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Comment by dpweb | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of being a non-popular opinion, I don't find tax filing to be particularly difficult. Maybe its because my job is to solve pretty hard problems all day. But the average person/family who doesn't itemize have a Sched C, it's quite easy.

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.

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> I don't find tax filing to be particularly difficult.

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 won't argue that the whole system is stuck in the 20th century, but there is a little bit of "big companies and taxes are evil and I'm oppressed!" going on here.

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.

Intuit is just really easy to understand as a cut-and-dry example of regulatory capture. They basically maintain the need for themselves entirely through laws that create the problem they solve.

The Free File program may as well not exist. The fact that it was mostly delegated to companies whose success depends on its failure, means that its lack of adoption should surprise no one.

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...

> They know that already and calculate it in your account. You're acknowledging that debt to them.

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.

So? Because you find something easy, the rest of the country is supposed to be okay with a large company lobbying for less QoL for them?

Have you ever had an even minor non-standard issue? Foreign dividend paid in stock rather than cash for example.

> They know that already and calculate it.

Why waste people's time with this stuff then?

Real talk though, how are they going to know that you bought an energy efficient AC unit for your house that you can deduct off your taxes?

That's a case of ammending what the gov already figures out automatically.

You file a form or enter data into some fields in a web interface that updates their records?

The vast majority of people are better off with the standard deduction. For everyone else, they can file to their heart's content.

They don't know that. The trick is to send you a draft proposal based on what they do know, and allow you to amend it based on information that they do not. If you aren't eligible for any deductions nor have any other taxable source of income of which the IRS was not aware, you just accept their proposal. That's how it works in most developed countries.

It kind of works that way here. You get a W2 from your employer which has every bit of info you need. You put that into a form and submit to the government. The end.

They don't, but the important thing is that the vast majority of people don't itemize, especially with the high standard deduction there is now. Required filing is just pointless for them.

Of course the option to file will remain, no one is arguing against that.

Tax code reform aimed at simplification would just get rid of that, and incentivize the behavior of your example via e.g. DoE grants to manufacturers to allow lower prices on more energy efficient units. The problem is that everybody has their own pet deductions (and a good number of them have armies of lobbyists backing them up), so a real attempt to clean the slate would require a degree of political cohesion that congress can only dream of.

> 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.

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.

Yes. For people with super simple tax returns, e.g. a few W2/1099s/standard deductions/no cost basis issues/etc., I suppose it would be convenient to have taxes auto-filed but it really isn't a big deal and doesn't require software. Once you get into the complexities that make tax filing a big deal and may involve accountants or multiple evenings with tax software, auto-filing isn't going to work.

It's not that difficult, but as you point out, the government already knows the info you have to give them.

That's the crazy part.

The system is very complex and it's very easy to make a mistake once you start having more complications like selling property, dealing with stocks, handling additional income, etc.

Correcting mistakes is expensive, you'd likely need tax attorneys to figure this all out and you will also pay penalty.

You vastly underestimate the number of people that:

1. Don't even know they have to file taxes.

2. Don't even know where to begin.

I had one non-“salary” event one year. I spent so long staring at the instructions during filing, failing to get any of the software to work for my case, and at the end of all of it I ended up overpaying a significant amount.

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

Cleaning isn't that difficult and yet I keep putting it off for as long as I can.

Filing taxes isn't especially difficult. Knowing that filing taxes isn't especially difficult is not so easy.

If you have absolutely no clue how it works, you're probably going to have to pay someone to do it for you.

There is considerable overlap between people who have no clue how taxes work and people who cannot afford to pay professionals to do it for them.

And yet the taxes need to get done. So many times they do despite not being able to afford it.

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