California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in
latimes.com
latimes.com
There's nobody hounding you here, no stress regarding your taxes unless you're filing for a return or have extenuating circumstances, and even then there's a government-provided online portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt (finance department).
Every American should be upset with Intuit.
Interestingly enough, the self-employed actually make up a smaller percentage of total employment in the US at 6.1%. So if the US were to adopt a similar system, it'd be closer to 15 out of 16 Americans.
You mean, most of the people then?
> As an independent or small company owner you have todo it every year.
Well, obviously
Is it really? Are you talking about an advisor for employees or for self-employed people/companies?
I was searching for a tax advisor two years ago and it took me exactly one attempt to get one. My parents got an appointment within a month as well. Also, unless there are very specific circumstances there is little to no reason for an employee to get an advisor. Most of my friends just use the ELSTER form provided by the Finanzamt or use tax software the purchased which makes it slightly less painful.
But I have no clue about how hard it is for companies
A government provided portal?! Surely this is a case of government over-reach: directly competing with hard working private-sector businesses (tax accountants, tax software makers), destroying jobs and stifling innovation? It would never be allowed in freedom-loving America!
/s
Because you can go out and buy one of the programs that are on the market. There is a public interface/api that can be used by the companies to file your taxes. We even have startups doing your taxes with a questionaire on your phone.
But the government provides you with a free, basic version, the same they did with the standard forms. There is little help, a bit of explanation but nothing more.
And since you have to hand it in digitally now, they are also providing the means to do so. Paper, but digital.
All this hate towards FB and others but we really should be reigning in the likes of Intuit because filing taxes should not cost anything for simple W-2's.
I recall reading that in Japan if you have just wage income it's more or less automatic. Imagine that!
It's true for most of the world. It's a bit like metric vs. imperial – the US is the odd one out.
Consider a couple who live in New York City, where one partner works in Connecticut and the other works in New Jersey. There are potentially 6 different entities collecting income tax there.
That being said - fully agree - tax filing software should be free for everyone.
Lol I wish they deducted the appropriate amount.
> No need to file anything
Not true - many still need to file a self assessment, just like in the US.
Singapore we pay tax for the previous year on a month to month basis. It’s good but I imagine if you end up with less pay than the previous year it could be a strain on life.
"The tax preparation industry guided Washington down a different path."
Be even more upset with the IRS and politicians. They are literally responsible for this. They make the laws. Don't let them shift blame. They should have told Intuit to pound sand. This is like a kid that gets caught doing something bad and blames their friends. They told me to do it! It's their fault.
Here would be the honest translation: I took their money and went against the best interests of my voters, and now I'm going to shift all blame while accepting no responsibility for my actions. Furthermore, I'm going to reframe this as though I was the good guy trying to save you.
That doesn't mean the people running Intuit are worse than the politicians making decisions about the IRS, it's just easier to make a singular judgement about their organization.
I don't expect politicians to act on principles more than anyone else. They are just trying to keep their jobs, and they functionally depend corporate financing to do this, so they will naturally go to bat for the same people.
Intuit is a profit-making machine with side-effects that include creating a tax-filing product. The people running it are acting rationally to keep their jobs too.
This situation is a predictable outcome given the way the system works, and is one example of the failings and inefficiencies of the system to serve the common good.
> They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade to pledge in writing not to adopt California’s innovation or develop any other offerings that threatened their business model.
I think the IRS deserves much of the blame for yielding to Intuit's persuasion.
Every American should be upset with both Intuit and the IRS.
Whereas the IRS, and every other government agency, is supposedly trying to help society or at least not hurt it.
Maybe US people should elect politicians that represent them instead of business. And stop buying the incredible amounts of double-speak that is always present in discussions like these.
And so it goes.
(That school of thought, yeah, puts most companies in a real bad light. And? Well? Yes. They have earned it.)
There is no such thing. This is such a silly argument made by people who have no understanding of corporate liability laws.
Incorporating doesn't suddenly shield you from liability. If you were negligent or intended harm, you will be held personally liable. If you're a shareholder and knew what was going on, you will also be held liable. The issue is not incorporation, it's a government too timid to enforce the law.
It is a moral failure and a failure of social distinction, not a legal one. I understand why that shorts your circuit. It exists nevertheless.
I don't agree, I'm just logically expanding your statement.
Unfortunately, editorials favor incumbents too much to allow an attack from the left to succeed. https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/03/01/why-we-endorse-incu... and https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/10/28/editorial-eshoo/
Is that really so hard to imagine?
Blame Congress.
I'd much rather power reside with people and what they can vote for, rather than let it all fall to mega-corps.
This is also why the US keeps sales tax separate instead of rolling it into the price of the item like Europe.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-t...
Perhaps you're confusing VAT vs sales tax, which is an entirely different issue, and while some politicians might prefer a sales tax on the presumption of its conspicuousness, the real debate regarding adopting VAT is far more complex. VAT does seem to be the darling of many economists, but those economists also tend to overlook the fact that Europe has significantly larger grey and black markets, as well as more tax evasion, than the U.S.; and some of that difference is arguably a consequence of the mechanics of VAT and the general preference for hiding the taxation system from individuals.
It's also worth noting that there are good reasons for itemizing sales tax separately. For example, for individuals state sales tax can be deducted from federal income, but not the cost of the item itself.
Even in a relatively federalized (by European standards) country like Switzerland, the VAT is set nationally. This isn’t the case in the US, and several states even have different sales tax rates in each city. It would be a considerable logistical mess to coordinate integrated sales tax signposting, both from a business and consumer perspective. Amazon already handles this somewhat awkwardly by changing store prices if you set your location on Amazon.de to Switzerland, with the prices somewhat unpredictably changing if it decided to remember your location preferences, and no longer following common numbering conventions (e.g. x.99).
Nope. More like we don’t want the gov to have their hands directly into our pocketbooks. The left are the ones that want more taxes and this auto income tax feature. The right wants less taxes. Understand people want different things and quit trying to force people your way. A great many people do not want the gov in their personal business.
What do you mean?
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion essentially sets your tax rate to 0% for the first $108k of earned income. It has no effect on earned income in excess of this threshold, or on unearned income such as investment income.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
The Foreign Tax Credit subtracts your foreign tax liability from your US tax liability. In other words, you only pay US taxes to the extent they exceed the foreign tax rate. You can use it on any type of income, but you only get a benefit if the foreign country actually taxes the income.
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
You may not double dip: So if you choose to take FEIE for some part of your income, you cannot take FTC on the same part of your income. However, you can take FTC to the extent you have income not eligible for FEIE.
> What (the left) needs to do is clear out rents. Not just housing rents, but rent seekers. The economy is riddled through with people who do nothing, but get paid because structurally that’s who gets paid.
Intuit is one of those companies. They produce a few real products, QuickBooks for businesses and Mint, but overwhelmingly their money comes from the fact that they charge rent on filling your taxes. They’re a parasite on our society.
Fortunately the podcaster wasn’t talking about the US; their country was worse off than America in this area by far. But unfortunately it seems like we’re on the same glide slope if we don’t do something about it.
Unfortunately in the US the rent seekers have an easy hack to make sure that never happens: lobbying.
The system will never change unless we vote out the current politicians, and then maybe it will change. We might have to clear out most, ideally all of the applicable congress every election cycle for a few years before we see any results. As long as we keep voting in the same people, nothing will change and it will most likely only get worse. The current political power structure is great at telling us what we want to hear, then conducting business as usual.
The only political power the citizenry has is our vote, everything else can be ignored. Emails go unanswered, polls go unnoticed, protests get suppressed.
Occupy Wall Street was 10 years ago. Thing are worse today than they were back then.
This would require a nationwide general strike to show the people are serious. Most people are not serious about anything beyond TV, social media, and more personal debt.
Sounds good.
>And restore the not direct election of Senators. Then remove federal personal income tax. For icing on the cake, shut down the 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve'.
I’m curious to know how any of these policies would be beneficial.
Really started going downhill in 1913 with creation of third central bank of the U.S. and addition of personal income tax.
That’s really not true. Never mind the involvement of the French, the current constitution is the result of the miserable failure of the articles of confederation, which was arguably closer sentiments that drove the revolution. Whether or not the constitution as it exists today reflects the principles that kicked off the revolution was hotly debated by the men that actually fought that revolution.
Regardless of the historical claim, I’m fairly skeptical of the idea that what the founding fathers wanted is inherently the best. Yes, it was better than the British monarchy, but that’s a low bar. I’d hope that we can achieve something as a society that’s better than what a bunch of slave holders thought was a neat idea.
1. Up until 1913 the Senators were elected by the Representatives. In 1910 the law changed for Representatives to be per 30,000 population, to be static count of Reps. There is now is now 750,000 people per Representative. Because a Representative can not possibly talk to all 750,000, they can not represent them. The supply of their time is limited and that pushes up the supply/demand curve. They lobby for donors and only talk to the richest of the set.
If there were 131 Representatives in CA and only they could vote in Senators, the Senators would be beholden to them, and would be required to act on the average behalf. As the distribution is currently to large, this does not happen, and the poorer of the population are ignored and harmed.
2. The only tax that is non-distortionary is a Land Value Tax. All other taxes create distortions and should be eliminted. A Land Value Tax, if implemented, would be sufficient to handle all government spending. The only other tax that should be able to be implemented are Pigovian taxes on negative externalities.
3. The core mandate that the Federal Reserve handles is the management of the money supply. Austrian economic principles state that this is a waste of time, and you can do the same job, perfectly, and with less economic cycles and harm caused, by simply mandating a static monetary velocity.
So you can see in both the Taxes and the Federal Reserve example you can work out the exact algorithmic rule that should always be applied, and remove the need for individuals within the government from mucking up the system with their corruptions.
1) federal Senators were usually appointed by State legislature and were regularly recalled by States and fired when they voted against the State's interests at the federal level.
2) a consumption tax, excluding uncooked food, might be reasonable. Higher tariffs and import duties can work, and tends to reduce offshoring for the purpose of polluting 'over there'.
3) surprisingly something better than gold and silver was invented in 2008 and appeared in 2009. Bitcoin fixes this.
as long as the media & its corporate advertisers can keep congress and the white house more or less evenly balanced between GOP and Dem over the long term, the people will never catch on that congress is bought and paid for...and 'throwing the bums out' has not worked yet...so it will not likely work in the future...
i don't see how any action by the people is going to effect any positive long term change...all we can do is wait for a collapse of the US dollar...as long as the dollar holds its value, the elites can still control everything and keep squeezing us dry...
it's gonna get worse before it gets better...maybe a lot worse..
If China plays it right, they can be the financial leader within ten years. 2031.
I doubt China will be the financial leader. I think they’re basically running their economy as a giant bubble, it’ll be a bad time when it bursts.
Here's some background on the arguments for and against. It's got some partisan hyperbole so try to ignore all that.
https://www.theusconstitution.org/news/the-17th-amendment-un...
What passes for the left (the socially liberal corporate elites that run most of the democratic party) are pretty much just as invested in protecting the rentiers as the right wing.
Rentier money is structurally geared towards destroying any populist politicians who threaten their rents. It was a fluke that AOC won given her Democratic opponent (when she was unknown) outspent her something like 7:1. People like her arent supposed to slip through the early stage political filter.
If they do slip through there's also an enormously powerful and effective propaganda machine dedicated to character assassination.
The only "left" that would push against the rentiers are people who will almost never see power. However, I wouldnt say AOC winning is a "fluke". Its definitely the exception, but progressives have been able to repeat it a few more times in democrat strongholds that have historically kept establishment candidates.
Right now the only "power" the real left has is withholding their votes from corporate dem bills like we're seeing with the BBB Act. This only even works because the rest of the party is interested in protecting power/wealth and is pretty inept at actually winning races.
So when the left does something you dont like, they must not be left? Smells of no true scottsman to me.
A is "the left" to most people.
B is the right.
C is (apparently) a logical fallacy represented by 3 congresspeople and a senator.
The "No True Scottsman" statement must be used as the argument. It has to say that they're wrong BECAUSE they are not a true Scottsman.
What OP did was say there is The Left and there is "The Left". The Left is against rentiers. "The Left" supports rentiers. He's dividing the two, but he's not saying one is wrong because they're not true leftists, he's saying one is wrong because they support rentiers.
But then he additionally says they're not true leftists, which is to say that a leftists shouldn't support them because they don't align, which is where the smell comes from.
The main argument is not a Scottsman fallacy. But there's definitely some implied Scottsmanism in the additional use of Left and "Left", which if read by the right person who is already weak to Scottsmanism will materialize as the Scottsman fallacy.
EDIT: I thought you were wrong, but under more analysis, I realized you were right, it was just complicated.
You seem to interpret that statement as an opinion, but it is not a subjective statement. [1]
The U.S. isn't the only democracy in the world, and if we compare the Democratic party with other political parties around the world, they are indeed barely left-of-center.
When viewed from a global perspective, the Republican party is firmly right-wing, but today's Democratic party is decidedly center-left on economic issues, and more closely reflects the values of the median American voter [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto_Project_Database#Aca...
[2] https://www.globalpartysurvey.org/methods
Frankly, I have no idea why people consider liberal to be left wing. How else would you describe an ideology that emphasizes private property, free trade, and market capitalism as anything other than at least moderate right? Sure, if you’re a monarchist that whole “equality before the law” sounds radical left, but for the rest of us… And that’s before we talk about neoliberalism and it’s emphasis on free markets and minimal government interference, which is hardly a leftist position.
Of course you could definitely make an argument for that being no true scottsman, so I guess it just depends on opinion.
Being pro-rentier is antithetical to almost every definition of left wing.
It's also not like Democrats who wear a left wing mask try to trumpet their pro-rentier behavior.
But what can I do about it? I would imagine if it went to a vote overwhelmingly people would say no I don’t want to file like this every year. But here we are and honestly I don’t have much energy left these days to be mad about anything as it’s wearing on my health.
At this point I am familiar enough with all the forms that I could probably do it myself in less than an hour. But I don't mind supporting the accountant, it's fun to chat with him each year.
Intuit is pure evil.
Just paying someone to do stuff doesn’t solve everything unless you are some level of rich I don’t understand where someone has access to all your accounts and does it for you.
And hey, if we want progressive taxation -- "is it really worth it for them to send somebody down to bring me the bill" is a great filter that everybody's taxes should be passed through.
Then be like Clintons and live your life spending through foundations, trusts, and companies via speaking payments.
It does require upfront effort to set up everything. An unexpected benefit is the financial privacy it brings.
This is a common theme with big businesses. Instead of complying with "make people's life easier" initiatives they just pay off the politicians.
If they're so tired, I'm sure they'd be happy to give back the billions of dollars they receive any time now.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-state...
On your other point, I'll just leave this here:
>“How come the white working class uses government programs while railing against handouts?” Because you are the government. They’ll take what they can, but they’ll be damned if they beg for it. “Why are all these hicks voting for authoritarianism?” Exercise some basic cognitive empathy, please. They’re not voting for authoritarianism. They’re voting for fuck you.
https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/159702160399/the-subp...
New York for example benefits tremendously from its large financial industry that pays a lot in taxes. But arguably the industry is so concentrated in New York today because of federal laws that force the federal reserve to conduct its financial activities only in New York, among other hard coded advantages that the state has lobbied for. In addition, retirees who receive billions in benefits each year from the federal government commonly leave the state in favor of places like Florida, further distorting the picture. Unlike more fiscally prudent states, New York also has billions in tax exempt bonds outstanding that deprive the federal government of revenue but are not counted by the Rockefeller study.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/new-york-is-no-donor-state-...
The WSJ commentary/opinion section. Truly a pinnacle of economic discussion.
There's no free lunch.
Alabama is doing well. We live in such an enormously wealthy country that it only looks bad by comparison. But not by comparison to basically anywhere else on Earth.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states...
I greatly doubt the average German, Belgian, Japanese, etc. would want to live in Alabama :-)
Edit:
Another flawed metric, but probably closer to the truth, tells a slightly different story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
Alabama has roughly the same HDI as Cyprus. Cyprus is a nice place, but it's quite a bit behind the countries on your list.
If we try to use the inequality adjusted HDI (which depending on how you look at it, might get us closer to the real situation - or might not), things look even worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inequalit...
I can't find the number of Alabama, but considering that it's generally in one of the last places in the US, I can't imagine it being higher than the US average, so I wouldn't be shocked to see it somewhere around Croatia's level.
And HDI is still quantitative, it's still a number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index#New_me...
You might not like the magic numbers in the formula or the things they choose to weigh, but GDP is much, much too coarse to evaluate anything about the greater well-being of a population, especially in developed countries.
So you’ve basically argued against a quantifiable measure that is a major determinant of quality of life and replaced it with something worse?
That's the exact same argument people in net tax recipient states use for reducing federal taxation even when it hurts them slightly.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/quality-of-...
"A 2017 study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government found that traditional blue states like Connecticut ($15,643), Massachusetts ($13,582), New Jersey ($13,137), New York ($12,820), and California ($10,510), contributed significantly more in federal taxes, per citizen, than traditional red states like Mississippi ($5,740), West Virginia ($6,349), Kentucky ($6,626), and South Carolina ($6,665).
Not only do some states contribute more to the federal budget than others, but some also receive less from the federal government in return. On average, each of our 50 states receives about $1.14 from the federal government for every tax dollar they send to Washington.
This is why our federal government runs a deficit every year. The traditional red states mentioned above, however, receive more — much more. For example, Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar it sends to Washington by way of federal taxes, West Virginia $2.07, Kentucky $1.90, and South Carolina $1.71.
For some large traditional blue states, California receives only 96 cents, Massachusetts 83 cents, Connecticut 82 cents, New York 81 cents, and New Jersey 74 cents for every tax dollar they sent to Washington. The discrepancy is significant."
https://www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/carroll/opinion/cc-op-...
This tired old trope needs to be taken out back and shot. The net in or out flow from any given state is not enough to substantially impact anything.
Pretty much every state gets back what it puts in plus or minus 10-20%. Considering that each state is putting in a number that is only a small fraction of its GDP the overall difference is negligible. I think most people in the states that are getting paid would consider the economic hit to be a cheap price to pay for removing federal oversight from the things those dollars pay for.
Furthermore, even the poor states are just fine by European standards.[1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
But regardless, seems like you’re all for redistribution of wealth unless it goes to the political “undesirable”?
You just made a great argument against redistribution - it’s too fraught with politics.
Yeah, duh, that's their point.
We are strong as a country because our wealthy, dense state economies support our poorer, rural state economies; and that's why it's laughable when red-state citizens and politians rant about seceding from the "evil communist blue states."
He made a one sentence comment about CA's policies being ineffective. He made no endorsement of anything or comparison to alternatives. If you're going to build a straw-man be more subtle.
They charge a couple bucks to file state taxes, which gives me a bit of confidence they’re not making money by selling my info to someone.
The price for state taxes is $15 where TurboTax would cost me over $100 (I have business income).
It’s just so weird seeing the billboards here in the US encouraging people to sue for personal injury damages, featuring photos of happy people holding fans of cash like they just won the lottery. Maybe the celebration of lawsuits is the American thing, if not having greater total numbers.
try legal transations per capita
That's because our inefficient and costly to access and high-risk legal system is optimized for resolving conflict by legal intimidation rather than actual adjudication.
It's literally 0 minutes, if you don't have deductions.
In this case, I would suggest dropping income tax altogether, decommissioning the IRS, and using the state infrastructure already in place to collect an equal amount of revenue from sales tax.
No filing. Broader tax base, including criminals and illegal activity. Everyone's checking account effectively becomes a 401k.
Sales tax is regressive, yes. But proposals like the FairTax suggest the idea of an annual "prebate" or credit up front in the form of a check that effectively eliminates taxes on spending up to poverty level income.
In that case, the overall income from tax would be lower than it is now.
I don't necessarily agree but the idea is normally that "rich" people should pay a higher percentage of their income as tax because "they can afford it".
I personally like the idea of a fixed rate from 0 to infinity like Russia iirc, which gives everyone skin in the game and avoids some of the tax avoidance that we see to avoid the thresholds.
No, because it's a requirement of the design that the revenue be the same. So to the tax rate goes up until the result is the same.
Right, I addressed this.
However, for the wealthy household, exactly what is the utility of all the money they have if they can't spend it? The minute any money is spent, the not-taxed argument comes apart because it is now taxed. How can you be wealthy if you do not have access to money?
I don't get the context at all. Is the ELI5:
CA wanted to create their own tax return software. Intuit said no, and now they use Intuit or something?
Normally I understand context and such, but in this case: isn't it the obvious thing to do? Does the USA not have the back of their citizens?
I'm sorry to say it so charged but this seems desperately simple on what ought to be done here.
In the US, at least one party requires its members to have the party's back, but not the other way. Which is why we have mass delusions about vaccines being bad, or COVID-19 not being a big deal. The party has decided its members need to provide blood sacrifices and the party members obliged. This is the same party that says that government can do no good, then asks for your vote.
For a less partisan example, for the past ~3 years, people with US phone numbers have been bombarded by spam phone calls, making the phone system nearly useless, and congressional action has been nonexistent.
When I see what is going on with national media and with federal inaction, I feel that the US is far past its peak years. We have chosen bad governance, and if we can't get a majority of people to even want to advocate for themselves, there's no way to get that back.
I think about 100 commenters mentioned it over the years before I finally switched to it and I haven't looked back.
It's a great product and way cheaper and way easier than TurboTax.
That's the first result for https://www.opensecrets.org/search?q=intuit
Im also annoyed the intuit bought Mint -- which I like but now feel like it is a risky to have them access all my accounts / purchases etcs.
I’ll take option 2, thank you!
"We believe most Americans would go from the long form or the short form to no form.
Comparing the distance between the present system and our proposal is like comparing the distance between a Model T and the space shuttle. And I should know -- I've seen both."
Sadly the space shuttle suffered multiple disasters.
And we're still stuck with form 1040.
A market will always have rent seekers, and people will always look for shortcuts. It's the job of our elected officials to ensure that doesn't happen.
The California FTB would love to tell you how much money it thinks you owe them, have you not question them, and make your life hell if you think they messed up.
While it's fair to say that lower-income W2 taxpayers are probably easier to calculate for, don't assume that the California FTB would go out of its way to help taxpayers.
Just a sample of the nastiness and incompetence that is the FTB: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2017/11/21/franchise-tax-boa...
Isn't this already the case? They know how much they think you owe. The only difference now is if you will out the form differently and they disagree they can also accuse you of intentional defrauding them.
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/state-taxes/discussion/why...
The FTB and Intuit exist on the same plane of hell.
"Does the IRS not like money?"
What's annoying is they often seem to calculate your return anyway, but they keep it a secret unless they think you made a mistake.
This is something IMHO REALLY BAD, and is apart from red/blue or intuit's behavior.
It's nothing new for a frequent reader of HN. California ran a trial of automatic tax filings in 2005, Intuit persuaded the IRS to adopt no such system, the government mandated a free file system run by the commercial providers for eligible people, the providers used dark patterns to direct free file eligible users to paid options. Current democrats and former california republicans are quoted as being for actual automatic filing, some anecodotes from people who had been pushed by the software companies to paid options.
Then in the UK if you have more complex tax affairs, then you have to fill in a self assessment on the government portal (where it already knows most of your tax information, and you are pretty much just making disclosures).
And it's VERY rare that people have to hire an accountant (only for people who own businesses, or individuals with the moxt complex tax affairs).
Well in the USA they don't have any of that, and everyone has to file their own taxes. The USA has the capability to do automated tax like in the UK, however the companies who sell the tax software petitioned the government to make sure that they didn't implement it so they can continue to get $$$ out of everyone else.
If taxpayers aren't forced to confront the details of their tax payments every time they do a filing, they're less likely to complain about high taxes (this comes with the implication that high taxes are inherently bad, which depends on your political leaning)
Taxpayers may just accept the automatic deduction without realising they're being overcharged in the event of an error, for years at a time.
How much they actually care about such arguments vs the threat to their business model is subjective, but it seems the majority on this site (and myself) don't buy it.
What they don't mention is that this free filing offer is used by significantly less than 5% of the eligible taxpayers. Probably because Intuit advertises it very little and within the product very heavily hints that you should switch to a paid product instead.
Accountants will tell you “I’m not a tax guy” and tax guys will tell you “I’m not an accountant”
Taxes are so convoluted and constantly changing that a separate class of number crunchers are maintained for it.
(I’m sure someone could wear both hats, but in my experience they don’t or can’t. Too many requirements for maintaining both?)
Fuck intuit.
Oh and before someone asks me why I feel comfortable doing that security wise...I do it on an airgapped machine and print the return out and mail it in. Ezpz
I will never use Turbo Tax, just out of principle. I cannot support a company like that.
I had never used Credit Karma’s tax service anyway, but good to know.
The process wouldn't complete in Firefox, I had to use Edge.
Right now you say "vote for politicians who do good things" and then every politician is found to be doing some good things and some bad things with their opponent doing the opposite, and someone doing a higher proportion of good things can't get on the ballot because first past the post voting results in a two party system.
I agree that taking a hard, sober look at how we ourselves vote is a good thing, but I doubt it is the magic silver bullet to our problems.
I'm sorry... you can't say you're trying to save us from tax filing while simultaneously having a tax form that would put a blank excel spreadsheet to shame.
California and the federal government's willingness to write complex, byzantine tax rules, is ultimately what keeps intuit in business.
Intuit would lobby against that too.
Intuit just wants money, they really don't care about taxes or complexity of the tax system. The only reason they care about complex tax code is that they can make money from it. These large businesses of today don't have visions or value creation goals, they have markets, competitors, and revenue streams. Everything else they do is tangential.
If Intuit could continue to make their money or make more money by advocating for simpler taxes they would. We should pass the Intuit Tax Toll bill where everyone is required by law to just throw money at Intuit every year until they go away, except they'll only come back for more... because this is what Intuit and a mountain of existing businesses would foam at the mouth for, a world where they were just handed money.
That's not what "simplifying taxes" means. That's paying Intuit to deal with the complexity for you, which is the status quo. They need the complexity or there's nothing for you to pay them to do.
Compare this with, say, replacing federal income tax with VAT+UBI. You get a progressive tax system (because of the UBI) with zero individuals having to file income tax returns. Actual simplification. You also solve the problem of people not realizing how much tax they're paying because they see the VAT on the receipt every time they buy something.
Edit: I love how this is getting downvoted really fast. I feel like everyone is skimming and misunderstanding what I said :D
The thing to understand about filing is that (particularly for W2 wage earners) you're not telling the Government how much you made and how much you owe. They know that already.
If you make a mistake in your filing, good or bad, they will send you a friendly letter correcting your mistake. The filing is just acknowledging the debt to them.
If you have absolutely no clue how it works, you're probably going to have to pay someone to do it for you.
But that’s part of the problem. What is the purpose of making people acknowledge that debt? Why not send a bill showing the calculation that the government already knows? Even if it’s just a few hours, accumulate that for every person that pays taxes for every year of their adult life and now you’re wasting millions of person hours just to let a couple of companies sell products/services that are not really needed.
Why waste people's time with this stuff then?
Of course the option to file will remain, no one is arguing against that.
1. Don't even know they have to file taxes.
2. Don't even know where to begin.
I later (2 years) found out about some tax exemption I qualified for and applied for it. They sent me a refund after I filed an amended return. I miswrote my zip code. The check got sent and returned. No phone call to me or attempt to contact me to my knowledge.
Only after 8 months of waiting did I reach out. Person was real nice and resolved it all real quickly (for which I’m grateful), but still a bit annoying that this was a thing.
Meanwhile in many other countries you have 1 (one) form to fill out if you have to. None of the billions of tax exemptions you have to file for correctly (mainly cuz you don’t have to give tax credits when your social programs are semi-universal) or other headaches.
The filing is annoying and can be error prone. The underlying system is something right out of Brazil (the movie). The sort of bureaucracy that Americans like to imagine infect every socialist nation is totally present in the tax system of the US
That's nice.
You still might care that we collectively waste an enormous amount of time doing it, unnecessarily, for the benefit of Intuit (and some cranks who want people angry about taxes).
If you still don't care, I'll be taking a few hours of your labor per year for my around the house work. It isn't particularly difficult work, no big deal, right?
I understand not everyone has an easy time with it. But today, 70% of Americans can file for free. Some version of optional auto-filing I have no problem with.
As far as a private company trying to protect it's revenue, there are far more egregious examples of that, out there right now.
70% are eligible but only 2.4% use it: https://amp.freep.com/amp/4679338002
Here’s just one example of Intuit kneecapping its Free File offering: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-hid...
Correcting mistakes is expensive, you'd likely need tax attorneys to figure this all out and you will also pay penalty.
That's the crazy part.
But they don't necessarily know how much you owe. Even many W2 wage earners are eligible for various credits, including but not limited to out of pocket charitable donations, moving expenses, child and dependent care expenses, student loan interest and post-high-school courses you pay for that improve your work skills.