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Companies like Intuit have successfully lobbied our government to halt any sort of bill that would make it better. The entire thing could be easily automated; o

Companies like Intuit have successfully lobbied our government to halt any sort of bill that would make it better. The entire thing could be easily automated; other countries have proved that. But then Turbo tax wouldn't get to rake in all that $$$. Seriously though, I would love (hate) to read what sort of ethical backflips they had to do to make IRS reform a bad thing. I'm presuming they tried to make logical arguments.

tssva 6y ago
My state had an online tax system in test for a few years. Over the course of 3 - 4 years it was opened up to a larger group of tax payers with potentialy more complex tax returns. The final year of testing I was one of those selected to use it. The following year it was going to be rolled out to everyone. The state had invested millions in it. The legislative session before it was to go live Intuit successfully lobbied both the governor and legislature to kill it.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  In which state did this happen?
  - rodonn 6y ago
    Some thing very similar happened in California: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
    - ac29 6y ago
      CalFile is still around, and pretty good: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/index.asp https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/inde...
vulcan01 6y ago
> I'm presuming they tried to make logical arguments. Why would they need to make logical arguments? Money (lobbying) is far better at influencing politicians. However, the politicians that are getting lobbied sometimes try to make logical arguments, and they typically say that making the process harder encourages popular support for lower taxes.
Frost1x 6y ago
Crony capitalism wins yet again. The US needs serious reform on what it allows corporate entities to do. Your common citizen couldn't get away with a fraction of the arguable theft to the general population most these companies get away with. It's not technically "theft" though since the theives define the rules and what constitutes theft to not include their actions. Alas, I don't know how we accomplish such reform. It increasingly seems to be yet another lost battle and perhaps lost war. Aside from consumers essentially checking out as many segments of systems and allowing them to crumble under their own weight and then rebuild them after under stricter policy, I'm not sure what can be done. Legisilation doesn't seem to reflect the needs of the many and continues to cater to the wants of a few. I suspect Intuit and the like argue that any sort of electronic system of improvement is some direct competition to the private market and is unethical. They probably also argue that the free market version of something like TurboTax offers a more cost effective solution to the general tax payer than what it would cost the government to simply fix parts of a broken process to simplify things. In the short term these arguments could be viable but I'm pretty sure within a few years time, a tax system that didn't involve so many people spending hours of their time navigating through these commercial packages while also paying them plus many still needing an accountant to speak to could possibly be cheaper than a simplified tax system. Obviously simplifying the tax system can have socioeconomic effects. Many deductions exist to try and fix those issues or help push policy onto citizens and some of the complexity is unavoidable as even those dedications are loopholes around existing legislation. It seems to me though we can still allow for these sort of dedications to let people who need tax relief get it and not what we currently have where the people getting tax relief are the ones with mountains of capital to hire professionals to find and exploit tax loopholes while so many who need the tax relief likely overpay comparatively as a relative portion of their total assets.

tssva 6y ago

My state had an online tax system in test for a few years. Over the course of 3 - 4 years it was opened up to a larger group of tax payers with potentialy more complex tax returns. The final year of testing I was one of those selected to use it. The following year it was going to be rolled out to everyone. The state had invested millions in it. The legislative session before it was to go live Intuit successfully lobbied both the governor and legislature to kill it.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
In which state did this happen?
- rodonn 6y ago
  Some thing very similar happened in California: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
  - ac29 6y ago
    CalFile is still around, and pretty good: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/index.asp https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/inde...

vulcan01 6y ago

> I'm presuming they tried to make logical arguments. Why would they need to make logical arguments? Money (lobbying) is far better at influencing politicians. However, the politicians that are getting lobbied sometimes try to make logical arguments, and they typically say that making the process harder encourages popular support for lower taxes.

Frost1x 6y ago

Crony capitalism wins yet again. The US needs serious reform on what it allows corporate entities to do. Your common citizen couldn't get away with a fraction of the arguable theft to the general population most these companies get away with. It's not technically "theft" though since the theives define the rules and what constitutes theft to not include their actions. Alas, I don't know how we accomplish such reform. It increasingly seems to be yet another lost battle and perhaps lost war. Aside from consumers essentially checking out as many segments of systems and allowing them to crumble under their own weight and then rebuild them after under stricter policy, I'm not sure what can be done. Legisilation doesn't seem to reflect the needs of the many and continues to cater to the wants of a few. I suspect Intuit and the like argue that any sort of electronic system of improvement is some direct competition to the private market and is unethical. They probably also argue that the free market version of something like TurboTax offers a more cost effective solution to the general tax payer than what it would cost the government to simply fix parts of a broken process to simplify things. In the short term these arguments could be viable but I'm pretty sure within a few years time, a tax system that didn't involve so many people spending hours of their time navigating through these commercial packages while also paying them plus many still needing an accountant to speak to could possibly be cheaper than a simplified tax system. Obviously simplifying the tax system can have socioeconomic effects. Many deductions exist to try and fix those issues or help push policy onto citizens and some of the complexity is unavoidable as even those dedications are loopholes around existing legislation. It seems to me though we can still allow for these sort of dedications to let people who need tax relief get it and not what we currently have where the people getting tax relief are the ones with mountains of capital to hire professionals to find and exploit tax loopholes while so many who need the tax relief likely overpay comparatively as a relative portion of their total assets.