Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby against it (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby against it (2017)

propublica.org

395 pointsKerryJones114 comments

I worked at TurboTax. They are really good at separating employees into two groups.

Group 1, which is by far the largest group, really wants to make it easier for people to get their taxes done.

Group 2 makes sure that the govt doesn't make any progress on making it easier for people to do their taxes. Make taxes even more convoluted, so that you need TurboTax (not just personal but also their software for CPAs). Make sure there isn't any actually free way to easily do your taxes. Get laws passed making sure of it. Act like you have a free version but make it nearly impossible to use it without paying for other stuff.

Intuit goes to great lengtsh to make sure that group 1 (which is most of the company), doesn't know about the existence of group 2. I only knew about group 2 because I knew of it before I worked for Intuit. A lot of people there were very surprised when I shared the truth with them about group 2.

I didn't end up a fit for this garbage and quit after 6 months.

Do you use TurboTax to file your taxes?

Unfortunately, yes... I've tried to move away, but found the other tools were lacking - at least with the level complexity of my taxes.

I was *very* hopeful for Credit Karma's tax product as they generally make a very good product. That is why Intuit bought Credit Karma. They were forced to divest the tax part of CK. Which is of course what Intuit wanted - CK to not do taxes.

And now Credit Karma’s tax software is at the helm of Cash App/Square/Block, and I’m afraid that going anywhere besides TurboTax may make it a pain to retrieve my records (tax forms, namely). Just look at the complaints around Cash App Taxes to understand.

Another example: my partner used software other than TurboTax and now their tax work from three years ago can’t be retrieved without paying an “archive fee”. And going through the IRS’ website is horrible to return a transcript. TurboTax offers the most consistent and reliable software, but they are scum. I wish it was easier to go elsewhere. Many people want to mindlessly submit their taxes and be able to retrieve them from one main hub at any time, and TurboTax is unsurprisingly the go-to.

2M is nothing, according to this[1] 3.7B was spent in total on "lobbying" last year meaning that amounts to 0.05% of total activity. The idea that Intuit is The Reason tax filing is painful, and not that the GOP is systematically undermining the IRS as a way to convince people that taxes are bad, seems unlikely. If they stopped lobbying altogether, would anyone expect that the IRS would suddenly be allowed to make filing "Free & Simple"?

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/257337/total-lobbying-sp...

There's ..

1. lobbying in general

2. lobbying about US tax code, tax code enforcement and IRS funding

3. lobbying about the way US tax returns are done

The fact that the amount spent on 3. by Intuit et al. is a small part of the amount spent on 1. does not make it any less outrageous.

> If they stopped lobbying altogether, would anyone expect that the IRS would suddenly be allowed to make filing "Free & Simple"?

Who would be opposed to this?

> Who would be opposed to this?

Republicans who view taxes as inherently corrupt and therefore are not in favor of improving the system.

(also as I mentioned elsewhere, that statement is not meant to be a value judgement - if you are opposed to taxes then it makes sense to oppose improvements to the system)

That $2M is basically "unopposed" though, because it's tough to organize well-funded coalitions against something that slightly affects a large number of people.

Also, politicians are amazingly cheap. Remember reading that Comcast bought of my local representative for $30k. I'm sure politicians with "aligned views" on the matter are even cheaper.

There's only 100 senator and 435 house member. Of those, companies only need to buy a few swing votes. $2MM at 30k a pop is 66 votes. If most republicans are on board anyway, that's all they need.

Really? Has anyone tried a gofundme to hire lobbyists like this parody article suggests?

https://www.theonion.com/american-people-hire-high-powered-l...

That is basically how "grass roots" lobbying works. Someone starts a group - like the ACLU or AU - raises some money, and then uses that to either support themselves while lobbying in Washington or to hire a dedicated lobbyist while they focus on fundraising.

The influence of Intuit and H&R Block is basically meaningless compared to the wealthy in this country that benefit most from the complicated tax code.

The complication is because of all the loopholes carved out for them and a byproduct of that process.

Not just for them, but in general it's the fact that we use tax code as a means of policy implementation. So we end up with all sorts of complicated deductions, credits, taxes, etc because politicians want to promote or discourage some action.

"It's the Republicans fault!"

What a unique and interesting take.

It's not a take to say that Republicans are not in favor of a more efficient IRS [1]. It was also not meant as a moral judgement (at least not by me). While it is not my position, I understand that if one believes that taxes are bad then there is no incentive to make tax collection easier.

My only point is that the article misunderstands the root causes.

[1] https://www.axios.com/gop-tax-irs-infrastructure-9226b210-05...

That doesn't make it untrue.

Party that doesn't believe in effective government sabotaging all efforts to make government effective. It's been documented; it is literally what they claim to do.

I agree it’s a common refrain for pro business decisions that hurt America, but a useful counter argument is to look for who sponsored what amendments.

Tax filing really isn't painful in the U.S. for the vast majority of people. Saying that it is complex is the true lie. It takes like 5 minutes for most if all you have is a W-2. It's also really cheap if not free.

> It takes like 5 minutes for most

Average tax preparation time in the US is 175 minutes.

> Tax filing really isn't painful in the U.S. for the vast majority of people

You're probably referring to the fact that 36% of people itemized deductions in 2007, and only 10% itemized in 2020.

But even taking the standard deduction, the process is still much more complex than it needs to be, and there are plenty of other factors that add additional complexity (e.g. gig work, home ownership, stock sales, etc.)

Averages can be misleading, what is the median? I was obviously exaggerating with 5 minutes, but I doubt it is 175 minutes. I know I personally spend a lot more time than that but my situation is intentionally complicated.

As an employee (currently) in the UK, I spend exactly 0 minutes preparing my taxes. I don't have to do it!

This is wrong for many reasons, but I'll just give one example: what if you're a gig worker? Here's some guidance: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/tax-information/

Or kids, or a house, or an. Electric car, or a 401k, or an HSA

None of these are hard to track, but they’re more complications that take time to fill out in our current, broken, system.

I think 401K and HSA are pretty much automatically correctly handled on your W-2 statement. (The general point stands, but those two examples I think are seamless.)

401k has a lot of tax implications outside of just adding money in every year.

It's simple once you've done it a few times and understand that there are probably only a few numbers you need to enter. For example, If you don't understand the difference itemized vs. standard deductions, you might waste hours hunting down medical bills only to find out it doesn't matter. Until you've got it down, there are a million variables and special cases to consider.

> We anticipate that governmental encroachment at both the federal and state levels may present a continued competitive threat to our business for the foreseeable future,” Intuit said in its latest corporate filings

Sounds like a good thing to me.

Agreed. I think Canada (CRA) is doing this behind the scenes. My hypothesis is that they can't do it publicly because the lobbyists will make a big fuss.

> I think Canada (CRA) is doing this behind the scenes

Yes, I noticed that the CRA website displayed my T4 this year, although the problem is I couldn't simply hit "Confirm" and be done with it.

I wonder if this is why they're diversifying with purchasing other companies.

FYI: Alternatives include: Cash App Taxes https://cash.app/taxes and FreeTaxUSA https://www.freetaxusa.com/

I had started my taxes this year with TurboTax, but it wasn't loading some of my investments automatically, which was one of the big plusses it brought to the table.

One minus reported by HN users on a thread yesterday is that CashApp Taxes require you to install their app to login, you login by scanning a QR code on your phone and the app logs you in.

Last night I started with CashApp Taxes, and it looks pretty good. Other reviewers here yesterday were saying they had done both and preferred FreeTaxUSA, so I was going to get started over there and see which one I liked best.

Just filed mine yesterday with FreeTaxUSA, would recommend their services. Found it to be straightforward, explained stuff I didn’t understand, and as far as I could tell, they didn’t try to trick me into paying for extra stuff. They presented a deluxe option for sure, but didn’t implement some dark pattern that made it impossible to go the free route for federal (state costs money, mine cost $15).

+1 for freetaxusa. I held off for years using them because their name sounds pretty much like a scam to steal your identity.

They're stupid easy if you just have work income, and really simple if you have other schedules to file along with the basic forms. I have multiple types of income from multiple sources, and they're really simple still.

They will try to sell you their premium service, but nothing is locked behind that paywall, and it's presented once, clearly, with a clear way to accept or decline.

I've thought about buying it just to support the business.

I also ended up completing my taxes on FreeTaxUSA, after having filed with TurboTax for years and getting started with Cash App Taxes earlier in the week. FreeTaxUSA was a really great experience, would highly recommend. I paid the $6-something for their upgraded service, and the $15-ish for state. Didn't end up using any of the upgraded service, but I wanted to give them some money.

I've had good experiences using Freetaxusa for several years. This year, however, I discovered that they don't support ISO exercise-and-hold behavior. They advertise support for form 6251 but don't allow you to enter anything in line 2i (or any lines not directly supported). Made a real mess.

+1 FreeTaxUSA

I had to file Australian income taxes for two years. I was kinda terrified of it. I logged into the government website with information I received in the mail (TFN), plus a phone call to link my information to my web account.

My taxes were pretty simple, admittedly. But the government website already had all of my income information pre-filled out. I entered a bank account, entered my health insurance details (hey, hey, affordable universal healthcare), and submitted. I was literally done in 15 mins.

The Australian government practically fell all over themselves to promise me they would get me my refund as soon as possible. They sent a text within hours that promised something like five business days. It was done in three. I never had to deal with them again.

WTF America.

US could have simple taxes. Basically a standard deduction for everyone. But what that means is getting rid of a lot of tax credits including mortgage interest, charitable donations, education credits, child care, medical care, energy and disaster, just to name a few.

So instantly any proposed changes would get resistance from housing, charity, education, parent groups, medical industry, ESG among others. Think about how many times politicians say "we should encourage [good thing] and discourage [bad thing]". What do you think they're talking about? Changing the tax code.

And if you think the US government knows if you installed solar panels on your roof this year or something, then you're sorely mistaken

The IRS might not be able to know about every credit/deduction, but they could host an online form, pre-populated with what they do know (most income sources for most people, family size/child deductions, etc) and then give a simple list of credit/deduction checkboxes/inputs. Even that would be worlds better than paying for TaxCut or a CPA every year, or doing it all manually on paper.

I've had this conversation with (dutch) government employees a good number of times long ago.

I use to wait with filling out a form until the absolute latest moment. I knew they [often] couldn't process the forms until they had all of them. I would get reminders and sometimes a phone call.

I explain my sabotage: If you already have access to these numbers. Why are you asking me for it? If it is up to me I will exercise my right to make a mess of it.

Same for paying taxes: You present it like I have a choice I can pay it or I can not pay it? But if I don't pay it you will give me a 5 euro fine and then a 50 euro fine and then the 800 euro fine and then you take the money out of my account or seize my income. So they choices are: 1) PAY or 2) PAY. Just take it out of my account? Why would you invite millions of people to make a mess from your administration?

I give the employee an example. I can request a form, it is send to my house, at the top of the form it asks for my name and address. As if I have nothing better to do? Then I return the form and someone has to check my name and address???? As if they too have nothing better to do. Multiply the effort by many millions and by dozens of forms and it becomes a horrific waste of of time.

Why are we doing this?

Now it is just a web page that shows the data they have on me. I click accept, even if it is slightly inaccurate and I'm done. Wonderful!

So basically IRS recreates turbo tax?

Essentially, yes. But with income and other knowable data pre-populated and none of the dark patterns and at no charge.

You could still have all of those deductions, but let people request that the IRS do their taxes for them, which would cover the 90% of cases where your standard deduction is optimal for you.

They have my bank accounts, they have my brokerage accounts, they have my W-2s. There's no reason I can't just ask them to do my taxes for me.

Sweden here. We beat you by 5 min. No seriously, WTF America?

Imagine being scared year after year they're going to come after you with fines and jailtime for missing $100 somewhere. They are famous for being relentless and overworked. They also go after poor people more often than rich people by a long shot (percentage wise, not just absolute numbers) because they know poor to middle class people can't afford a lawyer/accountant to fend them off. It's a racket.

> They also go after poor people more often than rich people by a long shot (percentage wise, not just absolute numbers) because they know poor to middle class people can't afford a lawyer/accountant to fend them off.

Adjusted Gross Income, Audit rate

0 8.9%

$1- $25,000 0.7%

$25,000-$50,000 0.4%

$50,000-$75,000 0.4%

$75,000-$100,000 0.4%

$100,000-$200,000 0.4%

$200,000-$500,000 0.6%

$500,000-$1,000,000 1.1%

1,000,000-$5,000,000 2.5%

$5,000,000-$10,000,000 5.1%

over $10,000,000 8.6%

Please don't make stuff up

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-are-the-odds-be...

So this describes P(audit | bracket), the probability of me getting audited give what I earn.

But those brackets are very different sizes. What I'd find more interesting is "do they focus on minimizing the amount of money stolen from other tax payers?" That would be more like the absolute number of audits in each bracket, divided by the total number of audits. (or audit hours, if you want to go for a "bang for buck" type analysis)

I don't know their internal incentives, but I would imagine they have an incentive to get as much money as they can, balanced slightly by catching outright fraud. There's a fixed cost to auditing. Auditing people that they believe have small discrepancies in their taxes just isn't worth it.

I read there's a secret formula that screens out cases that can be considered for audit and auto-approves the refund. It's secret because if you knew it, you could obviously exploit it.

Even the numbers for lower incomes are a little misleading because fraudsters know the probability of audit and know they can exploit the system by using fake identities to file claims for relatively small amounts. Bret Johnson spoke about this in an interview with Lex Fridman [0] and said 3 days a week for 8 months out of the year he was filing a tax return every 6 minutes using fake or stolen identities. Then he spent the rest of the week driving to ATMs around the state to withdraw the returns. Fun fact, a standard briefcase can hold $150,000 in 20s. So obviously the IRS needs to go after absolute fraud as a deterrent as well as the large tax filings where the money is.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC1LFC0KFSw

You're not going to go to jail because you're $100 off on your taxes.

If you're $100 off on your taxes, they are going to tell you that you're off, give you the reasons why they think you are off, and ask you to pay them.

Now, if you keep refusing to pay, and refuse to provide a reason why, eventually, some point a long way down the line, jail becomes an option.

Or alternatively pay you if you're off in the other direction, which I've had happen to me before.

New Zealand here, the first I knew about my yearly tax obligation one year, was them depositing my refund into my account...

Israel here -- full-time employees generally don't file taxes on their own. Your employer will ask to fill out a single form for any changes in tax status (such as single parent or disability).

On the other hand, self-employed individuals do need to file, which is not simple.

i'm not surprised. I've heard the same from many foreign friends. I think USA is one of the few if not the only country that makes YOU responsible and liable for your taxes. I always thought it was such BS when you hear about it from other countries

I feel like its all to keep accountant and lawyer jobs

> WTF America.

Americans have been programmed to assume anything the government can do, a company can do better.

It's similar in the UK. You collect your end of year employment tax summary from any employers and file your self assessment online for for free using the HMRC website. There are helpsheets for most stuff and it's all over in 20-30 mins

You didn’t trade any stocks, right? Because most of the complications are coming from complex tax situations not from simple salary earnings.

Stocks aren't complex. Your broker has all the information the government needs. In the US, you have to manually enter that data into government forms.

Sweden here again. Most of our stock brokers submit our taxes from trades to our tax authority. If you're doing basic buying and selling, it's all prefilled in tax form every year.

Not to mention there is a standard e-forum you can file with turbo tax and h&r that automatically do all of the filing

This is just not true. While that is more complicated, it's still stupidly complicated to do something as simple as fill out the W-2 form if you have a single job with a salary, and if you're a freelancer with lots of clients that don't pay you the same way and don't give you a salary it's all but impossible.

> all but impossible.

This is somewhat hyperbolic. Reporting income to the IRS is pretty easy. Dealing with deductions and credits is not hard, but is hard to get right. The whole process ought to be much, much easier than it currently is, but it is not "all but impossible". I even managed to teach all 3 of my kids how to handle 1099s and other stuff, and if they were a bit intimidated (they were), they didn't find it actually hard.

I don't believe I'm being hyperbolic. Maybe everyone else is just smarter than me, but every time I filled it out myself it was extremely confusing and difficult to the point where I gave up and was generally told I'd made tons of mistakes when someone fixed it for me.

It's *one* political party wants to make taxes hard so people hate it. If your taxes are simple and if you misfile something, government will fix it before sending you refund or send you notice that you owe them. That means IRS can calculate the taxes. But it doesn't have authority for send you prefilled tax documents.

Which one is that? I've seen proponents and opponents of simplified tax reform on both sides and for different reasons.

Two things going on here:

1. "simplified tax reform" as in "change the tax code to eliminate a bunch of complexity that we think adversely affects the people who vote of us"

2. "simplified tax reform" as in "enable the IRS to precompute the tax forms for 80% of the US population, since they can"

Sure, #1 is bipartisan (even if the things to be eliminated are not).

#2 is opposed almost entirely by Republicans only, just as they are the only party to consistently oppose realistic funding levels for the IRS given the current tax code and legal requirements.

True. Ostensibly, doing #1 could lead to number #2 to a degree. I think both parties have come up with plans to make the filing part easier, but plans from both sides have incomplete or only partially easier implementation.

I think the IRS has made it fairly clear that there are no real technical hurdles to doing 2. right now (certainly, free e-filing is absolutely not a technical problem).

I might or might not support 1., but 2. is doable regardless.

Well, 2 is only sort of doable currently. There are many things in current tax code that are not reported/recorded at transaction time but are required to be reported at filing time, either on the income side or the deduction side. So there's still a lot of manual work involved for many people, but prefilled forms could save some time for the parts you don't have to redo.

You can already efile for free. Implementation and options could be better though.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...

2 included the phrasing "for 80% of the US population". That matches (roughly) the percentage with no itemized deductions and (I believe) the similar percentage with no income to report other than W2 and 1099 transactions.

And yes, i use FreeFileFillableForms and have done for many years now. It works, but it's a bit clunky.

Ah, true, although I think 80% is high. That might be the number taking the standard deduction, but there are still credits and deductions even if not itemizing.

Do you think it’s more lucrative in tax money for the government if they continue doing things the way they are or if there were pre-filled taxes sent to each american to confirm?

If I think about the state/federal tax services like businesses, wouldn’t the prospect of convenience be more likely to create more revenue inflow, or am I mistaken?

For example, if I send a customer a bill, with a due date and amount, then all the customer does is check it over then send the money that I asked for. It would seem ludicrous if I transacted with a customer and we played this back-and-forth guessing game where I want the customer to tell me the number in my head.

Yes, this would definitely help the government collect tax revenues.

> If I think about the state/federal tax services like businesses, wouldn’t the prospect of convenience be more likely to create more revenue inflow, or am I mistaken?

No, you're not mistaken. The problem is that one of the major parties fundamentally believes that giving more money to the government is bad and they go to great lengths to make it harder to reduce collection, which in turn helps them politically to argue that the government is inefficient and ineffective.

Yes, what you describe is how civilized countries typically process their taxes for the reasons you describe.

My understanding is that the US does not do it this way for a couple reasons: 1) lobbying from tax preparation companies and 2) anti-tax advocates who believe that making taxes simpler might result in people becoming less opposed to taxes in general.

TIL Canada is an uncivilized country?

When it comes to filing taxes we kind of are.

> Intuit spent more than $2 million lobbying last year, much of it spent on legislation that would permanently bar the government from offering taxpayers prefilled returns. H&R Block spent $3 million, also directing some of their efforts towards the bill.

Yes they probably lobby against it, so would any company if its important to them. $5 mil in lobbying is loose change. These are not big businesses - HR Block has a market cap of $4 Billion about the same as a bunch of companies no one has heard of.

However the real reason is politicians making the tax code as complicated as possible, giving breaks to favored groups.

You can't believe such a hugely important thing as tax is swayed by such a little piece of lobbying.

My takeaway is a bit different:

- You can buy the tax policy you want for surprisingly little money

- The lawmakers who create tax policy are happy with the average american being annoyed at the IRS all the time.

In the US, those specific lawmakers would generally be the Republican Party, who explicitly want tax filing to be a manual process for various reasons.

Similarly, I doubt the IRS wants taxpayers to know how much it knows. What if the IRS has no idea about someone's Craigslist hobby fixing and reselling old computers that technically should be considered taxable and add 10% to their income? They probably prefer the ambiguity about how much they know.

This is the real story, in my opinion. The income tax code in the United States boils down to:

Here is a simple, large amount you owe.

You can reduce it by:

1) changing your behavior in ways we like

and

2) telling us everything about your personal and financial life

It's a disgusting invasion of privacy on a far far larger scale than, say, the PATRIOT act. H&R Block and Intuit are just leeches on the back of the tumor that income tax represents.

do you feel that any payment to a government is useless?

No, I do not. In fact, when it comes to income taxes, I object to the social gamesmanship + privacy invasion more than the actual amount. A solution I prefer would be a federal sales tax, combined with a Universal Basic Income.

The UBI would be equal to the amount of the tax on up to some minimum income level (say, 50k / year). In other words, everyone gets a monthly check that is essentially a rebate on their sales tax up to the income threshold.

That's simple, loophole-free, and avoids the privacy invasion that accurate income tax collections require.

That only works until individual wealth outstrips consumption. It also punishes people from participating in the economy.

I think we have the first problem now anyway. And I have no problem with a tax code that gives a little friction to profligate consumerism. In any case, I don't think you need to worry about my idea becoming policy any time soon :)

Your elected representative could represent your interests too, if you could hire and fire your representative as easily as you can a tax preparer.

For me personally, my reps represent me very well. They just only 1 vote each and Congress has reps for all over. It's important to stress that Intuit can lobby all they want but each rep is responsible for their own vote. I seriously doubt any of them actually don't understand the implications of what they do. A lot of voters simply vote against their interests. It's the entire raison d'etre for Republicans to never fund a government service that can be done by private companies and they wear that philosophy on their sleeves so it's not like voters are being fooled.

That being said, it's also important to understand that a free file program isn't just sitting behind a door waiting to be unlocked. If there was political will to make it happen, it would take a multi-year outlay of funds to design, build and operate a new digital product and the federal government has a less than stellar track record of delivering on that kind of thing. And you can bet that even if it actually happens, that Republicans would make it a campaign plank to tell everyone how terrible it is and prevent broad enough adoption for it to be worthwhile.

Those who get their interest represented say they're represented well.

Those who don't get their interests represented well disagree.

Yeah, well, people's interests don't all align. There's tens of millions of people who look at this headline and say "this is good, IRS should not compete with private businesses".

My rep represents me well. She got like 85% of the vote in her district. She votes along with my interests nearly all the time. But the fact she frequently votes for things that don't end up getting signed into law isn't her fault. The fact that a lot of policies I like don't even get voted on because they don't have a chance isn't her fault either.

Suffice it to say, we most likely don't have Free File because of voters.

Yes, people's interests don't all align. But they'd actually be better represented with proportional representation than one representing people solely by geography.

Because geography is just one thing that matters.

It's still possible to e-file your federal taxes for free with Free Fillable Forms[1]. They also had State Fillable Forms that allowed one to e-file their state taxes the same way. Unfortunately, they discontinued the state one this year.

[1] https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/home/default.php

The first few years I actually had to file taxes I forced myself to go full oldschool and do it all on paper. It was a bit of a PIA but if you were careful it was really not all that bad - unless you made a proper mistake and had to fill out a whole new form.

It also gave me a much better understanding about how all these different software manufacturers work behind the scenes however and I highly recommend everyone do it at least once. If you have a very complicated tax filing however with multi businesses or lots of assets/depreciation then totally use a nice piece of software.

These days I am lucky enough I used to work for an accounting firm so a friend does my taxes for free using whatever fancy accounting software they use and they get me all kinds of small wins I would not have thought of myself.

I have friends who have more complicated returns than myself and the money they spend on a decent CPA is peanuts compared to the amount they save - you would be surprised how much little additional investment it is to hire a real person vs just paying for TurboTax!

I think in New Zealand (probably plenty of other places too), if you're a normal person earning a wage or salary and maybe some interest but nothing special going on, you don't need to file a tax return at all.

After all, a tax return is basically a means of correction at the end of the year. If everything is withheld correctly throughout the year, there is nothing to correct.

The reality is most people don't give a damn, and the pain isn't high enough yet to make it a major political issue, so the companies "win" by default.

As in many cases, the lobbying is a smoke-screen to the real issue. The increase of the standard deduction dumped a bunch of people into "very simple taxes", but nothing much changes.

Filing taxes could be automatic like in other countries. I'd much rather get a pre-calculated return and do nothing if everything looks in order or send it back with adjustments as needed.

You can already do your taxes for free! A 1040 form is only 2 pages long. And even if you have a complicated situation, you can follow the detailed instructions it still only takes an hour or two.

But, you will probably end up paying the sticker price on what you owe. When people talk about making them free or easier, they are invariably talking about making it easier to claim credits or itemize deductions.

In which case, it's hard to understand the incentive policymakers have to make it easier for people to pay less in taxes.

hahahahahahahahaha. no. just no.

My first year in the US I tried doing my taxes by hand as you describe it. 1040 is only 2 pages but the instructions are... drumrolls... https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf .. 114 pages.

I was like: cool. I'll do it. Start reading the instructions and it started referencing other cool forms that were referencing other cool forms. So unless you have a really straightforward situation the answer is no. you cannot do this on your own. and if you want to do it on your own the effort is at least days if not weeks.

Using previous years' returns as templates, it takes me about 5 hours to complete state and federal.

I hate to be mean but the worst part is that H&R and TurboTax both have kinda bad sites. If we just let it be automated by the government could just have all those forums filled out.

What would be really cool is if the government managed an open source document filing system. It could be a trusted submitted and since the government owns it its neutral among all parties (execpt gov v people i suppose) That people could submit government docs to in general and all of taxes could be automated along with other things

This is one of the far worst things about our capitalist system - large companies can use money to impact politics and the law in pretty much no one's favor except for their own. It takes many years to reverse these decisions, and in the meantime is a massive waste of time and money for consumers and the government. All so a few politicians and large corporations can make more money for a few more years.

Modest proposal: pass a law that requires members of Congress and the President to do their own taxes using only the materials the IRS provides. No external assistance of any kind.

Citizens should be offered choice of salary being paid via CBDC, all taxation conducted at source, with a lower overall tax rate to reflect lower admin load and better collection rate.

For most people in the US, taxation is already conducted at the source through estimated withholdings. Filing is how they get tax refunds. It's a clever scheme that seems to make people actually happy about income tax.

what is this 'estimated withholdings' ....so the govt makes up a number, takes the money and then you gotta claim it back??

Kinda. The number isn't made up, it's based on your salary from that job and then a calculation based on the number of dependents you will claim (which generally lowers your tax liability so they withhold less).

At the end of the year, this tax filing process is to reconcile if the amount you had withheld matches with what you owe the government.

that fiendish. I can see why govt would do this but heck, what a terrible experience for citizen!

My tax return was more then 80 pages long and I barely had to enter any information... It would have been the same way if the Government did it for me except for a small amendment ...

my prediction is that, as more cloistered elite continue to abdicate themselves from the responsibility of paying taxes, the states desperation to backfill the shortfall will inevitably result in filing reforms including legitimate free filing regardless of lobbyist efforts as the alternative --tax reform for the wealthy-- is much less popular.

The existence of lobbying is in itself not interesting. Of course it is in their interest to protect their business, and it's reasonable for any company in a free market to oppose the government undermining or destroying their business.

The problem is that government has to suck up that cost and deal with it.

The larger issue, and the thing that keeps us from having our taxes done for us, is that there is a strong feeling in the conservative and libertarian movements that taxes SHOULD be painful, and that exposing taxpayers to the complexities and annoyances of filing taxes is a necessity to make people want to reduce the pain associated with taxes, and keep their legislators in check.

That is, any legislator who chooses to vote for an increase in taxes or an increase in the complexity of taxes should be voted out of office and replaced with someone who will do the opposite.

In practice, this has failed miserably. There is absolutely no accountability associated with this, and legislators know that, and they have no interest in actually simplifying or otherwise reducing the burden of filing taxes. It's time to just give up and put "taxation is theft" to bed because people only care about this one month a year, and by the time elections come around we've forgotten it completely. It's tempting to say -- "how can we make it MORE painful", like, let's move tax day to November 1st, so that you go to the polls cursing your senator, but we know that this won't work.

> It's time to just give up and put "taxation is theft" to bed because people only care about this one month a year,

I agree and I wish this was true. Unfortunately, the "taxation is theft" mantra is effective year-round as wages continue to lag behind inflation. It's so much easier to make the government the boogeyman instead of businesses that don't pay a living wage.

Planet Money did a great episode on the "taxes should be painful". https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...

This is been going on a lot longer than 2017

FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846071 - March 2022 (555 comments)

Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122 comments)

Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H&R Block and Intuit Lobby Against It (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18 comments)

Killing TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330584 - March 2021 (662 comments)

Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138446 - Feb 2021 (219 comments)

TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26102695 - Feb 2021 (306 comments)

TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26060414 - Feb 2021 (199 comments)

FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24409093 - Sept 2020 (194 comments)

IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923220 - Dec 2019 (448 comments)

IRS Tried to Hide Emails That Show Tax Industry Influence over Free File Program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21393758 - Oct 2019 (188 comments)

TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281411 - Oct 2019 (447 comments)

TurboTax to charge more lower-income customers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461169 - July 2019 (81 comments)

Congress Scraps Provision to Restrict IRS from Competing with TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119916 - June 2019 (18 comments)

TurboTax Uses a “Military Discount” to Trick Troops into Paying to File Taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994118 - May 2019 (42 comments)

Listen to TurboTax Lie to Get Out of Refunding Overcharged Customers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19870242 - May 2019 (44 comments)

TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810981 - May 2019 (143 comments)

TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 - April 2019 (262 comments)

TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19718284 - April 2019 (274 comments)

Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725 - April 2019 (696 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19392673 - March 2019 (253 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Lobby Against Free and Simple Tax Filing (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18956883 - Jan 2019 (190 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17751383 - Aug 2018 (424 comments)

Why I'm boycotting TurboTax this year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844458 - April 2018 (23 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Lobbying Against Simpler Tax Filing (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449 - April 2018 (232 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13922482 - March 2017 (234 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13853150 - March 2017 (439 comments)

TurboTax Takes Aim at Smaller Rival in Fight for Filers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11150694 - Feb 2016 (87 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9381437 - April 2015 (150 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9380232 - April 2015 (124 comments)

Filing taxes: It shouldn't be so hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5488084 - April 2013 (56 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 - March 2013 (330 comments)

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