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Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Every single one of my employees goes to H&R block or some tax guy to pay taxes. Almost all of them have

Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Every single one of my employees goes to H&R block or some tax guy to pay taxes. Almost all of them have 1 job. Most of them 1 or 2 W2s and most don't houses. A pre-filled form will help every single one them to save money. And you can still have your pre-filled form verify by an accountant or H&R Block. No one is stopping you from that. You should listen to the latest Planet Money Podcast - Tax hero. Republican don't support this because having complicated form will make people oppose taxes in general. That is the republican motto.

javagram 8y ago
> Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Through the Free File Alliance, TurboTax and other such software is free for anyone making less than 66k. Maybe this problem could be solved with education? I know there are also issues where people in poverty don’t file and then miss out on $1000s they might have gotten from the government via EITC.
mikestew 8y ago
Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Every single one of my employees goes to H&R block or some tax guy to pay taxes. Almost all of them have 1 job. Most of them 1 or 2 W2s and most don't houses. We own a house, two high-tech incomes, and loads of 1099Bs to deal with. IOW, I can't imagine the tax situation of your employees is any more complicated than mine. In previous years, I could whip it out on a Saturday morning. This year, it was an hour of importing forms electronically, if that (umm, thanks, higher standard deduction?). I'm not trying to take away from your point, I'm still chafed each year that I have to give money to TaxAct (at least they don't lobby for complicated taxes, AFAICT). But taxes aren't that complicated for simple situations. Maybe have an hour brownbag or something on "here's how to enter the control # off a W2 and import it. Import from Fidelity. Sorted."?
- fwip 8y ago
  In my experience, it's less the effort required to do it, and more about the risk of getting it wrong. There's a lot of domain-specific knowledge that goes into filing your taxes, and it's easy to be afraid that you're gonna mess it up and be on the hook for thousands of dollars.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
There's nothing stopping low income people from just filling out the forms. With a trivial income situation and no complicated deductions it's dead simple. The problem is that much of America is functionally innumerate and doesn't want to take a little time adding up some numbers.

Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Every single one of my employees goes to H&R block or some tax guy to pay taxes. Almost all of them have 1 job. Most of them 1 or 2 W2s and most don't houses. A pre-filled form will help every single one them to save money. And you can still have your pre-filled form verify by an accountant or H&R Block. No one is stopping you from that. You should listen to the latest Planet Money Podcast - Tax hero. Republican don't support this because having complicated form will make people oppose taxes in general. That is the republican motto.

javagram 8y ago

> Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Through the Free File Alliance, TurboTax and other such software is free for anyone making less than 66k. Maybe this problem could be solved with education? I know there are also issues where people in poverty don’t file and then miss out on $1000s they might have gotten from the government via EITC.

mikestew 8y ago

Poor taxpayers spend 200+ dollars to file their taxes. Every single one of my employees goes to H&R block or some tax guy to pay taxes. Almost all of them have 1 job. Most of them 1 or 2 W2s and most don't houses. We own a house, two high-tech incomes, and loads of 1099Bs to deal with. IOW, I can't imagine the tax situation of your employees is any more complicated than mine. In previous years, I could whip it out on a Saturday morning. This year, it was an hour of importing forms electronically, if that (umm, thanks, higher standard deduction?). I'm not trying to take away from your point, I'm still chafed each year that I have to give money to TaxAct (at least they don't lobby for complicated taxes, AFAICT). But taxes aren't that complicated for simple situations. Maybe have an hour brownbag or something on "here's how to enter the control # off a W2 and import it. Import from Fidelity. Sorted."?

fwip 8y ago
In my experience, it's less the effort required to do it, and more about the risk of getting it wrong. There's a lot of domain-specific knowledge that goes into filing your taxes, and it's easy to be afraid that you're gonna mess it up and be on the hook for thousands of dollars.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

There's nothing stopping low income people from just filling out the forms. With a trivial income situation and no complicated deductions it's dead simple. The problem is that much of America is functionally innumerate and doesn't want to take a little time adding up some numbers.