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Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

Interesting points, but I'm wondering if you're possibly missing the point here. It's not only that Intuit uses their "right" to lobby the government and politicians allow Intuit to exercise this "right" to make money themselves; it's also that politicians ideologically agree with Intuit that Intuit should be charging $X to citizens to file taxes. Some politicians, either superficially, or truly authentically/rationally, think government should not be allowed to do anything a private enterprise can do, and therefore categorically want Intuit to charge us $X as a middle-men instead of government doing the filing, in order for Intuit to turn profits. Consequently, although you're right that politicians have incentive to extort more money from Intuit, they likely want to work with Intuit and come to a balanced compromise so that Intuit is able to make huge profits off of our tax filings.

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Many Republicans have signed Grover Norquist's pledge, and he explicitly opposes making it easier to file taxes on the belief that doing so would make it easier to raise taxes in the future.

> explicitly opposes ... on the belief

Do we know that's a truly-held belief by this politician, or do we only know that it's an assertion or claim?

TurboTax has already made it easier to file taxes, so the cat is out of the bag. Maybe Norquist didn’t know what computers are capable of.

Needing to do your taxes at all on TurboTax is the whole point of the argument. It's a yearly annoyance everyone has to do AND often times you have to pay money to a company. Where in many countries you just get something in the mail already done for you since the government has the information already for most people. You can still file yourself if you want to amend something or have a special reason. That's how it should work.

Then why do I still dread doing my taxes every year? I literally only have a W-2 to file and I don't know why.

My tax return was 20 pages last year, and I expect it to be longer this year because I sold/bought a home. Tax return software does make it easier, but it's still not easy, and there's a good reason that everyone dreads it, even if they just have W-2 information.

Right, but the IRS likely already knows all the information that goes on those 20 pages (or at least most of it), and could prepare your return for you, and just send you an email that lets you approve or amend it.

OK, my taxes have to be hard to process because other people occasionally have hard to process taxes. That makes sense. Fair is fair; when people are struggling we make the entire country feel the same pain.

This all makes sense if you ignore that politics are suppose to be representing the people who vote for them. I don’t think I have talked to anyone on any side of the fence that think you should have to pay for filing basic taxes.

Uh, no.

A politician is supposed to represent all citizens equally, even those which did not vote for them.

In a proper democracy, the voter is assessing candidates for a job. Once elected, that job is to do right by all citizens, by doing what they believe is the correct choice, correct way to do their job.

We are supposed to be electing someone to make decisions, based on their beliefs. The election is a job interview.

anudatt

Then you aren't talking to enough people. There are plenty who believe that easy tax filing will also make it easier for the government to raise taxes in the future. And enough who just flat-out believe the government shouldn't be doing things that a private enterprise can do for a profit.

Man, you haven't talked to enough people then. Come up with the most absurd opinion you can about any political topic and you will find a small but aggressive group online that is convinced it is the only rational option.

Plenty of conservatives genuinely believe, for whatever reason, that it's impossible for "Government" to do something well. They then elect people who promise to make that reality and then point to the obvious, purposeful struggles of our government as their reasoning.

And it's not just the "government shouldn't do it" crowd, there are also those that believe that profit motive makes it more efficient and costs less overall.

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