Hacker News Reader

Comment by dlcarrier | Hacker News Reader

There shouldn't be a stand-alone TurboTax-like tool to fill out analogs of paper forms; it should just be a part of the IRS web page.

Why can't I log in, see what information employers and banks and whatnot have submitted about my income, add any pertinent information about deductions or additional income, appeal any inaccurate information, then click 'request refund' or 'pay dues', select which bank account to use from the information they already have, and be done?

Subsiding smaller companies to compete with the larger ones isn't going to fix the problem, it's just going to entrench the industry and empower more lobbyists.

View on HN

The IRS agreed not to build software like that in exchange for private companies providing that software for free to people making under a certain Adjusted Gross Income limit: https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-free-file-do-your-taxes-for-f...

I think they dropped that agreement in like 2019, but I haven't been following.

Intuit spends a lot of money lobbying here, I suspect because they make a lot of money off getting people who qualify for free tax filing to pay for it by either tricking them or making scary statements about getting audited and fined for screwing up a 1040EZ.

I can’t understand why the IRS would ever do that deal—it’s a handout to the private tax firms.

I guess it’s just corruption. business as usual for the US.

I think theoretically the IRS is happy because they don’t have to build this. Private firms are happy because they get to charge people who are above the AGI limit but still file basically a 1040EZ. The AGI is like $80k, there are for sure people above that who still have basic taxes.

The private firms just got greedy because the IRS hasn’t reeled them in.

Seems to me that a government agency must, above all, have a service goal. Serve the most people the best. If you look at it that way then the IRS creating their own simple filing solution is the only way to go.

Maybe IRS execs still suffer under Reagan-era propaganda? (government is always bad. government should never compete with private industry)

"The IRS" isn't an independent entity with its own agenda and leadership that persists over time. The deal was, substantively, between the Bush Administration and private interests that the Bush Administration was politically allied with and supported by.

It was, exactly, a handout to private tax firms.

> Why can't I log in, see what information employers and banks and whatnot have submitted about my income, add any pertinent information about deductions or additional income, appeal any inaccurate information, then click 'request refund' or 'pay dues', select which bank account to use from the information they already have, and be done?

This is exactly how it works here in The Netherlands.

California almost had such a system. NPR's Planet money did a great episode on this called Tax Hero: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...

Description below is from the podcast episode page:

> Back in 2005, a group in California decided we could make filing taxes dramatically simpler in the US as well. Lots of Americans could receive tax forms in the mail that were pre-filled out by the government. All they'd need to do is check for errors and send the forms back in.

> Joseph Bankman, a law professor at Stanford, thought this was such a no-brainer, that he offered to test out the idea with some California taxpayers. It turned out to be a huge success. Other states thought about using the plan. Even California's governor at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger, supported it.

> Bankman thought getting ReadyReturn through the California legislature would be smooth sailing. He was wrong.

Meanwhile, I went lean FIRE and couldn't e-file in California, because my income was too low. At least I didn't have to file, so I just let them keep my few-hundred-dollar rebate, but they decided to add insult to injury and sent me a letter saying if I didn't file my taxes, they would assume I was earning more than I ever had before and go after me for several thousand dollars.

Joseph Bankman is today probably better known to HN as Sam Bankman-Fried's father.

the UK has actually gone backwards on this

today for filling in your company or self assessment tax return there's a perfectly usable website on gov.uk (it's not perfect, but acceptable)

and for next year HMRC have just decided to... turn it off, offering no replacement whatsoever

you're supposed to pay a third party for to pay your tax, which is completely insane

Also here in Italy, of all places.

Crazy how they've been telling us since January that Europe won't be able to make up for the collapsing US IT sector while they can't even get basic state systems in order.

Same in Portugal

You can't because the entire political point from one party is to make taxes as painful as possible, something you have to waste your time every year doing and thinking about, and then as a bonus get kick back donations from lobbyists who profit making tax software. Free file was s step in the right direction to the ideal but there are a lot of people trying to pull back the end goal.

This isn't a partisan issue. The tax filing lobby gets rejected by no politician.

This is kind of how it works here, Sweden.

Companies report my salary to our version of the IRS, banks report my loans etc. Before I started a company my yearly tax session took about 2 minutes.

The refunds are automatically sent to the registered account, you can pay outstanding money directly online after clicking submit.

Sweden outlawed cash? all income is discoverable in electronic records?

Most people don't have enough income outside their job to worry about

Obviously you can report additional income also on the website. For example, I report income from Github Sponsors every year so that I can pay my taxes on that. The same would apply if you got paid for something in cash, for whatever reason.

An employer should report qhen they pay their employees no matter how they do it.

That’s how it works in the UK. All the basic tax info in your return is already filled out and you only have to give a bit of additional info which is very easy to do. The website is a standard website and is built with accessibility in mind so it actually works on Firefox for example.

This is true with the caveat that some special cases (like filing UK tax from overseas) isn't supported, or wasn't last time I attempted to use HMRC's site directly. You can use things like gosimpletax.com for that though.

This is true for personal tax, but HMRC has been successfully bribed by Sage et al. not to support web-based returns for partnerships or companies.

HN Search: DirectFile (IRS)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

That's the direction Direct File was aiming in. This year it was able to import W-2s and limited other data, but the vision was always to bring in as much info as possible.

The Wikipedia page for it calls it "mobile-first" and the IRS calls it a tool, and I heard it was released as open-source software, so I would presume it's an independent platform from their regular web page, and not just an increased capability of already-existing online accounts that is already available for every taxpayer.

>, appeal any inaccurate information

The entire government top to bottom from the most mundane and local stuff to the feds makes money hand over fist on the additional friction of appeals not being worth it. You will never get that feature. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent a situation where it's easy to add that feature.

Its like this in my country, and I agree that its how it should be. Not reason to shop around after a turbo tax program, just a well made overview over what financial data the government have of me and an ability to adjust if there are any errors.

Why...

Lobbyists like the article said.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com