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TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines

881 points by danso 8y ago

czbond 8y ago
And this is news worthy, how?
- kbenson 8y ago
  Because there was arecent legislative push for allowing the IRS to do people's taxes for them for the majority of people, since the IRS already has the info to do so. The Tax industry pushes back against that, strongly, and one of the ways they do so is to note how the provide a service to do the taxes for free for people under a certain level of income (I believe as mandated by earlier legislation?). That they purposefully make it hard for people that qualify to find the free service has some bearing on the situation.
- danso 8y ago
  Congress is debating a bill that would bar the IRS from creating an official free filing system, and instead, mandate that the IRS have private companies fill that role. The concern has been that private companies use dark patterns to upsell users into buying unnecessary paid features: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the-government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    Bar it from creating free filing software. Free e-filing pf fillable forms already exists, and would continue to exist. Not that this makes such a measure palatable.
- cldellow 8y ago
  The US government has promised TurboTax that the IRS will not create a free e-filing service. In exchange, TurboTax will offer its software for free to some low-income taxpayers. The US legislature is considering extending this deal. In light of that, various organizations are exploring how well the current deal is working. In sum: not very well, because TurboTax uses a variety of dark patterns to make it hard for people who are eligible for free services to discover it.
- Liquix 8y ago
  Large companies have been in the spotlight in the last 12 months for placing corporate interests above the interests of users. The use of 'dark patterns' (subtle, intentional UX changes with the purpose of driving user behavior towards a desired outcome) has been discussed as well. It is now tax season and many were not as informed on these issues last time they filed as they are now. Looking at the online free filing process under the aforementioned lens generates new observations, discussions, debates, headlines... Imo it's not so much that this is something new that's happening, it's that people are now aware of and pissed off about it.
sithlord 8y ago
Wouldn't this need to be listed on the disallow on the robots.txt if they didnt want them to index the page?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zamadatix 8y ago
  The article has sections detailing how blocking works and literally provides pictures of highlighted sections of the websites source code covering this question.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  No. That's one approach, but the page has a meta tag that has the same effect: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />
  - Zenst 8y ago
    Saw that on every page they have, not scrutinised the sanity of their code, but looks like it is part of their site template. Also the site code - egads, 200+_ blank lines as a header, then clearly some extra padding blank lines here and there.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      It is not part of their site template. The Turbotax home page has "yes, do index" meta tags. So does their deceptive "free edition" page at https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi...: <meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> You've been tricked. Imagine how easily people who can't read source code get sucked into the wrong version.
      - Zenst 8y ago
        Yes, I see the issue more clearly now. So many aspects about American TAX I never understood, the one were citizens who are living in another country and paying tax there also have to pay American income TAX always seemed brutal. Most people in the UK are PAYE and the employer does tax fillings and as such the need for a individual to file any form of tax return is lower than the American system that from my understanding - mandates it and the onus for any tax information is placed solely upon the individual. Which I would of thought opens up a larger can of worms for fraud potential from the payer and payee as well as opening up less skilled people into realms they will make mistakes to their own detrement. Yet if you're a corporation - tax seems to offer more freedom in expression compared to individuals. Which is the norm in many a country.
metalliqaz 8y ago
Yeah they do, of course they do. They are in business to make money, after all. The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be. It's one of the things I would immediately correct if I was king for a day.
- dacohenii 8y ago
  There's a good Planet Money episode about this, in case you like podcasts: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...
  - damian2000 8y ago
    That was a great episode, the guy funded a lobbyist from his own pocket to the tune of $70k but still lost
    - mywittyname 8y ago
      The best part, IMHO, was the Republican Senator they interviewed that came out and said that they (Conservatives in Congress) wanted tax filing to be onerous.
- vertis 8y ago
  Really makes me appreciate the ATO (Australia). Free online tax filing has been a thing for quite a few years. You end up with an accountant only if your tax is somewhat complex, which tends to correspond with higher income.
  - arethuza 8y ago
    Or places like the UK where most people don't even need to do a tax return and if you do doing it online for free isn't too bad - only time I've used an accountant was when things were when my tax affairs were moderately complex.
Zenst 8y ago
I popped "file free tax returns turbotax" into Google and found the page directly listed. The page in question is https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi... The robots.txt for the intuit.com domain is: https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt Not listing in robots.txt to block the personal-taxes folder, which has many offerings and a sub from that is the free one. I'm not seeing the block that the story is on about in search and in robots.txt What am I missing? [EDIT ADD] Thank you for all the replies, I see what they did there now.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- schwanksta 8y ago
  The page you found is a different page, not related to the IRS' "free file"/FFA program for those who make under a certain amount. See previous coverage here: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you...
- gsteinb88 8y ago
  That is not the free file page, and the fact that it tricks you into thinking it is is exactly the point: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you...
- bonyt 8y ago
  That's not their freefile page, that is their more limited free edition page. That's part of the confusion. The /taxfreedom/ page, which is linked to from the IRS website, is blocked in robots.txt https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/
- morley 8y ago
  As the article mentions, it's set in the metatags of the page https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />
mruts 8y ago
Why do low income people need any software to file taxes in the first place? If you just make a wage taxes are trivial.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  Because companies like TurboTax work to ensure it remains as complicated as possible, and seems even more complicated than it actually is.
  - OrgNet 8y ago
    How do they even get into that business? They see the tax filling process and think "hey, it's too easy, let make it harder and sell a product to make it easier" (I'm clearly not a business person).
    - pwinnski 8y ago
      Mostly by lobbying politicians for extra exemptions that make taxes more complicated, but also by directly lobbying against bills that would simplify things.
- cmurf 8y ago
  Withholding overtaxes. They're entitled to a refund.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  It is true that lower income folks tend to have simpler taxes and really don't need software. The taxes are easy on paper. But e-file still wins. Most poor folks could really use the money they get back from taxes and it is definitely quicker. E-file also saves folks from doing things like making copies, buying stamps, and mailing. On top of it all, there is a fair amount less chance of mistakes. Not to mention that there is a sizable number of folks that cannot figure out the legalese the IRS uses for slightly complicated taxes and the IRS helplines are generally of little help.
  - 8y ago
jahabrewer 8y ago
Fuck Intuit. Shame on engineers who work there.
- Demiurge 8y ago
  Really? This is a greedy policy, not an engineering decision. How many engineers have managers they disagree with? I'm sure you've always quit every company in such a situation?
  - untog 8y ago
    No-one is saying engineers chose the company policy, they're saying that engineers are complicit by working on it. Someone had to but that no-index instruction on the page, and they knew what they were doing. We're lucky (at least at this moment in time) that engineers are in huge demand. If you're an engineer at an ethically compromised company you could change jobs within a few months, tops. If you haven't then, yes, it's going to affect my opinion of you.
    - Demiurge 8y ago
      That's ridiculous. Perhaps you can find in a few minutes, but I know plenty of people stuck in jobs they hate but can't find anything better. They are not quitting, and they can't move, because they have people that depend on them or other circumstances.
      - untog 8y ago
        Intuit is headquartered in Mountain View. No-one needs to move from there in order to secure a job an engineering job. If people depend on you then you can look for another job while keeping your current one - it's something I've done multiple times. And if you can't find a job in Mountain View then I certainly feel for you, but it may be time to take another look at your resume and work out what's going wrong.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
      One of my friend's parents works at a company where a large percentage of the engineers / etc. are corrupt (think Boeing with its FAA certifications done by fellow engineers, but with all the engineers agreeing to not look at each other's stuff)- and he decided to stay there and continue to work, despite the corruption- if the company goes down or gets attacked by the Feds, he has a lot of proof to show that he wasn't part of the problem. He's also sort of doing that classical destroy-the-company-from-the-inside thing.
linsomniac 8y ago
I've been using TurboTax for the last 4 years or so but I'm getting pretty tired of this story. I read an article a few weeks ago that mentioned CreditKarma has free tools for tax prep, so I signed up for it and I'm planning on using it next year. I used to use an accountant because my taxes were kinda complicated, but once I sold my business they got really easy. Turbo makes it slightly easier, but honestly the IRS should just be telling me how much to pay or refund, given a small amount of input (like this year, change me from single to married with this other person filing jointly). And worst, the last several years I've gotten letters from the IRS late in the year saying "You owe a few thousand dollars", this after Turbo got me a fairly big refund. IRS: If you have a number in mind just tell me. Oh, and you know that upsell Turbo does for "have your filing reviewed by a CPA and talk to a tax expert to answer questions on your filing"? I tried it this year: Couldn't find an option to have it reviewed by a CPA before filing, and when I asked one of their tax experts about a number related to an IRA disbursement last year, basically all he could tell me is "Yes, you have put a number in a box on the form".
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  I've used Credit Karma for the past two years, and I'm planning on using them again next year. I have paid zero dollars for things like investments that TurboTax would upsell to me, and as far as I know Credit Karma doesn't do any unsavory lobbying. Highly recommend.
  - linsomniac 8y ago
    Can I pay Credit Karma to do lobbying AGAINST HR Block and Intuit? :-D
- rm999 8y ago
  >I'm getting pretty tired of this story. I read an article a few weeks ago that mentioned CreditKarma has free tools for tax prep, so I signed up for it and I'm planning on using it next year. This is exactly what I did this year and it went incredibly smoothly. It felt a lot like Turbotax, but Credit Karma was noticeably faster without all the confusing upsells (I did my and my wife's taxes in ~30 minutes, including three W2s and investment income from two banks; almost entirely within the iphone app). Personally I think the writing is on the wall for Turbotax et al. Credit Karma got much better from year 1 to 2 and I predict it will be increasingly recommended in future years, starting a race to the bottom in the industry.
tantalor 8y ago
Arguably their agreement to "offer" the free service necessarily requires it's discoverable by normal means, including search. “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
maxmcd 8y ago
I learned a little while ago that H&R Block makes a substantial amount of its revenue from "refund anticipation loans" (no citation, I couldn't find it here: https://investors.hrblock.com/static-files/4293dedf-951d-4541-b4a8-ac80daded417 https://investors.hrblock.com/static-files/4293dedf-951d-454... maybe my information is overblown). Is there a reason there isn't a "Robin Hood for Taxes"? A service that makes all of its revenue off of refund anticipation loads and provides all tax services for free to entice customers to join? Ignoring the problematic conflicts of interest involved in issuing loans it seems like this would align a lot of incentives. The company wants tax filing to be as simple and easy and free as possible, just as long as you do it through them.
- mortgagemonster 8y ago
  Credit Karma does legitimately free filing
  - pnutjam 8y ago
    I file free with DIY tax (freetax.com). I've been using it for several years, but it's not well advertised.
  - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
    I prepared my taxes with Credit Karma, then with Turbo Tax, and CK was showing me a significantly higher return that TT. Upon investigating, I found that I had accidentally claimed my mortgage interested deduction twice, and didn't enter my 1099-G from my state tax refund from the previous year. CK makes it too easy to make a mistake. TT is a much more polished product, which makes sense since they've been doing it for decades. I trust TT more than CK. That said, TT doesn't charge you until you file. So I use both, make sure the numbers match, then file with CK for free.
    - colejohnson66 8y ago
      Credit Karma just added free audit defense to their tax prep
  - 8y ago
linsomniac 8y ago
Govt: "We need some money from you to buy things." Me: "How much?" Govt: "You figure it out." Me: "Oh, I get to pay whatever I want?" Govt: "LOL, no, we have a figure that we want you to pay." Me: "What happens if I guess that number wrong?" Govt: "You get to go to prison."
- themagician 8y ago
  You only go to prison if you willfully and purposely try to defraud the government. It’s more of a, “Pay what you believe you owe based on your best guess and the laws as you best understand them, and if we disagree we may ask you to pay more.”
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    > if we disagree we may ask you to pay more The opposite can happen, too. The last time they disagreed with me on how much tax I should have paid, they mailed me a check for the difference.
    - nickjj 8y ago
      Did they give you 5% interest on the amount you overpaid? Because that's what they take from you if you underpay (by accident or not). Living in the US is like: "oh you were born and live in the US? We're forcing you to give us a huge chunk of your earnings for your entire working life, make it close to impossible to determine the exact amounts and then fine you 5% interest if you happen to underpay, but we'll never give you interest if you overpay.". Edit: Well, as mentioned the tax system is super complex here and I obviously don't know the rules for every case. It seems in SOME cases you do get interest when the IRS owes you money but personally I've never seen this, where as I've always had to pay x% interest if I ever owed anything.
      - cbhl 8y ago
        The one time when this happened to me (they thought I was ineligible for a refundable tax credit; I mailed them both a check for the amount they thought I owed and proof that I was indeed eligible for the tax credit) the IRS did actually compute and add interest to the refund check! Sure, the gov't cashed the check and held on to the money for like two months, but the interest at the end was a pleasant surprise.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
quantumwoke 8y ago
As someone who lives outside of the US, can someone please explain how the US government has not implemented its own free tax filing system? In my home country this hasn't been a thing for over 10 years.
- ska 8y ago
  Short story: lobbying.
  - username223 8y ago
    Slightly longer story: bribes (http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8076/693/400/price-sheet-of-corruption.jpg http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8076/693/400/price-sheet-...) Basically, our representatives can choose their voters via redistricting (gerrymandering). Senators can't do that, but elections are advertising wars, and the one with the most money often wins, and therefore repays his/her donors. I'm not saying people should give up on democracy, but it needs some help from human beings instead of TurboTax.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Politics and lobbying have had its way, and there aren't enough elected officials that have backbone enough to stand up to them. I'm pretty sure they entice folks with the promise of hiring folks and "benefits" for the officials - in other places, this stuff might look like corruption. It definitely isn't in the interest of the voters or the government, since I'm of the understanding that easy taxes means more compliance and thus, more income.
- fimbulvetr 8y ago
  If you print out the forms and fill them out by hand, the only cost is the the envelope & stamp to mail them in. What the US Federal Government/IRS doesn't have is a free way to e-file taxes online.
  - stagger87 8y ago
    Yes they do, you can fill out all the forms digitally online for free. Search "freefile fillable forms". They have already closed for the year. I've been doing it for a few years now. The nicest thing about it is it does most of the math for you and you get your refund really fast (usually 1 day for me).
DangerousPie 8y ago
Planet Money had a great episode a while ago about how much more complicated tax returns in the US are than in any other country, and how TurboTax has been fighting to keep it that way: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
thanatos_dem 8y ago
It’s a bit on the nose to see their robots.txt file state: > Disallow: taxfreedom
noer 8y ago
This goes way beyond dark patterns and ux strategies to push people towards paid options. This is manipulating search engines to hide their services when searching for "free tax filing". If they're going to offer free services, but hide them from potential customers, they might as well not be offering them. if they're not offering them, then they're not holding up their end of the bargain with the IRS.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  Yeah, this isn't just a dark pattern, this is a black hole pattern, this is a scam. With a dark pattern there is a way, if you're careful, to navigate through things and get to the desired outcome. Here there was no such route, you had to have entered from the correct starting place to begin with to have a chance at all, and that entrance was hidden from the public.
Proven 8y ago
Mind your own business. Who cares what they do or their own web site.
thomasfortes 8y ago
It's an idea so dumb that you need to pay for a software that the only reason to exist is for you to pay your taxes, Brazil gets a lot of things wrong, but at least our government provides a software available for every platform (windows, mac, linux, ios, android and even a jar, so if it runs java, you're fine) for us to do our taxes. You need to pay an accountant only if your taxes are complex, and even them will use the software, they just know more about how to structure your data to insert in the program, it is honestly insane that a company like turbotax is needed, but lobby is really a powerful tool.
- tantalor 8y ago
  Software takes time to develop, and time is money. Tax software is especially bad because 1. the rules are insanely complicated and 2. the insane rules change every year requiring updates. The real question is why don't we have open-source tax software? I'd argue that since 1. IRS is publicly funded and 2. they have to write code anyway to enforce the tax rules as they change, then they should just publish that code. At a first step, the tax rules could be published in a machine-readable format.
  - ultrarunner 8y ago
    I get what you're saying here (and generally agree), but I really think it's worth taking a step back when "the law is too complicated for humans to follow it; machine-readable versions should be available" starts making sense. Imagine if the speed limit was a function of current local wind speed (as measured by one of three airports, depending on the time of day), tire pressure, the azimuth of the sun, etc, and that large companies had digital speed limit signs outlawed. Saying, "Oh, we'll just mandate that all cars carry the necessary equipment to calculate the current speed limit" is probably the wrong approach. The solution is to do away with the convoluted calculation because it doesn't add value in the first place.
exabrial 8y ago
Sounds like the correct decision to me.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joshmn 8y ago
I wish there was a place programmers could go to say "hey we're being asked to do this immoral shit"
- mac01021 8y ago
  Isn't that what journalists and our congresspeople are?
miguelmota 8y ago
The government has a copy of your W2’s and 1099’s so they know how much you make. It’s a shame that the government didn’t make 'ReadyReturn' [0] the new way of filing taxes where the government sends you a packet of all the tax information they have on you and you simply make corrections to it. Many countries have something similar and it’s a breeze to file taxes. Only in the US do people hate filing taxes. Intuit lobbies hard to make taxes as difficult as possible. Their rational is that they want people to hate tax filing as much as possible so that they vote against taxes and taxes are lowered for big corporations like Intuit. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn
mherdeg 8y ago
Huh I didn't realize that ProPublica did blog posts (I'm used to seeing long articles from them, often with partners, like that great Katrina piece). I used to be dismissive of newspapers re-reporting things that were not news. I probably would have been surprised to see an entire news article basically re-reporting a Twitter message and a reddit post. In retrospect though this attitude I used to have is unfair and mean. Who cares if the re-hashed reporting about the tax-filing industry's regulatory capture is brand new or just a reminder? Reminders are important.
javaIsGreat 8y ago
i called after paying 150$, i was a student for most of last years tax filing, they told me because i signed their user agreement im not eligible for a refund even though i qualified for free service
b_tterc_p 8y ago
As I said on an earlier thread, I was able to file freely on turbo tax. It didn’t require any special effort or searching. I’m not sure I believe this claim. I was being bombarded by ads for free TurboTax all over the place and... it was free, so great?
rdiddly 8y ago
Who wants to just start writing a free version and start putting them out of business? Filing taxes is not the Linux kernel, I mean how complicated is it really? It's still just a matter of following directions and doing basic math. Computers are great at that. No rocket science needed. I even thought of a name: Caesar (as in "render unto..."). Caesar.org is available. At the end it generates a PDF for printing & mailing. After the first x users we lobby for our own connection to the IRS system like those companies have.
- atonse 8y ago
  It's not hard. It's all arithmetic. Before people pounce on me for "trivializing it" – I've written, from scratch, Obamacare Insurance calculators that analyzed hundreds of policies with various coverages, coverage tiers, and you could type in things like "If i broke my leg on this policy, how much would it cost?" (all in real-time). It was a lot of arithmetic but really not that bad (about 150-200 lines of mainly applying coefficients to standard formulas depending on your policy tier), but it was all addition, multiplication, and division. And it really wasn't that bad. Took about 2 weeks. Update: Just to clarify, an analyst had already done all the legwork of collecting those coefficients and premiums and costs for me. But all I'm saying is that the actual formulas are never that crazy. I've also written similar calculators for life insurance and travel insurance. I really doubt the tax calculations are any different. Ultimately you gotta remember that these laws are made by pretty average humans and have to be enforced by those same average humans. They're going to be vast, but any single rule won't be mathematically complex.
  - jason_slack 8y ago
    So I once worked for a company writing math calcs all day everyday for various things (real estate, insurance, algo trading, school district budgets, hazards). If you would be willing to talk more about this email in my profile. I’ve often thought about the tax sector and how to make it easier. I really like the idea of a “Robinhood” for taxes. So to speak.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  I feel like this might open up liability, or at least substantial "badwill" if the software messes something up?
logn 8y ago
Google "turbotax free" which returns https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi... This is not recent either. I remember getting to this page from Google on tax day. Google "turbotax" and it returns the free edition link nested under the first result.
- astura 8y ago
  That's the "Fremium" version. The FreeFile version is here: https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ The "Fremium" version exists to upsell you to death, the FreeFile version can't do that. You've fallen for their trick.
atonse 8y ago
Hopefully we get a Robin Hood version of tax filing software soon. :)
deleted 8y ago
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CalRobert 8y ago
Meanwhile, California makes it pretty easy to file your state taxes for free, with no intermediary https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp
- mars4rp 8y ago
  I am the developer in charge of this, thanks for promoting it.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    Thanks for your work, I'm a big fan of Calfile for the years when I'm eligible to use it. Out of curiosity are there any plans to support returns with capital gains?
    - mars4rp 8y ago
      Thank you for using it, unfortunately no. I don't qualify to use it myself either.
  - mlindner 8y ago
    Perhaps you can expand it so that most software developers can use it? The fact that capital gains are excluded from the e-file is really frustrating when the majority of us have RSUs/ESPPs.
    - mars4rp 8y ago
      I WISH it was up to me, lots and lots of bureaucracy!
      - mlindner 8y ago
        Every voice counts! Bring it up with your manager and help push the message up the chain!
  - mywittyname 8y ago
Causality1 8y ago
I imagine there's quite a lot of juicy information hiding behind noindex tags across the web. Is there a search engine that ignores these tags?
rdl 8y ago
I wonder what the minimum-effort private organization would be which could comply with IRS rules to offer free filing of extensions, 1040ez, etc. I'd happily throw in $1k toward it (even though I'm not eligible, and thanks to Puerto Rico, don't need to file federal taxes, probably, after 2019). Just offering a simple, responsible, and stress free process for these filings, ideally with zero advertising, or just a brief "fuck turbotax, this is why..." message, and good infosec/anti-fraud (to protect against the EIC-claim-scams against the poor) would be great. The downside is a lot of those people need immediate access to cash, so a shittier commercial option offering instant refunds for a high fee would probably still get a lot of victims. A big company like Walmart could possibly offer this to users, too, for free, and offer instant-refund as store card or savings accounts.
- astura 8y ago
  I think CreditKarma is attempting to do this. There's been other efforts in the past/currently. Some examples: Open Tax Solver: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ 1040 Spreadsheet: https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions
0x262d 8y ago
dictatorship of capital
kup0 8y ago
TurboTax was free for me up until I tried to report $10 in interest paid on student loans, which is a small, barely necessary form. TT doesn't include this very common form in their free bundle and wanted me to pay $40 to upgrade. While H&R Block also gets criticized- I have to say that they include this form, and I was able to file completely free for both federal and state, without having to hunt for a link- just started on their normal site. They also allowed automatic import of W2s, easy import of TurboTax previous years, etc.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  What happens if you just add $10 to your AGI and omit the interest payments? My thinking is the IRS will send you a "corrected" return and a $0 bill for the difference. Since that's what they do if you fill out incorrect information anyway.
  - homero 8y ago
    It's a deduction so don't report at all
    - kup0 8y ago
      As far as I know, reporting paid student loan interest is a "required" form according to the IRS. I remember looking up information about it at the time to see if I could just not report it, and that did not seem to be recommended
      - homero 8y ago
        Really odd, it's like failing to report donations. But i guess they filed it.
dakial1 8y ago
Can't someone create a site, listed, with very good SEO practices and content that links directly to the Free edition?
fulldecent2 8y ago
Much pixels and ink have been spent on this topic. I am much more interested in first-party services for tax filing in the 50 states.
mlindner 8y ago
The IRS already provides a free-file option, you just need to spend more time reading instructions. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-fi... Not sure what all the hate is here. If you're not completely uneducated, you can figure this out yourself.
- cabaalis 8y ago
  > In exchange for the IRS promising not to create its own free, online filing tool, Intuit, H&R Block and other companies signed a deal to offer Free File options to lower-income Americans. Hence the hate when they attempt to hide such an option. Signed a deal.
  - mlindner 8y ago
    There's no income limitations for what I linked.
- danso 8y ago
  If you're going to tell us to "spend more time reading instructions", maybe you should take the time to read and follow the links you send. What the site your link refers to -- freefilefillableforms.com -- is not a service built by the IRS. Did you really believe the U.S. Congress, and Turbotax's lobbyists, would be proposing and debating a bill on the existence of something you think you found with a Google search?
deleted 8y ago
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fuzzieozzie 8y ago
I wonder what Bill Campbell would have done if he were still alive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_executive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_exe...
deleted 8y ago
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silversub 8y ago
Has anyone attempted to create an open source project for filing federal taxes? I understand e-filing would probably be out of the question but something that could generate a pdf that you could print out and mail to the government.
could-be-wrong 8y ago
If taxes were centralized, is it possible that one’s average tax bill delta would be higher than the average deal value of tax software products? The point being, one could argue that the private sector has more incentive to reduce your tax bill in order to take a cut of the savings.
nnain 8y ago
Damn, one thing I definitely don't envy about US is the lobbying. This definitely shouldn't have been left to a private company! Indian govt websites aren't great and most look dated, and still income tax site run by govt is just about fine. No reason that the IRS/US gov should have locked themselves out of doing this.
Angela_Marshall 8y ago
That's unfortunate. Unfortunately, big business and bad habits are not mutually exclusive.

881 points by danso 8y ago

czbond 8y ago

And this is news worthy, how?

kbenson 8y ago
Because there was arecent legislative push for allowing the IRS to do people's taxes for them for the majority of people, since the IRS already has the info to do so. The Tax industry pushes back against that, strongly, and one of the ways they do so is to note how the provide a service to do the taxes for free for people under a certain level of income (I believe as mandated by earlier legislation?). That they purposefully make it hard for people that qualify to find the free service has some bearing on the situation.
danso 8y ago
Congress is debating a bill that would bar the IRS from creating an official free filing system, and instead, mandate that the IRS have private companies fill that role. The concern has been that private companies use dark patterns to upsell users into buying unnecessary paid features: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the-government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  Bar it from creating free filing software. Free e-filing pf fillable forms already exists, and would continue to exist. Not that this makes such a measure palatable.
cldellow 8y ago
The US government has promised TurboTax that the IRS will not create a free e-filing service. In exchange, TurboTax will offer its software for free to some low-income taxpayers. The US legislature is considering extending this deal. In light of that, various organizations are exploring how well the current deal is working. In sum: not very well, because TurboTax uses a variety of dark patterns to make it hard for people who are eligible for free services to discover it.
Liquix 8y ago
Large companies have been in the spotlight in the last 12 months for placing corporate interests above the interests of users. The use of 'dark patterns' (subtle, intentional UX changes with the purpose of driving user behavior towards a desired outcome) has been discussed as well. It is now tax season and many were not as informed on these issues last time they filed as they are now. Looking at the online free filing process under the aforementioned lens generates new observations, discussions, debates, headlines... Imo it's not so much that this is something new that's happening, it's that people are now aware of and pissed off about it.

sithlord 8y ago

Wouldn't this need to be listed on the disallow on the robots.txt if they didnt want them to index the page?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zamadatix 8y ago
The article has sections detailing how blocking works and literally provides pictures of highlighted sections of the websites source code covering this question.
ceejayoz 8y ago
No. That's one approach, but the page has a meta tag that has the same effect: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />
- Zenst 8y ago
  Saw that on every page they have, not scrutinised the sanity of their code, but looks like it is part of their site template. Also the site code - egads, 200+_ blank lines as a header, then clearly some extra padding blank lines here and there.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    It is not part of their site template. The Turbotax home page has "yes, do index" meta tags. So does their deceptive "free edition" page at https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi...: <meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> You've been tricked. Imagine how easily people who can't read source code get sucked into the wrong version.
    - Zenst 8y ago
      Yes, I see the issue more clearly now. So many aspects about American TAX I never understood, the one were citizens who are living in another country and paying tax there also have to pay American income TAX always seemed brutal. Most people in the UK are PAYE and the employer does tax fillings and as such the need for a individual to file any form of tax return is lower than the American system that from my understanding - mandates it and the onus for any tax information is placed solely upon the individual. Which I would of thought opens up a larger can of worms for fraud potential from the payer and payee as well as opening up less skilled people into realms they will make mistakes to their own detrement. Yet if you're a corporation - tax seems to offer more freedom in expression compared to individuals. Which is the norm in many a country.

metalliqaz 8y ago

Yeah they do, of course they do. They are in business to make money, after all. The real story is the absolute travesty of government corruption that TurboTax and HR Block have perpetrated by making it illegal for the government to make tax filing as easy as it should be. It's one of the things I would immediately correct if I was king for a day.

dacohenii 8y ago
There's a good Planet Money episode about this, in case you like podcasts: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...
- damian2000 8y ago
  That was a great episode, the guy funded a lobbyist from his own pocket to the tune of $70k but still lost
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    The best part, IMHO, was the Republican Senator they interviewed that came out and said that they (Conservatives in Congress) wanted tax filing to be onerous.
vertis 8y ago
Really makes me appreciate the ATO (Australia). Free online tax filing has been a thing for quite a few years. You end up with an accountant only if your tax is somewhat complex, which tends to correspond with higher income.
- arethuza 8y ago
  Or places like the UK where most people don't even need to do a tax return and if you do doing it online for free isn't too bad - only time I've used an accountant was when things were when my tax affairs were moderately complex.

Zenst 8y ago

I popped "file free tax returns turbotax" into Google and found the page directly listed. The page in question is https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi... The robots.txt for the intuit.com domain is: https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt https://turbotax.intuit.com/robots.txt Not listing in robots.txt to block the personal-taxes folder, which has many offerings and a sub from that is the free one. I'm not seeing the block that the story is on about in search and in robots.txt What am I missing? [EDIT ADD] Thank you for all the replies, I see what they did there now.

deleted 8y ago
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schwanksta 8y ago
The page you found is a different page, not related to the IRS' "free file"/FFA program for those who make under a certain amount. See previous coverage here: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you...
gsteinb88 8y ago
That is not the free file page, and the fact that it tricks you into thinking it is is exactly the point: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you...
bonyt 8y ago
That's not their freefile page, that is their more limited free edition page. That's part of the confusion. The /taxfreedom/ page, which is linked to from the IRS website, is blocked in robots.txt https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/
morley 8y ago
As the article mentions, it's set in the metatags of the page https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,noodp" />

mruts 8y ago

Why do low income people need any software to file taxes in the first place? If you just make a wage taxes are trivial.

pwinnski 8y ago
Because companies like TurboTax work to ensure it remains as complicated as possible, and seems even more complicated than it actually is.
- OrgNet 8y ago
  How do they even get into that business? They see the tax filling process and think "hey, it's too easy, let make it harder and sell a product to make it easier" (I'm clearly not a business person).
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    Mostly by lobbying politicians for extra exemptions that make taxes more complicated, but also by directly lobbying against bills that would simplify things.
cmurf 8y ago
Withholding overtaxes. They're entitled to a refund.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
It is true that lower income folks tend to have simpler taxes and really don't need software. The taxes are easy on paper. But e-file still wins. Most poor folks could really use the money they get back from taxes and it is definitely quicker. E-file also saves folks from doing things like making copies, buying stamps, and mailing. On top of it all, there is a fair amount less chance of mistakes. Not to mention that there is a sizable number of folks that cannot figure out the legalese the IRS uses for slightly complicated taxes and the IRS helplines are generally of little help.
- 8y ago

jahabrewer 8y ago

Fuck Intuit. Shame on engineers who work there.

Demiurge 8y ago
Really? This is a greedy policy, not an engineering decision. How many engineers have managers they disagree with? I'm sure you've always quit every company in such a situation?
- untog 8y ago
  No-one is saying engineers chose the company policy, they're saying that engineers are complicit by working on it. Someone had to but that no-index instruction on the page, and they knew what they were doing. We're lucky (at least at this moment in time) that engineers are in huge demand. If you're an engineer at an ethically compromised company you could change jobs within a few months, tops. If you haven't then, yes, it's going to affect my opinion of you.
  - Demiurge 8y ago
    That's ridiculous. Perhaps you can find in a few minutes, but I know plenty of people stuck in jobs they hate but can't find anything better. They are not quitting, and they can't move, because they have people that depend on them or other circumstances.
    - untog 8y ago
      Intuit is headquartered in Mountain View. No-one needs to move from there in order to secure a job an engineering job. If people depend on you then you can look for another job while keeping your current one - it's something I've done multiple times. And if you can't find a job in Mountain View then I certainly feel for you, but it may be time to take another look at your resume and work out what's going wrong.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 8y ago
    One of my friend's parents works at a company where a large percentage of the engineers / etc. are corrupt (think Boeing with its FAA certifications done by fellow engineers, but with all the engineers agreeing to not look at each other's stuff)- and he decided to stay there and continue to work, despite the corruption- if the company goes down or gets attacked by the Feds, he has a lot of proof to show that he wasn't part of the problem. He's also sort of doing that classical destroy-the-company-from-the-inside thing.

linsomniac 8y ago

I've been using TurboTax for the last 4 years or so but I'm getting pretty tired of this story. I read an article a few weeks ago that mentioned CreditKarma has free tools for tax prep, so I signed up for it and I'm planning on using it next year. I used to use an accountant because my taxes were kinda complicated, but once I sold my business they got really easy. Turbo makes it slightly easier, but honestly the IRS should just be telling me how much to pay or refund, given a small amount of input (like this year, change me from single to married with this other person filing jointly). And worst, the last several years I've gotten letters from the IRS late in the year saying "You owe a few thousand dollars", this after Turbo got me a fairly big refund. IRS: If you have a number in mind just tell me. Oh, and you know that upsell Turbo does for "have your filing reviewed by a CPA and talk to a tax expert to answer questions on your filing"? I tried it this year: Couldn't find an option to have it reviewed by a CPA before filing, and when I asked one of their tax experts about a number related to an IRA disbursement last year, basically all he could tell me is "Yes, you have put a number in a box on the form".

jakelazaroff 8y ago
I've used Credit Karma for the past two years, and I'm planning on using them again next year. I have paid zero dollars for things like investments that TurboTax would upsell to me, and as far as I know Credit Karma doesn't do any unsavory lobbying. Highly recommend.
- linsomniac 8y ago
  Can I pay Credit Karma to do lobbying AGAINST HR Block and Intuit? :-D
rm999 8y ago
>I'm getting pretty tired of this story. I read an article a few weeks ago that mentioned CreditKarma has free tools for tax prep, so I signed up for it and I'm planning on using it next year. This is exactly what I did this year and it went incredibly smoothly. It felt a lot like Turbotax, but Credit Karma was noticeably faster without all the confusing upsells (I did my and my wife's taxes in ~30 minutes, including three W2s and investment income from two banks; almost entirely within the iphone app). Personally I think the writing is on the wall for Turbotax et al. Credit Karma got much better from year 1 to 2 and I predict it will be increasingly recommended in future years, starting a race to the bottom in the industry.

tantalor 8y ago

Arguably their agreement to "offer" the free service necessarily requires it's discoverable by normal means, including search. “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

maxmcd 8y ago

I learned a little while ago that H&R Block makes a substantial amount of its revenue from "refund anticipation loans" (no citation, I couldn't find it here: https://investors.hrblock.com/static-files/4293dedf-951d-4541-b4a8-ac80daded417 https://investors.hrblock.com/static-files/4293dedf-951d-454... maybe my information is overblown). Is there a reason there isn't a "Robin Hood for Taxes"? A service that makes all of its revenue off of refund anticipation loads and provides all tax services for free to entice customers to join? Ignoring the problematic conflicts of interest involved in issuing loans it seems like this would align a lot of incentives. The company wants tax filing to be as simple and easy and free as possible, just as long as you do it through them.

mortgagemonster 8y ago
Credit Karma does legitimately free filing
- pnutjam 8y ago
  I file free with DIY tax (freetax.com). I've been using it for several years, but it's not well advertised.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  I prepared my taxes with Credit Karma, then with Turbo Tax, and CK was showing me a significantly higher return that TT. Upon investigating, I found that I had accidentally claimed my mortgage interested deduction twice, and didn't enter my 1099-G from my state tax refund from the previous year. CK makes it too easy to make a mistake. TT is a much more polished product, which makes sense since they've been doing it for decades. I trust TT more than CK. That said, TT doesn't charge you until you file. So I use both, make sure the numbers match, then file with CK for free.
  - colejohnson66 8y ago
    Credit Karma just added free audit defense to their tax prep
- 8y ago

linsomniac 8y ago

Govt: "We need some money from you to buy things." Me: "How much?" Govt: "You figure it out." Me: "Oh, I get to pay whatever I want?" Govt: "LOL, no, we have a figure that we want you to pay." Me: "What happens if I guess that number wrong?" Govt: "You get to go to prison."

themagician 8y ago
You only go to prison if you willfully and purposely try to defraud the government. It’s more of a, “Pay what you believe you owe based on your best guess and the laws as you best understand them, and if we disagree we may ask you to pay more.”
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  > if we disagree we may ask you to pay more The opposite can happen, too. The last time they disagreed with me on how much tax I should have paid, they mailed me a check for the difference.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    Did they give you 5% interest on the amount you overpaid? Because that's what they take from you if you underpay (by accident or not). Living in the US is like: "oh you were born and live in the US? We're forcing you to give us a huge chunk of your earnings for your entire working life, make it close to impossible to determine the exact amounts and then fine you 5% interest if you happen to underpay, but we'll never give you interest if you overpay.". Edit: Well, as mentioned the tax system is super complex here and I obviously don't know the rules for every case. It seems in SOME cases you do get interest when the IRS owes you money but personally I've never seen this, where as I've always had to pay x% interest if I ever owed anything.
    - cbhl 8y ago
      The one time when this happened to me (they thought I was ineligible for a refundable tax credit; I mailed them both a check for the amount they thought I owed and proof that I was indeed eligible for the tax credit) the IRS did actually compute and add interest to the refund check! Sure, the gov't cashed the check and held on to the money for like two months, but the interest at the end was a pleasant surprise.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

quantumwoke 8y ago

As someone who lives outside of the US, can someone please explain how the US government has not implemented its own free tax filing system? In my home country this hasn't been a thing for over 10 years.

ska 8y ago
Short story: lobbying.
- username223 8y ago
  Slightly longer story: bribes (http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8076/693/400/price-sheet-of-corruption.jpg http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8076/693/400/price-sheet-...) Basically, our representatives can choose their voters via redistricting (gerrymandering). Senators can't do that, but elections are advertising wars, and the one with the most money often wins, and therefore repays his/her donors. I'm not saying people should give up on democracy, but it needs some help from human beings instead of TurboTax.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
Politics and lobbying have had its way, and there aren't enough elected officials that have backbone enough to stand up to them. I'm pretty sure they entice folks with the promise of hiring folks and "benefits" for the officials - in other places, this stuff might look like corruption. It definitely isn't in the interest of the voters or the government, since I'm of the understanding that easy taxes means more compliance and thus, more income.
fimbulvetr 8y ago
If you print out the forms and fill them out by hand, the only cost is the the envelope & stamp to mail them in. What the US Federal Government/IRS doesn't have is a free way to e-file taxes online.
- stagger87 8y ago
  Yes they do, you can fill out all the forms digitally online for free. Search "freefile fillable forms". They have already closed for the year. I've been doing it for a few years now. The nicest thing about it is it does most of the math for you and you get your refund really fast (usually 1 day for me).

DangerousPie 8y ago

Planet Money had a great episode a while ago about how much more complicated tax returns in the US are than in any other country, and how TurboTax has been fighting to keep it that way: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/epis...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

thanatos_dem 8y ago

It’s a bit on the nose to see their robots.txt file state: > Disallow: taxfreedom

noer 8y ago

This goes way beyond dark patterns and ux strategies to push people towards paid options. This is manipulating search engines to hide their services when searching for "free tax filing". If they're going to offer free services, but hide them from potential customers, they might as well not be offering them. if they're not offering them, then they're not holding up their end of the bargain with the IRS.

InclinedPlane 8y ago
Yeah, this isn't just a dark pattern, this is a black hole pattern, this is a scam. With a dark pattern there is a way, if you're careful, to navigate through things and get to the desired outcome. Here there was no such route, you had to have entered from the correct starting place to begin with to have a chance at all, and that entrance was hidden from the public.

Proven 8y ago

Mind your own business. Who cares what they do or their own web site.

thomasfortes 8y ago

It's an idea so dumb that you need to pay for a software that the only reason to exist is for you to pay your taxes, Brazil gets a lot of things wrong, but at least our government provides a software available for every platform (windows, mac, linux, ios, android and even a jar, so if it runs java, you're fine) for us to do our taxes. You need to pay an accountant only if your taxes are complex, and even them will use the software, they just know more about how to structure your data to insert in the program, it is honestly insane that a company like turbotax is needed, but lobby is really a powerful tool.

tantalor 8y ago
Software takes time to develop, and time is money. Tax software is especially bad because 1. the rules are insanely complicated and 2. the insane rules change every year requiring updates. The real question is why don't we have open-source tax software? I'd argue that since 1. IRS is publicly funded and 2. they have to write code anyway to enforce the tax rules as they change, then they should just publish that code. At a first step, the tax rules could be published in a machine-readable format.
- ultrarunner 8y ago
  I get what you're saying here (and generally agree), but I really think it's worth taking a step back when "the law is too complicated for humans to follow it; machine-readable versions should be available" starts making sense. Imagine if the speed limit was a function of current local wind speed (as measured by one of three airports, depending on the time of day), tire pressure, the azimuth of the sun, etc, and that large companies had digital speed limit signs outlawed. Saying, "Oh, we'll just mandate that all cars carry the necessary equipment to calculate the current speed limit" is probably the wrong approach. The solution is to do away with the convoluted calculation because it doesn't add value in the first place.

exabrial 8y ago

Sounds like the correct decision to me.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

joshmn 8y ago

I wish there was a place programmers could go to say "hey we're being asked to do this immoral shit"

mac01021 8y ago
Isn't that what journalists and our congresspeople are?

miguelmota 8y ago

The government has a copy of your W2’s and 1099’s so they know how much you make. It’s a shame that the government didn’t make 'ReadyReturn' [0] the new way of filing taxes where the government sends you a packet of all the tax information they have on you and you simply make corrections to it. Many countries have something similar and it’s a breeze to file taxes. Only in the US do people hate filing taxes. Intuit lobbies hard to make taxes as difficult as possible. Their rational is that they want people to hate tax filing as much as possible so that they vote against taxes and taxes are lowered for big corporations like Intuit. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyReturn

mherdeg 8y ago

Huh I didn't realize that ProPublica did blog posts (I'm used to seeing long articles from them, often with partners, like that great Katrina piece). I used to be dismissive of newspapers re-reporting things that were not news. I probably would have been surprised to see an entire news article basically re-reporting a Twitter message and a reddit post. In retrospect though this attitude I used to have is unfair and mean. Who cares if the re-hashed reporting about the tax-filing industry's regulatory capture is brand new or just a reminder? Reminders are important.

javaIsGreat 8y ago

i called after paying 150$, i was a student for most of last years tax filing, they told me because i signed their user agreement im not eligible for a refund even though i qualified for free service

b_tterc_p 8y ago

As I said on an earlier thread, I was able to file freely on turbo tax. It didn’t require any special effort or searching. I’m not sure I believe this claim. I was being bombarded by ads for free TurboTax all over the place and... it was free, so great?

rdiddly 8y ago

Who wants to just start writing a free version and start putting them out of business? Filing taxes is not the Linux kernel, I mean how complicated is it really? It's still just a matter of following directions and doing basic math. Computers are great at that. No rocket science needed. I even thought of a name: Caesar (as in "render unto..."). Caesar.org is available. At the end it generates a PDF for printing & mailing. After the first x users we lobby for our own connection to the IRS system like those companies have.

atonse 8y ago
It's not hard. It's all arithmetic. Before people pounce on me for "trivializing it" – I've written, from scratch, Obamacare Insurance calculators that analyzed hundreds of policies with various coverages, coverage tiers, and you could type in things like "If i broke my leg on this policy, how much would it cost?" (all in real-time). It was a lot of arithmetic but really not that bad (about 150-200 lines of mainly applying coefficients to standard formulas depending on your policy tier), but it was all addition, multiplication, and division. And it really wasn't that bad. Took about 2 weeks. Update: Just to clarify, an analyst had already done all the legwork of collecting those coefficients and premiums and costs for me. But all I'm saying is that the actual formulas are never that crazy. I've also written similar calculators for life insurance and travel insurance. I really doubt the tax calculations are any different. Ultimately you gotta remember that these laws are made by pretty average humans and have to be enforced by those same average humans. They're going to be vast, but any single rule won't be mathematically complex.
- jason_slack 8y ago
  So I once worked for a company writing math calcs all day everyday for various things (real estate, insurance, algo trading, school district budgets, hazards). If you would be willing to talk more about this email in my profile. I’ve often thought about the tax sector and how to make it easier. I really like the idea of a “Robinhood” for taxes. So to speak.
saagarjha 8y ago
I feel like this might open up liability, or at least substantial "badwill" if the software messes something up?

logn 8y ago

Google "turbotax free" which returns https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-edition.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/free-editi... This is not recent either. I remember getting to this page from Google on tax day. Google "turbotax" and it returns the free edition link nested under the first result.

astura 8y ago
That's the "Fremium" version. The FreeFile version is here: https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ https://turbotax.intuit.com/taxfreedom/ The "Fremium" version exists to upsell you to death, the FreeFile version can't do that. You've fallen for their trick.

atonse 8y ago

Hopefully we get a Robin Hood version of tax filing software soon. :)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

CalRobert 8y ago

Meanwhile, California makes it pretty easy to file your state taxes for free, with no intermediary https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp https://www.ftb.ca.gov/online/calfile/index.asp

mars4rp 8y ago
I am the developer in charge of this, thanks for promoting it.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  Thanks for your work, I'm a big fan of Calfile for the years when I'm eligible to use it. Out of curiosity are there any plans to support returns with capital gains?
  - mars4rp 8y ago
    Thank you for using it, unfortunately no. I don't qualify to use it myself either.
- mlindner 8y ago
  Perhaps you can expand it so that most software developers can use it? The fact that capital gains are excluded from the e-file is really frustrating when the majority of us have RSUs/ESPPs.
  - mars4rp 8y ago
    I WISH it was up to me, lots and lots of bureaucracy!
    - mlindner 8y ago
      Every voice counts! Bring it up with your manager and help push the message up the chain!
- mywittyname 8y ago

Causality1 8y ago

I imagine there's quite a lot of juicy information hiding behind noindex tags across the web. Is there a search engine that ignores these tags?

rdl 8y ago

I wonder what the minimum-effort private organization would be which could comply with IRS rules to offer free filing of extensions, 1040ez, etc. I'd happily throw in $1k toward it (even though I'm not eligible, and thanks to Puerto Rico, don't need to file federal taxes, probably, after 2019). Just offering a simple, responsible, and stress free process for these filings, ideally with zero advertising, or just a brief "fuck turbotax, this is why..." message, and good infosec/anti-fraud (to protect against the EIC-claim-scams against the poor) would be great. The downside is a lot of those people need immediate access to cash, so a shittier commercial option offering instant refunds for a high fee would probably still get a lot of victims. A big company like Walmart could possibly offer this to users, too, for free, and offer instant-refund as store card or savings accounts.

astura 8y ago
I think CreditKarma is attempting to do this. There's been other efforts in the past/currently. Some examples: Open Tax Solver: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net/ 1040 Spreadsheet: https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions https://sites.google.com/site/excel1040/home/instructions

0x262d 8y ago

dictatorship of capital

kup0 8y ago

TurboTax was free for me up until I tried to report $10 in interest paid on student loans, which is a small, barely necessary form. TT doesn't include this very common form in their free bundle and wanted me to pay $40 to upgrade. While H&R Block also gets criticized- I have to say that they include this form, and I was able to file completely free for both federal and state, without having to hunt for a link- just started on their normal site. They also allowed automatic import of W2s, easy import of TurboTax previous years, etc.

mywittyname 8y ago
What happens if you just add $10 to your AGI and omit the interest payments? My thinking is the IRS will send you a "corrected" return and a $0 bill for the difference. Since that's what they do if you fill out incorrect information anyway.
- homero 8y ago
  It's a deduction so don't report at all
  - kup0 8y ago
    As far as I know, reporting paid student loan interest is a "required" form according to the IRS. I remember looking up information about it at the time to see if I could just not report it, and that did not seem to be recommended
    - homero 8y ago
      Really odd, it's like failing to report donations. But i guess they filed it.

dakial1 8y ago

Can't someone create a site, listed, with very good SEO practices and content that links directly to the Free edition?

fulldecent2 8y ago

Much pixels and ink have been spent on this topic. I am much more interested in first-party services for tax filing in the 50 states.

mlindner 8y ago

The IRS already provides a free-file option, you just need to spend more time reading instructions. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-fi... Not sure what all the hate is here. If you're not completely uneducated, you can figure this out yourself.

cabaalis 8y ago
> In exchange for the IRS promising not to create its own free, online filing tool, Intuit, H&R Block and other companies signed a deal to offer Free File options to lower-income Americans. Hence the hate when they attempt to hide such an option. Signed a deal.
- mlindner 8y ago
  There's no income limitations for what I linked.
danso 8y ago
If you're going to tell us to "spend more time reading instructions", maybe you should take the time to read and follow the links you send. What the site your link refers to -- freefilefillableforms.com -- is not a service built by the IRS. Did you really believe the U.S. Congress, and Turbotax's lobbyists, would be proposing and debating a bill on the existence of something you think you found with a Google search?

deleted 8y ago

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fuzzieozzie 8y ago

I wonder what Bill Campbell would have done if he were still alive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_executive) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Campbell_(business_exe...

deleted 8y ago

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silversub 8y ago

Has anyone attempted to create an open source project for filing federal taxes? I understand e-filing would probably be out of the question but something that could generate a pdf that you could print out and mail to the government.

could-be-wrong 8y ago

If taxes were centralized, is it possible that one’s average tax bill delta would be higher than the average deal value of tax software products? The point being, one could argue that the private sector has more incentive to reduce your tax bill in order to take a cut of the savings.

nnain 8y ago

Damn, one thing I definitely don't envy about US is the lobbying. This definitely shouldn't have been left to a private company! Indian govt websites aren't great and most look dated, and still income tax site run by govt is just about fine. No reason that the IRS/US gov should have locked themselves out of doing this.

Angela_Marshall 8y ago

That's unfortunate. Unfortunately, big business and bad habits are not mutually exclusive.