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Comment by enterthematrix | Hacker News Reader

Intuit is a bunch of vampires stealing money from Americans. Every developed country in the world has a relatively easy tax system for citizens, but only the US operates in this insane way where they willingly tax citizens by not providing them with an easy way to do taxes, and instead sends them to the wolves of Intuit and others.

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Why blame intuit for our crappy tax policy? Sure, they might lobby for more complexity, but the legislators that we elected pass the laws.

Intuit is directly responsible for a long and aggressive lobbying effort to keep tax filing expensive and privately run.

Yes, but any public representative should easily see past that nonsense. It's their entire job.

My kids are directly responsible for a long and aggressive lobbying effort to eat ice cream every night.

Because we are effective parents and do our job, they don't get their way.

I can't see why our elected representatives can't manage to act with the same level of responsibility.

Those voting won't recall the politicians because the people are distracted by the latest divisive outrage.

Do you expect voters to switch sides of the aisle over this issue? If not, then politicians have no reason not to take industry money. After all, if you have access to all the campaign and other funds without losing voters, then it would be idiotic not to follow the money.

Because elected reps believe that they need to support constituent businesses in addition to constituent people. And those constituent businesses spend more money to ensure they are heard.

I have often wondered if we could split the house in two: one for people and one for industries. This would force transparency and bring the primary issue of double speak and lobbying to the forefront. It would turn them into official cogs in our body politik instead of forcing reps to work and speak in a duality.

Two parties can both be to blame.

Please read the article next time.

>Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee in June proposed a budget rider that would prohibit funds to be used for the IRS to create a government-run tax preparation software, unless approved by a group of House and Senate committees.

>The move “safeguards the IRS from an obvious conflict of interest where the tax collector becomes the tax preparer,” the bill’s summary states.

That doesn’t contradict what I said. Did you uncharitably assume “parties” meant political parties?

Also, per the site guidelines, please don’t make unnecessary accusations that someone has not read the article. Pointing out what the article says is enough—the self-righteousness doesn’t add anything.

As someone from a country with ludicrously (needlessly) complicated tax law: Unless you have a really complicated situation, you just get a pre-calculated form on a government site you basically just have to look at and approve. That covers about 90%+ of everyone.

Even developing countries! In my shitty country this year I got an email, and 2 days later my tax return money showed up in my bank account. I need to fill out some extra forms to claim my work from home tax benefit, but it's a minimal amount of effort, and it's optional.

> Intuit is a bunch of vampires stealing money from Americans.

Let me introduce you to HFT.

Free tax filing through the government? Why that’s basically communism!! Free enterprise is the best option for everything!! /s

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