6 ms·

And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings. That is because they could pre-populate much of t

And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings. That is because they could pre-populate much of the W2/1099/stock sales/etc data since its all being reported to the IRS from other organizations. For the vast majority of people it could be as simple as logging into a web site and clicking "no" to a bunch of questions like "did you have more than 20k of medical bills last year", and then "I accept" at the bottom where it prints your final tax. As I understand it, that is how some other countries handle their taxes..

syshum 6y ago
>>>And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings. Someone has never worked in government contracting or developing Software from Government Committee a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets Not a easy to use streamline system If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Here’s the thing though: the IRS already has all the information they need for a majority of the population. Why does everyone need to fill out forms themselves only for the government a few years later to say you did it wrong?
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Because some people are irrationally biased against government providing services or collecting taxes in general. These are ingrained belief systems being challenged.
    - jaywalk 6y ago
      Ridiculous thing to say. I am a small government person, and I believe taxation is theft. However, I am a realist and so I recognize that taxes are part of our reality. I am 100% in favor of the IRS making it as easy as possible for people to do their taxes, because they already have 99% of the info needed.
      - Octoth0rpe 6y ago
        > I believe taxation is theft > However, I am a realist Choose one.
        jaywalk 6y ago
        I have no idea how you see those two things as mutually exclusive.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        If taxation is theft, so are the vast majority of jobs.
        jaywalk 6y ago
        I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes.
        ardy42 6y ago
        > I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes. You totally do have choice to not pay your taxes, just like you have a choice to not pay your rent or mortgage or renege on other kinds of private contracts. The making those choices may lead to outcomes that aren't good for you, but it doesn't mean you have no choice.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        You can move to a place with no income tax. Now, you might argue that is impractical, but so getting a non-shit job for many people. I happen to think the government should impose taxes, and tax evasion is a moral failing, but I also recognized people were born into a contract with the government, and I'm not going to argue that's fair.
        syshum 6y ago
        The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. --Lysander Spooner
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it Would you rather have a system that’s inefficiently built by a government or one efficiently built by a private company that illegally extracts fees from users, as the FTC alleges Intuit has done? What’s the point of being obsessed with “efficiency” when the company screws end users anyway?
  - syshum 6y ago
    That is a false dilemma, I know this will shock you, but it is possible to have private companies that do not illegally extract fees from users, and at the same time not have government created software.... I support the FTC's actions to go after intuit, but I have filled my taxes every year for many decades and not used Turbo Tax.
- StillBored 6y ago
  I have, and sometimes it goes well, but you don't hear about those cases. OTOH, you have to remember that the IRS is already developing a fairly complex bit of software which allows the tax companies to "e-file" the tax returns. Then they are verifying those companies results in house against the data they already have. At which point, apparently the returns are either rejected, or assigned some kind of weight for a human inspector to come along and review for whether a formal audit should be undertaken. So, its quite possible that cutting out the e-file portion and replacing it with a webUI actually simplifies things.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  > a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval. > Following Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the summer of 2017, KFF Health Tracking Polls have found a slight uptick in overall favorability towards the 2010 health care law. The most recent KFF Tracking Poll shows over half of the public (52%) hold favorable opinions of the ACA while about four in ten (41%) hold a negative opinion of the law. [1] > Some 55% of Americans support the ACA, a record high since the law went into effect a decade ago, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while 37% of the 130,000 respondents in the nationally representative poll hold unfavorable views. [2] > But the election of Donald Trump and efforts by Republicans to repeal the ACA have boosted the law’s popularity. Since November 2016, on average, 49.4% of the public has had a positive view of the law, compared with 41.6% who view it unfavorably. [3] [1] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/6-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/6-charts-abou... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-affordable-care-act-is-more-popular-now-than-when-obama-was-president-2020-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-affordable-care-act-is... [3] https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-has-public-opinion-on-the-aca-shifted-over-time https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-has-public-opinion-on-the-aca-...
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval I support the ACA, but when you implement the benefits in a law and repeal or ignore most of the new taxes and mandates, that will happen.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      Okay? There's no reason laws have to have good and bad parts, like a fundamental yin-yang. You can simply write laws without the bad parts.
- hellotomyrars 6y ago
  You mean those universally hated unemployement systems, the like one in Florida which was intentionally set up to fail and be as hard as possible to qualify for and interact with so that the real, hard-working Americans don't have to pay to support those deadbeat lowlifes who don't have a job? The government is more than capable of accomplishing tasks. There is no inherent reason why government is incapable of doing anything but a corporation is capable of doing everything! If you design a system to fail from the outset and it doesn't work, then they achieved the goal. So really, the government nailed it. And the better part is they nailed it for people who feel the way you do. It's literally a self-fulfilling prophecy of politically-motivated people who don't believe in the ability of the government to get anything done working as hard as possible to make sure that the government doesn't do a good job.
- d4rti 6y ago
  HMRC manage to do this just fine in the UK. I'm sure many other governments around the world do the same.

syshum 6y ago

>>>And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings. Someone has never worked in government contracting or developing Software from Government Committee a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets Not a easy to use streamline system If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it

colejohnson66 6y ago
Here’s the thing though: the IRS already has all the information they need for a majority of the population. Why does everyone need to fill out forms themselves only for the government a few years later to say you did it wrong?
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Because some people are irrationally biased against government providing services or collecting taxes in general. These are ingrained belief systems being challenged.
  - jaywalk 6y ago
    Ridiculous thing to say. I am a small government person, and I believe taxation is theft. However, I am a realist and so I recognize that taxes are part of our reality. I am 100% in favor of the IRS making it as easy as possible for people to do their taxes, because they already have 99% of the info needed.
    - Octoth0rpe 6y ago
      > I believe taxation is theft > However, I am a realist Choose one.
      - jaywalk 6y ago
        I have no idea how you see those two things as mutually exclusive.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        If taxation is theft, so are the vast majority of jobs.
        jaywalk 6y ago
        I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes.
        ardy42 6y ago
        > I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes. You totally do have choice to not pay your taxes, just like you have a choice to not pay your rent or mortgage or renege on other kinds of private contracts. The making those choices may lead to outcomes that aren't good for you, but it doesn't mean you have no choice.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        You can move to a place with no income tax. Now, you might argue that is impractical, but so getting a non-shit job for many people. I happen to think the government should impose taxes, and tax evasion is a moral failing, but I also recognized people were born into a contract with the government, and I'm not going to argue that's fair.
      - syshum 6y ago
        The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. --Lysander Spooner
save_ferris 6y ago
> If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it Would you rather have a system that’s inefficiently built by a government or one efficiently built by a private company that illegally extracts fees from users, as the FTC alleges Intuit has done? What’s the point of being obsessed with “efficiency” when the company screws end users anyway?
- syshum 6y ago
  That is a false dilemma, I know this will shock you, but it is possible to have private companies that do not illegally extract fees from users, and at the same time not have government created software.... I support the FTC's actions to go after intuit, but I have filled my taxes every year for many decades and not used Turbo Tax.
StillBored 6y ago
I have, and sometimes it goes well, but you don't hear about those cases. OTOH, you have to remember that the IRS is already developing a fairly complex bit of software which allows the tax companies to "e-file" the tax returns. Then they are verifying those companies results in house against the data they already have. At which point, apparently the returns are either rejected, or assigned some kind of weight for a human inspector to come along and review for whether a formal audit should be undertaken. So, its quite possible that cutting out the e-file portion and replacing it with a webUI actually simplifies things.
ciarannolan 6y ago
> a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval. > Following Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the summer of 2017, KFF Health Tracking Polls have found a slight uptick in overall favorability towards the 2010 health care law. The most recent KFF Tracking Poll shows over half of the public (52%) hold favorable opinions of the ACA while about four in ten (41%) hold a negative opinion of the law. [1] > Some 55% of Americans support the ACA, a record high since the law went into effect a decade ago, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while 37% of the 130,000 respondents in the nationally representative poll hold unfavorable views. [2] > But the election of Donald Trump and efforts by Republicans to repeal the ACA have boosted the law’s popularity. Since November 2016, on average, 49.4% of the public has had a positive view of the law, compared with 41.6% who view it unfavorably. [3] [1] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/6-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act/ https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/6-charts-abou... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-affordable-care-act-is-more-popular-now-than-when-obama-was-president-2020-02-24 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-affordable-care-act-is... [3] https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-has-public-opinion-on-the-aca-shifted-over-time https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-has-public-opinion-on-the-aca-...
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval I support the ACA, but when you implement the benefits in a law and repeal or ignore most of the new taxes and mandates, that will happen.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Okay? There's no reason laws have to have good and bad parts, like a fundamental yin-yang. You can simply write laws without the bad parts.
hellotomyrars 6y ago
You mean those universally hated unemployement systems, the like one in Florida which was intentionally set up to fail and be as hard as possible to qualify for and interact with so that the real, hard-working Americans don't have to pay to support those deadbeat lowlifes who don't have a job? The government is more than capable of accomplishing tasks. There is no inherent reason why government is incapable of doing anything but a corporation is capable of doing everything! If you design a system to fail from the outset and it doesn't work, then they achieved the goal. So really, the government nailed it. And the better part is they nailed it for people who feel the way you do. It's literally a self-fulfilling prophecy of politically-motivated people who don't believe in the ability of the government to get anything done working as hard as possible to make sure that the government doesn't do a good job.
d4rti 6y ago
HMRC manage to do this just fine in the UK. I'm sure many other governments around the world do the same.