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Comment by mars4rp | Hacker News Reader

I am the developer in charge of CalFile, the free filing software that everyone asks for here for state of California.

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/inde...

I am pushing so hard to make it better and more useful to more people, like being able to add capital gain that is not currently supported.

these are the push backs that I am getting:

1. Last time they tried to do what all of you ask, a ready return. TurboTax and others hired bunch of lobbyist and put so much pressure on people here and killed the project. People are still afraid and don't want to do too much to grab the attention of their lobbyist!

2. Use of CalFile goes down every year and if trend continues, it would be killed in the near future.

when you have your Federal return it is much easier to pay a little more and file your state tax with it too. No body even knows CalFile exist because we don't have a marketing budget to promote it.

3. Even people here buy the argument that free software exist and people could file their taxes for free.

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Dude I salute you. There are so many edge cases to support.

For number 2 can you import fed return with calfile?

IRS free returns going down too so you are not alone: https://taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/Free_File_Program_Is_Failin...

This is a large reason why Prorepublica keeps digging at this - it’s fucking crazy actual free filing is going down while these paid shenanigan products are holding strong with their ginormous marketing budgets.

Is it really as simple as that? Budget trumps all?

With all due respect to the OP, most state run software operations are complete, utter, garbage. I'd happily pay money to avoid some of the clunky, poor UI/UX, and downright broken web tools that the state of California produces.

TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

I personally think the Calfile UI is better than TurboTax for what it does. CalFile's UI isn't shiny and Web 3.0, but it is nice and linear and easy to understand. IMO TurboTax can get a bit weird if you skip around sections or need to manually look at the generated forms. CalFile doesn't have all the features that TurboTax does, like being able to say "I donated a microwave to charity, figure out my deduction". However I've found that the two actually work pretty well in conjunction with each other— do Federal taxes in Turbotax to figure out my deductions and get my W2 #s collected, then copy all that info into CalFile.

"but it is nice and linear and easy to understand"

I never wanted "linear". My ideal tax software just has the forms to fill out on screen, but applies all the constraints and rules so that the return is either consistent or you have a comprehensive list of discrepancies. And cascades any fields that can be derived from others. Really, just like a compiler for taxes.

Edit: TurboTax used to work like this...

I am tired of for-profit companies hamstringing government using bribes to representatives and funding lobbyists from delivering inexpensive or free services to citizens. If someone wants to pay TurboTax, that is fine. If someone wants to continue to support their efforts to stymie government from delivering said services for free, they should be tarred and feathered.

Intuit's tax products are regulatory capture, plain and simple, and deserve no defending.

Why are you solely blaming the companies? Are the government officials doing their jobs? If the government officials are being corrupt by accepting lobbying money and helping the corporations; they are as much (if not more) to blame for the situation as "for-profit companies". At least, for-profit companies exist to make a profit. The government, on the other hand, exists to defend the citizens.

I did not include representatives accepting donations and lobbying money as villains in my comment. My apologies, thank you for pointing this out.

> The government, on the other hand, exists to defend the citizens.

Never a truer word spoken.

Hm that's been a big issue for maybe 200 years. Should the government start its own companies? What happened to the free market? How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

It's not a right to be free from competition from the government. The reason we allow corporations is so they can serve the public good, but if the public good would be better served by the government providing that service then there's no reason society shouldn't do that.

It seems to be working fine in every other country mentioned in this thread where government is free to provide free tax filing services. We do not need bullshit jobs at rent seeking companies that are glorified PDF generators. This is a government feature, not a product.

So maybe this one should be allowed.

Other government competition with private enterprise is not so clear. Paving roads? Providing medicine? Delivering packages? Its been a rocky road.

I'm going to say probably not. I've been pretty disappointed by the attempts of private industry to deliver what should be government infra (tax prep, healthcare, prisons, etc), while I'm super happy with my roads, police, fire, water, sewer, muni fiber, and the USPS (all government provided or backed).

I have 'volunteer' fire service out here in the country. And installed my own sewer. Police are essentially non-existent out here - I see a patrol car maybe once a year go by.

And the USPS has been going broke for decades now. Not a good example of a well-run service.

The only reason USPS has financial trouble is Congress mandated huge advance on payments for benefits many years into the future.

It runs excellently otherwise.

Congress did that. It's political. It can be undone.

Free market people want the USPS gone. Trouble is the Post Office is in the Constitution, must exist barring some Amendment, and must be run by the Federal Government.

None of those are bad things. The Post Office has been exemplary.

The trouble began during the Bush administration. Two things were done:

1. Rate changes that turn big bulk mailings for companies into a subsidy. Deep discounted rates. That was coupled with significant increases for ordinary people and smaller publishers. None of that made much sense.

2. Forced advanced payments on benefits. At the time it was done, there were people not even born yet, who would end up working for the Post, whose benefits were being paid now, basically.

It's crazy.

USPS is a really well run service. They need to provide universal service, even to country folk at a loss, handle foreign parcels, etc. Most of their woes are created by a republican congress setting out a path for privatization. (Weather is next)

In terms of the self-reliant rural communities, you’re not factoring the very significant cost that the entire population pays to support your rural lifestyle. As agriculture continues to decline and consolidate, those externalities costs will continue to grow.

USPS requires Congressional approval to set rates (as well as pension funding requirements). Your complaint is with your representatives, not USPS itself.

It reminds me of the demonization of the IRS, they just carry out Congress' laws and funding. It's disingenuous when Congresspeople complain as they reduce their funding.

Plays well to the uneducated unfortunately.

Plays well to everyone because most people hate representatives but like their representative.

My complaint is with 'government-run businesses', which will always have such issues. It stems from not being responsible for efficiency or profitability.

I mean, honestly, yeah? I'd rather not my roads focus on being profitable. I'd really prefer the opposite of my police force focusing on being profitable. I'd really start freaking out if my voting system(the actual counting of votes) focused on turning a profit, and probably take to streets if my public schools were trying to profit off my children.

Efficiency, sure, what's inefficient about the USPS? I sent a package over my lunch break today, and my package delivery is 10x better delivered by a USPS mailperson than someone hired by amazon. (A USPS mailperson leaves a package at my door, but I've had packages from amazon thrown into my bushes, or dropped beside the street)

Yeah but a website/accounting function? It should be accurate, efficient and legal. Which our tax office is sometimes seen as not-those-things.

And this whole thread is how TurboTax lobbied to make it inaccurate, inefficient, and no doubt have tried to make it illegal.

But USPS is focused on efficiency and profitability. They have streamlined many of their operations and created new profit making initiatives (e.g. Informed Delivery), all while having the mandate that mail cost the same from Alaska to Florida as from New York to DC. They just have the aforementioned budget burden to fund retirement funds no other organization, public or private, would ever bear upon themselves voluntarily. And they can’t set their own rates. And they have to deliver to every address once a day six days a week no matter what.

This is a strawman argument. Being "government run" does not automatically equate to being irresponsible or inefficient. Your complaint holds no water: Social Security and Medicare are incredibly efficient programs for their scale, and both wildly popular with their participants (per Pew Research as well as direct survey data from SSA and HHS). If they can achieve such results, why would other large orgs such as the IRS not? Rhetorical of course! They can, with proper political and logistical support (as has been seen with USDS/18F executing at the IRS, DHS, and VA).

I don’t know about social security but the claim that Medicare is more efficient than private insurers is not correct. It only appears to be so due to accounting procedures that do not expense services from other govt agencies on Medicare’s pnl. So for example, a different department of the government handles billing, all the costs therein are not included in Medicare’s bottom line, thus inflating its efficiency.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep... (Comparing administrative costs for private insurance and Medicare)

Medicare is still more efficient than private insurance, even allowing for Social Security handling a lot of the administration you mention. Social Security must exist, and must provide the services it does, so you would of course rely on their infra if you're Medicare.

So the government is incredibly inefficient at everything... except health insurance?

Those weren't my words at all.

it is telling that the only way you seem to judge entities is through the lens of efficiency and profitability on a short term basis.

could you please share your thoughts about internet access in the US of A? it seems that despite the best efforts of Saint Market, long may he reign, and all of this wonderful competition and efficient allocation of resources and so forth optimizing for short term outcomes has led to mediocre speeds and monopoly-ish behavior/choice in most areas.

or that Saint Market has led to pretty poor health outcomes in the USA despite spending massively amount more per capita than other nations

or that Saint Market's desire for profitability and efficiency leads them to, say, not replace lead pipes which ruin health of various communities (probably far away from yours, so it's OK .... for now)

it's almost like evaluating things based on extremely myopic criteria that people use to judge for-profit companies leads to outcomes that optimize for local maxima but are horrible when viewed from even slightly more far out, like, i dunno, a few years.

can you acknowledge that some things are best evaluated on performance outside of "profitability" and "efficiency" in the time span of 3 months?

Ok, how about cost overruns, administrative costs, technology upgrades and on and on? Its only as regards these things, that I regard profitability to be an important pressure.

Management responsible to the bottom line will sometimes improve those things. Management responsible to … I don't know what a government agency is responsible to? rarely upgrades, review, improves. It is axiomatic of government agencies that they exist for their own sake. And cost a bucketload of (our) money.

Why is profitability important for a government-run entity?

Because we pay for it. So it should be run without egregious cost overruns, huge administration costs and old technology.

That sounds like breaking even, not profiting?

All of this /could/ be provided by the private market or by volunteers, but the things you're describing have a huge operational expense--especially in more rural areas. Something like tax software has more of a capital expense paid upfront. It doesn't cost significantly more if its widely used or used in more rural areas.

With taxes you're interfacing directly with the government; that's either as a citizen or Turbo Tax as a proxy for the citizen. To me, that seems more appropriate for the government to handle than fire, police, or sewer service. Whether it's the citizen or Turbo Tax, it costs money to implement Congress' tax code and build out a "UI" (tax forms). It still costs money to audit. So you're outsourcing one portion of the interface, you still have to build/maintain an e-file protocol, and you're doubling up on the auditing.

History bears this out as a band-aid. The program started in 2001 under GW because other countries already had online tax filing and engaging the private sector was seen as a way to "catch up" quickly. 20 years later it's still miserable for the average citizen and there are countless examples of other countries showing how much easier it can be.

USPS has also lost a massive amount of money due to being required to accept shipments from China at extremely low rates.

This is misleading. The USPS has an operating budget of about $70 Billion dollars per year, and loses about $150 million per year as a result of lopsided "terminal dues" under the UPU. So about .2%, and not all of this is due to China. While there is legitimate fear that this loss will continue to increase, relative to their budget it is not "a massive amount of money". This link has more complete numbers: https://www.lawfareblog.com/withdrawal-universal-postal-unio....

but if private enterprise is more efficient than govt, what do they have to fear?

A breakdown of a belief system.

I worked for a self-sustaining government entity for a few years. There was no direct appropriation, all funds re recovered via fees. We were able to compete successfully with commercial entities in a variety of ways.

A big advantage is overhead. If the work scales out, government employees get paid less, especially executives. The disadvantage was that you couldn’t make money to re-invest, and capitalizing new services was difficult.

.gov orgs get a lot of grief, but if you compare them to an average large company, they aren’t as awful as most people think.

I've worked in a private sector (publicly traded) fortune 500 company, a large government contractor, a non-profit state government subsidiary that was quasi-independent, and now for a state government.

My experience is that in the public sector, things often move slower, but the range of productivity seems to have a significant overlap with an average large company. I think the cost of nobody believing in what they are doing is an underappreciated drag on many private sector workplaces. The fact that failure is not an option in the public sector has several oft repeated negative consequences, but it also means that you have a reason for coming to work and making an effort, (other than not starving) even if nobody appreciates it, management is terrible, working conditions are lousy, pay is poor, co-workers are idiots, etc. That counts for something towards effectiveness, if there is a core group that hasn't descended into nihilism.

Government is forcing people to pay their taxes, so Government needs to provide a free and easy way for people to pay their taxes.

> How does a 'free' government company respond to competition (since they have no pressure to be profitable)?

The leadership of government organizations has pressure to get re-elected, or to get someone from their party elected.

I'm not sure whether you are simply ignorant how representative democracy is supposed to work, or whether you're feigning ignorance. Is it really so unfathomable that people might be motivated by something other than financial gain? Are we expected to take anything else you say seriously if this is the starting point of your ideology?

Is the vote of the election ever: "Can you make this one website that is messy better?". People are more focused on big issues and annoying software won't often make the platform.

The vote of the election isn't "Can you make this one website that is messy better?" because the politicians are incentivized to never let it get that bad.

One only has to take a look at the Obama administration's apparent panic over healthcare.gov to see this at work. When it wasn't going well, it very much was a political issue at the forefront of political conversation.

> TurboTax on the other hand, is a relatively nice experience.

For this tax year I used TurboTax. I have a relatively simple return, but editing stock sales was extremely tedious and I was constantly upsold on random products when I just wanted to go to the e-file page.

TurboTax is getting worse and worse every year.

One example where it worked well before and became a complicated mess now: for some deductions you need answer a lot of questions just for it to tell you that you are not eligible because of your income. Why not to check this in the very beginning?

If they told you sooner that you weren't elligible, your return would be lower, and maybe you'd feel you could "get more back" by using a different tax preparation program, but at the juncture where you're told it isn't possible, you already feel more invested in using Turbotax and ultimately filing with it.

I file my taxes in Australia using a government-run web application. It's not perfect (like all big government systems it has outages, etc etc) but I can't really complain about it, it's more than adequate to get the job done and I certainly wouldn't want to pay for something that's only marginally better. There's a few UX tweaks which would be nice but it's fine, really.

"Intuit succeeded so I'm happy."

This year it took me over a week of full-time study to file my federal taxes! Correspondingly, my Calfile submission was done in perhaps 20 minutes. Thank you for your service. Reminds me of filing in New Zealand, a breeze.

Question, the site and now you mention it does not support Capital gain/loss. I used it anyway, it asked for Adjusted Income from federal return, which takes those into account? So it appears to support it after all. Still confused about that.

(I refuse to share my financial info with a malicious third party, and continue to.)

One nitpick on the Calfile UI, it puts the "Continue" buttons on the left instead of the right side, which seems odd for folks that read left to right.

Hats off to you, sir. Please don't stop the work you do. Thank you!

After college I quickly weaned myself off TurboTax in favor of filing taxes for free with CalFile & Free Fillable Forms with an occasional paper mailing of PDFs that I download and fill out. Much like my opposition to using proprietary word processors, my disdain of paid tax return services that own your data is deep and profound.

While a bit painful and limited in feature set, the mere existence of a free filing option is crucial to keeping Intuit from forcing me to pay to file my returns. I find Intuit to be a rather evil company. Filing a return is mandated by law with steep penalties. They intentionally keep the process complicated and convoluted. It's a plundering of everyone's time for unproductive work and overspending on something that should be quick and easy.

> I find Intuit to be a rather evil company.

Heads up then because Intuit is behind Free Fillable Forms.

In fact, when confirming phone numbers the calling number is from Intuit.

That is not unexpected because they are part of the consortium running Free Fillable Forms.

It's just one of those things where the USA lags behind the rest of the world, not being able to file directly with the tax authority.

> Heads up then because Intuit is behind Free Fillable Forms.

Thank you for pointing this out, but yes I am aware. It is the only method to electronically file federal taxes for free. If FFF gets dropped due to Intuit's posturing then I will have to resort to paper filing.

> 1. Last time they tried to do what all of you ask, a ready return. TurboTax and others hired bunch of lobbyist and put so much pressure on people here and killed the project. People are still afraid and don't want to do too much to grab the attention of their lobbyist!

This is insane. Where are the actual citizens at the negotiating table?

This is always the problem with these sorts of things... TurboTax cares a LOT more about this issue than an individual citizen... sure, it costs each citizen $50-100 every year to file their taxes, and they would love to have a free public option... but it is literally THE ENTIRE BUSINESS for TurboTax. They are going to fight so much harder than the people who pay the $100 a year. Concentrated gains and widely distributed costs create this imbalance.

Here's a great podcast that goes over what happened. There is a transcript too.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...

Pushed out by money.

There are efforts to fund politics on small donations. I'm on board.

Consider looking into them.

Honestly, the citizens will have no place at the policy table, until they take some seats on their own dime.

So, that's happening. Ideally, other changes can be made, but to even get at those, some power is required.

Can you expand on why people are "afraid" of lobbyists? The way you write that makes it sound like the elected officials the lobbyists are trying to convince, are afraid of those same lobbyists. What I assume you meant is that ground troops like you are afraid lobbyists will notice your work and pay more attention to your given team of elected politicians.

Can you help me understand?

My intuition is that the elected officials are wary of choosing positions blatantly opposite of the interests the lobbyists are pushing for since the lobbyists could easily support a different candidate and put a lot of money into supporting them. So if you don't behave in the way the powerful lobbyists want, they'll get you kicked out of office.

It is exactly this.

You look at donations to people from corporations or through lobbyists and they don't look that large, $15-20k and they are getting big bills passed.

That $15-20k isn't buying the politician or their vote. The threat to give millions of dollars to the opposing politician that will support them is.

There are limits on how much you can donate to a candidate's campaign; however, you can contribute unlimited funds to a PAC, but the PAC's advertisement efforts must be separate from the candidates; they can't be coordinated.

Which is perfect for a company like TurboTax who wants to lobby for an issue... they don't care about the candidate, they don't have to coordinate with them at all... they just tell the representative, "if you don't vote my way, we will fund a PAC that will attack you". No candidate coordination, no problem.

Conversely, people opposed to TurboTax could get their own lobbyist and do the same thing.

As I said in another comment, no one cares about free taxes as much as TurboTax cares about not having free taxes. It is a minor annoyance to every citizen, but it is life or death for TurboTax.

The people who are hurt by not having free taxes certainly can't afford lobbyists, and even if they could... they would have to spend so much more than they pay in tax preparation fees for their whole life to compete with TurboTax money. Who would do that?

Collectively, people spend billions annually on TurboTax. They could, instead, all chip in $25 for their own lobbyist, if they cared enough to not spend $100 on TurboTax.

If they can afford TurboTax, they can afford the lobbyist.

Couple of problems with that... one, not everyone would chip in. Why would they? If there is a fund paying lobbyists, my $25 is not going to make a huge difference.... they aren't going to win or lose based on my contribution, so why contribute? Your money wont change the outcome, and you will get the benefit even if you don't participate... standard Free Rider problem.

You might say that you should donate out to the fund out of moral principle of a just cause, but there are a million just causes, a million small rent seeking industries that do this sort of thing. Which of them do I donate to fight against? Why income tax and not one of the others?

TurboTax is going to be willing to spend a LOT of money to fight this... you are going to have to get a LOT of people to choose your moral cause, and donate to the PAC.... and then find even more when TurboTax spends even more on lobbying to counteract your PAC. Who is going to give up first?

A lot of people are saying that the fear comes from lobbyists and the interest groups they represent giving money to opponents. That is partially true, but money is just part of the overall influence that the interest groups lobbyists represent wield.

In the case of ReadyReturn, one of the key players is Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist. (see https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t... for some of the older history here) He has this incredible network of anti-tax groups, media figures, and others that can be activated to attack and take down politicians, particularly republicans, without spending a dime (altough they also have money to spend).

It might seem wrong, but it is fundamentally the same mechanism by which liberal action networks (like human rights campaign or NARAL) drive their political influence as well.

It is these networks of influence that politicians really fear, because they are so much more effective then money.

Lobbyists often threaten to fund whoever will campaign against the elected official at the next election. They say "we will allocate $1M to a PAC benefiting your opponent if you advocate for free tax filing".

It never ceases to astound me how this is allowed and accepted in the U.S. America is the first to complain about corruption in other countries around the world... yet here we are.

We privatized corruption and turned it into a business model

Corruption is legalized here. Changing these laws is hard!

so let me elaborate a bit, all the people that work on this agencies are employees, they are not politicians.

If a politician influenced by a lobbyist start to question the decision of an agency, have hearings, grill the management on the reasons they decided to waste tax payers money, etc. that is not fun for those employees.

There is no incentive for that trouble and people try to avoid it as much as possible.

Is CalFile an open source project that anyone can contribute to (and if so where do I go?) or is the FTB paying you to develop it as a closed-source product?

Seconded. I wouldn't mind contributing to it. Maybe if even the rules engine was released.

I thought calfile was the go-to place for cal state taxes? I use it every year and I think it's a fairly nice tool

Hey, your work is super interesting and I'm wondering if you have blog posts or papers somewhere that talk about the work involved in writing an application with complicated legal scenarios like this. I assume lawyers and tax professionals are involved with requirements and approving workflows, but I'd love to read about specifics.

Virginia used to have free online filing until the tax prep industry got one of their people elected and killed it off. Now our state efile options are more expensive than federal efile options.

You're doing great work! I'd love to try it next year. If I do, what do you recommend for filing my federal?

Is there anything like this for of the other big states like NY, Texas, and Florida?

One for NY should be pretty easy, just a splash page showing the user how to send the state everything in their bank account.

You sir, are Awesome! Keep up the good fight!

Now that I know about this, I'm definately going to use it. Can I use it for federal too? or do I need to use something else for federal, then I can use CalFile for state.

> Can I use it for federal too?

You may want to read the ProPublica article.

I had no idea CalFile existed, and I've been filing taxes in California since 1997. Thanks for weighing in!

The Pro Publica reporting about TurboTax's efforts to suppress the free option is eye-opening.

Given that open-source has given tough competition to every area of business software what, in your opinion, is the reason for a lack of open-source options to prepare taxes?

> Given that open-source has given tough competition to every area of business software

Huh?

Open source word processors and spreadsheets? Open source ride hailing apps? Open source social media? Open source chat applications? Open source consumer operating systems?

Only in a few niches (mostly developer tools or platforms) is open source giving "tough competition".

I thought I heard Brazil had open source tax software. It would need to be sponsored and managed by the government in order to work. With open source software the liability is on the end user and a corrupted Word document is a bearable risk. Businesses pay for Red Had and system engineers to reduce the risk their systems won't boot. In addition, tax laws change all the time (and are honestly a bit subjective).

I would imagine it would have to be managed by the government (or someone with liability) but accept contributions that would be vetted and approved by the government.

It is not open-source. It is free and runs on the major 3 operating systems.

It's very costly to keep up with changing rules and is mostly a once a year need that has to be bullet proof at filing time. Not a good recipe for open source.

I don’t think your assertion is true. 99% of business software is helped by open source, not in competition with it. Business software = business logic = people gathering requirements. Not really compatible with open source

You are amazing for building and running this program. People like you are what give me hope that we can build a better government! Thanks for all you do!

Who is/are Turbotax's lobbyist/s? Who do they put most pressure on? It's hard to take action without knowing who the players are.

I tell everyone I know about CalFile. It is awesome. You are awesome for working on it.

Thanks for your work! I've used it and it is simple and just works. No fake loading bars to boot.

You literally have office politics. I salute you.

The linked site is not mobile friendly BTW as text is cut off (OnePlus 5 Chrome).

Posted it on Twitter. I encourage others to do so too. #freepromotion

Thanks for the info, will definitely use it next year !

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