In 2019 I filed my (Dutch) taxes on my phone, while I was on a bus somewhere in the north of Argentina after previously having traveled for 20 something hours. It took me about 15 minutes to check if the numbers from the government were correct (they were) and I was done. Americans are being duped by these predatory companies.
TurboTax recently tricked me using some dark UI patterns into spending 30+ minutes painstakingly filling out my tax forms in a way that made it seem like it was for the free filing.<p>Only at the very end, did they reveal that it was in fact for the paid version, with no way to change it to the free version and also keep the work. Essentially holding my work hostage.<p>So I had to redo it again in the hard-to-find free version. I am now anti-TurboTax for life.
>In 2019, ProPublica reported that Intuit added lines of code to the free version of its TurboTax website so that the site would not appear in search results on Google.<p>It's almost refreshing to see such an obvious "fuck you" move, without having it be covered by tons of PR and legalese.
What I don't understand is, if I make a mistake (e.g. missing a schedule or wrong number) in the form 1040 and send it to IRS, I'll be guaranteed to receive a CP notice from them later asking me to pay the missing tax and penalty. Clearly IRS has their own algorithm to calculate everything based on what they got (which is exactly the same as what I have, W-2, 1099, etc., for most Americans) anyways.<p>If IRS already know precisely how much tax I owe, and whatever I "claim" has no power, why do I need to play the game of "cat and mouse", every year? Why not just send me a pre-filled 1040 that their internal algorithm calculates and ask for my approval, like those Europeans do? How is this more "prone to raise tax"?
Let's not forget the US and Eritrea are the only countries still taxing citizens abroad. You can escape the country and still have this tax bullshit, but now it's even more complicated because you're filing from abroad. Then a lot of the free options become unavailable strictly from filing from a non-US location.
The US taxpayers, thru their government, could just do a
buy out of Intuit/TurboTax for under $4 billion, and make
the software free to use as part of a transition process.<p>Any Intuit employees who at competent at tax preparation
could be employed by the IRS, which takes in 4-6 dollars
for every 1 dollar it costs. Win/win. Would never happen.
Planet Money/Pricenomics had a fascinating story about California's trial of a streamlined system that was <i>incredibly</i> well-received. However, Intuit's lobbyists teamed up with the small-government movement to sink it. <a href="https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/" rel="nofollow">https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...</a>
Use the government's official web app, <a href="https://freefilefillableforms.com" rel="nofollow">https://freefilefillableforms.com</a><p>It's the sketchiest URL ever
Shows how powerful lobbying is.<p>In the UK, unless you're a special case (e.g. Lloyds Name) you simply file on the HMRC website.<p>Then again, we can deduct far less, don't have state AND federal tax, so it's somewhat simpler.
I found submitting my tax in "Third World" South Africa so easy. Just log on to the website and submit. Most of the information is already there provided by the employer.
Brazil has a tax program that has always been multi-platform for well over a decade. This year, when filing my taxes, that there was also a simplified online/mobile version for folks without computers.<p>To be fair, US's tax code is a wild collection of tax breaks and exemptions so it's very complicated but still...
Didn't read the article (paywalled) but I'm commenting on the context of the title.<p>People have been saying this for years, but Intuit has invested billions in fighting the idea off.<p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...</a><p>Not only that, for a lot of people, Turbo Tax "feels like" a great thing. If you have a simple tax situation, it takes minutes to go through, you pay 10$ and get your refund very quickly. The free alternative is to fill out a 1040EZ and wait a few months.<p>For the comparisons to Europe, I'm living in Iceland now, and the tax filing system is incredibly easy simply because the tax system is incredibly easy - there is only one tier of taxation, everyone pays the same percentage. That's the core of the problem. The tax code in the US is incredibly complex, and that's why software like turbo tax exists.
I've use TurboTax before, but this year I used freetaxusa.com and it worked really well. I actually did my taxes in both of them to verify the numbers were the same (in TurboTax, you only pay to submit your return and by exploring the UI you can find a preview of your full return before paying). The numbers matched, so I submitted via freetaxusa.com for $0.<p>I think the anti-TurboTax argument makes sense, but with a free alternative like freetaxusa.com the idea that the IRS should prepare on our behalf is slightly less compelling.
Intuit is a middleman, pure and simple. Collecting taxes is 100% a government issue, not a private one.<p>There's zero reason why the government shouldn't guide you through a government program.<p>Except, of course, profits for the middleman.<p>I agree that sometimes getting a professional to help is useful--I've hired people when my taxes were extra complex.<p>But if your taxes are no more complex than W2+itemized deductions+home owner+passthrough LLC, you can easily do them yourself today. And if you're not sure what to do, ask an accountant and then you'll know for next year.<p>What would make it trivial is if the government would set up a website to guide you through it. But for some idiotic reason (cough lobbyists cough) they haven't done it.<p>Every time you pay Intuit, you're making taxes even harder for posterity and guaranteeing your own future expenses.
Here in the Philippines, filing tax returns are not a problem.<p>If you're an employee, your employer does it for you.<p>The employer just deducts the tax owed by each employee, and pays it to the government every quarter.<p>The total tax amount owed per month may vary from 10k USD (10 to 20 employees) to 20K USD (20 to 50 employees).<p>But the catch is: If the taxman is corrupt (highly likely), and the officer-in-charge of the remittance of such withheld taxes is also corrupt (not improbable), do not expect that the full tax amount will end up in government's coffers. Both parties will pocket a "small" percentage of it, per quarter, every year.<p>This scenario is highly likely for offshore companies, where the real owners are outside (e.g. US, Europe) and there's a "trusted" individual (or group of people) that does the "administrative" stuff for the company.<p>Crazy.
Intuit is to blame for much of our current US tax fiasco, as are politicians, and key to the bs is this guy: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist</a>
I contend that Americans need to rise up and require a government that makes federal legislative and tax "code" visible through a read-only fossil[1] repository. Maybe a state can lead the way.<p>For non-classified matters, the fact that we are paying customers and aren't privy to the who/what/where/when/why of these important decisions is just last-century.<p>[1] <a href="https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki" rel="nofollow">https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki</a>
Americans (and citizens of other countries) need a society where they don't have to spend any time worrying about how to navigate the byzantine maze of tax deductibles and special cases. The income tax code should be "pay x% of your annual income". Just one line is enough. All else is just introducing inefficiency and creates loopholes.
I wonder if it would be possible for the government to specify the logic of the tax code in computer readable form. (I would say "source code" but maybe there's a better way). A company like TurboTax could still exist, but could compete on the basis of their user interface and optimizations.
What would it take to develop a piece of Open Source software that makes it easy for accountants/tax attorneys to build TurboTax form equivalents? Basically a CMS for tax forms to be translated into plain english, and then the inputs to be put back into the correct places on the forms.
I'm an American and finally told TurboTax to go f itself this past year.<p>I was very happy to find <a href="https://www.freetaxusa.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.freetaxusa.com</a> on reddit. Great experience and it cost me $15
Not to cut Intuit any slack, but in my mind there already is a useful free file program. I've been totally satisfied with Free File Fillable Forms for many years. I wouldn't trust the guided programs even if they were free.
I used Turbo Tax Home and Business for my income and small business. The federal part is free the state filing cost costs money. Does this mean I have to pay to file federal taxes then when I next buy Turbo Tax?
Dupe of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27889618" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27889618</a>
Blocked by paywall, but I'm not asking for a workaround - I'm having trouble parsing the title because of the comma, so please answer me this question:<p>Is the article expressing joy about Intuit getting beat, or about Intuit beating something?
The way the U.S. tax system is setup is impossibly stupid. The government <i>already</i> should have on record all sources of possible income you could be making since pretty much all places you could be making money are required to send it in anyways. So it's conceivably possible for the IRS to pre-fill your returns for you and have you just double check and add anything in that they missed -- but it does get complicated very easy outside of the trivial "here in my country they just take x% of my income". I'm going to guess that almost all of those comments are made by people who's earnings come almost entirely <i>from</i> salary/pay, but have no idea that lots of people make lots of money in ways that are <i>not</i> salary/pay. In some cases it's possible to make <i>most</i> of your earnings in ways that external to salary/pay and in some cases figuring out what that monetary amount is isn't totally trivial.<p>For example, this is all over the news right now, but suppose your company lets you drive a company car? If you only use it to drive from home to work or other business related meetings, you probably don't need to consider it "income". But what if you can use it for all manner of personal activities as well? Maybe then it needs to be considered for your taxes. So what's the taxable amount of the car? The MSRP x the percent you drive it to non-work activities which of course you keep dutifully and precisely logged? Why the MSRP? Most people try to negotiate car prices under the MSRP. Why not the Blue Book value? In the end, what does the government use to consider the car as income in order to tax you for it?<p>In other cases, property ownership, and the layered governmental system in the U.S. also complicated things. For example, you might get Federal deductions for taxes paid to local governments on property you own. But what about locales that don't tax property? More importantly, how does the Federal government know you own the property at all? What if you own it, but then "loan" it out to somebody who uses it exclusively? You're the title holder, but should they count it as income a la the previous example and now two people are paying taxes on one piece of property?<p>These kinds of scenarios are incredibly common and affect people in all socio-economic levels. These kinds of things extend to include retirement holdings, investments, cash transactions, different kinds of corporate bodies that can affect individuals, foreign business/income/investments/etc. and so on.<p>What Intuit did is take advantage of this messy system, and provide some level of organization on it so that people would stop seeing and paying for CPAs to do their taxes and could do it themselves. They then fed on this like a cancer and the tax system started to reflect and assume Intuit was a public service. Part of this was the fractured and uncoordinated nature of the Federal IRS, State Tax Departments, and local county and city level tax systems that don't cooperate at all even though tax laws that affect one may affect the others.<p>In effect, the IRS can't put out a complete tax system because the IRS can't process your local tax stuff - the locales need to. So the IRS has relied on external non-government organizations to do it for them.
America's way behind in government digital services in comparison to Europe and China. It's almost impossible without a meeting. You'd have to make an appointment for anything, even though most of the time all you do is filing an document, and nothing else.
The Brazilian government has been providing such a program for ages now. The last version I used (moved from Brazil 5 years ago) was a Java program that ran well on my Linux box. It advises on how to better submit your deductibles - either as a full all-things-counted or as a simplified model.<p>There has been some constant pressure to provide it as open-source so we could improve it, but, last time I checked, the government was reluctant. There was one guy who reverse engineered the formats and wrote a GPL version that's compatible. I assume it's still maintained.
For years I have seen the USA grab taxes from lottery winners - yet they do not allow people to claim the amounts they pay to buy lottery tickets. The same for gambling.
This is crooked on it's face, as we know the casino makes money and is taxed on that, so on the whole the bettors lose money. Same with the lottery. Strictly speaking the aggregate of deductions would exceed the winnings = zero tax due - but no, they tax one and not deduct the other. The US tax authority (IRS ~~= Inland Revenue in the UK) does this, yet the IR in the UK does not tax winnings or allow deductions of bets - this is simple fraud by fiat against the people, and the IRS has a huge infrastructure devoted to this. I suspect it is based on the so-called christian label 'evil' attached to lotteries/gambling?