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I probably should’ve made clear that I support the idea of pre-filled taxes for most people. At the same time, I think there’s some tendency towards exaggerati
by cepth 8y ago
I probably should’ve made clear that I support the idea of pre-filled taxes for most people.
At the same time, I think there’s some tendency towards exaggeration on how hard someone who derived all their income from a single W-2 has to work to file taxes.
Your W-2 alone has 20 boxes, albeit usually a dozen are actually used. When you file using a free online service, they have to ask you if you’re filing jointly, if you have dependents etc. A dozen fields is not a lot of work when you’re literally retyping information from a paper form. It’s tedious, but not particularly time consuming. It took me maybe an hour, part of which was just getting my pay stubs and W-2 out.
- p49k 8y agoNot everyone is a well-educated HN reader like yourself. I know tons of people (genuinely good people who work hard and contribute significantly to our society) who get anxiety around tax time and end up paying for services they don't need because they buy into the dark patterns and scare tactics pushed by Intuit and H&R Block. They wouldn't have this problem if they received a pre-filled form in which they knew there would be basically zero chance of error if they were a regular W2 employee.