Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software
fsf.org
fsf.org
The US should do what other civilized countries do and send you a tax bill. They can give you a simple form to tell them a few things that a lot of people have (donations, change in marital status, new dependent, other income like rent, etc) and then you can either pay the bill or file the regular return because your situation is complicated.
90% of taxpayers only have income the government already knows about, and with some simple data about donations and dependents, most people's tax bills can be calculated and billed.
The only people who would need to prep forms would have such complicated situations that they need a professional.
The problem isn't a lack of FOSS tax prep software. The issue is the need for it, and the cause is Intuit bribing politicians to keep it that way.
In reality there are many smaller variables but I think the single biggest factor is how regulation works. You hardly ever see all the rules thrown out in favor of a new system. It takes more buy in than you will ever get. Instead you can just add or remove a few things at a time. Over time cruft accumulates.
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
The minority of tax payers who have more complicated taxes would still have to file returns like they do now. But the overwhelming majority of those people are probably already going through professionals or using commercial software (like Intuit's) - not looking for FOSS tax software to do it themselves.
However, the callouts for tax return preparation companies lobbying against simplification are still valid. It's also fair to advocate for changing the allocation of energy by the US's IRS from auditing underprivileged folks and slapping them with fines to assisting them in validating that they've met their tax obligations.
Hello nonethewiser,
We have filled proposed tax returns for you. You may either
[Review and pay proposed return]
[Submit your own return]
No, Intuit's hands are not clean in this, and while corporate taxes might be intrinsically complicated (the information does have to enter the system somewhere), personal taxes are largely not.
Well, people using the tax code to encourage certain moral and political views. Whether that's good or not depends on your political stance, and probably even various between particular deductions/credits.
But I don't think it's relevant. The tax code is however complicated it is. The point is that the government already knows, more or less, all the right answers. Put that information, in bill form, down, and bill the taxpayer; the commenter above you is also attempting allow for adjustments (such as for things the government might not know about, perhaps like a donation) to permit for the cases the government already know about. The question still stands: why can that not be done, thus freeing most people (whose tax situations are simple) from the burden of needing to file using today's system?
To your points about the rules, I think even in a scheme where the government sends a bill, the rules can quite easily change. Most of the rules today fall into either deductions or credits, or how we account for various sources of income. (E.g., normal income vs. capital gains.) That much could stay the same, and then the government can adjust its own accounting.
Taxes are just controversial by nature. Every change that raises taxes is going to be opposed by those people who will be taxed more, and when taxes are lowered it will be opposed by a portion of the people that the reduction doesn’t apply to.
No, they instead lobby to make it illegal for the IRS to offer the tools that would mitigate the complexity.
Intuit didn't invent tax code complexity, but they sure fight like hell to own the results of that complexity.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483065-Intuit-board...
Or requirements to pay more.
> Taxes are just controversial by nature
Yes, but that doesn't mean that anything tax related automatically has no solution, you have to look at the specifics. And in this specific case things could be a bit better for many people.
There's also state-level taxes, where I took a number of deductions such as from renting, which is also a minority, again about a third, and again from investing², so that same third again. I think those two minorities won't share that much overlap, perhaps even enough to get to a majority.
(I should note too that these are criticisms of the complexity of the tax code itself; none of this invalidates the point that the original commenter above this thread started with: that the IRS knows all this and can simply compute a bill, on top of which — if required — alterations can be made. That seems to stand. But while, yes, many people — myself included — take the standard deduction, there's just enough other junk in the taxes that I feel like you can fairly easily wind up hitting one or two complications.)
[1]: https://www.sec.gov/spotlight/fixed-income-advisory-committe... though a bit dated.
²Some states, mine included, do not tax income from US government obligations; this is pretty easy to get into accidentally if you're just doing something like a robo-account (which is how I have this situation). But this information is a PITA to get, because it is not captured in any box on a standardized form.
Did you know that around August/September you can log into your IRS account and download all the forms the government has on you for that year?
They would just have to expose that earlier. Or just make the tax deadline October.
Yes, I'm aware. (That's even the argument you're responding to…)
The point is that there are several credits and deductions; some with with P(it applies to me) of ~30%. The point is not P(a given deduction applies to me), but P(any deduction applies to me), and that that probability, I think, is fairly high. To say "yeah but most people can take the standard deduction" is a true statement, but it ignores where the complexity of taxes is. (Heck, I took the standard deduction, and again, there is information required for taxes that is known to all the relevant authorities — just not me, at least not via any official means. If it's input to the tax code, it should be given a Box on a tax form, a the very least.)
But that's a simpler procedure than forcing them to compute most of what the IRS knows from scratch.
¹But if you want to, that's fine too, it's just not what this thread is about.
At one time the rich in theory paid 90% tax rate, but via deductions that needed an accountant could get their real rate down to the mid 30%. Now most deductions are gone and their real rates are still in the mid 30% range. The rich needing accountants spread the idea that taxes were hard for most people when in fact with basic 4th grade math they were easy for most people.
I do use software. while taxes by hand are not hard, the computer doesn't forget to copy line 13b from form 1234 to line 36d of form 9876 - as I did one time. The IRS caught that mistake, but then I had to redo my state taxes, and the whole thing was a pain - all caused by forgetting something a computer does automatically.
Tax software makes it seem hard by adding a lot of waits while they calculate. In truth any 8 bit computer could do your taxes in less than a second once the numbers are entered - the rest is just artificial waits to make it seem like it is more complex than it is. That less than a second includes calculating all scenarios to see if you can save money with some deduction or not.
The above applies to 90%. There are situations where you need help - but if you don't already have an accountant to help you with your books that isn't you, and taxes are easy.
Having a complicated tax code certainly makes things difficult in general, but has very little to do with the issue at hand.
The IRS could send you an email in March every year, where you click through to their tax portal. It would show you a list of all the income and deductions and other miscellaneous things they know about. If you have extras, or if any data is incorrect, you can click around and add and change things. It might also start with a short questionnaire to ask if any tax-relevant things have changed about your life (change in dependents, change in marital status, etc.).
For the vast majority of US taxpayers, they won't have to change a thing, and it would take them minutes to finish up.
Yes, there are a lot of rules in the US tax code that can make things complicated. But -- critically -- these things do not apply for the vast majority of taxpayers. For those for whom it does, yes, they will have more work. But it's still going to be less work than the current regime, and none of this precludes having a CPA take care of it for you if you'd prefer that.
I suspect even many of us tech-job types wouldn't have much extra to do. The main thing we'd have to fill in ourselves would be cost basis adjustments for RSU vests. (But really, law should be changed so that brokers are required to report that info to the IRS as well; so dumb that it isn't the case.) The IRS could easily keep track of capital loss carryover, AMT credits, etc., over many years if necessary.
It feels like the argument is often "this won't 100% work for 20% of taxpayers, so we should make the other 80% suffer... and make the 20% still do more work than they'd otherwise have to do".
There are still really just two main reasons we have to do our own taxes:
1. Companies like Intuit who lobby to make it illegal for the IRS to do it for us.
2. Buttholes like Grover Norquist who actively convince people that it's necessary to feel the pain of filing taxes, lest the government slip in new taxes that we don't notice (largest eye-roll in history).
The cost basis thing used to be a nightmare. At one point with some old stock that got converted to another company's stock with an acquisition, I just threw up my hands and put in a plausible number. (It wasn't a huge amount of money in the scheme of things.) But these days, the only time I've had to manually provide a cost basis to my accountant was when I was donating some stock.
Probably for the same reason that it's rare to see entire codebases scrapped and rebuilt from scratch (and that when you do, it's often the case that you end up with something that isn't an improvement). The judgment behind it has a lot in common with "look at all this terrible complicated code, this could be way simpler, let's just rewrite it." Which also sometimes is hard to get buy-in on, and thank goodness the industry has learned some Chesteron's Fence lessons.
The tax code (like other forms of regulation) does stuff, it's a tool for policy as well as revenue, it creates and reshapes incentives. Criticisms of specific things it does or how it does them make sense. Vague criticisms like "cruft" or "complicated" should be for people who don't have a technical or systems mindset.
And that's before we get to other points. Like the facts that for most people with some W2 income and a few investments, taxes aren't complicated, the system for filing them is, and the reasons for this are some specialized interests combined with partisans who suppose an advantage to making filing aggravating. And where taxes do require professional involvement, that has as much to do with the complexity inherent in situational judgments as proliferation of rules.
FreeFileUSA lets you e-file your federal taxes for free even.
The problem is that most people don't know about such things and don't feel comfortable filling in the needed data anyway.
Plus most states have the same requirements and make filing even harder.
The reality is America is incredibly difficulty to change. There are just too many people and groups with interest.
And I don't even mean this in the conspiratorial way--it's just that simple taxes are in opposition to some of our other goals.
For instance, we want simple taxes. But we also want to use the tax structure to incentive certain actions (having kids, buying an electric car, or whatever). Every exception is another check everyone else has to do. This is why every year you need to select whether you were a member of the railroad workers union, or invested in tribal lands, etc.
I just am very pessimistic about America's ability to adjust. America is legacy software.
By analogy, there's no way we could have reformed the taxi system. It was only by flanking the issue that anything changed.
I may have missed that vote.
Most of the rest take some pretty standard deductions so with a simple form would be able to input those and have their bill updated.
I can see and empathise with their concerns, but... eh. Just let me have my form thank you.
I really miss the UK's PAYE system.
Shifting to a higher consumption tax would put the onus on businesses that sell things, not the average person.
It would also greatly reduce the need for governments to surveil citizens to make sure they're not evading taxes.
I could imagine a scenario where everyone from your average taxpayer to a large corporation uses the same desktop application to pay taxes. For most taxpayers, they'd fire it up and it downloads all the relevant data from the IRS and asks you if it's correct -- done in five minutes. If people need to add more information they can enter it.
You could accomplish the same thing with an IRS website, but I think it's a little better if there's a desktop app that talks to the IRS over a standardized API, as it means users aren't locked into using the app if they don't want to, and if the source code is available then if someone wants to add features or improve the interface, they can. It's also good to have the business logic be out in the open in a way that users can inspect and change.
(Best case might be an app that can run either as a stand-alone desktop application, or as a web app. The IRS could run their own instance for users who just want a website with the default experience and don't want to install software. States could also run their own instances with whatever extensions they need so you can figure out state taxes at the same time.)
It seems like it should be possible to do so up front and pre-fill the form online on freefilefillableforms. Then you could either accept it as-is or make changes as needed.
Can't these people already file their simple tax returns for free using a number of tools (including Intuit/TurboTax)?
This is absurd. Particularly with W2s and 1099s and the like, the government knows what your tax bill should be anyway and is just sitting there waiting for you to mess up complicated forms and penalize you.
If you can read a W2, and can do basic arithmetic, you're done. As my parents said years ago, "You think it's really that hard when they just grab a bunch of people off the street, stick them behind a folding a table call them H & R Block?"
It's only when you start having to deal with itemized deductions, self-employment, multiple investments, and all the stuff that quite frankly poor people can't afford, do you start to need help, and even then, the filing isn't that big of a deal. It's the structuring to reduce taxes prior to tax day that's complicated as hell.
If you want to put $100 in some stocks, it isn't going to cost anymore than that today.
Thinking they have savings is just the chef's kiss of out of touch.
And for many people, even $50 a month can mean the difference between being hungry or not, or paying rent or not. It's a very bad state of affairs.
There was a time in my life when $100 was my monthly food budget. I had to get dental work done, and even with insurance, it was $400. I had to take out a god damn credit card to pay for it and cut my meager food budget even further to make payments.
In my (admittedly limited, personal) experience, the consequences are not so great. They send you a letter letting you know what the mistake was, and how to fix it. And then you fix it. The IRS isn't out to punish you, they just want what they're owed.
Playing it up like screwing up your taxes will get you the death penalty is a myth perpetrated by the tax prep lobby.
They’ve even done that to me when I made a mistake that resulted in a smaller refund; they sent the “you fucked up” letter along with a check.
Even the year that I screwed up massively by not realizing I needed to pay the AMT, they just sen me a bill.
The experiences left me thinking that the people that constantly fear monger about the IRS are just out and out committing massive tax fraud. Probably not a coincidence that these are the same people complain the loudest about tax enforcement.
And again, if the government already knows your income to this level, why don't they send you a tax bill and completely eliminate the time, energy, and stress that average people face preparing taxes.
The only one I know of personally was a friend misfiled his taxes and didn't allocate cost basis for day trading so the IRS had each sale marked as a cost basis of zero, and they sent a letter saying "you owe $800k in taxes based on this" but all he had to do was dig out the cost basis and refile.
And yes, for the vast majority of people who do NOT own a business, they could just send you the 1040 already filled out (there's actually a way to get them to do that IIRC, something like you file for an extension and then request "what tax info do you have on me and the result is basically a filled out 1040).
Is this the end of the world? No. It is stupid, stressful, and potentially ruinous given the economic reality that huge swaths of people can't sustain a surprise bill (outdated and likely worse by now: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-...).
Now, the cohorts who can't absorb a surprise tax bill likely fall into two camps: unlikely to be hit with a surprise tax bill - their taxes just aren't complicated enough, they don't earn much, etc. But at the same time, surprise 'income' like debt forgiveness can still hurt people.
If that's too hard, that's not Intuit's problem. They shouldn't be forced to go FOSS if they don't want to.
For businesses, complicated households, people dealing with particular life events (divorce, inheritance, special medical deductions) it's a bit more work but still doable.
Our government is strongly incentivized to make taxes easy and even came up with a slogan: "taxes. we can't make them more fun, but we sure can make them easier".
It's clear why they want to make it easy: it takes an army of very expensive staff to address endless questions. And then some even more expensive staff to address tax appeals.
You don't even need to make it complicated and walled-garden with eFile, just have the program end up with a printable PDF that you mail to the IRS.
Want to incentivize the IRS to open their eFiling system so someone like the FSF can eFile or make their own ? Just send 10,20,30m paper 1040 forms. That will quickly cause the IRS to want alternatives. This will never work for a simple reason.
The problem, as I see it, is that people misunderstand what value online eFilers offer their customers.
I could have gone on TurboTax website the day I got my W-2, filled out their forms and "get your money in as little as 1 minute," deposited directly into their bank account where you get a virtual debit card. Regardless of your opinions about that scheme, many people are very attracted to it and in my hypothetical paper filing logjam scenario it might take 6 months and legislation to resolve it, nobody wants to wait for their refund, not even for the week or two it takes the IRSs normal ACH, I want it in 1 minute! This is (part of) the real perceived value from companies like TurboTax. Is the FSF going to fund advances like this? Of course not.
The other half of the value proposition from them is protection against mistakes. Again, regardless of the actual utility of these claims, some people are very afraid of making seemingly minor errors on their tax return and being faced with a huge tax bill with huge fees and fines and penalties. Yes, I know that the IRS is actually a semi-reasonable organization and for the average filer the chances of having something like this happen is effectively nil, but, people are attracted to the security of those protection guarantees. Is the FSF going to back their software with a similar liability promise?
It's easy to recruit developers to make the next best editor. It's another to get them to read tax law.
The FSF just doesn't have the ability to do a good job with tax software.
and then after the CPA and tax counsel does it one year, then I know how to do it future years and its back to the excel spreadsheets for me
The french already do this as of the 90's, and there was a modernization effort detailed here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3446804.3446850
There is no one single professional, bureaucrat, or representative that understands the simultaneous and interrelated parts of the tax code.
And from I can tell, telling people what compliant thing you found almost guarantees that it changes.
There is an incentive to let the rest of people operate in ignorance and disbelief, while they squabble over “fair share” without defining what that is.
Edit: I think it's this one: https://policyengine.github.io/policyengine-us//index.html
Edit 2: _This one_ is the actual one, policyengine just wraps this: https://taxsim.nber.org/taxsim35/
The fact that I couldn't even find the info I needed online for /what/ I needed to file (let alone /how/) makes me furious. Having to pay ~$400 for someone else to enter basic info feels like robbery. I think for next year I can figure it out but I'm still wary (TaxAct kept asking for all these forms I didn't have and couldn't tell if I needed to "generate" them from my LLC to myself or if that was only for partnerships/corps).
I have zero issues with paying taxes, in fact I'm somewhat happy to pay them but figuring out what I owe is miserable and fills me with anxiety and dread that I might mess up something and get in trouble.
Unless you have an actual tax accountant, you’re just paying some teenager to enter your data into a higher-cost version of TurboTax.
https://johntreed.com/products/aggressive-tax-avoidance-for-...
This book is aimed at the real estate investor but may still be worth a read.
Humerous sidenote I always thought it was kind of funny that the software is called Elster (magpie). At least someone in the government had a sense of humor.
That there, yes! Since it benefits all citizens there is no reason why it should not be able to continually improve and become better so that said benefit grows over time for all concerned. If closed source and / or proprietary, those things will almost certainly only happen in ways that benefit a small select group (the owners of the "IP" / source). If open source / FOSS, then anyone who understands code, or who can hire someone who understands code can contribute improvements and bugfixes that benefit the "greater good". This is one of the "superpowers" of FOSS that few seem willing or able to grasp.
People just don’t care enough (a state like California could make it illegal to charge for e-filing, for example, but they don’t).
To save even more money, I wonder if they could even take a page from real estate law where easements for public benefit are sometimes purchased either through the free market or via eminent domain. Under this theory, they wouldn't even have to purchase full ownership of whatever's necessary for US filing purposes, they'd just need to purchase an easement transferring to the federal government Intuit's right to charge US citizens and resident noncitizens for US federal income tax filings via TurboTax, as well as the right to deny these groups TurboTax's US federal income tax filing services. And then the federal government would decline to exercise these two transferred rights.
But yeah, I have no idea if the easement idea would hold up in court, and in any case I doubt the government would be politically willing to use eminent domain against Intuit despite indisputably having the right to do it.
Mixing in the FSF desired source code licensing would muddy the waters, and I don't think it would provide anything 99% of tax filers care about.
Who here looks at the current US government and thinks “this is working great, let’s have more of it?” Because that’s what more taxes does. It doesn’t fix deficiencies.
Didn’t take 5 minutes before the “roads are good” straw man emerged.
We've got some seriously great government programs. I won't stop you from criticizing the visible parts of the government (politicians can be quite frustrating) but Medicaid and Medicare are both extremely efficient and Social Security is basically why we have such a high expected lifespan. Personally, I am quite thankful for the roads, rail lines, sewage and all the other things living in a modern society gives us.
The construction of roads and rail lines though is enormously overpriced though. It's not like they'd just disappear if we stopped paying taxes.
Instead why not just pay for them directly and get _a lot_ more of them? What if your AAA membership built the actual roads you're driving on and you could buy an unlimited pass, or a pass based on your actual mileage or something like that?
We don't need parallel highways built just so corporations can compete on who has the best roads.
And I'm imagining a scenario where one company sells their road network to another, and the new one decides they hate SUVs and so won't allow SUVs on their network, and suddenly my neighbor can't leave the neighborhood because he drives an SUV for work.
Not to mention the extreme number of tolls booths you might have to set up.
Everybody I talk to agrees that they only use 5% of the features so nobody would miss them!
Its more common for me to think “This works badly, because its obviously underfunded”, actually.
Particularly when I have to deal with the IRS.
Edit: the fact that it requires software proves my point. No one thinks it’s a difficult programming problem.
This is not a real problem.
(In response to your edit) Do you think accountants are currently working by slide rule? The tax code is currently extremely corrupted by loopholes and exceptions. My original hyperbolic statement was to highlight that the graduation of income tax is dirt simple. We've currently got seven tax brackets and it is trivial to calculate what you're going to owe based on them, even if we pushed seven to a thousand it's still a trivial calculation to run.
Imagine the political seismic shift when people head to polls realizing how much their government is taking out of their pockets.
There's a lot of people who want the government to stay out of medicare ...
People might feel like not-heres-ville shouldn't get government funding for whatever project but when it comes to any less funding for heres-ville there will be complaints. Its basically reverse NIMBY. You think Iowans want the government to do less weather prediction or crop testing?
So? Withholding formulas can be separate from the main tax formula (heck, they can be “withhold at your personal overall rate for the prior year”.)
> 1000 brackets makes things a lot more complicated.
For whom?
> the fact that it requires software proves my point.
It only requires software to generate the tax tables. Every other use can just use the lookup tables.
…
> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes
— The Constitution of the United States
Oh, and the 16th Amendment,
> The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived
How far to the right do you have to go when you start considering the Constitution is shaky? I mean, yeah, people quibble over interpretations, but the 16th Amendment is pretty explicit.
Not that far? For example, the GOP in Texas's Senate passed a law requiring the Commandments in public schools. I find that hard to view as anything other than direct contempt for the Establishment clause. The only pragmatic reading of such a law, should it become law, in today's political climate, is that it exists solely to be challenged, on the hopes that the Supreme Court will … IDK, strike that portion of the 1A or otherwise reinterpret it as completely ineffectual? The Establishment clause is also quite clear (though I grant, not as clear as the 16A, but not as vague as say, "A well regulated Militia" makes the 2A). That's not the only such law, or portion of the Constitution, either, though I'd certainly say it's one of the more clear ones…
How about no? How’d you pick those numbers and a two-tier system? (“Let’s set the top marginal rate of our only tax to approximately the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio of the OECD” is, I suppose, a choice, but its a very odd one.)
> Income happens when it is realized or upon transfer.
In any progressive (including a two-tier like this, which, while far less progressive than the status quo, is still technically a progressive system) system that brings LTCG in line with general income taxation, you also want to allow advance recognition (for sure) and maybe deferment of income spikes, otherwise you end up taxing income that takes multiple years and is nonrepeatable the same as current and repeatable ongoing income, which is unfair to people with irregular income through capital. Doing this, and applying equally to regular income, also is more fair for people with irregular non-capital income, which may be a less-common pattern, but definitely happens.
> this is the fairest way I can think of supporting savers, supporting investing, supporting small businesses, and allowing the wealthy to be taxed at a reasonable rate.
It radically cuts taxes on the wealthy, and "supports" all those things by cutting taxes on the wealthy people doing them. Its just a giant downward shift of net tax burden that also is a massive cut in overall tax revenue.
> This also incentivizes congress to actually grow the GDP and work within a budget.
No, it doesn’t. (I mean, there are incentives to both of those, especially the first, that exist independently, but this doesn’t add to any of them.)
the government can figure out how pay interest on its borrowings any way it wants, its just not desperate enough to figure it out thanks to its rent seeking behavior
https://www.irs.gov/privacy-disclosure/irs-freedom-of-inform...
This is why attempts to simplify the tax system never go anywhere.
60M Americans have taxes so simple the IRS could do them automatically - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35476709 - April 2023 (277 comments)
Lobbyists begin chipping away at Biden’s $80B IRS overhaul - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35381701 - March 2023 (214 comments)
Intuit pouring money into lobbying amid push for free government-run tax filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34840039 - Feb 2023 (178 comments)
IRS builds task force to explore running its own free e-file system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764952 - Feb 2023 (199 comments)
IRS Free File: Do Your Taxes for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34462122 - Jan 2023 (247 comments)
IRS will look into setting up a free e-filing system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32753099 - Sept 2022 (408 comments)
The IRS could be on the verge of changing the way Americans file their taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32550841 - Aug 2022 (17 comments)
IRS will study free tax filing options - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32502321 - Aug 2022 (25 comments)
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)
FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846071 - March 2022 (587 comments)
Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122 comments)
Why do Americans have to pay much to file their tax returns when the IRS knows? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30267361 - Feb 2022 (22 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)
California tried to save the nation from tax filing, then Intuit stepped in - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28944200 - Oct 2021 (283 comments)
The IRS has a big opportunity to fix the way Americans file taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177289 - Aug 2021 (12 comments)
UsTaxes – open-source tax filing web application - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27998452 - July 2021 (53 comments)
Good Riddance, TurboTax. Americans Need a Real ‘Free File’ Program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27902380 - July 2021 (248 comments)
Intuit will no longer be a part of IRS Free File program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865625 - July 2021 (140 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 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)