradictory. That, I was not expecting.
|
| I don't think we're gonna bridge that gap productively in
| a comment section. Have a nice weekend (sincerely).
| plorkyeran wrote:
| That's not what the phrase "Rule of law" means.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| No matter what society you live in, you will have to obey
| rules. There has never been a society where this is not
| the case, and there never will be one.
|
| You can call that slavery if you want.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _If you care about economic success of the country, the
| goal isn 't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is
| to make the citizens wealthier in real terms._
|
| But the goal of taxation _isn 't_ to maximize the country's
| economic success or overall wealth.
|
| It's to fund necessary government services (schools, courts,
| police, military, etc.) and to redistribute wealth (Social
| Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.).
|
| We only want to maximize national wealth _after_ we 've
| funded government services fully _and_ redistributed wealth
| (and sufficiently protect the environment, protect workers,
| etc.).
|
| So if funding the IRS gets you back more money, that's
| _always good_ , because it's by definition going to the
| things that we have democratically decided are a higher
| priority than maximizing national wealth. And if we
| democratically decide that we're spending too much on
| services or redistributing too much, _then_ we cut those
| _intentionally_ -- not "accidentally" by underfunding the
| IRS.
|
| Even if under-collecting taxes is good _economic_ policy by
| the extremely narrow measure of GDP, it 's terrible
| _national_ policy. It 's like saying that accidentally
| redirecting an extra $500 per person to the military is good
| military policy. I mean, sure it might be. But that doesn't
| mean it's good _national_ policy.
| dpc050505 wrote:
| >We only want to maximize national wealth after we've
| funded government services fully and redistributed wealth
|
| There's a chicken or the egg issue here. If your country
| isn't rich enough to fund government services such as
| education, transport and healthcare you need some economic
| development first.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Except we are vastly more wealthy than needed to provide
| these services. Wealth inequality is so laughably bad
| that a tax on just a handful of mega rich billionaires
| could cover the cost of many important social services.
| Drakim wrote:
| > If you care about economic success of the country, the goal
| isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to
| make the citizens wealthier in real terms.
|
| Just like how "collect as many taxes as possible" isn't
| actually a good goal, just "make the citizens wealthier"
| isn't actually a good goal either because it says nothing
| about the distribution of that wealth.
|
| If we enacted a law that made 99.9% of all citizens
| absolutely destitute to the point where they must eat rotten
| food found in the trash to survive, but this law also
| multiplied the wealth of Bezos and Elon a millionfold, then
| that would successfully "make the citizens wealthier" in sum.
|
| Taxes are used to run society, from it's roads, fire
| department, education, social services, and much more. A lot
| of people are pushing to cut down on those things, to
| decrease the bounty that society offers regular people who
| partake, because "we just can't afford it." and the reason we
| can't afford it is because there is an overly focus on "make
| the citizens wealthier" even at the cost of most citizens.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Taxes are used to run society, from it's roads, fire
| department, education, social services, and much more
|
| The "much more" is much, much, much more than anyone
| thinks. The federal budget is tremendous. People cannot
| conceive of trillions, yet the federal government alone
| spent over six of it a year, three years in a row.
|
| Virtually nobody has a problem with tax funds being used to
| build roads and bridges, fire departments, and whatnot.
| It's everything else that's contentious. Public schools are
| visibly wasteful, with the number of students and teachers
| overall remaining largely constant, but the number of
| administrators having increased many-fold in the past
| decades; at this point it's a jobs scheme for adults, not
| an education scheme for children. Nonprofits received
| hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support illegal
| immigration. Et cetera.
|
| So many things in the federal budget appeal to a fringe
| minority of advocates, yet the money hose continues to
| flow. This is not the way that a federal government with
| clearly delineated limits should work. Something is wrong.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It's everything else that's contentious.
|
| In part, because of comments using wording like "hundreds
| of millions of taxpayer dollars" as if it were huge, when
| it describes a pretty miniscule part of the _6,000,000
| millions_ in the budget. (It also misses those same
| immigrants paying _billions_ in sales and other taxes
| here, including quite a bit of Medicare /Social Security
| funding they'll never get back.)
|
| As a result, Americans have a massively skewed idea of
| where it all goes; they think NASA gets 6.4% of the
| budget when it gets 0.5%, for example.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-budget-estimates-
| opinio...
|
| Defense, healthcare, and social security make up the vast
| majority of Federal expenses. Education is,
| comparatively, a pittance; nonprofits serving immigrants
| don't even show up on the chart as a full pixel.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_M
| and...
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2023_US_Federal_D
| isc...
| beart wrote:
| Most public education funding at the K-12 level is from
| state and local taxes.
| tantalor wrote:
| Economics is not divorced from ethics. Fairness matters. If
| people think the system is rigged they won't participate, or
| they will try to find their own way to exploit the system.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You need to ask yourself how the tax evader uses their $2,
| and how the government uses their $1. And you need to ask
| yourself about the perceived rule of law, and how many more
| tax evaders you would create by letting it be known that it
| is easy to get away with tax evasion. And you need to ask
| yourself if you want tax evaders to have a leg up on
| investments compared to full-tax-payers.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| it is not good policy to reward people who break the law to
| the detriment of people who abide by the law. if tax fraud
| occurred less, it would give us latitude to lower taxes which
| would give the broad based economic improvement you are
| discussing.
| ohashi wrote:
| I would like to see the citations on this asinine idea.
| willis936 wrote:
| Nobody needs a first principles argument to justify greed
| and tax evasion. It just feels right.
| bloppe wrote:
| > Effort your citizens put into tax collection is 'dead
| weight', and doesn't contribute to exports etc.
|
| Hot take: a lot of tax revenue does contribute to exports
| etc. The government is spending a lot of money re-digging
| that shipping channel in Baltimore after the bridge
| collapsed. Just one recent example, but pretty much every
| bridge and port and road in the world has a lot to do with
| taxes.
|
| The government is also spending lots of money on social
| programs people like too much for even the Republicans to try
| to repeal, yet the government is not taxing enough to cover
| them. Letting rules slide for certain people means more debt
| for everyone else, and is what a lot of economists would call
| "arbitrary redistribution", which is bad.
| rain_iwakura wrote:
| It's good economic policy based on what? Did you run a
| counterfactual already? Comparing the US to other countries
| is meaningless, it's not the same set of init conditions and
| variables.
|
| Do you realize that those taxes go to fund public services
| and help people stay afloat, which I don't need a study to
| show you, creates far more customers for all these tax
| evaders in the first place? Go back 50 years to see what this
| country used to be and how much shit it got done and compare
| it to today. There are measures of productivity engineered in
| math, and then there is common sense: majority of existing
| infrastructure was built decades ago and now it costs
| billions in overrun projects to build a single station in
| NYC.
|
| The current system works just fine in terms of punishingly
| taxing everyone on this website and the poor, that's why it
| feels like I'm contributing half of my salary to the federal
| government. What it doesn't do is take its share from
| extremely wealthy, who in turn DO NOT SERVE the economy
| because they're effectively stateless agents, who can put
| their money into Seychelles or whatever. Nobody would bat an
| eye if those billionaires would contribute the billions to
| the economy. Instead you get people crying about how "the
| government is inefficient, it gets nothing done, I'd rather
| the titan spend it as they see fit." But if this ship called
| United States floods they will be the first to abandon it,
| just like a famous critter.
|
| I'm sorry but posts like this are the exact definition of
| bootlicking.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I think you are only looking at a point in time and not
| considering the impact of incentives over time.
| gottorf wrote:
| > Where are crimes more likely to occur, a city with 10,000 or
| 1 million?
|
| A city of 10,000 may very well have a higher rate of crime. In
| terms of your analogy, consider my lawn man, who only takes
| cash for his services. I know he's not taking in millions of
| dollars a year (or even hundreds of thousands), but I also
| strongly suspect that he does not report all of his income.
|
| Same goes for every cash-only business I know.
|
| > I rather have a well staff IRS going after those that evade
| paying their taxes, probability speaking the wealthy.
|
| I'd rather the tax code be simplified so that nobody has access
| to loopholes, not just the wealthy. Not much you can do to
| hide, for example, a land value tax.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I would argue that having to file taxes through a 3rd party
| accountant or service is not only forced commerce but also
| broken glass economics"
|
| Where are people being forced to use a 3rd party? My
| understanding is that direct file is optional, hiring someone
| is optional, and using tax software is optional. Isn't it still
| possible to file with paper on your own?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Not only is it still possible to paper file, almost half of
| taxpayers still paper-file their returns, and a lot of them
| filled out the returns _manually_ (by hand) on a paper copy
| of the return.
| randerson wrote:
| Anyone with company stock grants, investments, or unusual
| scenarios is going to find it difficult to file their tax
| correctly without an accountant or software. The US tax code
| is too complex for a regular person.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I choose to use software to make it easy. I don't feel like
| it's being forced since I could use paper if I wanted to.
| Indo understand that the tax prep lobby generally doesn't
| want simpler taxes or simpler filing, but it still feels
| way less coercive than many other areas of legal life.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| I personally used TurboTax the first few years I had RSU
| and ESPP income to report (and ran the end result by an
| accountant) but eventually switched to filling out the
| forms manually because I found it _easier_ than entering
| the same information into TurboTax. Tax prep software is
| great for when your taxable circumstances change and you
| don 't even know which forms you need to fill out, but I
| didn't find that it let me skip understanding the relevant
| parts of the tax code and I got to the point where I was
| having to generate preview pdfs look over exactly what it
| was generating to make sure I'd entered numbers into the
| correct spot in the software.
| coffeecat wrote:
| Filing a DIY tax return with investments is intimidating at
| first, but it's really not hard once you've done it the
| first time. Assuming you're not doing any esoteric cost
| basis adjustments, it's just a matter of knowing where to
| copy the numbers from your consolidated 1099. Interest and
| dividends go right onto your 1040. Realized capital gains
| go on Schedule D. If you hold any foreign stock, claim your
| foreign tax credit on Schedule 3. Investments in IRAs,
| HSAs, and 401(k) accounts are, of course, not reported at
| all.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think this has been studied and low-to-medium income filers
| are more likely to actually commit tax fraud so you get better
| returns as the IRS by focusing on these filers
| wredcoll wrote:
| This is contrary to every article I've seen on the subject.
|
| Are you perhaps thinking of when IRS said they couldn't
| _afford_ to go after wealth tax evaders because they were
| underfunded?
| vladgur wrote:
| probably because high-wealth individuals have a lot more
| wealth preservation instruments available to them and paying
| a $300/hr to professionals that help them navigate these tax
| reduction techniques makes very little sense when youre
| income is less than $100k
| jerlam wrote:
| Heard mostly it's the opposite:
|
| _By mapping audit costs and returns across the income
| spectrum, he continued, "We saw very clear evidence that the
| return from audits at the top of the income distribution
| really exceeded by quite a bit the returns at the bottom of
| the income distribution." With the top 10 percent of earners,
| they found, audits have the potential to return more than $12
| for each $1 spent._
|
| https://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/07/turns-
| out...
| randerson wrote:
| I keep hearing that its mostly the wealthy who evade tax, but I
| don't understand it. Service workers love being tipped in cash
| because its easy to not report. OTOH the wealthy have more to
| lose if they're caught, and can afford to pay their taxes and
| accountants.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| not sure how you keep hearing this, the IRS is very clear
| that lower income filers commit much more tax fraud which is
| why they focus audits on filers in this income bracket
| because it generates the best returns
| tombert wrote:
| I do wonder if part of this is because lower-income people
| don't have the legal resources to fight this though. If a
| billionaire hides their wealth in an illegal way and
| they're caught, they'll hire a bunch of lawyers and fight
| against, potentially dragging a court case out for years,
| and costing the taxpayers millions of dollars.
| tombert wrote:
| Even if that's true, the number of dollars being evaded is
| substantially lower. Not reporting $2000 a year in tips isn't
| exactly going to have the same effect of a billionaire not
| reporting $100,000,000 of their income.
|
| There are plenty of legal ways to evade (or at least not pay)
| taxes as well, though. An easy way, for example, is to store
| wealth in the form of stock; generally you don't pay taxes
| until you sell, so increased value is ignored until then, but
| once you have that many assets you can borrow money using the
| stock as collateral, and in some cases I believe you can even
| write off the interest. All of this is perfectly legal, and
| I'm not sure if it can or should be "fixed", but a lot of
| cash that might otherwise be taxed simply isn't.
|
| For that matter, they could also buy a piece of art for a
| million dollars, a year later get it appraised as worth $40
| million, donate it, and then write off $39 million. Again, as
| far as I know this isn't strictly illegal, but it can be used
| to evade taxes.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Who steals more? 10,000 people evading 100k or 1million people
| evading 1k?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Rich tax evaders are evading way more than 100k
| kylecazar wrote:
| "Intuit doesn't see a success story here, arguing that the Direct
| File program is costly for taxpayers"
|
| Good Lord
| macrael wrote:
| It's SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set
| of tax situations and states to start. Every government project
| I've been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that
| doesn't include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently
| as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to
| ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b/c they were
| able to scope things down to something doable in 9 months.
| dheera wrote:
| sigh this is a baby step but
|
| - Many if not most software engineers in California earn more
| than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File
|
| - From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state
| tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work
| twice even if I can use it
|
| - Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save
| more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboTax by
| using TurboTax instead of Direct File, as much as I hate it
| gamblor956 wrote:
| DirectFile was created by the IRS, a federal agency, for
| preparing your _federal_ income tax return, in a manner
| similar to the streamlined e-file options available in other
| countries (i.e., for the most common /basic situations).
|
| There are 50 states, and every single one of them has their
| own idea of what an income tax return should look like, so a
| direct file that handled state returns would take several
| years and hundreds of staff to develop and maintain.
|
| The US also has significantly more tax planning/tax
| structuring opportunities than do other countries, and
| DirectFile doesn't even try to handle those...but neither do
| its foreign counterparts. If you have a more complicated tax
| situation, like most software engineers do, than DirectFile
| isn't for you, and never was intended for your use case.
| Spivak wrote:
| > so a direct file that handled state returns would take
| several years and hundreds of staff to develop and maintain
|
| Or just contract one of the companies that already do it
| with a public-private partnership. HR Block or whatever
| gets paid say 2x their current tax prep revenue in exchange
| for being the white-label direct-file available for free to
| everyone.
|
| Like these tax prep companies are crazy cheap for just
| being able to hit import next next next next next submit
| and never think about taxes ever. The work is already done,
| why duplicate it?
| dessimus wrote:
| >Or just contract one of the companies that already do it
| with a public-private partnership.
|
| The IRS tried that already and the 3rd parties just used
| dark patterns that tricked customers into paying for
| unnecessary services.
| dheera wrote:
| > There are 50 states, and every single one of them has
| their own idea
|
| That's not my problem. The states are part of the country.
| This is as bad as restaurants charging tips instead of
| stating one number. Government dudes should meet and work
| it out between state/federal and give me one damn number.
|
| All I want is one number.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The US is a federated system, the states' tax laws are
| independent of the federal tax laws (mostly, there are
| some interactions in there) and the responsibility for
| collecting state taxes falls on the state. The federal
| government cannot step in without authority which would
| have to be delegated by the states because it is _their_
| authority, not the fed 's.
| 8note wrote:
| From you early comment along the lines of "I make my
| taxes as complicated as possible so that I can save money
| on taxes"
|
| You would never take the one number if you could save
| money by making it a thousand instead. Eg. if your state
| did that simplification, youd move to a different state
| that doesn't have the simplification so you can save a
| couple bucks on the taxes
| galdosdi wrote:
| Incorrect. You must not be a US citizen (or else went to
| a poor quality K12 school that failed to teach the basic
| civics)
|
| States are NOT an administrative subdivision of the
| larger country. This is a common misconception. They are
| not at all like Japanese prefectures, not like Canadian
| provinces, nor like the counties or parishes that US
| states are subdivided into.
|
| States are fully sovereign entities that retain to this
| day certain inalienable rights vis a vis the federal
| government.
|
| A good analogy is that the US is more like a stronger
| version of the EU. States like New York and Texas within
| the US are more like Germany or France-- they've ceder
| some rights to the federation but retain many others. The
| US constitution, which is short and easy to read and
| required reading for the US Citizenship test, clearly
| outlines which powers are reserved for which part.
|
| >That's not my problem. The states are part of the
| country.
| galdosdi wrote:
| While I'm at it, the very attitude of "that's not my
| problem" reveals your foreignness (or if you are from
| here and very young, perhaps the sad fact that civic
| culture is dying everywhere but maybe new england)
|
| America has or has traditionally had a strong culture of
| self determination and citizen involvement in and
| ownership of politics and government policy.
|
| Another word for this is democracy. Real, genuine, messy
| democracy. America is not a service provider to you. It
| is a union or coop you are a part of.
|
| You are not a customer of your country. You are a member.
| A shareholder.
|
| This attitude is I know very foreign to many people who
| come from elsewhere and only know authoritarian states or
| democracies in name only. Or very young people who have
| caught on that civic culture is dying in most of America.
|
| But it's fundamentally diametrically opposed to what this
| country has always been intended to be at its best. it is
| very very much your problem
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _so a direct file that handled state returns would take
| several years and hundreds of staff to develop and
| maintain._
|
| The way to extend this, _if_ the federal government wanted
| to push it, would be to define a standard export format
| from IRS DirectFile, containing all the information in
| it...
|
| ... then make some federal money contingent on states
| implementing a filing system with an import function (for
| the shared data).
|
| Nice clean interface, and still states' choices on if they
| want to support.
| dmd wrote:
| 94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything
| is meant for "software engineers in California".
| dheera wrote:
| I meat this is Y Combinator Hacker News, so I would expect
| "software engineers in California" to be a significant
| fraction of the user base here.
| ohashi wrote:
| Some people have a broader view of the world and care
| about things which might not directly impact them
| nickpinkston wrote:
| This 100% - thank you
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Your suggestion that we don't / shouldn't care about
| anything other than ourselves is more than a little
| insulting, whether you intended that or not.
|
| In any case, like the root of this comment tree says, the
| best way to make sure this program lives to reach us is
| to make sure it paces itself. If that means another year
| or two of TurboTax, that's A-OK!
| cududa wrote:
| The problem is you're exposing yourself as someone
| extremely self-centered, and someone that assumes their
| lived experience is equivalent of everyone else's, and
| adjudicating the utility of this particular thing as if
| you are reflective of the larger population.
|
| Saying the majority of engineers in California make at
| least $200k makes you even more out of touch. According
| to Glassdoor, over $200k for a SE in CA is 90th
| percentile. The average SE in CA makes $132,000
|
| https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Software-Engineer-
| Sala...
| dheera wrote:
| GlassDoor and Ziprecruiter are grossly out of date.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/san-
| fra...
| BeetleB wrote:
| Sorry, but they're far more representative than
| levels.fyi. The latter has a very strong sampling bias -
| most of the companies in its DB are on the high end of
| the payscale.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Which is ~$70 per hour - which you can earn from US firms
| while remoting across many timezones.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| $70/hour is about $145k/year. If you're meaning it's
| close to $200k/year, that'd be $95/hour assuming 2080
| hours/year (52 weeks at 40 hours a week).
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >The problem is you're exposing yourself as someone
| extremely self-centered, and someone that assumes their
| lived experience is equivalent of everyone else's, and
| adjudicating the utility of this particular thing as if
| you are reflective of the larger population.
|
| Most of Hacker News and indeed the tech community at
| large exhibit _" I don't understand life outside of
| California cities."_ syndrome, this by itself is nothing
| new.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They are still a tiny minority. I mean HNers from
| everwhere from Wyoming to Germany and Brazil.
|
| One of the best ideas the Reagan administration had was
| paperwork simplification, they introduced a 1040EZ for
| (roughly) the same kind of filer that Direct File works
| for.
|
| My son put off paying his 2023 taxes to the last minute,
| I told him he should try Direct File (I'd believed the
| story that it would be easy) but when he tried it he had
| extreme difficulty authenticating himself, I think
| because they check you against consumer databases and
| they could not compare to past tax returns, credit
| history, etc. because this was his first tax return and
| he had no credit history.
|
| We were forced to wait for a long time to talk to a human
| operator for him to verify his id. In that time I found
| out that there was no longer a 1040EZ, see
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/1040ez.asp
|
| but I was able to fill out a complete 1040 and the New
| York equivalent of it before we got through to the
| operator. We just got the check from New York the other
| day after about 6 weeks, haven't heard from the IRS yet.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't get why there's an income cap though. There's
| nothing that gets more complicated on income alone, only if
| you add extra stuff to track
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Anybody who makes more than about $200K-$300K/year is
| likely making a mistake if they don't have a CPA.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| What makes you say that? I'm assuming you're adding other
| assumptions.
|
| My wife and I combined make about $300K/year. We don't
| run a business, don't make charity contributions, only
| pay ~$5K in mortgage interest, and don't have kids. We
| don't even do retail stock investing (EDIT: And I haven't
| exercised any employer stock options), just a 401k, an
| IRA, and a 5.25% savings account.
|
| We take the standard deduction. I can't imagine a CPA
| would be able to find so many possible deductions that it
| would be worth itemizing.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Yup totally silly. My CPA wouldn't even take you on as a
| client, he would say go to HR block if you don't want to
| do it,
| Sivart13 wrote:
| In an effort to keep the scope manageable for the pilot
| year, the Direct File team chose to have an upper income
| limit so they would not have to support Form 8959:
| Additional Medicare Tax (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
| pdf/i8959.pdf) which only kicks in at that threshold.
|
| Though it's also very likely at these high incomes that
| you would be disqualified for other reasons (investment
| income etc)
| MarkSweep wrote:
| 8960 (net investment tax) is another form that only
| applies at 200k or more income.
| macrael wrote:
| Yes? That was the point of my comment? If they had tried to
| support everyone's tax situation on day one they likely would
| have failed, but instead they shipped something that works,
| got made permanent, and now we all get to look forward to
| using this tool sometime in the next few years as it
| graduates from MVP to entrenched software
| whymauri wrote:
| I'm confused, I used (what I thought was) DirectFile for
| Massachusetts via MassTaxConnect (totally free). I make more
| than that threshold.
|
| Did I do something wrong?
|
| Edit: I understand now. DirectFile is for Federal and MassTax
| is for State taxes.
| tombert wrote:
| I mean, I don't dispute anything that you said, but a baby
| step is still a step. As they onboard more people onto the
| platform, they're be able to suss out bugs and fix issues and
| be able to raise income thresholds and maybe start handling
| state returns as well.
| fragmede wrote:
| > Many if not most software engineers in California
|
| have complicated taxes, due to how they're making that much
| money. I don't have a problem with them optimizing for the
| simpler case (eg the intention behind the 1040EZ) while
| software engineers, who can afford a CPA to deal with
| optimizing their tax burden off non W2 income, aren't
| initially able to use it.
| ilyagr wrote:
| In practice, for software engineers in CA, I'm guessing that
| https://www.freetaxusa.com/ will be superior to Direct File
| for a while. It also files federal taxes for free with no
| limits AFAIK.
|
| In terms of societal and long-term impact of eliminating the
| middlemen, Direct File has much more potential. Hopefully, in
| a few years, states will integrate their tax systems with
| Direct File. Perhaps one day the government will finally send
| us a completed tax return as opposed to the other way around.
| avgDev wrote:
| This comment is why people hate tech bros.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You must be quite devastated that you have to take a few of
| those 200k dollars and hire a CPA. Try not to sigh so hard
| you run out of breath.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My son tried Direct File in New York and had trouble signing up
| for it I think because he was filing for the first time and has
| no credit history. They make the process arduous because it's a
| common scam to fill out a fake return -- I had an uncle who
| worked for the IRS in the 1990s and he told me they were
| overwhelmed with this even then.
|
| We were put in line for 40 minutes to talk to someone to validate
| his id. Maybe it would not have been so bad if we had not
| procrastinated but we managed to print out the 1040 form and the
| corresponding New York form and file on paper before we got to
| the end of the line. I think he would have struggled to fill it
| out on his own but I have filled out easy and hard 1040s many
| times and I found it easy.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| I am a big fan of this, however since it doesn't do state taxes I
| will be forced to continue using freetaxusa since they do federal
| for free and charge a modest fee for your state filing. I hope
| that more states will follow the federal governments example and
| start allowing free filing online.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'll still be using 3rd party software. The main benefit is the
| guarantee of audit support and legal representation. For such a
| small fee, that's decent insurance. You'll get no such benefit
| working directly with the IRS.
| NickC25 wrote:
| You're probably in the minority, or you make a significant
| amount of income.
|
| If you are single or married without a family, a 1099
| contractor or just inputting in a W2 or two, and have a single
| form from your healthcare company, chances are this really,
| really helps.
|
| The IRS isn't going to audit someone who just files a single W2
| and claims maybe 1-2 deductions and a small stock portfolio
| appreciation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not saying it's a bad service. I'm saying for $30 some
| audit and legal representation is cheap insurance. The IRS
| can audit anyone they want. My finances are not exceedingly
| complicated, nor am I a high earner. It's an extremely low
| risk but still can happen.
| g15jv2dp wrote:
| I'm sorry but paying $30 for legal insurance sounds like a
| red flag. Either they know for absolutely sure that they
| will never have to pay out on the insurance, or they don't
| intend to pay out if/when you need it. Have you read the
| fine print to make sure there isn't an exclusion that will
| void the insurance as soon as there is any kind of problem?
| E.g., if the user made any kind of mistake in declaring
| stuff to the filing company (even a trivial one), then the
| insurance is voided?
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The main benefit is the guarantee of audit support and legal
| representation.
|
| I strongly urge you to read the fine print. The support is
| usually quite limited.
| 404mm wrote:
| > Taxpayers Protection Alliance spokesperson Kara Zupkus said in
| a statement that expanding the program will "radically increase
| the IRS's authority and scope" and "have devastating
| consequences."
|
| Sounds like something Turbo/Block would say.
|
| I don't understand how more competition in this area could hurt
| the customers. All the "file federal taxes for free" offers
| usually cost me around $70 since I have more than just W2.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| > Taxpayers Protection Alliance spokesperson Kara Zupkus said
| in a statement that expanding the program will "radically
| increase the IRS's authority and scope" and "have devastating
| consequences."
|
| 'For you.'
| gnicholas wrote:
| Is it going to be open to itemizers? IIRC this year it wasn't,
| which means a lot of people weren't eligible (and basically had
| to pay an itemization penalty to a tax preparer/company).
| iends wrote:
| Isn't itemization extremely rare post Trump tax cuts?
| gnicholas wrote:
| In CA it's still 15%, which is millions of people. There are
| other states with a higher percent. You're right that the
| number dropped due to the SALT cap. But the SALT cap is set
| to expire in 2025 (who knows what will happen, though).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I posted this same article yesterday. I wonder why the HN dupe
| detector didn't pick this up.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40526554
| syngrog66 wrote:
| I'm aware of a much more efficient solution. Don't believe will
| ever be adopted, not at scale. Because threatens livelihoods of
| too many grifters with political power, haha.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-31 23:01 UTC)