TurboTax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU | Hacker News Reader

TurboTax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU

pluralistic.net

67 pointsdanuker33 comments

I am not affiliated with them in any way, but I have swapped to https://www.freetaxusa.com as of several years ago and will never turn back. They cover everything I need and charge a much more reasonable fee than TurboTax.

+1 for FreeTaxUSA. Simple software, reasonable rates, no dark patterns (that I’ve seen). However, with the slush fund that the government has, I don’t see why they can’t make their own.

They can.

In fact, they already do it.

The IRS already does your taxes for you.

It’s the TurboTax lobbying that prevents them from giving it to you.

Same. They’re pretty upfront about what they charge for. Only thing I’ve ever paid for is the $15 for state filing.

This was the first year I paid for the Deluxe. Stripe didn't withhold enough taxes from the severance, and now I owe the IRS $11k. This station, combined with moving states, made me want to ask a tax analyst a few questions.

Was the Deluxe support helpful? I've also got into situations where I'm not sure about a particular thing (e.g. inadequate withholding for RSUs), and I don't want to pay Intuit more $$$ to talk to a CPA with these questions!

I used a TT "expert" last year who didn't seem to grasp what I was asking I feel like, but agreed with what I hoped they would say, they're a certified tax professional and I have them down as who told me how to classify it... but I have no idea if they'd really put their weight behind it in person. It felt a little "off" to me.

They were helpful enough to make it worth the extra $20 spend imo

The US blows my mind. Literally the only country where one has to pay a third-party company to help one do their taxes. I will never understand this.

We don't _have_ to. But it can be a bit of work to do it yourself if your taxes are remotely complicated.

I spend about 6 hours a year on it.

Yes, it's stupid.

Don’t all organisms fight for their own survival?

If the IRS just told us what we owe them or they owe us TurboTax would be obsolete, so this should surprise no one.

Actually, I believe TurboTax has successfully lobbied congress so that it's illegal for the IRS to do that. https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

The Inflation Reduction Act appropriated $15M for the IRS to assemble a task force to explore the feasibility of the IRS building a free file system that would replace what TurboTax provides. It’s mentioned near the end of the post.

Discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764952

Wait...they need $15M to just EXPLORE the FEASIBILITY of the IRS just telling us what we owe? (something they already know and have access to)

How much do you think it costs to build a system that affects the finances of 300 million people? If highly-paid professional accountants, lawyers, and programmers meet to discuss if and how this system could be built, it's going to cost some money. This is not a 20 minute "yup we can throw up a React app next weekend" meeting.

Building the thing is going to cost a hell of a lot more than 15 million dollars, it's not a 3 man startup android app. It has to be reliable with high uptime, it has to cope with enormous loads on April 15, it has to be accurate and have no potential for data loss, and it has to be Made in America, no outsourcing for various reasons.

Many smaller nations have had boondoggle affairs with MUCH smaller systems.

It is a system which would have to function for 300+ million people. With every possible financial circumstance ever known.

McKinsey would have likely charged triple.

It's a big, complicated country. At some point you really just have to get over the concept that things take time and cost money, yes even to plan for.

I don't think they already have access to what you own in any practical way. Sure, for any given person they could figure out what they owe, but they don't have the nearly enough resources to figure it out for everyone all at once.

$15mm doesn’t sound like all that much to me to be honest. You’d have to pay a lot of extremely expensive consultants to cover every perspective. And it’s not full time jobs so you have to pay the consultant premium.

IIRC they tried to replace turbotax back in the late 90s or 2000s, and wasted a half billion and didn't produce even a bare minimum system.

The IRS would be thrilled to do that.

The most cost-effective and realistic solution would be for the IRS to simply buy TurboTax AND all its competitors and make one of them the free e-file system. No way a government project could come close to building such a thing for less than the cost of the acquisitions.

If I were Intuit, I'd charge 100x to sell TurboTax to the US Government.

If unicorns were real and rainbows were made by leprechauns, and congress passed a flat tax, I'd be all for dumping TurboTax. But as it stands, they provide a pretty decent value to me. With 1099s, W2s, capital gains, multiple state returns, and god knows what else to account for, I seriously cannot imagine having to fill out my own tax forms. Plus they really do have (and have had consistently for years) some of the best UX of any product I've ever used. I don't mind paying those peoples' salaries.

As stated multiple times in the article, making taxes easier for the average person does not stop people with complicated taxes from getting help.

My taxes are simple; my family’s taxes are simple; most of my friends taxes are simple. We don’t need Inutit making our taxes more complicated than they need to be. I’d rather have free simple filing be done with my government. I don’t need Intuit getting between me and my government. And if I ever have really complicated taxes, I’m sure TurboTax will still exist.

There should be no requirement to fill out any forms. The government should fill them out for you for your "okay" and only if there's issues should you have to do any more than that.

The only reason that this isn't how it works is because these companies have bribed our representatives to avoid it.

This is something that the Indian government has done quite well. Although the website has had some growing pains (68 million filings is apparently not that easy to scale to) it is getting better and works exactly as you described. It even looks quite modern and not at all like a typical government website.

Moreover they also created a parallel tax system that forgoes all the deductions for a slightly lower tax rate so it's very easy for simple filings to just hit the OK button.

It isn't just turbotax - voting to adequately fund the IRS is political suicide anywhere but a handful of blue dots on a big red map.

Which is ridiculous, because the IRS brings in $3 for every $1 of additional funding. It's the only government agency for which this is true.

Keeping the IRS small and weak literally only helps extremely wealthy people dodge the taxes they owe.

There is also a hazard in this line of thinking. The money that the IRS collects is owed only in the most legal of senses. In reality there is very little reason why any individual should forgo 30% of their income for not much benefit. Thinking of the IRS as a infinite money multiplier implies thinking of the people as a bottomless well of money.

The answer is not to keep funding the IRS until this ratio comes to a saturation point, but to reduce taxation till this ratio reduces to a more sane number

> there is very little reason why any individual should forgo 30% of their income for not much benefit

You're right - extremely wealthy individuals should forgo 70%+ of their income for not much (individual) benefit.

> In reality there is very little reason why any individual should forgo 30% of their income for not much benefit.

Other than the benefit of having a functioning society, and some sort of semblance of a safety net.

The people you're paying are the reason you have to fill out those forms in the first place. This is like saying you're happy to pay the mafia their protection money because it makes you feel safe.

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