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Comment by chrisbennet | Hacker News Reader

I don't feel bad for Intuit maker of TurboTax. Intuit has spent millions lobbying against tax reform that would make filing simpler.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-mill...

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That seems like a pretty simplistic conclusion to make. Do you really think, given the recent embarrassment that was the ACA enrollment website, Intuit is worried the Government will come up with better software to file taxes than they have? It makes more sense to me that Intuit is worried the Government will shut out alternatives once they put their tax filing service online by making it the only way people can e-file, and that it will only be "better" because it will involve further reach of the Government into our personal financial information. I would absolutely spend millions to lobby against that potential outcome if I were them and I'm glad they do. If we have tax reform, I'd rather it be a complete overall of the tax system to make it simpler rather than spend millions allowing the Government fumble around trying to make software that helps people navigate the laughably complex tax system they were responsible for creating in the first place.

The tax reform that they lobbied against would have made it similar to the way some other countries do it:

The IRS sends you a form with all the numbers filled in. After all, for many people, the IRS already has that information.

Here's Norway's version:

"You will receive a tax return from the Norwegian Tax Administration in March/April if you work in Norway or on the Norwegian continental shelf. The tax return gives an overview of your income, deductions, assets and debts for the last income year.

You must check that the information in the tax return is correct and complete. You do not need to submit it if there are no changes to be made."

http://www.skatteetaten.no/en/International-pages/If-you-wor...

>it will involve further reach of the Government into our personal financial information.

The system many other countries have, such as the example given for Norway, involves them filling the data you intend to give to them. If you supply your own data then you may have to give proof. I don't see the difference in what they end up knowing.

Oh believe me I don't either. It's horrible an industry can crop up to assist with government inefficiency and eventually become powerful enough to keep the inefficiency in place.

Wouldn't you, if that were your business model? Let's blame TurboTax when it's legislators selling their power. They could, you know, be representatives of the people and not be influenced by TurboTax.

Plus, that article talks about TurboTax lobbying against the government providing their own tax software, nothing about making returns simpler. Why would a government-run service be simpler? I'm sure TurboTax wants to make their software as simple to use to compete with other tax return services. I've found these services very simple to use myself. If we were talking about making the tax code simpler, I would agree, so perhaps I missed that.

Your point seems to be that we shouldn't blame a corporation worth billions for making laws that make our society worse because there are others at fault as well...?

That's like saying it was not the Confederacy's fault for trying to stop the Thirteenth Amendment because it ruined their 'business model' too.

If a business pays money to make anyone's life harder then they are bad.

What does that say about the government then? They are complicit. The government is accepting money to make people's lives harder.

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