Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode
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A more graceful way is to make the govt data available for import. And then build products around that data. And that gives way to open source solutions in the future. And other projects too.
Just yesterday I was in a driving situation in which I lost visual sight of an intersection that is usually very busy (because oncoming cars are pilling up around a 90 degree bend and blocking visual just on the other side of the bend). This is a fairway for me without any traffic signals. While the intersection into the fairway has a stop sign (T style intersection). Because visual was lost, I made the decision to lower my speed considerably in EXPECTATION that a car would enter the roadway dispite not safte to do so. Normal speed for this roadway is 60mph but I lowered to 40mph. I did not hit them because I expected them. I still honked though.
Now imagine this sensibility being taken and stretched across a wide spectrum of people. You will find all sorts of behavior of people trying to be safe but making the roads frustrating and patience challenging. The point is that a judgement call works in a few limited scopes in really good ways. Other times, it does not work.
And so expectations of others is limited to what they understand. In this case, it is for their survival.
Capitalizing off a broken system means inventing and selling solutions. And keeping the system broken.
Law firms work to keep the laws complicated. So that you need lawyers.
Mechanics work to keep car parts difficult to self repair. So that you need mechanics.
Tech hardware companies work to keep the repair business running smoothly. Otherwise the repair industry is gone. And so is the repair servicing for their product.
Oil companies work to keep car on oil and not natural gas. So that you need oil. When oil company owns a natural gas business, do you find that either they don’t care or push everyone to the items more profitable.
Train companies (obsolete) work to keep people traveling (no work from home). And alternative transportation suppressed. So govt forbid train companies to invest in bus companies. Or the other way around.
No. It is a business's responsibility to survive. And responsibility to profit For the future and protection of its workers. And the rights that extend from that responsibility means that you try to keep threats to the business reduced. The rights do not extend to hurting others for the mere protection of your own.
Such was the case in competition between Uber and Lyft, where Uber founder tried to sabotage Lyft's funding. This is not helping Uber. Just hurting Lyft. If Lyft on the other hand were to fund Uber's competitor in certain markets, that would be ok. Because someone else is being helped.
If you fuck up the best thing to do is just ignore it and pray no one notices. I don't think many readers of this outlet really care all that much about this topic. I mean, international readers don't care about US taxes all that much and generally people don't care.
This lobbying is pretty egregious though. But generally lobbying laws in the USA are problematic. In many countries these practices are considered illegal.
This, however, has become very much juicy gossip now, so as someone else mentioned. It's going to be the Streisand effect.
Shouldn't that prompt introspection about what you're doing in Congress, sasan?
Among my tech friends Intuit’s reputation is already mud for standing against human decency on tax filing reform for 30 years, but non-tech-sphere people are always surprised to hear about the Intuit lobbying & deception stuff.
A few years ago, I filed my taxes and forgot to report some stock sales and therefore some short-term capital gains tax. More than a year after I filed, the IRS sent me a bill for about $8000, $7000 for the unreported capital gains, and a $1000 fine. I wasn't really upset about having to pay the $7000; if I owe the money then I owe the money, fair enough, it was my dumb fault, and I wasn't even that upset about the fine, because again it was my dumb fault.
What annoyed me is that if the IRS knows I owe the money better than I do, then why am I involved with this at all? I don't have enough money for the IRS to put a team together or anything elaborate like that, so it was almost certainly an automated program that determined I underpaid. Why not instead just send me a refund and/or bill at the end of the year and have me pay it, instead of having me write down the numbers that they already have, and then they can check to make sure I wrote those numbers down correctly by verifying it against their records.
I understand having the option to use complicated tax software for cases where the taxes are complicated, but my taxes really aren't; I have a typical W2 job, a typical mortgage, and very occasionally selling stock, I think in my case the "default" would be fine.
If the IRS already has my stuff, I don't see what TurboTax (and its competitors) is actually doing that's necessary. I'm confident my employer is sending the IRS my W2, ETrade is clearly sending over my stock trading stuff, my bank is probably sending over my mortgage information.
As I said, obviously some people are going to have more complicated taxes than the default thing that the IRS has access to, and for that then sure, TurboTax might be useful, but I don't think that's the majority of people.
Louder for the people in the back.
Well they made an extra $1k by doing it this way. Maybe if you'd have lawyered up you could have got them down to $500 but the point still stands.
Sure, the database and the developers and mailing the letters isn't free but you need to have basically all that overhead regardless of whether they're sending you a bill or a fine. The incentive is there.
On top of that, it costs them nothing to make you file your taxes. In fact they probably rake in a whole boat load of money from all the people who report things the IRS didn't know about or didn't have enough sophistication to attribute to them.
If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo.
The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good).
ROI on the IRS's budget is a pretty frequently cited talking point in their favor so there's probable at least some pressure to keep it that way lest that point in their favor go stale.
>If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo.
Yeah, the media would do their usual thing and peddle fear. I think the benefit to the average person is so big that it wouldn't matter though.
>The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good).
I lay a lot of blame at the feet of the people who've normalized a tax break/penalty for any and every pet issue. Intuit is evil, sure, but they're capitalizing on and perpetuating a status quo they didn't create
Not really, the treasury had to borrow $7000 for over a year that they wouldnt have had to otherwise, which isnt free.
Of you want to go fancy, you have 5 or 6 pages to play with. But this is really uncommon because you were need to have stuff the taxes do not know about.
The question was effectively are you going to do the opposite of what you have been doing all along. And that is not a fair question. Instead the interviewee pivots to something they have done (making taxes simpler) in similar line to what the question was asking (lobbying gov't to send a pre-prepared tax bill).
I think they should have deleted the part of the audio, and simply reported on what occurred. We grilled Sasan on pushing gov't to send people an already prepared tax bill, but he deflected to pushing govt to make taxes simpler.