60M Americans have taxes so simple the IRS could do them automatically
vox.com
vox.com
Much hay is made about how Intuit et al prevent this stuff from happening, and that's true, but the government itself has a very real incentive here. This is the easiest money they can get, as evidenced by the fact it's what the IRS goes after when it's "chronically underfunded."
Why would they willingly give it up by making compliance easier?
Or do you actually believe that the IRS should prioritize their resources on catching poor people trying to skirt taxes on hourly work over wealthy people and corporations that use/abuse the system at the expense of the population of the planet?
People with 7 digits on their tax return get audited a LOT. Low-income people get audited more than people with 6-figure incomes, but they also arguably have lower levels of tax compliance too.
And I have no interest in incentivizing low-income people to cheat on taxes - that will just result in them voting for more taxes that they can cheat on and impose on the rest of us.
Where there’s a bone to pick with IRS behavior, the cause is the people who write the laws, congress. Their incentives are different too. And it turns out if you want to spread anti-tax sentiment, one thing you might do is cooperate with the lobby for making filing itself a difficult and danger-fraught process.
You do realize that the IRS doesn't get to keep the extra tax money it manages to collect via audits, right? That money goes to the treasury, the same as if it was correctly paid in the first place.
I did some digging on where penalties go, and didn't find anything conclusive, but there was a CBO report on IRS enforcement that listed penalties and collected tax as "revenue", which usually means that it goes to the treasury, not directly to a particular agency.
It's the criteria they're evaluated on. It's the driver behind every "for every $X you spend on the IRS the government gets $Y" talking point that legitimizes making the organization more/less powerful. It's the thing the organization is trying to maximize, and that's the rationale they give for where they target their current enforcement.
> One study with the most recent data available from the IRS showed that 21 percent of known EITC errors (meaning an error identified during an audit with full taxpayer participation) were attributable to qualifying child rules; 58 percent of the errors were tied to income misreporting; and nine percent contained both errors.
> Qualifying child errors account for the most dollars of erroneous claims by far. Of the qualifying child errors, 20 percent involved the relationship test, ten percent related to the age test, and 75 percent involved residency. Income misreporting – and in particular self-employment income misreporting – accounts for the second highest dollar amount of erroneous claims.
We do not have that society but that is my direct answer.
If the government really got on the stick and stopped trying to reduce every issue to the correct set of tax incentives/penalties, we could make the tax code something regular people (or, at least, less than a suite of specialized accountants) could understand. This would simplify both compliance _and_ enforcement.
I want the IRS to have enough resources to do its job thoroughly, but we give them $13.7b/yr already. I have a hard time believing we couldn't do the job for that if the policy were sane.
Unfortunately, they are legally barred from doing that. Thank Intuit and the tax-prep lobby for making people (and, most importantly, Congress) believe that doing taxes is supposed to be hard, annoying, in-your-face work.
Because apparently if it was streamlined, it would somehow make people complacent and accept (or not even notice) increased taxes. Yes, corporate propaganda can tell people they are stupid and lazy, and they not only believe it, but believe it's their patriotic duty to believe it.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-need-to-rebuil...
But overall, I agree that way too much of federal policy is doled out as tax credits/deductions/penalties or what have you, but there are other reasons for that, which for me have little bearing on whether the IRS should be properly funded enough to after the biggest tax cheats.
(FWIW, the IRS could easily go after "the biggest tax cheats" right now. They don't need $13.7b to do that. They don't go after them because they're maximizing revenue, which I understand, but it's not like their choice of targets makes a material difference in our deficit, and I'm very worried that giving them more money will just give them more resources to "maximize revenue" and they'll simply never get to "the biggest tax cheats" because they'll never have "enough" revenue)
What power does the IRS have to automatically do anyone's taxes? Not only would that require laws to change, which the IRS does not have the ability to change, but it would also require access to a huge amount of private info fed either by private citizens or corporations.
Since the discussion is about budget it is also worth noting the IRS have its own courts, lawyers, judges that operate entirely independent of the rest of the legal system. They even have summer breaks and if one has an issue it may sit in a queue for several months or years. I just closed out 2020 and that was a simple error.
What amount of private information would be necessarily added?
The proposal is the IRS should propose that they tax you at X rate, and you only file if you disagree. So if you have deductions they can’t know of, then you file.
It would also drastically reduce IRS's own costs, though.
You are thinking of the 1040EZ which, along with the 1040A, was eliminated a while back (6 years ago, IIRC) in favor of making to the 1040 modular (but then the 1040-SR for seniors was added, which kind of reverses that policy direction.)
when you’re not rich, this adversarial assumption leads people to actually hide money. like “oh wow I’ve never been in a situation where my employer isn't automatically snitching on me, guess I wont report and just worry incessantly about venmo payments over $600 for the next decade!”
the IRS simply does far more than enforcement, at a certain point it switches from hiding from the IRS, to filing and hoping you arent picked for scrutiny, to informing the IRS ways you wont pay them taxes (ie. 83b elections, S-corp designation, 5500 for tax deferred plans), to collaborating with the IRS on not paying taxes (ie. 501(c)X non-profit approval, Advance Pricing Agreements)
The passionate overzealous people in the audits and enforcement division are just one part of the IRS, thats my point
There are some very obscure areas of the IRS with pleasant people just waiting for attention to help you with a less used part of the tax code
If you want more handouts for the poor then vote for it. Don’t blame the IRS for enforcing the tax code. They should audit anyone and everyone fraudulently filing.
This is a policy decision from top to bottom.
https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...
Honestly, if that's where the cheating takes place, they should go for it. It is disingenuous to say that they get audited more than the wealthy, though. Because they don't.
I've (unintentionally) fucked up my taxes like a good 30% of the time because I didn't understand something or a broker literally just missed 25% of the transactions I made in the 1099 they sent me, or w/e.
Every time without fail, some 1-3 years later the IRS sends a CP-whatever saying "yea you done fucked up, you owe $X with $Y interest ($Y is inevitably really low), because of Z missing income from your form". And then I just log on and pay and sometimes I send them a reply letter with whatever missing document, and that's it. (Since they know all this, it would be nice if they could just preemptively send me a 1040 to sign anyways, but oh well)
One year they even sent me a check when I fucked up in the other direction. No interest though lol.
And that extra $1k disappeared immediately to make other ends meet.
Also, people should be able to count their own time when calculating tax preparation costs.
They do. I’ve gotten checks from the IRS before, sometimes years later.
> counting their own time
This is not a good idea as my time is $1jillion/hour so the government owes me.
Seriously though, our time is factored into the standard deduction.
In reality the Federal IRS is a paper tiger compared to the California Franchise Tax Board. The FTB will shoot and ask questions later, and that's more than figurative if not quite literal. The FTB once garnished a paycheck while I was in the middle of correspondence with them.
From first person anecdotes I've heard, some other state tax authorities are similarly ruthless. My father got screwed out of a significant sum (in working-class terms) when Alabama came after him on the basis of some fraudulent 1099s (inflated payment amounts) from when he was a construction contractor. He had already moved to another state and it had been many years since the fraudulently reported income, making it infeasible to fight as it would cost too much to collect enough evidence to rebut Alabama's claim. While the Cal FTB has made national headlines a few times, most state services never make national headlines, so everybody just assumes the IRS are the bad guys, when in reality I think the IRS are relative softies.
I had slightly complicated taxes that year and actually called them and spoke to someone who helped narrow down the number of forms I needed to dig up and submit to just a single form from one employer, and confirmed that it was due to the above withholding anomaly. I sent that form and a couple months later they sent me a letter indicating that my original number was basically correct. for some reason they preferred a number that was lower by a few dollars and I really didn't care, so I happily cashed the refund check (which was for several $k (IIRC between $5-10k, which i did care about).
The next year I had to file an extra form - apparently FTB had held my refund for long enough that when they sent it back to me they also paid me interest on my refund, and I had to file for taxes on that interest...
Also, my 9 year old just read this whole thread and has this to say, "you people are just messing around and should get on with your lives" :)
After recent tax changes, there's not a lot of room for itemized deductions. The standard deduction wins in way more cases than before, becuase it was enlarged and common deductions were limited.
The point being the IRS can completely solve accidental mistakes but just telling everybody what they owe instead of forcing them to calculate it themselves.
In that case, from a revenue recovery point of view, going after the highest income / highest discrepancy taxpayers produces the greatest return on investment, with some randomness involved to keep everyone on their toes.
It’s like being able to spam offenders of EITC to spend 25 cents to collect a few grand with a 99.99% collection rate. Versus spending hundreds of hours on a complex audit that may or may not yield any fines and has like 25/75 win rate.
Obviously this means they are able to gather lots of data from different other government agencies (e.g. annual income is usually prefilled) and banks (so bank account / savings numbers are prefilled)
For the majority of people the convenience will probably prevail over any thoughts about the data collection going on in the background.
Also, for us, at least in the Netherlands and maybe also in many other countries, we are usually happy about all this data sharing, because it saves us filling in many forms / bureaucracy.
If you move to another city, you hardly have to do a thing, the old/new city will automatically inform many government agencies about your new address.
I personally also consider this as very convenient, I am pretty much accustomed to all this data sharing also because the data has to be provided to whomever needs it, and is legally accustomed to receive it, anyway.
However, after reading the linked article, it made me think.
I now wonder,are there people who read what happens in my country and who gets the shivers? E.g. from a privacy perspective?
The IRS already has all the same information that your country's tax authorities have. Employers, banks, investment firms, etc. are all required to report these sorts of income to the IRS.
Unfortunately, companies like Intuit (and other tax-prep juggernauts) have lobbied to bar the IRS from making it easier for people to do their taxes. And they've convinced a disturbing number of US citizens that this is right and correct, because if taxes were streamlined and easy to do, that sneaky, evil government would slip through even more taxes, and no one would even notice. Somehow, enough people buy this nonsense that nothing changes.
Taxes, although necessary, should be painful to pay. Every last bit should be accounted for and legit.
If anything governments should send you a receipt detailing where all your tax money was spent.
If you want to educate the taxpayer to be more well informed, there's way better mechanism than inflicting pointless bureaucratic misery and anxiety.
I also suspect most people don't really realize how much tax they pay under the current system, since W-2 employees have the bulk of their taxes automatically deducted from their paychecks and paid throughout the year. Sure, the total number ends up on the tax return, but the number of focus is always either the amount due or amount to be refunded. People doing their taxes by hand, either on paper or by filling out the PDFs directly, may be more likely to realize these numbers, but anyone who uses TurboTax or goes to a mass-market accountant like H&R Block might not even notice.
Regardless, I would much prefer a system where the IRS sends me an email telling me my tax return is ready, and then I can read it over, edit it if there are things I don't agree with or deductions the IRS didn't know about, and then sign it and be on my way. If that sort of system causes people to ignore it and just approve it without reading it, that's on them, and I'm sick of the idea that I have to suffer (and spend money on a CPA[0]) because others might -- might! -- treat their tax returns like a click-through software license agreement.
[0] I use a CPA because I have enough income sources and line-items that doing it myself would be annoying, time-consuming, and error-prone. But everything that ends up on my tax return is still data the IRS already has, and I expect that if they were legally allowed to prepare my return for me, it would be accurate, and I wouldn't have to do much (if anything) in order to approve it.
[1] https://www.irs.gov/faqs/irs-procedures/collection-procedura...
If you have a more complicated return that requires the paid Turbotax software, then when the IRS computes what you owe, it's likely to be a higher number than what you'd calculate with TurboTax, since the IRS isn't going to deduct itemized expenses, business expenses, etc from your income.
If you owe more than $10,000, you probably aren't eligible for the free filing at Turbotax. [1]
[1] https://turbotax.intuit.com/modals/dynamic/?instance=c7YON5P...
No it's 3% plus the federal short-term rate. It's 7% right now.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/interest-rates-remain-the-same-...
If you own a restaurant and let’s say you bought a kilogram of tomatoes for a dollar and it spoiled but you don’t claim it as a loss. How can the IRS know this automatically and refund you?
I mean I agree they can for simple people like me who just have a w2 though…
A small discrepancy like forgetting to note wastage would never be caught, assuming it didn’t make it to Quickbooks initially. There has to be some ability to detect and audit what happened in order to correct it. This is partly why restaurants have been historically useful for laundering and fronting criminal operations.
You might want to read that bit again.
I only caught the mistake the following year when I performed my annual ssa.gov inspection.
In Singapore, they pull your taxes directly from your bank account. What happens if the gets the calculation wrong?
Same thing as if your electricity/water/internet/etc. provider bills you wrongly. This is not a novel problem.
If incorrect, you update to the correct amount and submit. Feom there it's up to the tax office to choose to investigate further or not.
If something happens like you said its simple to match bank payments to confirm.
Regardless, if the IRS pre-filled this for you, then you would have caught it at filing time, which sounds like an improvement, if I’m understanding correctly.
It really depends what the process would be. If I get to approve, appeal, or delay all tax statements before the filing deadline, then this probably is ok. K-1s might not be delivered until after the deadline, resulting in angel investors needing to file an extension every year.
They even know that I bought apartment(shares for it). And I didn't report that to anyone.
I only went online added some deductions for using my home for remote work, half of the internet and some equipment I paid with my own money. About 5-10 minutes of work for some tax-money back.
I really see no reason why make life complicated for your average worker.
Spain is the largest of these by far, with a little under 50 million people. Quick search says about 19 million households.
Did the researchers do their work in a way that could scale up to 60 million and beyond well? Just because the IRS has the data doesn't mean it's easy to do stuff with it. (Thinking about how the ATF has gun databases that are non-searchable.)
Like if you have a system and make an improvement that simplifies 10 million returns in a big country and 1 million returns in a small country, it's worth more in the big country.
That’s a bad example. As far as I know congress sabotaged them on purpose.
Of course it can scale if the conditions are right, but certainly is an "if", unless you've got a lot of knowledge of the IRS's inner workings.
When the GOP gleefully raised taxes on middle class citizens of New York, California, Massachusetts, etc, they made millions of people ineligible for most deductions. The biggest real barrier for automated returns would be which noncustodial parent gets to claim dependents.
Do you really believe this? There seems to have been quite a bit of lobbying by Intuit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile
Yes. Go look up Grover Norquist. Intuit could give millions of dollars to the coffers of politicians and still not be anywhere even approaching the influence of Norquist.
This is the first time I've heard of this theory and Google doesn't seem to have heard of it either... can you expand? According to Wikipedia he's a flat-tax supporter.
Tldr: conservatives who are anti tax want to make taxes painful to make citizens against them. They believe that simplifying taxes would make it easier for the govment to raise taxes, which they’re vehemently against.
The vast majority of things that could be automatic aren’t, specifically due to legislation prohibiting it. For example stock trading companies provide all your trades to the IRS, banks provide info to the IRS, etc and yet the IRS is prohibited from using that to even just provide you a prefilled tax return.
So much information you need for a moderately complex return isnt sent to the IRS.
A good example is cost-basis for RSUs. I have to calculate that myself or i get taxed with a cost-basis of $0.
If you are dealing with RSUs you are not part of the 60 million that could be done automatically.
Are you a dependent [see instructions for criteria]?
Are you blind?
List all dependents [see instructions for critera] and whether or not they qualify for Child Tax Credit.
Tip income not reported.
It goes on, and on and on. Unless you have the most basic return possible - W2 income and nothing else, the tax code requires information from the tax payer that the IRS does not have access to.
I've lived in countries that automatically complete tax returns for you. It works great because it's simple - all your income is added up, then you get a couple deductions based on information automatically shared with the government and that's it.
The US tax code would either: a) have to be radically simplified and/or b) more information would need to be collected by parties and shared with the government.
For some of this stuff (like number of dependents or being blind), it would remember what you said last year, pre-fill, and let you edit (like if you had another kid, or if one aged out of being a dependent).
And this is the thing that annoys the shit out of me about all the naysayers like yourself about automating this stuff. It does not have to be 100% automated! Even 50% would be valuable, but for the majority of taxpayers I expect it would be close to 100%, with the average level of automation in the 80%-range (or even better; I'm being conservative with my guesses here). That would save people so much time and so much money, and it would absolutely destroy the revenue of the greedy, make-work tax-prep industry, which is fantastic.
You mention looking at 1040 to make this determination, but I look at it from looking at the TurboTax or TaxAct prompts. The vast majority of what I'd have to do on TurboAct (I use a CPA now, but used to use TaxAct) is either a) verifying that last year's information hasn't changed, or b) uploading or manually typing in data from documents that the IRS already has. I would gladly let the IRS do that all for me, and give me the opportunity to do the 10% or 20% of the work that the IRS can't automate. I wouldn't need a CPA anymore, for one thing, and I could knock out my taxes in under an hour, and feel confident that they're correct, much more so than if I were to try to do them 100% myself now.
Kinda sounds like what I'm already doing now. Sure, a nice slick government interface instead of TurboTax would be nice, but let's not kid ourselves that the work load would suddenly drop to something negligible.
You say I'm a "naysayer", I say I'm just being realistic based on how complex the tax code is.
1. How much money did you make last year? ______ 2. Send it all in.
For example, the US apparently includes deductions to compensate for money spent on special classes of medication (based on comments in these threads), but in countries with functional healthcare systems that's handled by virtue of you paying a discounted price for the state funded meds (or nothing at all).
My very vague impression is that a lot of the tax differences are because rather than simply subsidizing some things, or paying for them directly, the US gov lets you reduce your taxes at the end of year instead. There are many problems with this (and this policy is applied to things other than just medication) approach where "make this manageable" is wrapped up into tax returns rather than just being handled at PoS. But to be clear this is a very general impression I've developed, and it's certainly not something I'd be willing to say "this is absolutely there state of the world" about, as I left NZ before I really had professional (e.g. not near zero :D) income and I've not personally had any medication, treatment, etc the the US gov has carve outs for.
You're replying to the wrong comment. This is about the people who are not in that 60 million.
But yes, the US tax code is absurdly complicated. A significant part of that is the result of lobbying by the likes of H&R Block, etc - because their business model depends on people being functionally forced to use tax prep companies.
> Note: This information is not reported to the IRS. It may assist you in tax return preparation.
They give me a 1099B that's all zero cost basis, then in a different part of the paperwork bearing that disclaimer give me a "supplemental" 1099B that includes cost basis. Dunno why, but the CPA I asked said it was all above-board and to calculate cost basis off of the supplemental info.
There was no corporate lobbying behind that, just bad tax code that doesn't force brokers to report it.
But you understand that a lot of the documented reasons the tax code is bad, is lobbying by the tax prep industry, right? Their business model is built on it being more dangerous to do taxes yourself, than to pay them $50+, so they lobby against simplifications to the tax system, and similarly lobby to support laws that increase penalties, and ensure that new reductions aren't automatic.
But I don't think the tax prep industry lobbied for how RSUs cost-basis is captured. That's just a byproduct of the US tax code and requirements for reporting on 1099s from brokerages.
I've often wondered why this is the case. My brokerage that handled the RSU grant knows the FMV of the shares on the vest dates. They even provide separate documents listing them all. Why don't they just set the cost basis properly? I assume there's some legal reason, but laws can be changed.
But I think you vastly overestimate the number of people in the US who are in this boat. And even for those of us who have been in that boat, getting 80% of my taxes automated would be very valuable to me, even if I still had to manually adjust those cost bases.
And the reason I can't have that is absolutely due to corporate lobbying and Grover Norquist.
There a LOT of things that are enormously difficult through the neglect or apathy of the tax authorities, not because some faceless corporation demanded it.
They absolutely did. The reason that stuff is so complex is companies want to be able to give stock options at artificially low values so that their employees can defer or avoid paying taxes on them.
I don't think Intuit and their ilk specifically lobbied to make it so brokerage firms didn't have to report adjusted/correct cost bases to the IRS for these sorts of things. But they have certainly lobbied to keep the IRS from doing our taxes for us. They're not the only problem in that regard, but they're a significant one.
Nope. It was that simple.
The UK uses the PAYE (Pay as you earn) system whereby the employer withholds tax from your wage on your behalf and pays it to the government automatically. There’s no “pre filled form” to check. It’s just paid already. At the end of each tax year you get a P60 slip telling you how much you earned and paid in total. Sometimes HMRC writes to you tell you oops you paid too much, here’s a refund.
If you have more complex tax affairs you can request to do Self Assessment and fill in a form each year.
But on an absolute scale, though, I guess this trend is easy to miss. The riots have only involved a few thousand people, and they haven't been incredibly violent or anything, a few people dead but not a lot. If you don't follow the news closely you could probably miss everything but the Capitol riot.
This is unimaginable to me. I can only speak for Germany here, but there was a single death[1] in the last 25 years on a protests. I'm so sorry for everyone living in America.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Todesopfern_bei_Demo... ( excluding accidents )
I've always thought they were on borrowed time for TurboTax but here we are 10-15 years later and nothing at all has changed.
unclear to me if 1099-k could be used to track purchases. I'd guess if you're audited perhaps credit card records.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/othe...
I guess it is also possible for US to do this if they are ever willing to?
In France where this is the norm I guess that 90% of people do not modify they pre-filled declaration.
Starting from this year, if you do not do anything the taxes are automatically filed for you.
Since the app is mobile friendly, me and my friends did our yearly taxes during a party recently, while discussing how awesome their ux is - took each one of us literally 2 minutes :)
So, quite a bit more than 60 million people.
This is still twice less than in France (relatively), I wonder if the "reference" payer is different (a normal job, simple family - the kind of situation easy to pre-fill in the system).
Most salaried employees do almost nothing to manage their tax.
I didn't even agree with the candidate's rest of the policies but it was refreshing.
There's a difference between just asking, "Does your business have any expenses? Okay, what are those?" and actively pursuing the deductions a tax payer may be eligible for.
A tax preparer has every incentive to help a tax payer find the correct and legal deductions. Nowhere in my comment did I say anything about changing the rules or paying more than someone owes. Not sure why this bad faith reading of the comment is so prevalent?
Regardless, I think the GP poster doesn't understand what the IRS is empowered to do. They just enforce the tax code; they aren't allowed to change it.
Anyone who says otherwise is corrupt
Even if it couldn't produce a perfect tax return for me, it would still be much easier if all I had to do was (for example), click a few buttons to upload a few tax-deductible donation receipts, enter in the amounts, read through the rest of the return, and click "Accept".
Even if 20% of taxpayers still had to do their own returns from scratch -- which almost certainly would not be the case; virtually no one would have to do them from scratch -- automating it for the 80% would still be incredibly valuable. Even with a manual check/amend/approve step. It would save taxpayers tons of time and billions of dollars of tax-prep fees.
It's not that it's impossible to automate, but do we really want virtually every transaction going to at least 1 state and the federal government. Do we really want every transaction to have both parties identified? I'd rather keep the option of financial privacy open and just do a few hours of paper work every year.
(At any rate, the sales tax deduction is much less useful now with the $10k SALT deduction cap, as well as the increase in the standard deduction. Even if you manage to deduct $10k in sales+property taxes -- deducting state income taxes is disallowed if you deduct state sales tax -- you still need another $2k of deductions to make pass the standard deduction threshold... and that's if you're not married. It's even less useful if you file jointly. Annoyingly, the SALT cap isn't doubled for joint filers. I really hope it expires without extension in 2025...)
This very likely does not make a difference on your total tax bill, especially now that other deductions are limited (like mortgage interest).
Also, even if sales tax paid did make a difference on your tax paid, there is a simple calculator that estimates your sales tax paid that you can use instead of summing sales tax over all transactions.
If you want to play around with different scenarios, I recommend you try the tool "Excel1040" [1]. It is free but consider a donation. Works great in LibreOffice Calc but pay attention to the loading instructions.
The caveat is that if you deduct sales tax, you are then not allowed to deduct state/local income tax. And of course it can be quite a bit more work to keep track of all the sales tax you pay in a year, vs. income tax.
Things like out-of-pocket medical expenses and business expenses would have to be done manually. But that's fine! Automating 80% of the work is still better than automating none of it. And it would be 100% for the people who don't itemize (which, as I understand it, is the vast majority).
It would be easy for the government to send you its automatic, non-itemized calculations and give you the option of itemizing.
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IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34462122 - Jan 2023 (247 comments)
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TurboTax’s fight against free tax filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31072202 - April 2022 (394 comments)
Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby against it (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856968 - March 2022 (114 comments)
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California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28944200 - Oct 2021 (283 comments)
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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 stops firms like TurboTax from hiding free tax-filing products in searches - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21948935 - Jan 2020 (25 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)
Filing Your Taxes Is an Expensive Time Sink. That’s Not an Accident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19572917 - April 2019 (155 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)
IRS electronic filing system breaks down hours before midnight deadline - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16860086 - April 2018 (97 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)
Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990391 - March 2017 (386 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)
US Senator Warren Introduces Bill to Simplify Tax Filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11492025 - April 2016 (155 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)
TurboTax Maker Intuit Funnels Millions to Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7595440 - April 2014 (182 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)
Intuit lobbies against California's free tax filing service - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1569169 - Aug 2010 (29 comments)
And ... how do you compile that? Or is there a saved-and-updated list that you keep handy?
Once I've built a list that long I tend to trust it as the tail, and then go searching for more recent cases to cons onto the head. I don't keep any of them handy, I just rely on HN Search to keep them handy for me.
So, HN search as in you find the most recent version in your own comment history, then update it for the current thread, is my read. I ... do that myself a fair bit.
I know it's a perennial, but I'd argue that the story is getting too little attention until its mooted by the change it advocates for.
This also means 82% do not fall under this category.
Obviously 60M sounds better than 18%, but horrible misrepresented title.
41% of households. And that's their conservative estimate.
The article does have the important facts that you summarized. Somebody screwed up with that terrible terrible title.
Let's overlook the terribly written article for a second here and focus on the real issue.
A government that just does them for you might sound nice but in the end just makes people even more complacent and subdued. Every tax paying person should be conscious of this. A paycheck withholdings isn’t enough. It’s internalized too much. The yearly reckoning (and massive bill in a year you managed to have sone luck) is a great bit of clear headedness.
While this may be frowned on by HN rules, I don't believe any politician ever believed this rhetoric. At "best," they want to exacerbate the pain of taxes. It's the difference between pointing to a wound and shoving a finger in it.
Plus, most people end up with a return, and many think they are getting money back from the government. Doesn't that counter your reminder/pain of actually filling out the forms?
1) You pay the daycare
2) You pay the birth
3) You pay the food
4) You pay the healthcare
....
basically the list goes on, and all along society tells you to get fucked. Society isn't there unless maybe you let your kid walk alone to the park so they can have the slightest shred of confidence and then they arrest you for "neglect." It's not "we're a society we'll work together" -- no its "on your own you dumb fucker, by the way dont abort or you'll be in jail for murder." As soon as you raise the kid, suddenly society says "Look we need to take 30% of the kids stuff, including for retirement of everyone else" no matter that society straight up told you to get fucked for the costs of raising the child up to become someone who can pay the taxes.
It's that way with everything in the US. We pour money straight into Israel and get nothing in return. Blow up brown kids with drones only to have the world hate us.
Taxes are theft. I'd rather live with McScrooge evilCo that requires a toll every time I enter the road than this fucking dystopia where my tax money goes to blowing up innocent people around the world and the world's highest prison rate.
I am not interested in increasing my annoyance and expenses around tax preparation just because some people might -- might! -- be too lazy or complacent to read over an automatically-prepared tax return in order to make sure everything is in order.
I "internalize" my tax burden just fine on my own, thank you. I also suspect that the number of people in the US who look at their tax return and then go and "hold government accountable" is a number approaching zero.
It's really an amazing coup that the tax-prep industry has managed to convince a lot of people that they are stupid, lazy, and complacent, and it's their patriotic duty to suffer and waste time and money in order to make up for it.
Find a new, better argument than this tired old trope.
So basically it would just say me the time of typing in some numbers but otherwise all the work is the same?
Sure, if you were excessively paranoid, you'd want to make sure all the numbers matched and added up to the same things, but... well, I suspect most people aren't like that. I don't see why we should all suffer just because some people are paranoid.
The numbers that are pre-filled come from the government, which come from your employer. If you're confident your employer would never make a mistake, then you have way more trust in HR than I do.
I've lived in a country where it's all pre-filled in, and you can bet I double checked the numbers. I actually found an error that I had to go back and get HR to fix (they had claimed less was put into a retirement account than actually was).
It was much easier, but not so much because the numbers were filled in, but because the tax code was so simple. You just punch in: a) total wages, b) any kids, c) any donations, d) any money you put in a retirement account. That's it.
In the US it can be super simple if you have W2 income and that's it. Throw in even basic stuff like interest, owning your own home, even a Roth IRA and the math gets complex enough because of the rules around eligibility, or the fact that critical numbers aren't shared with the IRS.
So it wasn't hard for me to just eyeball the total wages and retirement contributions because they are the same each month. No doubt it's more convenient, but you'd be nuts not to double check all the numbers.
Why that means that the rest of us have to be forced to do the same is beyond me.
The near completely lack of anyone complaining that the IRS was mistaken when telling the filer that the filter had a made a mistake provides strong evidence that the IRS does in fact computes people's taxes correctly.
Agent: You claimed healthcare expenses of $4,500. Can you prove that?
Me: Ma'am, I have 4 kids. I always max out my insurance deductible.
Agent: Hahaha, me too! I understand. OK, that's reasonable. Moving on...
It was truly that straightforward and humane. The (fortunately) few times I've ever talked to an agent, they've been pleasant, competent, and empowered to use good judgment.
Gov says we think you owe this much, you say "sure" or you do your own from prefill.
are you guys ok?
In two separate years (that I remember), I did something wrong. One of the years the IRS sent me a bill to fix my mistake, the other time my error was in the other direction and they sent me a refund. So clearly the IRS is already doing my taxes for me. Just they're not allowed to show me their work before I show them mine.
Does your Medicare insurance not actually provide the benefits they claim?
Come on dude