11 ms·

The real dark pattern is their ability to bribe the Congress into preventing IRS from implementing free filing.

rootusrootus 8y ago
While Intuit definitely feeds Congress some money in support of their corporate goals, the lack of free tax filing is probably more Grover Norquist's fault. He strongly opposes anything that would make paying taxes easier, and he has a lot more influence than Intuit.
- username223 8y ago
  Norquist is just twisted, sabotaging the government to convince people that it doesn't work. It would cost the IRS almost nothing to send out pre-filled forms, and giving them enough money to audit the wealthy (i.e. ensure they aren't cheating) would more than pay for itself.
  - michelpp 8y ago
    Agreed. In fact the IRS would likely save money, because of all the followup enforcement actions they could avoid.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    While I think the IRS should do this, it would require a lot of additional work and resources, as well as a reshuffling of filing deadlines throughout the system. The IRS currently does not have all the information it needs to prefill forms, and inly has the resources to review a fraction of the 140M+ returns filed each year. I don't know why so many people in this site seem to think this is a trivial thing for the IRS. 100% review after the fact isn't even feasible right now, let alone having the information in January.
    - Noughmad 8y ago
      So, another thing that the richest country in the world can't afford, despite the fact that just about every other country can do it.
      - vonmoltke 8y ago
        First off, I never said anything about the US not being able to afford it. I said the IRS can't do it with their current resources. Big difference. Second, the IRS processed 247.8M total returns[1] and 3.59B supporting documents[2] in 2017. While I think the IRS could do a better job (like, well, the entire rest of the US federal government), what other tax system processes anything near that volume? Also, I'm not buying "just about every other country". Not even close. For starters, I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of African countries manage to do it. [1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6292.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6292.pdf, page (3) [2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6961.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6961.pdf, page (4)
        int_19h 8y ago
        How about "every other developed country"? The volume doesn't really matter, because it scales linearly with population - a larger country just needs more bureaucrats, but it can afford them because it also collects more taxes from more people. There's nothing unique in that regard in US. But if you want something in the same ballpark, we can look at, say, Russia (population of 150 million), or even at Nigeria (200 million).
  - rayiner 8y ago
    There may be many arguments in favor of having the IRS sending out pre-filled-in tax forms, but this one just isn't true: > It would cost the IRS almost nothing to send out pre-filled forms Enhancing the IRS databases to actually plug in the information used on a typical tax return almost certainly would not cost "almost nothing." Back when it existed, less than 20% of people filed a 1040-EZ (the simplest tax form). That means you need something beyond just "plug in the numbers from the W-2" for the vast majority of tax filers. The IRS almost certainly doesn't have all that machinery already. Some of that data, the IRS doesn't have at all. (How many children live with you for purposes of the EITC?)
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      The proposals I've seen for having the IRS prefill returns are that they'd just do the equivalent of the 1040EZ for you. If you want something more comprehensive than that, then you'd still have to do your own taxes. I think that's a very reasonable approach.
    - username223 8y ago
      The US government currently takes in about $1.7 trillion in individual income taxes per year, so even spending $500 million to pre-fill forms would be almost nothing (0.03%). Heck, that's less than a useless aircraft carrier or a Facebook consent decree violation. The IRS already has W-2s and 1099s, which cover ordinary pay and retirement investments, and enough money has probably been automatically withheld already. Remember that this isn't automatic billing, but automatic filling. They'll send you the form, and you can insert the number of children. If your taxes are much more complicated than that, you can probably afford TurboTax.
      - harryh 8y ago
        For the record, the IRS (in partnership with various tax companies) already providers for free filing for people making less than 66k/year. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
  - MagicPropmaker 8y ago
    Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. (Of course the return for the IRS going after the small player may not be worth it.)
    - learc83 8y ago
      Do you have any evidence to support this? It could be true, but any cash business owner (low income or not) is likely to cheat precisely because it's not feasible for the IRS to prove exactly how much cash income you made.
      - MagicPropmaker 8y ago
        Here's one data point. 24% of the people who claimed the "EITC" did so fraudulently (or, at best "in error") No high earner can claim this. https://taxfoundation.org/earned-income-tax-credit-still-faces-high-error-rate/ https://taxfoundation.org/earned-income-tax-credit-still-fac...
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      > Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. The statistics I've seen indicate the opposite. But I suppose it depends on how you measure. Perhaps on a per-incident basis, you may be correct. But I don't think you're correct if you measure by the amount of money.
      - notriddle 8y ago
        "Likely to cheat" usually means something like "the probability of a person cheating is higher," meaning it would be based on the number of incidents, not on the amount of money. If the poster has meant the amount, they might have said "Lower income people with cash businesses cheat more than wealthy people" (which is ambiguous) or "The IRS loses more money to low income cheaters with cash businesses" (which is unambiguous, and, when you phrase it that way, truly sounds ridiculous given the high level of wealth inequality I would expect one wealthy cheater to cheat the IRS out of more money than all of the other cheaters in the world)
rectang 8y ago
It's the inevitable consequence of strengthening corporate rights relative to individual rights: corporations take ever larger ownership of government.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  I dont even understand how corporations have rights... My understanding is that in a democratic system the individual voter is the unit of currency. Sadly this gets muddied in a sea of "representatives" and lobby groups which claim to represent people...
  - testvox 8y ago
    Because corporations are just groups of people operating as one legal entity as is required for many ventures which would be too expensive or risky for one person to take on by themselves. Do you think corporations like the New York Times should not have freedom of speech? Do you think the government should be able to arbitrary power against corporations like Planned Parenthood? Should governments have arbitrary power to limit what information corporations like your local internet service provider can transmit? Should whatever political party who is currently in power be able to steal all the money from the opposing parties corporate entity? Its good to keep in mind corporations include a large class of entities like public colleges, newspapers, internet providers, charities, political parties, organized religions, public interest groups, and of course for profit businesses. Saying all these entities should have no rights is advocating for the state to have unchecked and arbitrary power over all of them.
    - maerF0x0 8y ago
      > Do you think corporations like the New York Times should not have freedom of speech? I will admit i have not thought long and hard on this. But on the surface it seems like the answer is "Yes". But the individuals working in those corporations do. So when a journalist submits an article their free speech is protected as an individual rights extended through the corporation. Similarly for property rights... I think the idea i'm trying to get at is that these corporations shouldnt have influence beyond the voting power they represent, ie the people. Speaking of ideals, for example a hypothetical single employee business w/ billions in wealth should have 1 unit of political power, whereas a public interest group with a few thousand of dollars but 100 people should have 100 units of political power. Edit: Corrected my "No" --> "Yes" because the question sentence was confusing
turc1656 8y ago
Nah, you're missing the forest when looking at the trees. Go bigger. Why the hell is the tax code so damn complicated that it requires certified experts and special software to perform personal tax filings? I can see the case for a complex code for business taxes since there are many different industries that have different rules. But personal returns should never, ever have such complicated rules. And that doesn't mean I agree with business taxes being complicated, merely that the argument is much more reasonable.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  What complicated rules? The basic 1040 is perfectly straightforward, even if you have a few sources of income or special deductions/credits.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    If you do it quick and dirty, then yeah. But I am pretty sure most people would find even the 1040 a bit intimidating. The problem is that the tax code is more than 75,000 pages long. No one knows all of it and there are parts that are up to interpretation and self-categorization. If you want to basically ignore all that (legally) you can go the quick and dirty way and just take the standard deductions and exemptions and not itemize or claim anything and the government will have absolutely no issue with that. But to do it "properly" for most people - where properly means getting the most back that you can legally get back - then it's quite cumbersome and involves a lot of reading. For example, my tax situation is not terribly complicated. But looking at what I paid my accountant to do, there's precisely 0% chance that I would be able to do what he did and get back as much as we did without spending weeks of my life reading tons of IRS regulations and rules. This is exactly why I pay him to do it for us, and exactly the core of my point - doing it right and getting back the most is not easy at all without assistance whether that be software or an actual licensed professional.
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      Just curious: how much do you pay your accountant? A single federal/state personal return done by a pro goes for anywhere between $400 and $800 around here, compared to $80 or so with TurboTax. I can’t imagine the difference between an accountant and me doing my taxes to be more than that, especially with a “not terribly complicated” return. Are your taxes really hundreds of dollars less just from hiring a sorcerer to do them?
rayvd 8y ago
I can't imagine how horrible a single captive solution from the IRS would be compared to one spawned by the competitive marketplace. Now why our tax code needs to be so complex that it requires software like Turbo Tax is certainly a fair question.
- qwsxyh 8y ago
  I would imagine it would look like European solutions; which pretty much work perfectly vs whatever bullshit a market would put out.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > I can't imagine how horrible a single captive solution from the IRS would be compared to one spawned by the competitive marketplace. I see literally no reason to think the IRS would do a worse job of it than the commercial services. But regardless of that, there's no reason why the IRS couldn't provide services alongside the commercial services. It's not an either-or.
- danepowell 8y ago
  Of all the government agencies, I think the IRS actually has one of the best track records for caring deeply about UX. Compare the federal tax forms and instructions to just about any state tax forms, the federal forms are miles ahead in terms of usability. Relative to the complexity of the tax code itself, of course (which the IRS doesn't control).
- chungleong 8y ago
  And it'd probably cost a billion dollars. Government contracting is way more corrupted than the shenanigans alleged by this article.
- ahallock 8y ago
  Remember the healthcare.gov debacle? TurboTax isn't that much and it saves time and headache. People think in binary of free vs not-free while not considering the cost of time.
  - 8y ago
conanbatt 8y ago
The real dark pattern is the ability of the state to put you in jail unless you fork over money.
- whamlastxmas 8y ago
  The real dark pattern is the propagation of antisocial behavior that spreads the idea that you don't owe society anything.
  - ahallock 8y ago
    Society isn't the government, though. This conflation is a nice trick when arguing, I'll give you that.
    - whamlastxmas 8y ago
      Government is elected by society to represent. Yes governments are flawed and inefficient and corrupt at times, but generally speaking governments do an acceptable job at providing basic services to most people. There's countless examples of them fucking up but they get more right than wrong.
      - conanbatt 8y ago
        > Government is elected by society to represent. Some people are selected by some other people, neither representative of society as a whole.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  ... to pay for public services you're using? Roads, schools, firefighters? Of course, I'm not happy with plenty of other things my taxes pay for (Predator drones, e.g.), but I'd like to think that can be fixed via legislation, eventually.
  - conanbatt 8y ago
    And if I'm not using them?
ahallock 8y ago
But will the UX/UI actually be good and how will we hold them accountable? My city's site for filing is absolutely terrible and I'm surprised I can even make it through to the end and submit payment. I'm actually surprised they have online filing to begin with. I'd rather pay for good UI/X than a crappy experience that wastes even more of my time.
- godelski 8y ago
  The point is that it is an option. But return free filing is honestly the goal for most people and it already exists in many countries.

While Intuit definitely feeds Congress some money in support of their corporate goals, the lack of free tax filing is probably more Grover Norquist's fault. He strongly opposes anything that would make paying taxes easier, and he has a lot more influence than Intuit.

username223 8y ago
Norquist is just twisted, sabotaging the government to convince people that it doesn't work. It would cost the IRS almost nothing to send out pre-filled forms, and giving them enough money to audit the wealthy (i.e. ensure they aren't cheating) would more than pay for itself.
- michelpp 8y ago
  Agreed. In fact the IRS would likely save money, because of all the followup enforcement actions they could avoid.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  While I think the IRS should do this, it would require a lot of additional work and resources, as well as a reshuffling of filing deadlines throughout the system. The IRS currently does not have all the information it needs to prefill forms, and inly has the resources to review a fraction of the 140M+ returns filed each year. I don't know why so many people in this site seem to think this is a trivial thing for the IRS. 100% review after the fact isn't even feasible right now, let alone having the information in January.
  - Noughmad 8y ago
    So, another thing that the richest country in the world can't afford, despite the fact that just about every other country can do it.
    - vonmoltke 8y ago
      First off, I never said anything about the US not being able to afford it. I said the IRS can't do it with their current resources. Big difference. Second, the IRS processed 247.8M total returns[1] and 3.59B supporting documents[2] in 2017. While I think the IRS could do a better job (like, well, the entire rest of the US federal government), what other tax system processes anything near that volume? Also, I'm not buying "just about every other country". Not even close. For starters, I find it hard to believe that more than a handful of African countries manage to do it. [1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6292.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6292.pdf, page (3) [2] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6961.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p6961.pdf, page (4)
      - int_19h 8y ago
        How about "every other developed country"? The volume doesn't really matter, because it scales linearly with population - a larger country just needs more bureaucrats, but it can afford them because it also collects more taxes from more people. There's nothing unique in that regard in US. But if you want something in the same ballpark, we can look at, say, Russia (population of 150 million), or even at Nigeria (200 million).
- rayiner 8y ago
  There may be many arguments in favor of having the IRS sending out pre-filled-in tax forms, but this one just isn't true: > It would cost the IRS almost nothing to send out pre-filled forms Enhancing the IRS databases to actually plug in the information used on a typical tax return almost certainly would not cost "almost nothing." Back when it existed, less than 20% of people filed a 1040-EZ (the simplest tax form). That means you need something beyond just "plug in the numbers from the W-2" for the vast majority of tax filers. The IRS almost certainly doesn't have all that machinery already. Some of that data, the IRS doesn't have at all. (How many children live with you for purposes of the EITC?)
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    The proposals I've seen for having the IRS prefill returns are that they'd just do the equivalent of the 1040EZ for you. If you want something more comprehensive than that, then you'd still have to do your own taxes. I think that's a very reasonable approach.
  - username223 8y ago
    The US government currently takes in about $1.7 trillion in individual income taxes per year, so even spending $500 million to pre-fill forms would be almost nothing (0.03%). Heck, that's less than a useless aircraft carrier or a Facebook consent decree violation. The IRS already has W-2s and 1099s, which cover ordinary pay and retirement investments, and enough money has probably been automatically withheld already. Remember that this isn't automatic billing, but automatic filling. They'll send you the form, and you can insert the number of children. If your taxes are much more complicated than that, you can probably afford TurboTax.
    - harryh 8y ago
      For the record, the IRS (in partnership with various tax companies) already providers for free filing for people making less than 66k/year. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
- MagicPropmaker 8y ago
  Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. (Of course the return for the IRS going after the small player may not be worth it.)
  - learc83 8y ago
    Do you have any evidence to support this? It could be true, but any cash business owner (low income or not) is likely to cheat precisely because it's not feasible for the IRS to prove exactly how much cash income you made.
    - MagicPropmaker 8y ago
      Here's one data point. 24% of the people who claimed the "EITC" did so fraudulently (or, at best "in error") No high earner can claim this. https://taxfoundation.org/earned-income-tax-credit-still-faces-high-error-rate/ https://taxfoundation.org/earned-income-tax-credit-still-fac...
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > Lower income people with cash business are far more likely to cheat than wealthy people. The statistics I've seen indicate the opposite. But I suppose it depends on how you measure. Perhaps on a per-incident basis, you may be correct. But I don't think you're correct if you measure by the amount of money.
    - notriddle 8y ago
      "Likely to cheat" usually means something like "the probability of a person cheating is higher," meaning it would be based on the number of incidents, not on the amount of money. If the poster has meant the amount, they might have said "Lower income people with cash businesses cheat more than wealthy people" (which is ambiguous) or "The IRS loses more money to low income cheaters with cash businesses" (which is unambiguous, and, when you phrase it that way, truly sounds ridiculous given the high level of wealth inequality I would expect one wealthy cheater to cheat the IRS out of more money than all of the other cheaters in the world)

rectang 8y ago

It's the inevitable consequence of strengthening corporate rights relative to individual rights: corporations take ever larger ownership of government.

maerF0x0 8y ago
I dont even understand how corporations have rights... My understanding is that in a democratic system the individual voter is the unit of currency. Sadly this gets muddied in a sea of "representatives" and lobby groups which claim to represent people...
- testvox 8y ago
  Because corporations are just groups of people operating as one legal entity as is required for many ventures which would be too expensive or risky for one person to take on by themselves. Do you think corporations like the New York Times should not have freedom of speech? Do you think the government should be able to arbitrary power against corporations like Planned Parenthood? Should governments have arbitrary power to limit what information corporations like your local internet service provider can transmit? Should whatever political party who is currently in power be able to steal all the money from the opposing parties corporate entity? Its good to keep in mind corporations include a large class of entities like public colleges, newspapers, internet providers, charities, political parties, organized religions, public interest groups, and of course for profit businesses. Saying all these entities should have no rights is advocating for the state to have unchecked and arbitrary power over all of them.
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    > Do you think corporations like the New York Times should not have freedom of speech? I will admit i have not thought long and hard on this. But on the surface it seems like the answer is "Yes". But the individuals working in those corporations do. So when a journalist submits an article their free speech is protected as an individual rights extended through the corporation. Similarly for property rights... I think the idea i'm trying to get at is that these corporations shouldnt have influence beyond the voting power they represent, ie the people. Speaking of ideals, for example a hypothetical single employee business w/ billions in wealth should have 1 unit of political power, whereas a public interest group with a few thousand of dollars but 100 people should have 100 units of political power. Edit: Corrected my "No" --> "Yes" because the question sentence was confusing

turc1656 8y ago

Nah, you're missing the forest when looking at the trees. Go bigger. Why the hell is the tax code so damn complicated that it requires certified experts and special software to perform personal tax filings? I can see the case for a complex code for business taxes since there are many different industries that have different rules. But personal returns should never, ever have such complicated rules. And that doesn't mean I agree with business taxes being complicated, merely that the argument is much more reasonable.

wool_gather 8y ago
What complicated rules? The basic 1040 is perfectly straightforward, even if you have a few sources of income or special deductions/credits.
- turc1656 8y ago
  If you do it quick and dirty, then yeah. But I am pretty sure most people would find even the 1040 a bit intimidating. The problem is that the tax code is more than 75,000 pages long. No one knows all of it and there are parts that are up to interpretation and self-categorization. If you want to basically ignore all that (legally) you can go the quick and dirty way and just take the standard deductions and exemptions and not itemize or claim anything and the government will have absolutely no issue with that. But to do it "properly" for most people - where properly means getting the most back that you can legally get back - then it's quite cumbersome and involves a lot of reading. For example, my tax situation is not terribly complicated. But looking at what I paid my accountant to do, there's precisely 0% chance that I would be able to do what he did and get back as much as we did without spending weeks of my life reading tons of IRS regulations and rules. This is exactly why I pay him to do it for us, and exactly the core of my point - doing it right and getting back the most is not easy at all without assistance whether that be software or an actual licensed professional.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Just curious: how much do you pay your accountant? A single federal/state personal return done by a pro goes for anywhere between $400 and $800 around here, compared to $80 or so with TurboTax. I can’t imagine the difference between an accountant and me doing my taxes to be more than that, especially with a “not terribly complicated” return. Are your taxes really hundreds of dollars less just from hiring a sorcerer to do them?

rayvd 8y ago

I can't imagine how horrible a single captive solution from the IRS would be compared to one spawned by the competitive marketplace. Now why our tax code needs to be so complex that it requires software like Turbo Tax is certainly a fair question.

qwsxyh 8y ago
I would imagine it would look like European solutions; which pretty much work perfectly vs whatever bullshit a market would put out.
JohnFen 8y ago
> I can't imagine how horrible a single captive solution from the IRS would be compared to one spawned by the competitive marketplace. I see literally no reason to think the IRS would do a worse job of it than the commercial services. But regardless of that, there's no reason why the IRS couldn't provide services alongside the commercial services. It's not an either-or.
danepowell 8y ago
Of all the government agencies, I think the IRS actually has one of the best track records for caring deeply about UX. Compare the federal tax forms and instructions to just about any state tax forms, the federal forms are miles ahead in terms of usability. Relative to the complexity of the tax code itself, of course (which the IRS doesn't control).
chungleong 8y ago
And it'd probably cost a billion dollars. Government contracting is way more corrupted than the shenanigans alleged by this article.
ahallock 8y ago
Remember the healthcare.gov debacle? TurboTax isn't that much and it saves time and headache. People think in binary of free vs not-free while not considering the cost of time.
- 8y ago

conanbatt 8y ago

The real dark pattern is the ability of the state to put you in jail unless you fork over money.

whamlastxmas 8y ago
The real dark pattern is the propagation of antisocial behavior that spreads the idea that you don't owe society anything.
- ahallock 8y ago
  Society isn't the government, though. This conflation is a nice trick when arguing, I'll give you that.
  - whamlastxmas 8y ago
    Government is elected by society to represent. Yes governments are flawed and inefficient and corrupt at times, but generally speaking governments do an acceptable job at providing basic services to most people. There's countless examples of them fucking up but they get more right than wrong.
    - conanbatt 8y ago
      > Government is elected by society to represent. Some people are selected by some other people, neither representative of society as a whole.
blacksmith_tb 8y ago
... to pay for public services you're using? Roads, schools, firefighters? Of course, I'm not happy with plenty of other things my taxes pay for (Predator drones, e.g.), but I'd like to think that can be fixed via legislation, eventually.
- conanbatt 8y ago
  And if I'm not using them?

ahallock 8y ago

But will the UX/UI actually be good and how will we hold them accountable? My city's site for filing is absolutely terrible and I'm surprised I can even make it through to the end and submit payment. I'm actually surprised they have online filing to begin with. I'd rather pay for good UI/X than a crappy experience that wastes even more of my time.

godelski 8y ago
The point is that it is an option. But return free filing is honestly the goal for most people and it already exists in many countries.