Tax prep companies: $90M lobbying against free tax-filing | Hacker News Reader

Tax prep companies: $90M lobbying against free tax-filing

opensecrets.org

443 pointseverybodyknows231 comments

For most tax payers in the US, the government has all of the necessary information to calculate tax liability through W-2, 1099, and other filings from third parties.

A pragmatic approach might be to use this information, populate a tax form, send out for signature confirming accuracy and completeness. The balance of the tax payers could continue to use Intuit, H&R Block and others to handle their circumstances.

There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad. The more painful tax preparation is, the more sympathy they find with this narrative.

This is literally how it works in South Africa. It’s called auto assessment. You get sent a form to confirm all correct and click submit online. 99% it has all the correct information

Yep. The asinine requirement that we regurgitate what has already been reported to the government offends and steals from every U.S. taxpayer.

For those people it’s pretty automatic as it is, even free.

Yeah, there should be a filled-in form option (where you can make changes) but the reality is that if you have a W-2 with maybe a 1099 or two (with no cost basis complications) and standard deduction, it's really not that complicated today.

> There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad. The more painful tax preparation is, the more sympathy they find with this narrative.

I’m guessing you’re making a thinly-veiled reference to Republicans being the ones holding this up. Congress has had Democrat control many times over the decades, they could have pushed this through any time. Perhaps both parties share blame here.

I think the Democrats (Intuit headquarters in California) are primarily to blame here, but they find odd common ground with a portion of the Republican party who want to run up the debt by cutting revenue (while increasing spending).

Primarily to blame? One side is in near universal opposition to the idea and the other is ineffective/uninterested at pushing it through.

You think wrong.

https://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-optimistic-about-i...

> And while Porter, Beyer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and others have expressed interest in the free direct-file pilot program, congressional Republicans are speaking out against it.

> In May, the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee published a press release disapproving of the IRS' direction to move forward and create the pilot program after its chairman accused the Biden Administration of "cooking the books" in its study that ultimately recommended such a program be implemented.

> "IRS control of tax preparation is the latest step in Democrats' ongoing efforts to supercharge the agency to go after working-class families, after giving the agency $80 billion to increase audits on taxpayers making less than $75,000," said Rep. Jason Smith. "Americans will be powerless when the IRS completely controls the tax filing process from start to finish."

Again, at anyone point in the last several decades when Democrats had control they could have pushed it through. Your quotes don’t change that reality.

When have they “had control”? Do you understand how the US legislative process works? Only for a short time during the Obama administration did they actually “have control” and they used that time and political capital passing the ACA. Everything since basically has to be passed via reconciliation because republicans filibuster everything based on some sort of “principle”. Take a look at legislation which has been proposed, what the votes look like and what the filibuster record is. This is all very public information. There’s no need to pretend this is some fault of the Democratic Party.

> Do you understand how the US legislative process works?

Do you?

> Only for a short time during the Obama administration did they actually “have control” and they used that time and political capital passing the ACA.

Why are you arbitrarily limiting the time frame to recent history? A simplified tax filing method could have been introduced at any time in say, the last 50 years. During which time Democrats have had house and senate control many times [0] and the basic reality of the IRS having all your tax info ahead of time has been unchanged (read: simplified tax filing was possible). That they never seized the opportunity to do so is just evidence that they didn’t really care to, not that some shadow cabal of Republicans had held them back.

0: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/jun/25/control-house-...

Odd common ground is a weird way to say that most democrats are really just conservatives. Both parties bend to the will of big business. Both parties are happy to screw over workers (just look at what Biden did to rail workers). Democrats are happy to screw over real progressives like Bernie Sanders (look at 2016) while doing nothing about the conservatives within their ranks (Joe Manchin).

Conservatives are happy to take lobbyist money and give them whatever they want. Liberal progressive want no money in politics and typically get funding from labor unions.

We need to recognize that both parties support the interests of the ultra wealthy with the exception of a handful of democrats and 3rd party candidates.

> Congress has had Democrat control many times over the decades, they could have pushed this through any time.

It's not that simple. A party's agenda will include several things they want to pass when they have a majority, with different priorities.

For many of the items on their agenda there will not be unanimous support within the party and there won't be unanimous opposition from the other party. The result is that for some of their agenda items they will have to get some support from the other party.

Those other party members, even if they actually like the majority party's bill, will be reluctant to go against their own party and support it because their party might retaliate, doing things like deprioritizing those members bills or giving them less important committee assignments. The majority party might have to offer those minority members some incentive to get their support, such as agreeing to support bills that those members are pushing even if those are against the majority party's agenda.

And so parties have to pick their fights. Making tax preparation easier is not something that a lot of voters care deeply about, and so doesn't become something that is worth pushing through through when you've got a small majority.

Every House seat is up for election every 2 years, and it is very common for a party that has both the presidency and majorities in both the House and the Senate to lose that House majority in the midterm election. You want to spend the time before that on your high priority items.

In Canada I push a button in my tax app to populate everything from the government database. I then add the things they don’t know about like donations, make some choices about my RRSPs, and then file. Maybe ten minutes?

One year I totally screwed up and they fixed it for me, giving me a considerably larger return than I filed. So I’m really happy that auto button exists now.

Which tax app is that?

In the UK it happens automatically for the vast majority of people. You don't even need to think about it.

PAYE (Pay As You Earn) is automatic for all employees. Anything more complicated involves a P11D ie "benefits".

Self assessment nowadays gets all P60 details pre filled in. I run a closed company with two other directors and 20 odd employees. My tax affairs are pretty simple - I don't do anything fancy. It takes me abut 30-60 mins to fill in the HMRC SA questionnaire online. I get a tax calc at the end and I cough up my tax. Dealing with shares etc is pretty straightforward because there is statutory reporting - ie each year you get a standard form declaring all relevant amounts and what to do.

Taxation in the UK is pretty easy to deal with unless you want to take the piss, in which case you don't have a leg to stand on.

I've been on the receiving end of a HMRC audit and I don't recommend it. Bizarrely I came out better off when they found some additional things I could claim for, which more than offset my cock up that caused the audit, including the fine! That was for a former small business I ran (pre IR35) and I had an accountant, that I promptly fired for obvious reasons.

The US is also "pay as you earn" and automatically gets deducted from salaries. For most people working as employees, the tax return is just for you to confirm your numbers with the government's, specify any deductions if necessary, and see if you owe any extra or are entitled to a refund.

I am honestly surprised that learning how to fill out the IRS form is not part of the high school curriculum.

The 1040 form is only two pages long:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf

The software to make this isn't too complicated. This has more to do about being able to legally distribute it since an open-source solution could have been distributed already, but there is too much liability in doing so.

If you want to add e-file to the software, you have to be approved by the IRS and that's where the lobbying/corruption comes into play.

> For most people working as employees, the tax return is just for you to confirm your numbers with the government's, specify any deductions if necessary, and see if you owe any extra or are entitled to a refund.

In the UK, for most people working as employees there is no tax return. There's no numbers to confirm, no deductions, no extras.

Until 2018 there was a 1 page version called 1040EZ

What's the story behind its disappearance? I remember filling that out when I first started working long ago.

Fiji too. Employees never have to file taxes unless something unusual happens.

Turkey too.

Yeah, at this point a bunch of European countries have this setup. As long as you don’t have a complicated source-of-revenue situation (which is true for vast majority of population), you just confirm the tax return on a governmental app and you’re done. It’s extremely convenient, after they implemented a couple of years back, the time needed for tax return each year got down to maybe 2 min if you can use a computer.

Some take it even further. Inaction is considered approval. So you do not even need to confirm anything at all. You are likely to get tax return on your account automatically. Or a bill send at you. Or you can update details if needed.

Still, you have some years to ask for correction even after that, but as usual it is somewhat more complicated.

It's not even that hard if you have a discrepancy. Here in the UK, if you end up with a discrepancy (starting. Anew job, or benefits changes) and it's wrong, 98% of the time a single phone call will resolve the issue.

Data access is a good step, but it would be nice if the gov provided tools to do a declaration online. Of course the Provinces would need to get on board.

I don't like relying on third party apps. Especially that they're now all cloud based so they keep a copy of all your financials and it sucks. Turbotax even does a credit check (via equifax) on me once a year for god knows what reason...

It's a similar level of difficulty in the U.S unless you have a really complicated tax situation. All the major tax apps integrate with the payroll companies, banks, and brokerages, so it's just a few clicks to authorize it to import your data.

I used to do this and never spent more than 10 or 15 minutes on taxes either.

You underestimate the number of people who a) work for crappy businesses that screw up payroll, b) don't have a bank account, and/or c) traded stocks with Robinhood/Webull or traded crypto last year.

That's irrelevant to this discussion.

a) If they screw up payroll and the numbers reported to the government are wrong, you'd have to correct that even if the government sent you a pre-populated form (and if they screw up payroll, but the numbers are still right, then that's also what gets imported into the tax software).

b) If you don't have a bank account, you didn't earn interest from the bank, and there's nothing to report.

c) Robinhood, Webull, and Coinbase all integrate with TurboTax. If you were trading crypto without using an exchange, then yeah, that'll be harder to report. But this will be equally hard regardless of whether the government sends you a pre-populated tax form (which won't include these trades).

a) Well, not quite. As it is, you have to work with your employer to get it fixed. If the government is responsible for populating the form correctly, then you notify them, and they go to your employer. This is the difference between disputing overtime underpayment with your boss and getting the DoL involved. I'll let you guess which is less of a headache for the average worker.

b) If you don't have a bank account, paying for tax prep services becomes more complicated. You're also probably using shadow banking services that don't allow you to import info. Have fun doing it manually.

c) Ostensibly. In practice, they all had massive issues with correctly reporting cost basis and other important figures. So even with using an exchange, you had issues to deal with (again, manually).

So, I'd say it's all quite relevant. Your quick dismissal of such concerns is a large part of the problem.

Are you unemployed, and therefore not obligated to file? The flowchart for that takes about 10 minutes. For anything more complicated, I don’t see how you can possibly complete, review and file your federal and state returns in 10 minutes.

For one thing, it takes more than 10 minutes just to buy a copy of TurboTax.

I typically budget 4-5 hours to fill out the taxes, and give myself a few days to find any missing forms, or call tech support for random corner cases that like to arise.

I also spend at least 2-3 hours a year dealing with donation receipts, etc.

I still regularly either overpay by 5-6 figures, then need to file an amended return, and/or get a (usually mistaken) letter from the IRS or FTB demanding more money.

If that doesn’t happen, I often get mailed a check refunding money with (taxable) interest because they took too long to process my return, which causes direct deposit to fall through.

If you have to deal with “donation receipts” you have an unusual tax situation.

Most people (87%)[0] are better off taking the standard deduction rather than itemizing. Taking the standard deduction, your donation receipts don’t matter.

If you have just W-2 income then filing through tax software is very quick. Not sure if it’s 10 minutes or 30 minutes but not that much time.

[0] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/standard-deduction-itemized-d...

The chart in the thing you linked says most people with 90th percentile income should itemize, and that there’s a greater than 10% chance you should itemize if you make median income or greater.

Of course, figuring out if you should itemize requires the same amount of paperwork as actually itemizing.

Anyway, even when I was a student with nothing but W2 income, I still had to find my W2, and get a 1099-INT for my student checking account. That took more than 10 minutes.

Before that, I had to figure out how to figure the tax on my high school income, which also took more than 10 minutes.

For me, it was typically:

1. Log in to TurboTax and click through a few welcome screens (1 min)

2. Enter employer and AGI - TurboTax pulls in the rest of the W2 (1 min)

3. Enter bank credentials - TurboTax pulls in interest income (1 min)

4. Enter brokerage account credentials - TurboTax pulls in dividends and capital gains (1 min)

5. Enter charitable contributions manually (2 min)

6. Click "no" to some tax situations that don't apply (2 min)

7. Click populate state return from federal, then click "no" to a few more questions (2 min)

8. Enter credit card number and e-file info (1 min)

Total: 11 minutes

I don't see how it can take you more than 10 minutes to pay for TurboTax. You just enter the credit card number on the screen where it asks you for it. And you don't need donation receipts to file your return. If you're audited, you might have to find them (mine are all in my email), but audits are rare.

Do you pay for those tax apps? That's the problem. I don't want to deal with some shitty company. The IRS already knows everything, I should be able to deal with them directly for free.

I found the Canadian process much closer to the US process than what you describe. "Everything populating from government databases" didn't happen. I entered in stuff from my T4 slip by hand. Some financial firms linked to TurboTax, some didn't, and even the ones that did took almost as long to get working as doing it by hand.

I'm primed to believe this because I'm a registered Democrat raised in that kind of household. Is it true, though? The logic makes sense, but how could we really determine whether a tax-bashing neoconservative actively protects labyrinthine tax practices in order to justify adjacent political ends? I'm more likely to conclude that it doesn't happen.

You should do some reading about Grover Norquist, his organization Americans for Tax Reform, and the Taxpayer Protection Pledge that most Republican politicians are pressured to sign. I think you’ll find that your assumptions about what political operatives are willing to do are wrong.

A very large part of the current craziness has been enabled by people so incredulous that nobody would “stoop to such a level” that they ignore the topic completely, only to find out when it’s too late that they do, in fact, stoop down to that level and the damage has already been done.

Ahhh the good old republican pact. This is true. Norquist wrote a manifesto that all republicans had to swear to like it was the Bible or he was the godfather (pre-trumpism). They purposefully screw up or otherwise entangle tax codes to the point where frustration lends folks to be sympathetic to their calling. It’s a classic case of pay no attention to my right hand.

https://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137800715/the-man-behind-the-...

The right way to do this is to remove tax withholding by employer. If people really have to write a check every month to IRS, they'll start questioning more. For quite a few people on HN, the taxes they pay would be more than all other expenses combined.

Yes please. Being aware of just how much tax you’re paying will make people really interested in where it’s going. I’m ok with paying my taxes, but where exactly is that going? Let’s talk about this 35%…

That’s honestly the right mindset. Our brain loooves conspiracy theories. In a way, it’s more comforting to us to think we are lead by very intelligent mischievous people than to realize most of us just do an ok job, have imposter syndrome, etc.

It's not a conspiracy theory when they literally come out and say it.

I would break US tax arguments down along a few axes. Individual political identities line up all over on different ones.

   - Progressive rate vs flat
   - Detailed vs simplified
   - Policy via taxes vs outside of them
   - Low taxes vs high taxes + benefits
   - Use tax (e.g. sales) vs income tax
   - Labor tax vs capital tax
   - Gov-cooperative filing vs adversarial

My read on how we got to where we are is (1) all politicians love byzantine tax codes, because it allows sneaking favors in without repercussions + (2) people love getting money.

Consequently, we get a convoluted tax code that advantages special interests who can lobby, sold and balanced with enough direct benefits to people that they're happy.

Which... is a complicated sausage, but doesn't seem like the worst way to resolve a fundamental tension?

And then everyone stares at the resulting Rorschach blot of de facto tax codes and sees what they want to see.

"Look, it's ridiculously complicated! That's why we need a simple, flat rate tax!"

"Look, it's ridiculously complicated! That's because the corporations/wealthy are trying to screw you over!"

most people cant receive a benefit beyond the standard deduction or a poverty tax credit so they have no need to have an idea of … everything else

Reagan believed paying taxes should hurt - the more painful to pay, the more the public would want to do away with taxes. Reagan did soften his stance while in the White House, but the GOP never got on board, even to this day.

"As Ronald Reagan once put it, “Taxes should hurt.” He meant that when paying the taxes you owe is a painful process, you are very aware that government is taking your money. Then the governor of California, he was resisting the introduction of state-tax withholding, which, he felt, made it too easy for government to take money and too easy for taxpayers to miss what was happening."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-t...

So basically collective-punishment masquerading as informed-consent.

Weirdly one of few uses cases of consent they actually care about

This Planet Money episode[0] has a few short interview clips with Grover Norquist (author of the conservative Tax Pledge). He said that supporting a Ready Return program would be equivalent to breaking the pledge because it is then easier to raise taxes.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...

Ah, so requiring one to file their taxes is akin to allowing them to own firearms. A check against incursions on freedom. That an industry makes a killing on it is just a side effect :)

> how could we really determine whether a tax-bashing neoconservative actively protects labyrinthine tax practices in order to justify adjacent political ends?

We rarely have the ability to truly determine a politician’s motives in a concrete and objective way because many of the decisions they make are not transparent due to lobbying and other forms of influence.

Fundamentally, the American right argues consistently that the government does not represent the interests of the people and actively works to render the government ineffective.

Whether they intentionally use taxation as a means to achieve political gains or not, it’s pretty undeniable that taxation causes resentment when the government appears to be so ineffective. Ultimately, you’re trying to determine if this is intentional or not, which doesn’t make that much of a difference.

As Jon Stewart used to ask on his show when trying to assess the motivations of conservatives: are they stupid or evil? Which is just a simpler way of asking: are they being intentional about this or not?

It's not proof, but it's telling: it's the same reason sales tax is not included in the price of an item, unlike VAT in Europe. They want you to know how much you're paying.

This happens in other spheres. Two that come to mind are death penalty cases, where opponents play for delay after delay, and divorce court, which is designed to be horrible for everyone, and therefore limit the number of divorces. I'm sure something similar happens to abortion clinics when there is a sizable resistance to them.

"But in the United States, filing taxes is painful by design. The tax-collection system as we know it is the outcome of three forces: corporate lobbying, a stubborn resistance to borrowing good ideas from other Western nations, and the Republican Party’s decades-long campaign against taxation itself." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/american-t...

I suspect it’s more conservative politicians have a strong incentive to oppose easier tax filing—they want everyone confronted annually with how much taxes they pay—while conservative voters are cross-pressured and as a result won’t affirmatively demand easier tax filing or punish a politician for opposing it.

> easier tax filing

> everyone confronted annually with how much taxes they pay

The latter doesn’t contradict the former.

And yet we have paycheck withholding, which seems to be a relatively complex system and is also the thing that makes actually paying your taxes easy.

That isn't what paycheck withholding is at all.

Paycheck withholding guarantees you pay your taxes.

Can't forget to file if you already paid all your taxes ahead of time.

Also, it shifts the responsibility for the mechanics of income tax payment from individuals to businesses.

Which... I can see an argument for. Especially when coupled with regular payments vs end-of-year.

It's silly for everyone to individually have to think about "How do I get these dollars to the IRS?" all during the year.

Paycheck withholding is good.

It just isn't designed to makes things easier. That is a happenstance (if you don't do withholding you submit quarterly estimate payments which while annoying isn't much harder than tax season)

It is designed to minimize the IRSs job by focusing on businesses rather than individuals for the bulk of taxes.

The US system is pay as you go, so it is just paying taxes on time, not ahead of time. Tax day is just the date when all your accounts are supposed to be settled up for the year.

Ahead of time in this context is before filing your taxes. Certainly waiting until the EOY isn't allowed but since estimated taxes are due quarterly for individuals who don't get a W2 it isn't that different.

My point wasn't "you paid early" but "by the time you fill out you already paid"

Estimated withholdings are even worse IMO, especially for variable 1099 income.

"How much should I pay?"

"Enough"

"What if I don't pay enough"

"We'll fine you"

"What if I pay too much?"

"We'll refund you, in a year"

Eh, I forgot to file state taxes one year and they spent the next 3 harassing me about it and threatening me with fines. I continued to ignore it out of sheer laziness (was a trivial amount since I was underemployed) and eventually they garnished my wages for what was owed. It was unexpected and harsh; 25% skimmed off every check.

...but--and I don't know where the fault here lies--payroll garnished too much. Pay remained 25% less than it should be and my employer's hands were tied unless I had release forms faxed over, and then I had to go harass the state for a refund. Meanwhile, my autopay regimen was disrupted so some bills were going unpaid. But they were more responsible than I was and paid out in 4-6 weeks as promised.

All the time I didn't spend just sitting down and paying the taxes, I ended up spending on phone hold trying to reclaim overpayments and reactivate services. Would have been easier to just pay the taxes in the first place.

For an eh in the other direction: I overpaid PA state taxes in 2020 by a decent chunk. The last time I called, they said that they're still processing amended returns from 2019 (which you can verify by going to their "Where's my refund" page and looking at the year dropdown).

in the uk, most pay tax by an even simpler method, Pay as You Earn (PAYE). the taxes are all filed by the employer, and the online website allows taxpayers to add anything else

You don’t file a form with the IRS when you get married, have a child, divorce, pay for daycare, spend an unusual amount of income on healthcare, enroll at a local community college, leave your job, switch to selling pottery on eBay, buy a house, inherit money from the death of a relative, …

We could have IRS forms and the IRS maintaining an expansive database to cover all tax-relevant events and amounts, but that hardly seems desirable.

Federal income taxes are complex. Everyone will trip over that complexity multiple times in their lives, Federally-provided “easy file” or not.

EDIT: Just look at the qualifying criteria for the EITC, simultaneously one of the most important tax credits that many eligible low-income filers miss, and a massive source of tax fraud.

https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-in...

How in the world does the IRS figure out automatically if you’re eligible?

All of this can be provided to the IRS through a crud interface in your IRS account and it’s entirely desirable to make paying taxes as easy and cost efficient as possible.

Automate what can be automated, make what cannot straightforward.

The claim was:

For most tax payers in the US, the government has all of the necessary information to calculate tax liability through W-2, 1099, and other filings from third parties.

They do not. And I think most Americans would recoil at the idea of giving them what they would need to compute liability under the bulk of current law.

So we’re really talking about a “public option” for tax filing software. The Treasury Department is giving it a try, we’ll see how it goes.

My comment was specifically to rebut this weak claim you put forth:

> We could have IRS forms and the IRS maintaining an expansive database to cover all tax-relevant events and amounts, but that hardly seems desirable.

If it’s tax relevant, why would they not be collecting and then storing a record of it for the relevant period of time? That is their responsibility: to store, process, and maintain this tax-relevant information in order to compute taxes or refunds due.

Again, look at the EITC eligibility. It includes information like which partner is supplying more than 50% of the support in a household. Primary residence qualification has a similar requirement. The IRS does not track anyone’s primary residence from year-to-year without the taxpayer telling them, and doesn’t assume they know. This is a good thing.

But they could, trivially, using homestead exemption public record data wrt primary residence. EITC can be an attestation online. I prefer systems that prevent tax fraud. If you want to prevent institutional overreach, that’s a governance issue, not “better they just can’t find the fraud.”

In France you have a basic way of pre declaring such things, then your "simple" money sources are pre declared (salary, dividends and interests, also public interest donations you did) then the situation is carried over unless you go and change it. You often mostly just have to look that everything seems alright (it generally is) and click OK.

> You don’t file a form with the IRS when you get married, have a child, divorce, pay for daycare...

Er, yes you do? I'm pretty sure all of the things you listed are explicitly included in the 1040 and associated tax forms we have today. Daycare expenses, for example, are supplied in form 2441: https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-2441

This seems like pure FUD. The claim isn't that easy file would work for all people, the claim is that the present system is needlessly opaque in a way that benefits only the tax prep middle-men. More generally, it's really hard to claim that the US can't possibly accomplish something that many other countries already do.

The claim was that the IRS had all this information for most Americans without the content of the 1040’s they have to file today.

You're interpreting "tax liability" to include every possible deduction, when I think it's perfectly clear that OP was referring to taxable income before deductions.

> There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad.

Is this why the current president hired 80000 new IRS agents instead of making a simple system that presents this electronically for confirmation?

No, but there is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because placating tax prep companies aligns with their campaign fundraising strategy. I assume that our president was one of them when he was a senator, and continues to be friends with legislators who are included in that contingent.

Yes. It is literally illegal for him to make that simple system without Congressional approval.

Yes, but it's legal with Congressional approval. Has he been proposing it, and Congress have rejected?

Yes. The article itself is about lobbying against a law the President is proposing (and pushing through commissioned studies, hired experts, &c)

See eg this polemic from House Republicans blaming him for it: https://waysandmeans.house.gov/report-on-direct-e-file-progr...

And here's some straight reporting on the executive branch trying to implement it in roundabout ways, plus efforts on this bill: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/irs-free-tax-filing-...

It was 80,000 employees, not agents (Revenue Agents or CI Agents), the total includes IT, customer service, return processing/mailroom, legal research/appeals, HR, etc. across the entire organization.

Fun fact, the IRS has people that go out to oil refineries and make sure the transfers are being reported accurately and tax-free diesel is dyed correctly. They have people who advise the State Department on negotiating tax treaties.

Additionally, the total was an estimate of how many employees could be hired through 2031, including backfilling positions. Over half of all IRS employees are currently eligible for retirement, so significant departures are expected in the coming years.

Since you brought up refinery visits in the context of 80,000 hires I guess it is significant. Do you have an estimate of how many full time positions are for going to refineries to look at red diesel? Is this something a State could do?

how do does the federal government calculate all your deductions? do they have every transaction you make every year on file?

>> For most tax payers in the US, the government has all of the necessary information to calculate tax liability

A couple years ago, the US government owed me a bunch of money for taxes, I overpaid, it took the government many months to refund that money, and during that period, the US government could not tell me a single thing about where my money was, or what was the status of my return, or where my money was.

Not a single thing, after many hours on the phone, hours and hours, not a single piece of information.

And from your comment, I gather that you want these people to have more power over me, rather than less.

My answer is simple, no.

While it is true that many people have simple taxes, the philosophical shift is huge. It's just much better for the US citizen to be able to tell the government what he or she owes and then put the onus on the government to seek redress. In some countries, the government sends out a tax bill as if it's a fait accompli and the poor citizens just have to take it.

I realize there are some people who just want to frame this as Intuit is just a bunch of greedy people, but they're providing a service just like others. HR Block does offer some competition and it's often possible to get a free version of their software. I've seen some of my neighbors get the free option. It's real.

I like the option to control my taxes. It's worth the extra work.

> In some countries, the government sends out a tax bill as if it's a fait accompli and the poor citizens just have to take it.

I highly doubt this happens in any working democracy.

What the government does in those countries is just send the tax form pre-filled allowing the tax payer to make any corrections as they wish. You are just as much in control of your taxes in such a system as the US one but it just has a lot less work for most.

In an authoritarian/etc system you end up paying whatever the government says you have to pay no matter how the system works.

Really if you are living in a country where you can’t dispute your taxes when you think the government made a mistake you are living in a failed democracy or authoritarian/dictator system.

That's why the IRS is proposing an automatic preparation option, not "the government sending you a bill." The legal distinction between what their program initially suggests and what you file remains, and is deeply baked into the tax code.

>In some countries, the government sends out a tax bill as if it's a fait accompli and the poor citizens just have to take it.

In Australia at least we get a pre-filled form, but we still need to validate and submit it. If there is a discrepancy we can correct it then. The government isn't just "sending a bill", and because of pay as you go taxes happening via the employer most people are more likely to get money back than they are to owe more - for example if you get a pay rise you are taxed on each pay cheuque as if you were getting that pay rate for the whole financial year, but often people have part of the year at the old lower pay rate and so might get some back.

>There is a contingent of Congress that does not want to make tax preparation easier because it aligns with their narrative that taxes are bad. The more painful tax preparation is, the more sympathy they find with this narrative.

Had me up until here. This is what I'd dismiss as a conspiracy theory.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Oppos...

Perhaps this is just in my imagination, but it seems that there is an element to the byzantine tax process where it's desirable on the part of the government for people to feel that they have likely made some mistakes at some points with taxes, and this produces the feeling that the government has "kompromat" and therefore they should be careful and make sure to not do anything to get any unwanted attention. Of course, there is an analogy to be made with religion and the Catholic Church in particular.

I actually love it when republican politicians are actually and actively fucking over their own constituents while pocketing some money. truly an American dream through and through. sucks to be their constituents though, not that I'm sorry.

The issue is that US tax code is based on a lot of information the IRS doesn't have access to - disability, number of child, marriage status, etc.

And then the other issues is that the information the IRS has comes from 3rd parties like your employer, your financial institutions, colleges, etc. That information can have errors in it, so you need to review everything and make sure it's correct anyways.

This happened to me when I worked in a country that automatically filled out your tax return - I pulled together all the information just like I would in the US to make sure it was correct. And guess what? My employer made an error that would have cost me several thousand more in taxes!

So the benefit is really pre-filling a form with numbers. Otherwise the work is very similar to just doing your taxes on your own anyways.

I'm surprised they don't go for an alternative idea, since the govt has all the data. Make filing taxes online easy based on the info they have, but then require everyone to scroll thru e.g. a "tax invoice" that would break down the taxes proportionally based on the latest budget, with congress controlling the yearly highlights. "You paid $X for war in Iraq", "You paid $X to advance gender equality in Peru", "You paid $X to build a bridge to nowhere", "You paid $X for loan forgiveness for people studying underwater basket weaving".

That might get people's attention... would you rather cancel Hulu or underwater basket weaving?

A step further: I've seen someone suggest before that we should be able to choose the percentages of what our taxes fund. Been in love with that idea ever since.

Tax season should be like Christmas. Most of the time you get a check from the government! It should make people happy!

In the U.K. a lot of people do not have much interaction with HMRC (the tax authority) beyond knowing their National Insurance number, knowing their tax code, and seeing tax deductions on their payslips.

https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/how-you-pay-income-tax

Even when they do, it can be done online, or by post, or by phone.

Anecdote: I rang HMRC and within 60 minutes all of my questions were answered.

I filed 2022 taxes with FreeTaxUSA. Pricing was very reasonable ($15 total for fed and state combined). The interface was better than I expected for such a low cost service.

Prior to FreeTaxUSA, I used TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and Intuit. Intuit does surprise me by charging roughly the same as a CPA firm but for a "do it yourself" service.

What CPA charges TurboTax prices? I'm talking "standard" TurboTax, not with all the ridiculous upsells that you don't need.

I agree with everyone that it should be a completely unnecessary product, but I don't feel that it is excessively expensive for what it does.

not sure what TurboTax charges, but I pay $70 for fed , state, and local prep and filing.

lockhouse, If you want your account deleted, please email the HN admins rather than posting the same comment over and over.

The email address is at the bottom of every page.

Thanks, done!

I still think it's wrong that HN needs my email address to delete accounts and comments, but yes I finally broke down and did this their way.

I'll miss the good parts of this community, but the selective moderation and toxic flag-or-downvote-truths-i-dont-like-instead-of-discuss-them parts of the community have ruined this site for me.

> FreeTaxUSA

> $15 total

Sounds like a scam to me.

FreeTaxUSA is free for federal tax returns, and the $15 charge for state taxes is displayed right on the home page.

In WA it’s free because no state taxes. You can pay money for consulting or for being sent a printed or more expensive binded copy of your return. I’ve used it for 5 years now maybe. So I feel comfortable knowing they have a revenue stream and when I did my due diligence when I started using them a while ago.

I should probably figure out how to get notified if they get acquired or something though.

The real scam is TurboTax charging over $100 for software that has a fixed yearly cost for development and a negligible cost for distribution and is used by millions.

Just wait until you find about digital media distribution.

Well, it's not.

you'd be wrong. I've used it for 3 years in a row with zero issues.

Last year was first year using FreeTaxUSA.

You have to pay... to file your taxes? Just American things, I suppose...

Not only do you pay, you pay taxes on paying (sales tax).

No, they paid a service to do some of the more fiddly work for them.

I use the same service, but for just federal, and they are upfront about state filings costing $15 rather than surprising you at the end like Intuit/TurboTax.

No you pay to prepare your taxes. Inuit and a CPA have more thorough questions for more complicated tax situations. Nothing stops you from using the paper form and sending it through the mail.

You guys can not just fill out online forms from the gov. to submit taxes? And I thought Germany was bad because it was online but about 5 to 10 pages and then wait 2 months for the agency to check.

Happy I live in Romania now where it is basically 1 form with between 1 (company/cap gains) and 5 (lots of extra income) lines to fill out (and 80% of people don't need to fill anything), submit and get your owed taxes in about 5 minutes.

We can fill out online forms for free. I do it every year. The service is on the sketchy looking freefilefillableforms.com

For most people just getting paid by an employer, they'd just need to fill out one short form. For more complicated situations, that site has the other forms you need, and some of them are set up to auto-calculate values across forms.

No, you don't have to pay to file your taxes. You can pay to hv someone else do your taxes for you. The tax code is so screwed up, that it can be difficult to figure everything out yourself; but, you can. I've always done my own taxes.

The only "automation" I now use is an Excel spreadsheet, put out each year, for free, by Glen Reeves, (https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home/chan...)

you do not have to pay. you can do it for free by yourself. there is just a lot of papers, and the language used is confusing to people and they choose to get assistance.

Any person smart enough to work in tech (like the majority of HN community) can teach themselves how to understand that supposedly confusing language and file taxes themselves.

Any person who do not is just valuing their time more than the cost of tax preparation services. FWIW, I only spend about four hours every year doing my taxes myself. Which is less than the time needed to research a tax preparation service, communicate with them, and then check the results.

Do you have investments in stocks and index funds?

I trade stocks, ETFs, options (mostly section 1256 contracts which are easy to report), and I have rental property.

+1 on that... I had a complicated ISO options situation once, and that was the only time I used a tax advisor to help me take the return over the finish line. The only mistake in my taxes was in what tax advisor did; I was able to figure it out by reading the official IRS doc a week after filing. Luckily it didn't change the amount owed, the income was just in a completely wrong field according to the doc.

The docs are pretty well written...

I have limited experience with US tax, I lived there only one year. Everybody strongly recommended to have someone do it for me because it's complicated. Turned out it wasn't that complicated. Slightly more so than in my country where everything is pre-filled and you just sign.

I'm probably stereotyping here, but I noticed Americans are more willing to pay for a service, where Europeans are more penny-pinching and don't see why they should pay for something they can do themselves. I guess American love their businesses, where we see them sometimes suspiciously.

Americans have stories of the consequences, which are very inconvenient

Your one year of living there exempted you from that

What consequences? The IRS sends you a nice letter saying you underpaid. You agree with them and pay them. End of story.

It's not like you are using questionable deductions and barely legal maneuvers. Be honest in the first place. Tell them you had a good-faith effort to do your taxes and made a mistake.

Ive been audited twice for unrelated reasons. The IRS sends you a letter asking you for additional information and how to submit it. Its not even strongly worded

Very inconvenient, I know.

the stories are inconvenient not necessarily the reality

that and most Americans dont have the budget to pay or hire someone to challenge if theyre worried about how to do additional filings

anything and everything that can have a bloodsucking rentier in front of it, does. And they have way more lobbying dollars than us rubes.

But it doesn't make any sense. I understand renters banking on realty, 'cause there are just so many land and buildings and making more buildings is expensive and complicated. But tax filing is just a software. Nowadays we teach kids in schools to write software.

They aren't being taught the tax code, though, and guess who lobbies against simplifying the tax code?

If you set up to create a tax filing online service for regular consumers, you'll likely get your company bought out by Intuit before you can make significant market impact... Fine outcome for the founders personally, but Intuit really doesn't want the status quo to change.

I've only done my taxes with FreeTaxUSA, but I think I'll have to pay up for TaxSlayer for this year's taxes because FreeTaxUSA don't support a specific state form I need to file to save me money (Annualized income installment method for calculating estimated taxes). I did message FreeTaxUSA about supporting that about 2 years ago because I knew I was going to need it at some point.

That's too bad. State tax return forms are the worst. A lot of states don't have the resources to fine-tune their form design, and the instructions are often poorly written.

Do they support importing brokerage statements yet?

It's interesting to think about the harm done by Intuit and other companies' lobbying on this file, and compare it to the language that people like Ben Horowitz have used to describe Bill Campbell, Intuit's chairman in this period.

To hear it from people like Horowitz (in his book), Campbell is one of the best people he's ever met; one step removed from a saint. But the man's actions in stopping free online filing to become a reality in the US have caused incredible harm.

It's easy to confuse a nice person with a good person.

Isn't that the case with everyone Silicon Valley lionizes? People in tech always want to show how much they work for the "good side", when in reality, they're all part of the machine that causes long term societal harm.

I was recently at an event in New York, where they were honoring Kissinger. At least there, no one in the room was playing the part of a saint - everyone knew he was a near equivalent of the devil incarnate, possibly even the old man himself.

To me this illustrates something different than “all Silicon Valley people think they are the good guys”. Eg. Elon Musk is famously not very nice, doesn’t pretend to be nice, and many people have had bad experiences with him directly. But there is a different set of SV people who no one has ever said a mean word about personally, but whose influence on the world is deeply harmful, sometimes bordering on evil, like Campbell’s case here.

I think many people can’t tell the difference between a nice person and a good person.

If any billionaire wants to start real philanthropy, this would be a good start. Spend $100M or whatever to kill these companies and let free-filing happen.

Let's Encrypt for taxes. I'd love to see the day.

I bet if the people had a simple way to simplify taxes, they would attack the billionaire and philanthropy, having a more effective way to understand what tax codes those entities use as well

there isn’t really a benefit in offering these tools when the alternative is another 100 years of “taxing the rich” by raising income tax on the upper middle class

How many human lifetimes are wasted every year by unnecessary tax prep ?

There are about 125 million households in the US. I'm making the assumption that most households are filing a single tax return even if there are two or more incomes. Statistica reports that about 60% of households owe Federal taxes. So the market size of tax filing households is about 75,000,000.

How many small dollar donations would it take to either rival the lobbying dollars of Intuit or create a fantastic free alternative?

Already happening:

https://apnews.com/article/tax-irs-taxpayers-direct-file-ef2...

I’m not holding my breath on “fantastic”.

Track that $90 million, and publicize where it landed. Lots of corrupt politicians and regulators. I mean, I'm sure the money has been "legally" spent...just not ethically. Legal loopholes are deliberately left open...

The vast majority of lobbying dollars already are tracked, I recommend OpenSecrets. I don't think it's any secret that politicians are taking political donations and they (when they retire) or former staffers go to work for them for egregious sums of money.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/05/turbotax-owner-intu...

It's CPS time! Related:

IRS moves forward with a new free-file tax return system - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36804710 - July 2023 (221 comments)

IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950836 - May 2023 (567 comments)

Call on the IRS to provide libre tax-filing software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705469 - April 2023 (129 comments)

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)

GOTO https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35970518

No one can claim ignorance of the tax filing industry, mostly Intuit and HR Block, paying to block any such notion of easy IRS filings since the Internet and ecommerce took off. If IRS standardized e-filing for citizens, it'd remove what, 70% of Intuit's market value overnight, crippling net worth for how many employees and investors of such a fragile industry on the edge of collapse should this happen? Now it is, finally happening.

Finally some common sense took hold to let someone in government see beyond themselves the lobbying cash and veritable bribery that single-handedly kept Intuit their ilk as behemoths in the industry with nothing more than our politicians willfully overlooking the industry extortion of every common US citizen.

Sadly Intuit and like won't die overnight as sadly most silly accountants only know Quickbooks, same as people only know Microsoft Office or Windows itself, but it'll be fun to see them decimated soon once their services are no longer necessary to buy by de facto simply to pay taxes.

Hell, I'm sure if I tell ChatGPT they're a really good accountant, they'd gladly do it for me soon enough too.

For my own one-man electrical shop, I have used a private tax preparer – IN PERSON without a computer – to prepare US-state-level business taxes.

Earlier this year, I used ChatGPT to help me file my Federal 2022 taxes, so I credited this $20/month service under the 1040's "Paid Preparer Information."

Discussing this submission with my tax preparer had her mortified about career decisions (middle-aged female, began own taxshop a decade prior).

I don't know where worlds are heading, but she was honest about "how standard/easy" the majority of tax-filings are. In my own case, I pay for her services on business taxes because the entire tax system IS DESIGNED TO BE DIFFICULT for Average Joe Consumer.

I can afford to not play tax games, can you?

My friends from States for years encouraging me to move to the US. I am not doing it because something is really fucked there.

I am currently is a tax resident of Serbia, which is really a third world country, and I mean it though I love the country very much. No offense. I don't have to file my taxes here, my primary income is automatically reported to the local tax authority. All I have to do is declare any extra income and file tax return form, if I am eligible,via government web service. The most painful process was obtaining a physical electronic key/certificate to access said website. Which is impressive by itself: it is literally government issued Yubikey alternative, accessible by any country's resident.

Also health insurance companies lobbying against single-payer healthcare.

Also telecoms lobbying against municipal broadband.

Also banks and investors lobbying against regulation and oversight.

Also firearms manufacturers lobbying against control amidst an epidemic of suicides and other gun-based violence.

This seems to be a trend.

People who run businesses being opposed to government coming in and messing with them is a trend in the way that firefighters being found near fires is a trend.

I guarantee you won't be happy the first time something you've been doing for 20 years (like cooking on a ventilated gas range, smoking menthols, using a leaf blower, not using afci outlets) is suddenly declared illegal and you have to switch at your own expense and to something worse for no gain.

Like what do you expect someone's reaction to be? "Thank you Mr. Government for completely erasing my market by providing the goods/services I sell to people for 'free' but paid with tax dollars which I can't possibly compete with."

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't make the law or that it's not a net good for society but people will be pissed, they will push back any way they can, and will be right to do it.

I think it's not as clear cut as it sounds regarding "they will be right to do it". That depends on reference frame.

Sure, the tobacco industry is "right" from the angle of their personal riches to push something that has cost millions of lives and fight government resistance. Same for oil companies, plastics, some parts of pharma, etc.

From the reference frame of society, which the government represents (ideally), they are in the wrong to sell put millions of people for their own gains and what you'd want a representative government to do is help society's interests and adjust as the world evolves.

In this case, the reason for making people spend hours of their lives, untold amounts of stress and billions of dollars is so some people can: 1. Make money, and 2. Fulfill a personal political philosophy

Maybe it's okay if governments tip the scales in favor of the masses here...

I'm a black Millennial. I've never had the luxury of thinking of "the government (or private entities, for that matter) rolling in to disrupt my life with new policy" as an avoidable nuisance. I didn't have to wait 20 years to learn that someone is always under the steamroller. Rather, I take a, "What's good for the goose," outlook: hopefully the workers who built their upper middle-class lifestyles off of the unsustainable suffering of others were responsible enough to put money away for a revolt-y day, in the same way people displaced by economic necessity/gentrification/urban renewal/threats of violence were expected to pick up the pieces of their lives and compete, compete, compete against countrymen with generations of relative stability.

It's also quite different when you're talking about unorganized individuals and families versus powerful lobbies backed by wealthy corporations. This is the important part: the latter can use that influence to push laws that AREN'T a net good for society. Both pragmatically and morally, we should have a problem with that. And we also have precedence for, "A corporation/industry that abuses its power doesn't necessarily HAVE to exist, going forward."

>Also firearms manufacturers lobbying against control amidst an epidemic of suicides and other gun-based violence.

They do that, but the largest power block of the 2A is voters.

Maybe we should have as a public policy that when a certain topic is of sufficient public interest, and we observe some amount of $ registered for lobbying, the government should be able to allocate a proportional amount of funds to have policymakers receive competent advice from other sides of the argument. (distributed according to some sound independent judgement)

It seems that we're just leaving a lot of things to who can outgun in $ the other side lately. And sound government will never win in this race.

How is $90 Million spent in lobbying activity? Where does the money go?

Answer: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/layers-of-lobbying

I assume pockets.

The real question is how much money is unreported. Lol

Would it be fair to nationalize the companies at an amount approaching market value? From the company’s perspective, they did solve a real problem that was previously created by the government and it took a lot of time and resources to do it. The government changing the rules would be kind of a rug pull on those companies, even if the new rules are objectively better than the old ones.

Not for me, but how much of your personal money would you like to chip in to bail out the current owners of tax prep companies?

I can think of a lot of things currently happening with my tax dollars that I support less than this.

Also, bailout isn’t an accurate term. The government is about to destroy their industry through direct action. Bailout is when the company fails of its own accord and the government steps in. It would be like if the government started making free medical records software and bankrupted the existing companies.

Similarly, my country is trying to get rid of a coal industry, and they absolutely pay or promise a lot of money to the soon-to-be unemployed miners.

Just curious, what would be the drawback of having a single government abstraction to do salaries?

You register your employee, upload the contract, set the hourly rate. You report how many hours they've worked. Then you get billed and the employee is paid.

Then gradually make the same abstraction for everything?

You register your non profit for donations. The donor is billed, the non profit is paid.

etc

Is there some problem with this formula?

That would be even more bureaucracy and we don't need that. Most people's taxes are complicated enough to need services like taxact, that's what this effort is aimed at. Mostly likely businesses and corporations will always need accountants.

The government wants everyone except a select few companies to be wagies.

Maybe a compromise that would keep both sides happy is for the government free file program to apply only to those who owe tax, but if you want a refund you have to pay for tax prep. Would maximize both tax and tax prep company revenue.

No. That’s absurd, deductions for using the tax system to my advantage should not cost me money. e.g. Donations, mortgage insurance, credit for solar and home efficiency.

Then file your own taxes no need to pay for convenience.

I'm sure somewhere in there we're paying taxes on the taxes we've paid. I don't care one bit about the demise of TaxAct or any of the others. There will always be work for the more complex taxes need for those of us with businesses, employees, etc.

Why do we need to keep the tax prep software industry happy and maximize their revenue?

Why have any capitalism? Because the alternatives like communism are disastrous. If we want a complex tax system tax prep companies serve a useful function.

If their product is better than the free government app, and users find the government app not good enough, they will win anyway. If it's not better, then they will not. I don't see a problem here.

Thats quite a leap to go from "why should we care about keeping these particular companies happy?" to "why do you hate capitalism?"

I promise you there is a middle ground between govt. propping up a valueless industry, and outright communism.

…wait.

Anyway, plenty of other capitalist countries have significantly easier filing.

The government intervening to keep an industry afloat, particularly an industry that only exists because of complex government regulations, is about as far from capitalism as you can get.

Why do we need to give leaches like Intuit anything? We want to minimize the income of companies like that.

The tax code and filing process should be optimized for efficient use of government resources and tax payer time. There should be zero consideration for maximizing the profit of leaches like Intuit. If anything, we should be working to minimize the profit of such unethical companies.

And what happens if your taxes are so complex you can't file and get a refund or even if it takes you a week to figure them out. I'm all for simplifying the tax code but we have what we voted for.

Then you pay someone to help, of course. That's the value add they can offer - no 'compromise' to appease them required. If they don't offer enough value to enough people, then they don't get to stay in business. No reason for the government to artificially sustain these businesses if they can't offer enough value without government aid.

The complex tax code created by the government is the only reason they exist in the first place.

True. You keep saying that we have the tax system we voted for - that was true, once. But what we have had for years now is the tax system that the lobby is preserving for their own benefit.

The checks and balances system makes it hard to change things e.g. guns. But not impossible, e.g. Obamacare.

> The complex tax code created by the government is the only reason they exist in the first place.

it seems like you’re arguing complicated is what we deserve, while simultaneously arguing against people who want to make it easier where we can, because making it easier would somehow be a bad thing (and also somehow that more complicated is a net good because complicated means anticommunism?)

No - complex is what we have. I'm suggesting tax preparers offer a useful service and if government provides free tax prep it would be subsidized with higher taxes. Tax prep companies are no worse than insurance companies would you have the govt offer free insurance too? And free everything else while we are about it.

if a thing can be done better and make our lives easier, yes, i absolutely think the government should.

if we’re going to pay either way, through taxes or pay a corporation, i want whichever will make our lives better, i don’t particularly care which i pay.

while i’m definitely skeptical of government, i’m absolutely just as skeptical of industry, billionaires, and corporations.

in many instances where corporations have repeatedly proven their unwillingness to do something or repeatedly misled/broke our trust (eg, data abuse) or repeatedly failed to even do the thing, im completely and absolutely on board with just doing it ourselves (government).

Th complex to tax code continues to exist because those companies continue to lobby strongly against any kind of real tax reform.

Tax accountants still exist in countries where self filing is easier. And they’re still accessible to the every-person.

> The tax code and filing process should be optimized for efficient use of government resources and tax payer time.

The optimal case for efficiency would be to set the personal income tax rate to zero, and remove all deductions. The feds can get their money from corporate taxes, licenses, import duties, and deficit spending.

Why tho? They've had decades of profits, time for them to go the way of the buggy whip.

I'm surprised that this number is so low. What a deal these companies get to keep an unnecessary product necessary.

Indeed, it’s like medical costs. As you approach death, your price sensitivity for interventions declines to zero (what good is the money when you’re dead). But the money won’t help, this administration has the will to kill paid tax prep. It’s nice to see progress finally getting done.

At least folks on K street are getting some cocktails and steaks out of it.

They also have allies in low tax conservatives who seek to make taxes as painful as possible for everyone, including people who are actually getting a subsidy via the tax code.

Where does 90 million in "lobbying" go such that politicians aren't going directly to prison for bribery?

Answer: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/layers-of-lobbying

I assume wallets.

Intuit and H&R Block deserve to crash and die. They should not exist and should never have existed.

It's paying tax most people hate. The tax prep companies just make it a bit less painful for a fee. We have the complex tax code we voted for. Simplifying it is great - just don't take away my deductions!!

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