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How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013)

787 points by apsec112 10y ago

transfire 10y ago
I have a better idea. Simplify the tax code so anyone can do theirs on an index card. There is absolutely no reason for the gargantuan tax code in a free society.
- georgemcbay 10y ago
  Not that I believe you think it is, but this isn't exactly a startling new idea. The same forces described in the article are also responsible for lobbying against simplicity in general. There is a whole giant industry that would go away in a puff of smoke (or at least be drastically reduced) if individual taxes weren't unnecessarily complex.
  - eli 10y ago
    Also, everyone wants a simpler tax code except for the parts that benefit them. Few economists think the mortgage interest deduction is a good idea, but try telling that to homeowners.
    - smsm42 10y ago
      I'd exchange MI deduction for equivalent reduction in income tax. But the government wants to keep power to induce people into doing what it thinks is better, taxes and deductions are a major tool in this. Without explicitly giving up that power, nothing would change, so homeowners are not the main thing to blame it, they just do what the government wants them to do and makes profitable for them to do.
- afarrell 10y ago
  The problem is that every individual provision is popular with one group or another. But we could move to a system like the UK has where taxes are calculated for you and if you don't have contractor income you don't even need to file. But this would need changes to things like the Married Filing Jointly status.
  - abrowne 10y ago
    How about the IRS calculates, you click OK if you agree, and if you don't, you're free to file? (Maybe this is how the UK system works; I've only done American and Canadian.)
  - scurvy 10y ago
    Married filing jointly is one of the more sexist things codified in US law. It basically says women make no money and the man has to provide for everyone with a big salary so deductions and credits for the big earner. Or it says that if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% of what you do. Think about when these laws were written and look at it through a historical context. Once you do, it will outrage even the most even keeled.
    - alaaibrahim 10y ago
      could you elaborate more, where does it say that your wife should make 80% than what you do?
    - smsm42 10y ago
      > It basically says women make no money Could you explain this? I don't see where MFJ assumes women make no money. > if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% Also don't see how it means that. Could you explain your argument in a bit more detail?
      - scurvy 10y ago
        Sure. When the federal income tax was instituted in 1913, all of the tax rates were individual (and the lowest bracket covered most Americans). People who were married could lump sum their income and divide by 2 to find the correct rate. Married filing jointly back then was just a way to save on paperwork and hassle. Lump the two incomes together, divide by two, and treat the two people equally. That was it. In 1948, you got the official married filing jointly "status" and with it, the various income credits, deductions, etc. One would think that the married filing jointly tax rates would simply be double what the individual rates were, right? Wrong. The joint rates were about 1.8x the individual rates. Someone was 100%, someone was 80%. This being 1948, the woman in the dual income family was 80%. The IRS didn't want to appear to favor married couples over single people (even though they did), so they said 1.8X instead of 2X the individual rates. If you were lucky enough to be a big wage earning white male in 1948 America, you got a huge tax break since stay-at-home moms were the norm, there was a baby boom going on, and only about 20-25% of women worked. Married filing jointly is silly. It should be a sum of the family income, divided by two, then mapped to the individual rates.
- charlesdm 10y ago
  Great idea in theory, but hard to implement. Tax breaks were often created for a reason. Take them away, and that special interest group will try to protect it and lobby to keep it in place.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- fnord123 10y ago
  >Simplify the tax code so anyone can do theirs on an index card. Aim higher. In the UK, your employer informs the government about your wages and HMRC figures out how much you paid and whether it's the correct amount. And if you want you can check the numbers. In other countries it's basically the same but you have to log into the e-government portal to click 'yes, the values you have are correct'. Obviously if your finances are more complicated then you need to file; but it's not very difficult.
  - zw123456 10y ago
    Yes, of course. Obviously if the IRS knows your income, knows you mortgage interest, interest on savings and dividends and it is all electronically recorded, there what is the point of filing. Only to keep accountants and tax software companies in business. I can guarantee you that if you file a return and copy the numbers in wrong from your W4 you will get a computer generated letter. I did that by accident once I transposed two digits in the amount on a 1099 and I got a letter from them that was computer generated. So obviously they are having computers check it, so what is the point of me wasting time and money on filing. The UK system (and many other countries) is obviously the way to go.
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      Even on mortgages, the IRS doesn't have all the information. I refinanced my mortgage and paid points for the refi. Those points have to be amortized over the life of the loan (which the IRS knows the law, but doesn't know that I paid points on the loan). I just refinanced that mortgage again, meaning next year that I'll write off the rest of the points for the previous loan as a 2017 expense. There's plenty that the IRS doesn't know until you tell them.
      - xienze 10y ago
        That just sounds like a situation where the bank needs to supply information to the IRS for you so come tax time they already know about it.
- geofft 10y ago
  That's what the 1040EZ is. Seriously, take a look at it, it's a single page, only half of which is calculations: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040ez--2016.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040ez--2016.pdf If you object that this isn't sufficient for you or someone else, I'll be happy to argue that whatever behavior would make you 1040EZ-ineligible should either not be permitted in a free society (because it's a tax-avoidance scheme for certain types of rich people with political power) or should be taxed as W-2 income (because otherwise it'd become such a tax-avoidance scheme), but good luck getting the people who benefit from those schemes to allow it.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    One thing that is not 1040EZ is charity donations. I mean we could kill all charity deductions but not sure NGOs would be happy about it.
    - geofft 10y ago
      Do we get more value out of charity donations by normal people than we lose in charities being used as a tax-privileged vehicle for rich people to exert their desire on the world? Also, charitable donations have weird constraints. My church would like to end deportations of undocumented immigrants based on our reading of Leviticus 19:34, and the most effective way to do that would have been to campaign against certain presidential candidates. We couldn't do that. Another church wanted to end civil recognition of same-sex marriage based on their reading of Leviticus 18:22, but that involved campaigning for a ballot initiative, and they were allowed to do that to the tune of millions of dollars. I'm obviously not inclined to say "Please start taxing my church," but the fact that we can participate essentially by chance in some political activities and not others doesn't seem like it would exist in a "free society".
      - smsm42 10y ago
        First, your distinction between "normal people", which are moral, and "rich people", who are just evil, are kind of disgusting. Having a lot of money doesn't automatically make one evil (to remove all suspicion, I am not rich and likely never will be, at least by US standards :). I'm not sure what your point is there, but it doesn't sound good. > the most effective way to do that would have been to campaign against certain presidential candidates That's certainly not the most effective way. US law has very clear immigration provisions, which require certain documentation, and US president swears to uphold the law. Most efficient strategy would be to change the law, thus voting for specific - namely, open-border - candidate for Congress, that can change the law so that US has immigration procedures no longer, and thus does not have to deport people who violate them. Note that I did not say "efficient" but "most efficient" - I see no really efficient strategy that would make US a country without immigration law anytime soon, and having such law, it is natural to have to enforce it - otherwise there's no point in having it. In any case, nothing prevents you to from campaigning for or against any policy or any candidate, be it open border or not, as a private person or as a part of an organized effort. Why you need the church to do it? Just create an independent organization and campaign as your hear pleases. > I'm obviously not inclined to say "Please start taxing my church," If you register a non-profit and make all the requirements that tax-exempt non-profits have, and do charitable work and so on, nothing prevents you from calling your organization "church", but I don't see why doing so should give you any special status not available to any other nonprofit. And if it doesn't qualify as nonprofit, then it should be taxed by the same rules as the rest of organizations are.
- deleted 10y ago
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elberto34 10y ago
the deep cynicism here is how people think Turbo tax is doing a pubic service by making taxes easier and cheaper, that's how effective their marketing is. Convince the public there is a problem that only said company can solve.
- bluedino 10y ago
  Paying TurboTax $59.99 is cheaper than going to H&R Block and paying a tax preparer $169
  - texuf 10y ago
    The IRS already knows what taxes you owe. In most cases they could just send you a bill.
    - bluedino 10y ago
      Your state and local government would also have to send you a bill.
    - tormeh 10y ago
      Yeah, if they can check if I've paid the correct taxes then they know how much I should pay. Can't they just tell me?
      - sokoloff 10y ago
        No. How would they know how many charitable donations you made? How would they know how many miles you drove for your business? How would they know how much you spent on travel for your company? How would they know how much you paid for the raw materials for the products you sold? Or your business utilities, rent, etc? How would they know your unreimbursed medical expenses or casualty losses?
        bluejekyll 10y ago
        The issue here is that taxes have been over complicated with deductions. If it was just simply based off earnings and there were no deductions it would be simple. Obviously taxes would need to be reduced if all deductions were removed. I for one would love to see a zero deduction tax law, and simple validation of earnings.
Upvoter33 10y ago
well, of course. imagine you are a business and the govmt could change a law and put you out of business. wouldn't you put as much money as you could into preventing that change? this is why money in politics causes problems...
- joering2 10y ago
  Same old same old: show me a doctor who doesn't want you to be sick. Show me a lawyer who doesn't want you to get in trouble with law. Show me a priest who doesn't want you to sin. It just blows my mind up to what degree TurboTax will go with this!
  - olegkikin 10y ago
    Doctors already have more patients than they can handle, that's why they work such crazy shifts.
    - j2bax 10y ago
      I was under the impression that they worked crazy schedules so they could work 2-3 days and be off the other 4-5 days each week.
      - pixelmonkey 10y ago
        Are you kidding? Very rare is the doctor with that kind of schedule.
        bollockitis 10y ago
        My wife works at a regional cancer center and many of them do indeed have this kind of schedule. It's built into their contract.
      - cmurf 10y ago
        I have a family full of doctors and none of them have schedules anything even approximating that; it'd be 4 days with 10-12 shifts, one 1/2 day defined as at least 6 hours or possibly an open ended 8, and two days off. This idea of 4-5 days off in a row, or even per week is nonsense.
the_cat_kittles 10y ago
slightly off topic, but... you can file for free using any number of tax prep software if you make less than ~64k a year: https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-...
- geofft 10y ago
  You can file for free at any income level; you just get software assistance if you make less than a certain amount. I file with Free File Fillable Forms, which does the calculations for me, I just have to be comfortable filling in the inputs to the form (and I'm paranoid enough that I want to be reading the form and its instructions anyway). But I don't have complicated deductions... or at least, I don't think I do.
  - the_cat_kittles 10y ago
    right, should have clarified that. maybe ill go back and use free fillable forms myself, i do kind of hate not knowing whats going on "under the hood"
- dustinhlyons 10y ago
  Or use Credit Karma Tax. Completely free software assistance at any income level. (https://www.creditkarma.com/tax https://www.creditkarma.com/tax) Disclaimer: I work there.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    I signed up for the beta, but my taxes were long done by the time it was released...
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    I've looked at Credit Karma tax free, but I'm a bit nervous as I own a California LLC (100% sole owner), and also have capital gains, dividends, write-offs. Is Credit Karma a good choice for more complicated returns? Last year I paid H&R $650 for literally one hour of time which infuriated me.
joering2 10y ago
I always love reading absurd statements made by otherwise reasonable people who - of course - a salary depends on being unreasonable. Here: > Intuit argues that allowing the IRS to act as a tax preparer could result in taxpayers paying more money. Majority of work will be done automatically by some free jQuery and PHP scripts (hello Obamacare website) and taxpayers have only shell-out initial cost. Even if TurboTax is $19 per year, I have a hard time believing that 200MM tax payers X $19 will be less than running an enterprise servers for online consumers. > [...] "STOP IRS TAKEOVER" campaign and a website calling return-free filing a "massive expansion of the U.S. government through a big government program." I honestly laugh at this one. Just exactly which part of information that IRS process is not already in the IRS possession? With that statement -- they really reach out for the dumbest people hearing them out. > Explaining the company's stance, Intuit spokeswoman Miller told the Los Angeles Times in 2006 that it was "a fundamental conflict of interest for the state's tax collector and enforcer to also become people's tax preparer." I have to place a call to intuit maybe they will sponsor my idea that I should fill out and asses my own respondibility when it comes to a parking ticket. I mean you cannot trust the government that they will be fair to you - so I should get note "you violated parking zone - fill out this form and return to us with own assessment of your penalty". Gosh imagine wild wild west we would be living in if you stretch it to criminal law.
- simcop2387 10y ago
  > I honestly laugh at this one. Just exactly which part of information that IRS process is not already in the IRS possession? With that statement -- they really reach out for the dumbest people hearing them out. They won't have data from people who are self-employed. That said, neither does TurboTax so there's no difference here based on their argument, just as you said.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    It does make a difference. TurboTax is an app that allows you to enter this info. The whole premise of auto-filed tax return is that you don't need to enter anything. The argument "to be able to file without entering anything you need to either vastly expand what IRS knows about citizens, or to restrict it to a small number of very simple cases" is not refuted by pointing out neither IRS nor TurboTax initially do not have the info. Because TurboTax side is not based on the premise of having the info upfront, only auto-file case is premised on this. The correct way to refute such argument would be to prove that the simple cases - the ones that can be auto-files - constitute not a small part of cases but a part big enough to warrant IRS doing it. That's the argument I'd like to see - with proof, of course - i.e. how big is that part that can be auto-filed completely without increasing IRS knowledge it has now.
tschwimmer 10y ago
Serious question: Is it possible for society to criminalize rent seeking behaviors like this? It seems clear that there's no benefit to keeping the status quo tax filing system except for the benefit of tax preparers. What's stopping the US from creating a law that says if a company attempts to lobby for something in bad faith (like the tax example), they will face sanction?
- jessriedel 10y ago
  The 1st amendment.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  To get a law like that passed you'd need lobbyists stronger than the lobbyists representing that industry. I would say every lobbyist in DC would fight any such law as it would directly threaten their industry.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  Probably that your proposed rule is so vague that it would be impossible to be enforced .
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    That's rarely stopped US lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges before.
    - zitterbewegung 10y ago
      Sorry I was vague in my comment . You will have it on the books and the lawmakers can point to it when they get elected . Other than that the behavior that you want won't be prevented . At best you will have some long drawn out court case that will strike down the law .
- dfabulich 10y ago
  Not as long as bad policy is good politics. https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
chatterbeak 10y ago
Everyone should be able to get his taxes done for free by the Government. I pay about $3500/year to get my taxes done and pay a _lot_ in taxes. Why should the 40% of people who contribute little to tax revenue get another government benefit?
brownknight 10y ago
f
alkonaut 10y ago
TIL how I file my taxes (log in and submit a pre-filled web form, or send a text message approving it) was the exception, not the norm. I would have expected at least most of western Europe to have reached that point.
- Taniwha 10y ago
  here in NZ most people don't even have to file taxes - we have NO exemptions, if you have one job your boss will have gotten your tax right, your bank will withhold tax on interest at your declared marginal rate - if you have multiple jobs filing a one page web form might get you a refund (with interest!). less than 5% of us, those with complex financial lives who can likely afford it, have to file a more formal return
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    Same here, but I have to actually confirm that I have seen it and sign it (via text message, online or paper). The stuff I have to manually add to the filing is s.g if I bought or sold a house or did any complicated stock market trades (but then the broker or bank usually lets you take that form pre filled from them at least).
shakencrew 10y ago
Previous discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203
tacostakohashi 10y ago
It's pretty much the same as the situation with taxi medallion owners now that Uber has come along. If you ask me, the correct answer is for the government to either give some one-off compensation to Intuit (or buy the company from its existing shareholders), and then shut it down, and reform the system. Why should the government pay money to a private corporation or shareholders? Because they created this mess ("opportunity") in the first place with a ridiculous tax code. It's just the actual, realized, dollar-value cost of the mess that was created, instead of externalizing the cost onto taxpayers. Once that cost has been paid, the system can be fixed.
shmerl 10y ago
That's really disgusting, and the reason I'm not using TurboTax.
- ProAm 10y ago
  I switched to Tax Act [1] a couple years ago and have not been happier. Easier to use and MUCH cheaper. For federal and state the total came to $30 [1] https://www.taxact.com/ https://www.taxact.com/
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Yep, they are pretty good.
hackuser 10y ago
A tangential issue: It seems almost impossible to me that the systems of tax preparation services, whether cloud-based, local software, or offline, are secure. The standard of security is, make the target more expensive to breach than it's worth to the attacker. How much would it be worth to have access to the tax returns of large swaths of the population? I don't know the answer, but I'm guessing it's easily worth billions of dollars. Foreign intelligence services would very much like that information, as well as sophisticated criminals. I am very doubtful that Intuit or H&R Block, for example, invest in security sufficient to protect themselves against that level of attack.
- freehunter 10y ago
  The answer, of course, is "it's not that secure". Now, Turbo Tax and H&R Block aren't being hacked, but breaking into their systems isn't the easy way. And like you said, attackers want to take the easy way. The easy way is to get just enough info from your targets as it takes to extract money from them. And in the past few years, e-filing fraud has skyrocketed. The mantra is "file your taxes before someone else does", because the number of people who are submitting their tax form only to find out it's already been submitted is greater than ever before. It's really, really hard to attack Intuit. It's much easier to submit fraudulent tax forms and pocket the returns before anyone notices.
  - gst 10y ago
    > The mantra is "file your taxes before someone else does", because the number of people who are submitting their tax form only to find out it's already been submitted is greater than ever before. The IRS is liable for losses due to fraud, so why would I care about fraud? It's up to the IRS to secure their systems.
    - JohnTHaller 10y ago
      Perhaps because it is a long and painful process to prove it and then get your money.
xupybd 10y ago
I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all my charitable donations. Very easy very quick. All my details are available to me online. All transactions are there and it's very transparent. Why would anyone oppose a simple system like this?
- JacobHenner 10y ago
  Because it'd put accountants, lawyers, and firms like these out of work.
  - cmurf 10y ago
    So in other words, the free market has produced a pile of jobs that we don't really need? Lobbyists get paid money to get politicians to supply a deduction as a line item on some obscure form, which increases red tape, which requires a need for a free market service, the revenue from that service in turn goes to feed more lobbying for more red tape. This is basically collusion, using the worst aspects of the free market and government, in simultaneous failures. Meanwhile, the accounting and tax lay industry is part of the lobbying effort to grow their business on the back end, rather than making the case to the customer on the front end. It'd double dealing. So I'm hardly sympathetic, but yes considering there are an ass tonne of jobs that would just vanish overnight, there'd maybe need to be a transitional phase, just avoid an abrupt change. But how do you shrink a market in a non-disruptive and fair way considering it grew in a distruptive and unfair way in the first place?
    - iopq 10y ago
      > the free market it's not the free market when you lobby the GOVERNMENT to do what you want it to do
    - baddox 10y ago
pag 10y ago
I'm really happy with how the Canadian Revenue Agency handles things. You file online, there's plenty of free services to do your taxes. They support auto-fill where the CRA can send them the tax info it already knows about you (e.g. from banks and employers), etc. I filed my a few weeks ago and they assessed my returns by the next afternoon. Last week I received a cheque in the mail, but that's only because I forgot to fill out the direct deposit info on the CRA website. The husband of a former colleague used to fill out junk on their tax returns because they knew that the CRA would just fix it all up, and then tell them what they owed (or what they would be refundend) in their notice of assessment.
- upofadown 10y ago
  Technically the situation in Canada is the same as in the US. You must use a third party to file your taxes online. There is a donationware system from simpletax.ca and most (all?) of the others will not charge for a sufficiently low yearly income. That doesn't change the fact that in Canada there is no way for a citizen to file their taxes directly with the government other than by using the paper forms and mailing them in. There used to be a telephone system but that was eliminated some years back. The relationship between the private tax preparers and the CRA is much closer than is healthy. I suspect that is related to the current situation. This bothers me enough that I file my taxes on paper as a form of protest. The nice thing is that you can put pretty much any nonsense on there you want. They will just ignore your figures if they disagree which of course shows how silly the current situation is.
kumarski 10y ago
I once contemplated buying NovoNordisk and investing millions to open subsidized donut shops for the wealthy.....
harryh 10y ago
Intuit certainly does this, but blaming them for our overly complex taxes is wrong. They might move the needle a little bit but they aren't the primary driver. The primary driver is all the constituencies of all the little things in our taxes that add up to make them complicated. Like ObamaCare? That came with two additional forms. Live in a high tax state and like deducting your state taxes? That makes things more complicated. Big fan of deductions to for education or child care? That comes with complexities. I could go on and on.... Now maybe your answer to all of these questions was "no", but there are a lot of people that say "yes" to a lot of these questions. It's really hard to upset that apple cart. Lobbying doesn't have much to do with it.
- stult 10y ago
  That's not the point of the article at all, nor of Intuit's lobbying. Even with the current complexity of the tax code, the IRS could easily auto file your taxes for you if your income is below a certain very high level and you do not have any special complications. Such a system would work for 98% of Americans. This has nothing to do with what deductions are available or whatever complexity they introduce into the system. There is simply no reason whatsoever not to implement return-free filing, beyond the large dollar amounts tax industry lobbyists spend on the Hill.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > There is simply no reason whatsoever not to implement return-free filing, beyond the large dollar amounts tax industry lobbyists spend on the Hill. It's not all Intuit lobbying. Many politicians of a particular faction oppose return free filing because they want to keep tax proxess as painful as possible to make people emotionally susceptible to anti-tax and, more generally, anti-government rhetoric.
    - sampo 10y ago
      Government which stays in power based on people's anti-government sentiment, isn't that something.
nojvek 10y ago
If trump administration actually manages to simplify tax code and kill the stupidity corporations induce via lobbying such that I can file my own taxes. I would have a lot of respect for him.
- laser 10y ago
  In the first paragraph, "Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bill yesterday to allow free government-prepped returns."
  - ticviking 10y ago
    You seem to be confusing, gratis, and Taxpayer-funded.
    - mhalle 10y ago
      The IRS is already essentially doing your taxes already (certainly for the most common and straightforward returns): they have to verify your statement. The actual computation is trivial (for them). "Doing your taxes" mostly involves showing you their calculations. It's almost a freedom of information issue. Compared to the cost of private prep and filing, it basically does seem free (gratis). And even if you choose to dispute or file independently, such a program could save each filer time and money by providing a base document; you would just provide diffs.
      - umanwizard 10y ago
        The IRS mostly just trusts what you tell them for a lot of stuff (like charitable donation amounts). This is why audits are a thing.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    Note it says "free" and "government prepared". Setting aside that those are mutually exclusive concepts, that says nothing about simplifying taxes - it's just having the government do the complicated stuff instead of you (or your accountant).
mlinksva 10y ago
Many tech companies are members of CCIA and should demand it stop advocating for Intuit's civilization-destroying agenda. It's been one of their issues for a long time eg http://www.ccianet.org/2011/09/irs-tax-prep-not-a-budget-solution/ http://www.ccianet.org/2011/09/irs-tax-prep-not-a-budget-sol... and http://www.ccianet.org/2002/01/treasury-irs-announce-efforts-to-expand-tax-e-filing/ http://www.ccianet.org/2002/01/treasury-irs-announce-efforts... ... and it's a major activity of theirs http://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby-heavily-against-simple-filing/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby... > The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), of which Intuit is a member, represents its members on a wide range of technology issues, but spends a significant amount of its $6.7 million in lobbying on tax simplification. As ProPublica's piece points out, the group operates the website "Stop IRS Takeover" which bashes the idea of pre-filed returns. Disclosures indicate the CCIA has focused on "issues pertaining to tax preparation services" and legislation involving simple filing. It lobbied in support of Rep. Lofgren's bill that would have barred government-filed returns, and rallied against Sen. Akaka's bill that would have let taxpayers file directly through the IRS "without the use of an intermediary." The CCIA is an active political giver as well, doling out over $650,000 over the past 20 years with 91% going to Democrats. Silicon Valley-based Rep. Lofgren, an opponent of IRS-prepared returns, has been the biggest beneficiary of CCIA donation, collecting over $12,000. The group also opposed John Chiang in the 2006 California controller election, chipping in $50,000 to the Alliance for California's Tomorrow — the same group that received $1 million from Intuit. CCIA also gets lots of mentions in https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Report.pdf https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Repor...
schainks 10y ago
So, just for a different perspective, Taiwan has a relatively simple tax filing experience, and the government invests significant resources to make as simple as possible (which does result in many people paying their taxes properly, on time). While their digital tools for filing taxes make the telegraph feel modern, the "in person" experience is full of helpful people and takes about 90 minutes including travel time. My main criticisms of the filing process: 1. Tax bureau has a one month timeframe where you can go, in person, to file "on time", but only during business hours. Any 9-5 worker must take time off to go file in person. It's a pretty nice customer experience - The volunteers in the bureau help you file your taxes with highest deductions possible, it gets crosschecked by a government tax clerk, and you're done. 2. Make the software work better on a modern OS and give it modern usability. It's _really_ crap UI, and I only run it in a VM just in case because the download site is also shady looking. 3. Locals gaming the system can make your life harder as a working-from-home small business owner. Many landlords don't pay income taxes on their properties, which means tenants cannot register business addresses at their homes, and must "rent" an address for about $100 / month. 4. Withholdings on foreigners, by default, are artificially high as a "precaution". 5. Refunds process in August after filing in May. Because they still process every return much by hand. 6. Double taxation on people like US citizens. The tax clerk has asked friends of mine, while filing, to show their US tax return to make sure there are not more taxes owed. They can ask, but it's not enforceable. So why do it? Because the tax rate on that income earned elsewhere can be as high as 30-40%! The tax clerk gets to decide how bad of an offender you are. GLHF. 7. If your income goes down compared to the year before as a foreigner, you will probably pay a penalty for "making less money" because they suspect tax evasion. Pay the fine (less than $USD 100) and walk away, or they dig your records hard and you could wind up in a situation like #6 above.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  > Double taxation on people like US citizens. That's America that's out of step. Almost all other countries only tax their residents, not their residents plus citizens. It's normal to tax worldwide income. I told the British tax office that I'd left the country. They sent a refund and final statement a few months later, and we haven't communicated since. If I had, for example, a house in Britain being rented out, I'd need to declare that income to my new country.
azernik 10y ago
There's a fascinating article linked from this one: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-... See the final paragraphs, which I've copied below - it's essentially a version of the Citogenesis effect. ----------------------------- "Dennis Huang, executive director of the L.A.-based Asian Business Association, also told ProPublica he was solicited by a lobbyist to write about return-free filing. When the lobbyist sent him a suggested op-ed last summer and told him the proposal would hurt small businesses, Huang wrote an op-ed in the Asian Journal that claimed Asian-owned businesses would not only spend more time paying taxes, but they'd also get less of a refund each year. Huang declined to disclose the lobbyist's name, but acknowledged he didn't really do his own research. "There's some homework needed," he said. Oregon's Martin did some research on return-free filing and now supports it. She also co-published a post about the issue and the PR efforts related to it because, she says, she was alarmed that other nonprofits could easily agree to endorse a position they did not fully understand. "You get one or two prominent nonprofits to use their name, and busy advocates will extend trust and say sure, us too," Martin said."
startupdiscuss 10y ago
A lot of the comments here are conflating two different things: 1. The complexity of the tax code 2. The complexity of filing They are not the same thing. You have to go through some process to file now. Let the government go through that laborious process. For those who are not conflating the two, this point does not apply.
yawz 10y ago
When I read this, unfortunately I'm thinking "don't hate the player, hate the game". Lobbying is a double-edged sword, and it is a game played very well by the powerful and the rich.
- averagewall 10y ago
  Lobbying only works because voters don't care about what they're voting for. You can always vote against the candidates who were lobbied into doing something you don't like, or lobbied at all. But the majority of voters can't do that - they insist on voting for the candidates with the most expensive advertising and forget about where that money comes from.
unclebucknasty 10y ago
Reminds me that raw capitalism isn't the answer to every problem. Kind of like the current healthcare debate in the U.S., where the problem seems to be "how do we allow insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. to make maximum profits while providing healthcare for the maximim number of people at minimum cost?"
frogpelt 10y ago
As strange it may seem, a portion of people/corporations are always pro-privatization and anti-nationalization. This helps explain why there is an anti-net-neutrality faction. It's not just because people don't understand. And it's not just because people are bought and paid for. There are actually legitimate arguments for privatizing things and then regulating them rather than nationalizing and trusting the government to manage effectively.
camperman 10y ago
Institutions prolong problems to which they themselves are the solution - Systemantics.
- camperman 10y ago
  Ak, that was actually Clay Shirky. Sorry Clay ;)
sshumaker 10y ago
This is one of the reasons Credit Karma launched a totally free online tax product this year (https://creditkarma.com/tax https://creditkarma.com/tax). (We view this similarly to credit scores a decade ago, when everyone advertising "free" was a bait and switch).
rayiner 10y ago
It's not really a credible idea that an industry accounting for 0.05% of U.S. GDP somehow manages to out-lobby the industries representing the other 99.95% of GDP, so as to keep tax filing complicated when otherwise there would be a critical mass in favor of simplification.
randyrand 10y ago
The maker of tax return software doesn't want to lose business? news at 11.
thewhitetulip 10y ago
I am in India and tax filing here is as simple as 1 2 3. We have the Form16, which has the data to be entered in an excel sheet that you can download from the govt website, punch in the numbers and voilà, they tell you tax you owe! Pay via net banking and you are done.
chad_strategic 10y ago
I'm sure this will get a few down votes, for this beautiful poem. (The real problem is the last line, but this isn't an economics forum...) Roses are red, Violets are blue, Taxation is theft, and Inflation is too.
rushabh 10y ago
While the focus of this discussion here is on the taxes, I think the bigger story is the unethical behaviour of companies like Intuit. And its not only Intuit, but also companies like SAP [1] that engage in such behaviour at the cost of tax payers. The finanical might takes away so much from the commons and also pushes back adoption of good Open Source software. We constantly under-estimate the damage done by these mega-corps. [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2015/08/12/former-sap-executive-pleads-guilty-to-bribery-charge/ http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2015/08/12/former-sap... [2] http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/21/sap-south-africas-managing-director-implicated-in-alleged-38-million-sap-licenses-purchasing-and-kickback-scandal/ http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/21/sap-south-africas-managin...
tuna-piano 10y ago
I haven't read a legitimate argument against the IRS calculating taxes automatically, but here it is. The more invisible taxes are to the individual person, the less they think about that money (and the higher taxes can go without them complaining too much). Rent feels expensive because every month you write a check for rent. However, for many people, taxes are a much bigger expense than rent. But taxes don't feel as painful, because people don't write a check every month for taxes. Taxes are just invisibly withdrawn from your paycheck. The easier and more invisible it is to pay taxes, the more you forget about how much money that really is. If you believe in constrained government, there's a good case to be made that we should make tax payments more visible, not less.
- ruleabidinguser 10y ago
  Im sure people who are making their decisions about what they value the way you describe are not really so concerned without how much its actually costing them.
- millstone 10y ago
  In 2014 the Obama administration provided a "tax receipt" so you can see how much you paid and what you got for it. Cool idea. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/2014-taxreceipt https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/2014-taxreceipt
- TheGRS 10y ago
  Sales tax would solve that real quick.
- vxNsr 10y ago
  While I agree with the sentiment of what you said, my rent comes out to about 3 times my monthly tax deductions.
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  > Rent feels expensive because every month you write a check for rent Even when I was living in San Francisco, my rent payments were automatic, and I didn't think about them too much. My rent still felt very, very expensive.
jaypaulynice 10y ago
You can do your taxes for free using this: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/#/fd https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/#/fd, but it's a huge pain unless you know what you're doing. I did it last year, but it took 10+ times to submit it correctly and the errors were straight from programming errors (i.e: tax_status is not valid, etc.) Massachusetts had free tax filing, but got rid of it this year. It was really great and fastest refund I ever received.
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twblalock 10y ago
The fact that taxes are complex is the government's fault. The fact that companies can manipulate the government into keeping the taxes complex is also the government's fault.
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
The problem is not who prepares your taxes. The problem is how complicated taxes are.
mb_72 10y ago
I have experience as a tax payer in Estonia (employee only) and Australia (employee and business owner). In Estonia I login to my bank with my citizens ID card, click through a few screens ... and my tax return is done. All the financial information supplied by my employer to the government is immediately visible and checkable, not to mention donations made to tax-deductable organisations is also immediately visible. It is incredibly quick and convenient. In Australia it's just easier to leave everything to my accountant as they already have my quarterly business returns information; cost is still pretty reasonable (500AUD or so for the yearly business returns and the personal returns for my wife and I). But ... yeah ... in Estonia it just rocks. The ID-card based functionality for banking, digital signatures, tax ... just awesome.
- codfrantic 10y ago
  In the Netherlands it is similar, most information is combined for you by the government, they even introduced an app to file your taxes last year. It probably is still a lot of work for businesses though... We often hear about the advanced digital government in Estonia, must be nice to have such an open minded country.
- jedberg 10y ago
  > But ... yeah ... in Estonia it just rocks. The ID-card based functionality for banking, digital signatures, tax ... just awesome. That's what happens when your head of state has a computer engineering degree and used to work on databases before going into politics. :)
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  It is similar in Norway - though I've only watched my spouse do his. You get an email notifying you, log into the government website to check it. If you agree, the only action necessary is to pay the bill, if there is one. Otherwise, your refund will arrive. You have the option of doing actual filing or disputing the figures, but obviously don't have to. Edit: The tax is figured out when you start work or update for things like marriage or children. This seems to include a trip to the tax authority for a personalized tax schedule.
- 10y ago
orless 10y ago
I live and work (not self-employed) in Germany, which has one of the most complex tax systems in the world. Normally, a certain amount is deducted from my salary upfront automatically so I pay my most of my taxes through the year. The deducted percentage is defined by so-called "tax class" (1 for singles, 3/5, 4/4 or 5/3 for married or "registered partnership" couples). When the year is over you MAY file a tax declaration if you had 1 or 4/4 combo - or you MUST file it if you had 3/5 or 5/3 combo (because then you have normally underpayed the taxes through the year as a couple). If you have 1 or 4/4 you have normally overpayed taxes so if you don't file, the goverment is happy. The tax code in Germany is mindbloggingly complex. And it's not just laws, its' also "common practices", knowing what the Tax Authority (Finanzamt) accepts and what not. It's also knowing the current lawsuit which may be potentially applicable to your declaration. Every year there's a few dozen such tax lawsuits where the results are applicable to large groups of taxpayers. When I was single I either didn't file the tax declaration or filed it myself with the help of software and a few books. There's a bestselling book "1000 absolutely legal tax tricks" (https://www.amazon.de/Konz-1000-ganz-legale-Steuertricks/dp/3426788411 https://www.amazon.de/Konz-1000-ganz-legale-Steuertricks/dp/...) which is a a good starter. Nowadays with family and kids we must file a tax declaration, but now there are so many special cases we're either subject to or can profit from that it's not realistic to do it on our own. We outsource our tax declaration, it costs us around 300€ a year and is absolutely worth it. Our tax consultant routinely argues with the Finanzamt over two-digit sums, basically fights for every cent. Honestly I don't think we'd better off if the tax system in Germany would have been simpler. We profit from a number of special cases like "extraorinary burden" because of the disabled child, so I think in the "one size fits all" system we'd probably lose. I'm totally fine with 300€ fee for the tax consultant, she allows us to use the benefits of the system. By the ways, this fee is considered the next year, we get out tax back from the fee. If I remember correctly, a few years ago politicians discussed a "no-file" option: you declare that you don't file you tax declaration this year and get some bonus back (I think the proposed sum was around €300). The Finanzamt has less work to process declarations, so probably this was worth it. I don't think it was implemented, however.
grexe 10y ago
In Austria, since I think 2016, you also get automatic tax returns as an employee, but these are calculated based on a minimum standard wage and parameters, so you want to do the math on your own anyway, but it's very simple and straight forward, at least once you validated your account, which is a very official procedure but ok for security reasons. There's a simple online form where you basically only have to put 4 sums for each tax category and that's it, the rest is already sent by your employer. Always a nice and welcome surprise and a rewarding experience
grexe 10y ago
In Austria, since I think 2016, you also get automatic tax returns as an employee, but these are calculated based on a minimum standard wage and parameters, so you want to do the math on your own anyway, but it's very simple and straight forward, at least once you validated your account, which is a very official procedure but ok for security reasons. There's a simple online form where you basically only have to put 4 sums for each tax category and that's it, the rest is already sent by your employer. Always a nice and welcome surprise and a rewarding experience
rodionos 10y ago
Aggregate filing statistics for US tax returns 1990-2014: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/bbca48dc#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/bbca48dc#fullscreen Percentage of all reports filed electronically reached 86% in 2014. Big relief for USPS.
dennis_jeeves 10y ago
Interesting, that in all income tax discussions the underlying premise of income tax is not questioned. For me it's a form of extortion. If I avail of certain services provided by the government, I would expect a bill only for the services I availed. And just like my ISP I should have the option of not opting for the for their services.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Whether income tax is generally acceptable is a much broader (and philosophical) topic than the simpler question of whether it should be simpler to handle (obviously yes unless you make money from its complexity).
  - dennis_jeeves 10y ago
    In that case the debate would never end. Even before we get down to tax complexity, how do we decide if 10% of income as tax is good enough, versus 20%? Notice the rabbit hole of arguments that one can get sucked into.
    - TulliusCicero 10y ago
      > Even before we get down to tax complexity, how do we decide if 10% of income as tax is good enough, Why would we have to do that? The reality is that we already have an income tax, and we can definitely simply its filing process without changing its current rates. So far this sounds like a standard libertarian tactic where you try to turn every debate on political policy specifics into a debate around whether government should be doing anything at all. It's not any different than internet marxists who, given a topic that revolves around business, will always reply "well X should just handled by government anyway FULL COMMUNISM NOW". It's completely unproductive and borderline trolling.
BrandoElFollito 10y ago
I have this in France, filling in the taxes takes 20 seconds on Internet.

787 points by apsec112 10y ago

I have a better idea. Simplify the tax code so anyone can do theirs on an index card. There is absolutely no reason for the gargantuan tax code in a free society.

georgemcbay 10y ago
Not that I believe you think it is, but this isn't exactly a startling new idea. The same forces described in the article are also responsible for lobbying against simplicity in general. There is a whole giant industry that would go away in a puff of smoke (or at least be drastically reduced) if individual taxes weren't unnecessarily complex.
- eli 10y ago
  Also, everyone wants a simpler tax code except for the parts that benefit them. Few economists think the mortgage interest deduction is a good idea, but try telling that to homeowners.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    I'd exchange MI deduction for equivalent reduction in income tax. But the government wants to keep power to induce people into doing what it thinks is better, taxes and deductions are a major tool in this. Without explicitly giving up that power, nothing would change, so homeowners are not the main thing to blame it, they just do what the government wants them to do and makes profitable for them to do.
afarrell 10y ago
The problem is that every individual provision is popular with one group or another. But we could move to a system like the UK has where taxes are calculated for you and if you don't have contractor income you don't even need to file. But this would need changes to things like the Married Filing Jointly status.
- abrowne 10y ago
  How about the IRS calculates, you click OK if you agree, and if you don't, you're free to file? (Maybe this is how the UK system works; I've only done American and Canadian.)
- scurvy 10y ago
  Married filing jointly is one of the more sexist things codified in US law. It basically says women make no money and the man has to provide for everyone with a big salary so deductions and credits for the big earner. Or it says that if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% of what you do. Think about when these laws were written and look at it through a historical context. Once you do, it will outrage even the most even keeled.
  - alaaibrahim 10y ago
    could you elaborate more, where does it say that your wife should make 80% than what you do?
  - smsm42 10y ago
    > It basically says women make no money Could you explain this? I don't see where MFJ assumes women make no money. > if you're a dual income bunch of shmucks, that your wife must make 80% Also don't see how it means that. Could you explain your argument in a bit more detail?
    - scurvy 10y ago
      Sure. When the federal income tax was instituted in 1913, all of the tax rates were individual (and the lowest bracket covered most Americans). People who were married could lump sum their income and divide by 2 to find the correct rate. Married filing jointly back then was just a way to save on paperwork and hassle. Lump the two incomes together, divide by two, and treat the two people equally. That was it. In 1948, you got the official married filing jointly "status" and with it, the various income credits, deductions, etc. One would think that the married filing jointly tax rates would simply be double what the individual rates were, right? Wrong. The joint rates were about 1.8x the individual rates. Someone was 100%, someone was 80%. This being 1948, the woman in the dual income family was 80%. The IRS didn't want to appear to favor married couples over single people (even though they did), so they said 1.8X instead of 2X the individual rates. If you were lucky enough to be a big wage earning white male in 1948 America, you got a huge tax break since stay-at-home moms were the norm, there was a baby boom going on, and only about 20-25% of women worked. Married filing jointly is silly. It should be a sum of the family income, divided by two, then mapped to the individual rates.
charlesdm 10y ago
Great idea in theory, but hard to implement. Tax breaks were often created for a reason. Take them away, and that special interest group will try to protect it and lobby to keep it in place.
- deleted 10y ago
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fnord123 10y ago
>Simplify the tax code so anyone can do theirs on an index card. Aim higher. In the UK, your employer informs the government about your wages and HMRC figures out how much you paid and whether it's the correct amount. And if you want you can check the numbers. In other countries it's basically the same but you have to log into the e-government portal to click 'yes, the values you have are correct'. Obviously if your finances are more complicated then you need to file; but it's not very difficult.
- zw123456 10y ago
  Yes, of course. Obviously if the IRS knows your income, knows you mortgage interest, interest on savings and dividends and it is all electronically recorded, there what is the point of filing. Only to keep accountants and tax software companies in business. I can guarantee you that if you file a return and copy the numbers in wrong from your W4 you will get a computer generated letter. I did that by accident once I transposed two digits in the amount on a 1099 and I got a letter from them that was computer generated. So obviously they are having computers check it, so what is the point of me wasting time and money on filing. The UK system (and many other countries) is obviously the way to go.
  - sokoloff 10y ago
    Even on mortgages, the IRS doesn't have all the information. I refinanced my mortgage and paid points for the refi. Those points have to be amortized over the life of the loan (which the IRS knows the law, but doesn't know that I paid points on the loan). I just refinanced that mortgage again, meaning next year that I'll write off the rest of the points for the previous loan as a 2017 expense. There's plenty that the IRS doesn't know until you tell them.
    - xienze 10y ago
      That just sounds like a situation where the bank needs to supply information to the IRS for you so come tax time they already know about it.
geofft 10y ago
That's what the 1040EZ is. Seriously, take a look at it, it's a single page, only half of which is calculations: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040ez--2016.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/f1040ez--2016.pdf If you object that this isn't sufficient for you or someone else, I'll be happy to argue that whatever behavior would make you 1040EZ-ineligible should either not be permitted in a free society (because it's a tax-avoidance scheme for certain types of rich people with political power) or should be taxed as W-2 income (because otherwise it'd become such a tax-avoidance scheme), but good luck getting the people who benefit from those schemes to allow it.
- smsm42 10y ago
  One thing that is not 1040EZ is charity donations. I mean we could kill all charity deductions but not sure NGOs would be happy about it.
  - geofft 10y ago
    Do we get more value out of charity donations by normal people than we lose in charities being used as a tax-privileged vehicle for rich people to exert their desire on the world? Also, charitable donations have weird constraints. My church would like to end deportations of undocumented immigrants based on our reading of Leviticus 19:34, and the most effective way to do that would have been to campaign against certain presidential candidates. We couldn't do that. Another church wanted to end civil recognition of same-sex marriage based on their reading of Leviticus 18:22, but that involved campaigning for a ballot initiative, and they were allowed to do that to the tune of millions of dollars. I'm obviously not inclined to say "Please start taxing my church," but the fact that we can participate essentially by chance in some political activities and not others doesn't seem like it would exist in a "free society".
    - smsm42 10y ago
      First, your distinction between "normal people", which are moral, and "rich people", who are just evil, are kind of disgusting. Having a lot of money doesn't automatically make one evil (to remove all suspicion, I am not rich and likely never will be, at least by US standards :). I'm not sure what your point is there, but it doesn't sound good. > the most effective way to do that would have been to campaign against certain presidential candidates That's certainly not the most effective way. US law has very clear immigration provisions, which require certain documentation, and US president swears to uphold the law. Most efficient strategy would be to change the law, thus voting for specific - namely, open-border - candidate for Congress, that can change the law so that US has immigration procedures no longer, and thus does not have to deport people who violate them. Note that I did not say "efficient" but "most efficient" - I see no really efficient strategy that would make US a country without immigration law anytime soon, and having such law, it is natural to have to enforce it - otherwise there's no point in having it. In any case, nothing prevents you to from campaigning for or against any policy or any candidate, be it open border or not, as a private person or as a part of an organized effort. Why you need the church to do it? Just create an independent organization and campaign as your hear pleases. > I'm obviously not inclined to say "Please start taxing my church," If you register a non-profit and make all the requirements that tax-exempt non-profits have, and do charitable work and so on, nothing prevents you from calling your organization "church", but I don't see why doing so should give you any special status not available to any other nonprofit. And if it doesn't qualify as nonprofit, then it should be taxed by the same rules as the rest of organizations are.
deleted 10y ago
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elberto34 10y ago

the deep cynicism here is how people think Turbo tax is doing a pubic service by making taxes easier and cheaper, that's how effective their marketing is. Convince the public there is a problem that only said company can solve.

bluedino 10y ago
Paying TurboTax $59.99 is cheaper than going to H&R Block and paying a tax preparer $169
- texuf 10y ago
  The IRS already knows what taxes you owe. In most cases they could just send you a bill.
  - bluedino 10y ago
    Your state and local government would also have to send you a bill.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    Yeah, if they can check if I've paid the correct taxes then they know how much I should pay. Can't they just tell me?
    - sokoloff 10y ago
      No. How would they know how many charitable donations you made? How would they know how many miles you drove for your business? How would they know how much you spent on travel for your company? How would they know how much you paid for the raw materials for the products you sold? Or your business utilities, rent, etc? How would they know your unreimbursed medical expenses or casualty losses?
      - bluejekyll 10y ago
        The issue here is that taxes have been over complicated with deductions. If it was just simply based off earnings and there were no deductions it would be simple. Obviously taxes would need to be reduced if all deductions were removed. I for one would love to see a zero deduction tax law, and simple validation of earnings.

Upvoter33 10y ago

well, of course. imagine you are a business and the govmt could change a law and put you out of business. wouldn't you put as much money as you could into preventing that change? this is why money in politics causes problems...

joering2 10y ago
Same old same old: show me a doctor who doesn't want you to be sick. Show me a lawyer who doesn't want you to get in trouble with law. Show me a priest who doesn't want you to sin. It just blows my mind up to what degree TurboTax will go with this!
- olegkikin 10y ago
  Doctors already have more patients than they can handle, that's why they work such crazy shifts.
  - j2bax 10y ago
    I was under the impression that they worked crazy schedules so they could work 2-3 days and be off the other 4-5 days each week.
    - pixelmonkey 10y ago
      Are you kidding? Very rare is the doctor with that kind of schedule.
      - bollockitis 10y ago
        My wife works at a regional cancer center and many of them do indeed have this kind of schedule. It's built into their contract.
    - cmurf 10y ago
      I have a family full of doctors and none of them have schedules anything even approximating that; it'd be 4 days with 10-12 shifts, one 1/2 day defined as at least 6 hours or possibly an open ended 8, and two days off. This idea of 4-5 days off in a row, or even per week is nonsense.

the_cat_kittles 10y ago

slightly off topic, but... you can file for free using any number of tax prep software if you make less than ~64k a year: https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/uac/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-...

geofft 10y ago
You can file for free at any income level; you just get software assistance if you make less than a certain amount. I file with Free File Fillable Forms, which does the calculations for me, I just have to be comfortable filling in the inputs to the form (and I'm paranoid enough that I want to be reading the form and its instructions anyway). But I don't have complicated deductions... or at least, I don't think I do.
- the_cat_kittles 10y ago
  right, should have clarified that. maybe ill go back and use free fillable forms myself, i do kind of hate not knowing whats going on "under the hood"
dustinhlyons 10y ago
Or use Credit Karma Tax. Completely free software assistance at any income level. (https://www.creditkarma.com/tax https://www.creditkarma.com/tax) Disclaimer: I work there.
- JshWright 10y ago
  I signed up for the beta, but my taxes were long done by the time it was released...
- nodesocket 10y ago
  I've looked at Credit Karma tax free, but I'm a bit nervous as I own a California LLC (100% sole owner), and also have capital gains, dividends, write-offs. Is Credit Karma a good choice for more complicated returns? Last year I paid H&R $650 for literally one hour of time which infuriated me.

joering2 10y ago

I always love reading absurd statements made by otherwise reasonable people who - of course - a salary depends on being unreasonable. Here: > Intuit argues that allowing the IRS to act as a tax preparer could result in taxpayers paying more money. Majority of work will be done automatically by some free jQuery and PHP scripts (hello Obamacare website) and taxpayers have only shell-out initial cost. Even if TurboTax is $19 per year, I have a hard time believing that 200MM tax payers X $19 will be less than running an enterprise servers for online consumers. > [...] "STOP IRS TAKEOVER" campaign and a website calling return-free filing a "massive expansion of the U.S. government through a big government program." I honestly laugh at this one. Just exactly which part of information that IRS process is not already in the IRS possession? With that statement -- they really reach out for the dumbest people hearing them out. > Explaining the company's stance, Intuit spokeswoman Miller told the Los Angeles Times in 2006 that it was "a fundamental conflict of interest for the state's tax collector and enforcer to also become people's tax preparer." I have to place a call to intuit maybe they will sponsor my idea that I should fill out and asses my own respondibility when it comes to a parking ticket. I mean you cannot trust the government that they will be fair to you - so I should get note "you violated parking zone - fill out this form and return to us with own assessment of your penalty". Gosh imagine wild wild west we would be living in if you stretch it to criminal law.

simcop2387 10y ago
> I honestly laugh at this one. Just exactly which part of information that IRS process is not already in the IRS possession? With that statement -- they really reach out for the dumbest people hearing them out. They won't have data from people who are self-employed. That said, neither does TurboTax so there's no difference here based on their argument, just as you said.
- smsm42 10y ago
  It does make a difference. TurboTax is an app that allows you to enter this info. The whole premise of auto-filed tax return is that you don't need to enter anything. The argument "to be able to file without entering anything you need to either vastly expand what IRS knows about citizens, or to restrict it to a small number of very simple cases" is not refuted by pointing out neither IRS nor TurboTax initially do not have the info. Because TurboTax side is not based on the premise of having the info upfront, only auto-file case is premised on this. The correct way to refute such argument would be to prove that the simple cases - the ones that can be auto-files - constitute not a small part of cases but a part big enough to warrant IRS doing it. That's the argument I'd like to see - with proof, of course - i.e. how big is that part that can be auto-filed completely without increasing IRS knowledge it has now.

tschwimmer 10y ago

Serious question: Is it possible for society to criminalize rent seeking behaviors like this? It seems clear that there's no benefit to keeping the status quo tax filing system except for the benefit of tax preparers. What's stopping the US from creating a law that says if a company attempts to lobby for something in bad faith (like the tax example), they will face sanction?

jessriedel 10y ago
The 1st amendment.
bluejekyll 10y ago
To get a law like that passed you'd need lobbyists stronger than the lobbyists representing that industry. I would say every lobbyist in DC would fight any such law as it would directly threaten their industry.
zitterbewegung 10y ago
Probably that your proposed rule is so vague that it would be impossible to be enforced .
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  That's rarely stopped US lawmakers, prosecutors, and judges before.
  - zitterbewegung 10y ago
    Sorry I was vague in my comment . You will have it on the books and the lawmakers can point to it when they get elected . Other than that the behavior that you want won't be prevented . At best you will have some long drawn out court case that will strike down the law .
dfabulich 10y ago
Not as long as bad policy is good politics. https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

chatterbeak 10y ago

Everyone should be able to get his taxes done for free by the Government. I pay about $3500/year to get my taxes done and pay a _lot_ in taxes. Why should the 40% of people who contribute little to tax revenue get another government benefit?

brownknight 10y ago

alkonaut 10y ago

TIL how I file my taxes (log in and submit a pre-filled web form, or send a text message approving it) was the exception, not the norm. I would have expected at least most of western Europe to have reached that point.

Taniwha 10y ago
here in NZ most people don't even have to file taxes - we have NO exemptions, if you have one job your boss will have gotten your tax right, your bank will withhold tax on interest at your declared marginal rate - if you have multiple jobs filing a one page web form might get you a refund (with interest!). less than 5% of us, those with complex financial lives who can likely afford it, have to file a more formal return
- alkonaut 10y ago
  Same here, but I have to actually confirm that I have seen it and sign it (via text message, online or paper). The stuff I have to manually add to the filing is s.g if I bought or sold a house or did any complicated stock market trades (but then the broker or bank usually lets you take that form pre filled from them at least).

shakencrew 10y ago

Previous discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203

tacostakohashi 10y ago

It's pretty much the same as the situation with taxi medallion owners now that Uber has come along. If you ask me, the correct answer is for the government to either give some one-off compensation to Intuit (or buy the company from its existing shareholders), and then shut it down, and reform the system. Why should the government pay money to a private corporation or shareholders? Because they created this mess ("opportunity") in the first place with a ridiculous tax code. It's just the actual, realized, dollar-value cost of the mess that was created, instead of externalizing the cost onto taxpayers. Once that cost has been paid, the system can be fixed.

shmerl 10y ago

That's really disgusting, and the reason I'm not using TurboTax.

ProAm 10y ago
I switched to Tax Act [1] a couple years ago and have not been happier. Easier to use and MUCH cheaper. For federal and state the total came to $30 [1] https://www.taxact.com/ https://www.taxact.com/
- shmerl 10y ago
  Yep, they are pretty good.

hackuser 10y ago

A tangential issue: It seems almost impossible to me that the systems of tax preparation services, whether cloud-based, local software, or offline, are secure. The standard of security is, make the target more expensive to breach than it's worth to the attacker. How much would it be worth to have access to the tax returns of large swaths of the population? I don't know the answer, but I'm guessing it's easily worth billions of dollars. Foreign intelligence services would very much like that information, as well as sophisticated criminals. I am very doubtful that Intuit or H&R Block, for example, invest in security sufficient to protect themselves against that level of attack.

freehunter 10y ago
The answer, of course, is "it's not that secure". Now, Turbo Tax and H&R Block aren't being hacked, but breaking into their systems isn't the easy way. And like you said, attackers want to take the easy way. The easy way is to get just enough info from your targets as it takes to extract money from them. And in the past few years, e-filing fraud has skyrocketed. The mantra is "file your taxes before someone else does", because the number of people who are submitting their tax form only to find out it's already been submitted is greater than ever before. It's really, really hard to attack Intuit. It's much easier to submit fraudulent tax forms and pocket the returns before anyone notices.
- gst 10y ago
  > The mantra is "file your taxes before someone else does", because the number of people who are submitting their tax form only to find out it's already been submitted is greater than ever before. The IRS is liable for losses due to fraud, so why would I care about fraud? It's up to the IRS to secure their systems.
  - JohnTHaller 10y ago
    Perhaps because it is a long and painful process to prove it and then get your money.

xupybd 10y ago

I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all my charitable donations. Very easy very quick. All my details are available to me online. All transactions are there and it's very transparent. Why would anyone oppose a simple system like this?

JacobHenner 10y ago
Because it'd put accountants, lawyers, and firms like these out of work.
- cmurf 10y ago
  So in other words, the free market has produced a pile of jobs that we don't really need? Lobbyists get paid money to get politicians to supply a deduction as a line item on some obscure form, which increases red tape, which requires a need for a free market service, the revenue from that service in turn goes to feed more lobbying for more red tape. This is basically collusion, using the worst aspects of the free market and government, in simultaneous failures. Meanwhile, the accounting and tax lay industry is part of the lobbying effort to grow their business on the back end, rather than making the case to the customer on the front end. It'd double dealing. So I'm hardly sympathetic, but yes considering there are an ass tonne of jobs that would just vanish overnight, there'd maybe need to be a transitional phase, just avoid an abrupt change. But how do you shrink a market in a non-disruptive and fair way considering it grew in a distruptive and unfair way in the first place?
  - iopq 10y ago
    > the free market it's not the free market when you lobby the GOVERNMENT to do what you want it to do
  - baddox 10y ago

pag 10y ago

I'm really happy with how the Canadian Revenue Agency handles things. You file online, there's plenty of free services to do your taxes. They support auto-fill where the CRA can send them the tax info it already knows about you (e.g. from banks and employers), etc. I filed my a few weeks ago and they assessed my returns by the next afternoon. Last week I received a cheque in the mail, but that's only because I forgot to fill out the direct deposit info on the CRA website. The husband of a former colleague used to fill out junk on their tax returns because they knew that the CRA would just fix it all up, and then tell them what they owed (or what they would be refundend) in their notice of assessment.

upofadown 10y ago
Technically the situation in Canada is the same as in the US. You must use a third party to file your taxes online. There is a donationware system from simpletax.ca and most (all?) of the others will not charge for a sufficiently low yearly income. That doesn't change the fact that in Canada there is no way for a citizen to file their taxes directly with the government other than by using the paper forms and mailing them in. There used to be a telephone system but that was eliminated some years back. The relationship between the private tax preparers and the CRA is much closer than is healthy. I suspect that is related to the current situation. This bothers me enough that I file my taxes on paper as a form of protest. The nice thing is that you can put pretty much any nonsense on there you want. They will just ignore your figures if they disagree which of course shows how silly the current situation is.

kumarski 10y ago

I once contemplated buying NovoNordisk and investing millions to open subsidized donut shops for the wealthy.....

harryh 10y ago

Intuit certainly does this, but blaming them for our overly complex taxes is wrong. They might move the needle a little bit but they aren't the primary driver. The primary driver is all the constituencies of all the little things in our taxes that add up to make them complicated. Like ObamaCare? That came with two additional forms. Live in a high tax state and like deducting your state taxes? That makes things more complicated. Big fan of deductions to for education or child care? That comes with complexities. I could go on and on.... Now maybe your answer to all of these questions was "no", but there are a lot of people that say "yes" to a lot of these questions. It's really hard to upset that apple cart. Lobbying doesn't have much to do with it.

stult 10y ago
That's not the point of the article at all, nor of Intuit's lobbying. Even with the current complexity of the tax code, the IRS could easily auto file your taxes for you if your income is below a certain very high level and you do not have any special complications. Such a system would work for 98% of Americans. This has nothing to do with what deductions are available or whatever complexity they introduce into the system. There is simply no reason whatsoever not to implement return-free filing, beyond the large dollar amounts tax industry lobbyists spend on the Hill.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > There is simply no reason whatsoever not to implement return-free filing, beyond the large dollar amounts tax industry lobbyists spend on the Hill. It's not all Intuit lobbying. Many politicians of a particular faction oppose return free filing because they want to keep tax proxess as painful as possible to make people emotionally susceptible to anti-tax and, more generally, anti-government rhetoric.
  - sampo 10y ago
    Government which stays in power based on people's anti-government sentiment, isn't that something.

nojvek 10y ago

If trump administration actually manages to simplify tax code and kill the stupidity corporations induce via lobbying such that I can file my own taxes. I would have a lot of respect for him.

laser 10y ago
In the first paragraph, "Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed a bill yesterday to allow free government-prepped returns."
- ticviking 10y ago
  You seem to be confusing, gratis, and Taxpayer-funded.
  - mhalle 10y ago
    The IRS is already essentially doing your taxes already (certainly for the most common and straightforward returns): they have to verify your statement. The actual computation is trivial (for them). "Doing your taxes" mostly involves showing you their calculations. It's almost a freedom of information issue. Compared to the cost of private prep and filing, it basically does seem free (gratis). And even if you choose to dispute or file independently, such a program could save each filer time and money by providing a base document; you would just provide diffs.
    - umanwizard 10y ago
      The IRS mostly just trusts what you tell them for a lot of stuff (like charitable donation amounts). This is why audits are a thing.
- djrogers 10y ago
  Note it says "free" and "government prepared". Setting aside that those are mutually exclusive concepts, that says nothing about simplifying taxes - it's just having the government do the complicated stuff instead of you (or your accountant).

mlinksva 10y ago

Many tech companies are members of CCIA and should demand it stop advocating for Intuit's civilization-destroying agenda. It's been one of their issues for a long time eg http://www.ccianet.org/2011/09/irs-tax-prep-not-a-budget-solution/ http://www.ccianet.org/2011/09/irs-tax-prep-not-a-budget-sol... and http://www.ccianet.org/2002/01/treasury-irs-announce-efforts-to-expand-tax-e-filing/ http://www.ccianet.org/2002/01/treasury-irs-announce-efforts... ... and it's a major activity of theirs http://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby-heavily-against-simple-filing/ http://sunlightfoundation.com/2013/04/15/tax-preparers-lobby... > The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), of which Intuit is a member, represents its members on a wide range of technology issues, but spends a significant amount of its $6.7 million in lobbying on tax simplification. As ProPublica's piece points out, the group operates the website "Stop IRS Takeover" which bashes the idea of pre-filed returns. Disclosures indicate the CCIA has focused on "issues pertaining to tax preparation services" and legislation involving simple filing. It lobbied in support of Rep. Lofgren's bill that would have barred government-filed returns, and rallied against Sen. Akaka's bill that would have let taxpayers file directly through the IRS "without the use of an intermediary." The CCIA is an active political giver as well, doling out over $650,000 over the past 20 years with 91% going to Democrats. Silicon Valley-based Rep. Lofgren, an opponent of IRS-prepared returns, has been the biggest beneficiary of CCIA donation, collecting over $12,000. The group also opposed John Chiang in the 2006 California controller election, chipping in $50,000 to the Alliance for California's Tomorrow — the same group that received $1 million from Intuit. CCIA also gets lots of mentions in https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Report.pdf https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/Tax_Maze_Repor...

schainks 10y ago

So, just for a different perspective, Taiwan has a relatively simple tax filing experience, and the government invests significant resources to make as simple as possible (which does result in many people paying their taxes properly, on time). While their digital tools for filing taxes make the telegraph feel modern, the "in person" experience is full of helpful people and takes about 90 minutes including travel time. My main criticisms of the filing process: 1. Tax bureau has a one month timeframe where you can go, in person, to file "on time", but only during business hours. Any 9-5 worker must take time off to go file in person. It's a pretty nice customer experience - The volunteers in the bureau help you file your taxes with highest deductions possible, it gets crosschecked by a government tax clerk, and you're done. 2. Make the software work better on a modern OS and give it modern usability. It's _really_ crap UI, and I only run it in a VM just in case because the download site is also shady looking. 3. Locals gaming the system can make your life harder as a working-from-home small business owner. Many landlords don't pay income taxes on their properties, which means tenants cannot register business addresses at their homes, and must "rent" an address for about $100 / month. 4. Withholdings on foreigners, by default, are artificially high as a "precaution". 5. Refunds process in August after filing in May. Because they still process every return much by hand. 6. Double taxation on people like US citizens. The tax clerk has asked friends of mine, while filing, to show their US tax return to make sure there are not more taxes owed. They can ask, but it's not enforceable. So why do it? Because the tax rate on that income earned elsewhere can be as high as 30-40%! The tax clerk gets to decide how bad of an offender you are. GLHF. 7. If your income goes down compared to the year before as a foreigner, you will probably pay a penalty for "making less money" because they suspect tax evasion. Pay the fine (less than $USD 100) and walk away, or they dig your records hard and you could wind up in a situation like #6 above.

Symbiote 10y ago
> Double taxation on people like US citizens. That's America that's out of step. Almost all other countries only tax their residents, not their residents plus citizens. It's normal to tax worldwide income. I told the British tax office that I'd left the country. They sent a refund and final statement a few months later, and we haven't communicated since. If I had, for example, a house in Britain being rented out, I'd need to declare that income to my new country.

azernik 10y ago

There's a fascinating article linked from this one: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-... See the final paragraphs, which I've copied below - it's essentially a version of the Citogenesis effect. ----------------------------- "Dennis Huang, executive director of the L.A.-based Asian Business Association, also told ProPublica he was solicited by a lobbyist to write about return-free filing. When the lobbyist sent him a suggested op-ed last summer and told him the proposal would hurt small businesses, Huang wrote an op-ed in the Asian Journal that claimed Asian-owned businesses would not only spend more time paying taxes, but they'd also get less of a refund each year. Huang declined to disclose the lobbyist's name, but acknowledged he didn't really do his own research. "There's some homework needed," he said. Oregon's Martin did some research on return-free filing and now supports it. She also co-published a post about the issue and the PR efforts related to it because, she says, she was alarmed that other nonprofits could easily agree to endorse a position they did not fully understand. "You get one or two prominent nonprofits to use their name, and busy advocates will extend trust and say sure, us too," Martin said."

startupdiscuss 10y ago

A lot of the comments here are conflating two different things: 1. The complexity of the tax code 2. The complexity of filing They are not the same thing. You have to go through some process to file now. Let the government go through that laborious process. For those who are not conflating the two, this point does not apply.

yawz 10y ago

When I read this, unfortunately I'm thinking "don't hate the player, hate the game". Lobbying is a double-edged sword, and it is a game played very well by the powerful and the rich.

averagewall 10y ago
Lobbying only works because voters don't care about what they're voting for. You can always vote against the candidates who were lobbied into doing something you don't like, or lobbied at all. But the majority of voters can't do that - they insist on voting for the candidates with the most expensive advertising and forget about where that money comes from.

unclebucknasty 10y ago

Reminds me that raw capitalism isn't the answer to every problem. Kind of like the current healthcare debate in the U.S., where the problem seems to be "how do we allow insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. to make maximum profits while providing healthcare for the maximim number of people at minimum cost?"

frogpelt 10y ago

As strange it may seem, a portion of people/corporations are always pro-privatization and anti-nationalization. This helps explain why there is an anti-net-neutrality faction. It's not just because people don't understand. And it's not just because people are bought and paid for. There are actually legitimate arguments for privatizing things and then regulating them rather than nationalizing and trusting the government to manage effectively.

camperman 10y ago

Institutions prolong problems to which they themselves are the solution - Systemantics.

camperman 10y ago
Ak, that was actually Clay Shirky. Sorry Clay ;)

sshumaker 10y ago

This is one of the reasons Credit Karma launched a totally free online tax product this year (https://creditkarma.com/tax https://creditkarma.com/tax). (We view this similarly to credit scores a decade ago, when everyone advertising "free" was a bait and switch).

rayiner 10y ago

It's not really a credible idea that an industry accounting for 0.05% of U.S. GDP somehow manages to out-lobby the industries representing the other 99.95% of GDP, so as to keep tax filing complicated when otherwise there would be a critical mass in favor of simplification.

randyrand 10y ago

The maker of tax return software doesn't want to lose business? news at 11.

thewhitetulip 10y ago

I am in India and tax filing here is as simple as 1 2 3. We have the Form16, which has the data to be entered in an excel sheet that you can download from the govt website, punch in the numbers and voilà, they tell you tax you owe! Pay via net banking and you are done.

chad_strategic 10y ago

I'm sure this will get a few down votes, for this beautiful poem. (The real problem is the last line, but this isn't an economics forum...) Roses are red, Violets are blue, Taxation is theft, and Inflation is too.

rushabh 10y ago

While the focus of this discussion here is on the taxes, I think the bigger story is the unethical behaviour of companies like Intuit. And its not only Intuit, but also companies like SAP [1] that engage in such behaviour at the cost of tax payers. The finanical might takes away so much from the commons and also pushes back adoption of good Open Source software. We constantly under-estimate the damage done by these mega-corps. [1] http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2015/08/12/former-sap-executive-pleads-guilty-to-bribery-charge/ http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2015/08/12/former-sap... [2] http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/21/sap-south-africas-managing-director-implicated-in-alleged-38-million-sap-licenses-purchasing-and-kickback-scandal/ http://www.iafrikan.com/2017/02/21/sap-south-africas-managin...

tuna-piano 10y ago

I haven't read a legitimate argument against the IRS calculating taxes automatically, but here it is. The more invisible taxes are to the individual person, the less they think about that money (and the higher taxes can go without them complaining too much). Rent feels expensive because every month you write a check for rent. However, for many people, taxes are a much bigger expense than rent. But taxes don't feel as painful, because people don't write a check every month for taxes. Taxes are just invisibly withdrawn from your paycheck. The easier and more invisible it is to pay taxes, the more you forget about how much money that really is. If you believe in constrained government, there's a good case to be made that we should make tax payments more visible, not less.

ruleabidinguser 10y ago
Im sure people who are making their decisions about what they value the way you describe are not really so concerned without how much its actually costing them.
millstone 10y ago
In 2014 the Obama administration provided a "tax receipt" so you can see how much you paid and what you got for it. Cool idea. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/2014-taxreceipt https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/2014-taxreceipt
TheGRS 10y ago
Sales tax would solve that real quick.
vxNsr 10y ago
While I agree with the sentiment of what you said, my rent comes out to about 3 times my monthly tax deductions.
nathan_f77 10y ago
> Rent feels expensive because every month you write a check for rent Even when I was living in San Francisco, my rent payments were automatic, and I didn't think about them too much. My rent still felt very, very expensive.

jaypaulynice 10y ago

You can do your taxes for free using this: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/#/fd https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/#/fd, but it's a huge pain unless you know what you're doing. I did it last year, but it took 10+ times to submit it correctly and the errors were straight from programming errors (i.e: tax_status is not valid, etc.) Massachusetts had free tax filing, but got rid of it this year. It was really great and fastest refund I ever received.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

twblalock 10y ago

The fact that taxes are complex is the government's fault. The fact that companies can manipulate the government into keeping the taxes complex is also the government's fault.

em3rgent0rdr 10y ago

The problem is not who prepares your taxes. The problem is how complicated taxes are.

mb_72 10y ago

I have experience as a tax payer in Estonia (employee only) and Australia (employee and business owner). In Estonia I login to my bank with my citizens ID card, click through a few screens ... and my tax return is done. All the financial information supplied by my employer to the government is immediately visible and checkable, not to mention donations made to tax-deductable organisations is also immediately visible. It is incredibly quick and convenient. In Australia it's just easier to leave everything to my accountant as they already have my quarterly business returns information; cost is still pretty reasonable (500AUD or so for the yearly business returns and the personal returns for my wife and I). But ... yeah ... in Estonia it just rocks. The ID-card based functionality for banking, digital signatures, tax ... just awesome.

codfrantic 10y ago
In the Netherlands it is similar, most information is combined for you by the government, they even introduced an app to file your taxes last year. It probably is still a lot of work for businesses though... We often hear about the advanced digital government in Estonia, must be nice to have such an open minded country.
jedberg 10y ago
> But ... yeah ... in Estonia it just rocks. The ID-card based functionality for banking, digital signatures, tax ... just awesome. That's what happens when your head of state has a computer engineering degree and used to work on databases before going into politics. :)
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
It is similar in Norway - though I've only watched my spouse do his. You get an email notifying you, log into the government website to check it. If you agree, the only action necessary is to pay the bill, if there is one. Otherwise, your refund will arrive. You have the option of doing actual filing or disputing the figures, but obviously don't have to. Edit: The tax is figured out when you start work or update for things like marriage or children. This seems to include a trip to the tax authority for a personalized tax schedule.
10y ago

orless 10y ago

I live and work (not self-employed) in Germany, which has one of the most complex tax systems in the world. Normally, a certain amount is deducted from my salary upfront automatically so I pay my most of my taxes through the year. The deducted percentage is defined by so-called "tax class" (1 for singles, 3/5, 4/4 or 5/3 for married or "registered partnership" couples). When the year is over you MAY file a tax declaration if you had 1 or 4/4 combo - or you MUST file it if you had 3/5 or 5/3 combo (because then you have normally underpayed the taxes through the year as a couple). If you have 1 or 4/4 you have normally overpayed taxes so if you don't file, the goverment is happy. The tax code in Germany is mindbloggingly complex. And it's not just laws, its' also "common practices", knowing what the Tax Authority (Finanzamt) accepts and what not. It's also knowing the current lawsuit which may be potentially applicable to your declaration. Every year there's a few dozen such tax lawsuits where the results are applicable to large groups of taxpayers. When I was single I either didn't file the tax declaration or filed it myself with the help of software and a few books. There's a bestselling book "1000 absolutely legal tax tricks" (https://www.amazon.de/Konz-1000-ganz-legale-Steuertricks/dp/3426788411 https://www.amazon.de/Konz-1000-ganz-legale-Steuertricks/dp/...) which is a a good starter. Nowadays with family and kids we must file a tax declaration, but now there are so many special cases we're either subject to or can profit from that it's not realistic to do it on our own. We outsource our tax declaration, it costs us around 300€ a year and is absolutely worth it. Our tax consultant routinely argues with the Finanzamt over two-digit sums, basically fights for every cent. Honestly I don't think we'd better off if the tax system in Germany would have been simpler. We profit from a number of special cases like "extraorinary burden" because of the disabled child, so I think in the "one size fits all" system we'd probably lose. I'm totally fine with 300€ fee for the tax consultant, she allows us to use the benefits of the system. By the ways, this fee is considered the next year, we get out tax back from the fee. If I remember correctly, a few years ago politicians discussed a "no-file" option: you declare that you don't file you tax declaration this year and get some bonus back (I think the proposed sum was around €300). The Finanzamt has less work to process declarations, so probably this was worth it. I don't think it was implemented, however.

grexe 10y ago

In Austria, since I think 2016, you also get automatic tax returns as an employee, but these are calculated based on a minimum standard wage and parameters, so you want to do the math on your own anyway, but it's very simple and straight forward, at least once you validated your account, which is a very official procedure but ok for security reasons. There's a simple online form where you basically only have to put 4 sums for each tax category and that's it, the rest is already sent by your employer. Always a nice and welcome surprise and a rewarding experience

grexe 10y ago

rodionos 10y ago

Aggregate filing statistics for US tax returns 1990-2014: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/bbca48dc#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/bbca48dc#fullscreen Percentage of all reports filed electronically reached 86% in 2014. Big relief for USPS.

dennis_jeeves 10y ago

Interesting, that in all income tax discussions the underlying premise of income tax is not questioned. For me it's a form of extortion. If I avail of certain services provided by the government, I would expect a bill only for the services I availed. And just like my ISP I should have the option of not opting for the for their services.

TulliusCicero 10y ago
Whether income tax is generally acceptable is a much broader (and philosophical) topic than the simpler question of whether it should be simpler to handle (obviously yes unless you make money from its complexity).
- dennis_jeeves 10y ago
  In that case the debate would never end. Even before we get down to tax complexity, how do we decide if 10% of income as tax is good enough, versus 20%? Notice the rabbit hole of arguments that one can get sucked into.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    > Even before we get down to tax complexity, how do we decide if 10% of income as tax is good enough, Why would we have to do that? The reality is that we already have an income tax, and we can definitely simply its filing process without changing its current rates. So far this sounds like a standard libertarian tactic where you try to turn every debate on political policy specifics into a debate around whether government should be doing anything at all. It's not any different than internet marxists who, given a topic that revolves around business, will always reply "well X should just handled by government anyway FULL COMMUNISM NOW". It's completely unproductive and borderline trolling.

BrandoElFollito 10y ago

I have this in France, filling in the taxes takes 20 seconds on Internet.