3 ms·

This has already been done successfully in Canada. A small team from Vancouver built a pay-what-you-want web-based tax-filing system from scratch. It's called

This has already been done successfully in Canada. A small team from Vancouver built a pay-what-you-want web-based tax-filing system from scratch. It's called SimpleTax and it's already a major competitor to the Canadian version of TurboTax. In fact, it was so successful that it was recently acquired by Canadian investment group WealthSimple.

parliament32 6y ago
Unfortunately, the "we promise not to sell your personal data" disappeared from the privacy policy during the acquisition, so we know why they remain donationware post-acquisition. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-canadian-tech-company-that-changed-its-mind-about-using-your-tax-return-to-sell-stuff-1.5471400 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-canadian-tech-comp...
- jcun4128 6y ago
  Ooh ToS/privacy policy diffing service alerts as a service ha
  - eitland 6y ago
    Used to be a plain Firefox extension back in the days. It was really simple, something like: - You clicked a button in the toolbar or right clicked and chose menu option - a dialog showed up, you chose how often it should check the page and how big differences it should tolerate and clicked OK. - once every hour or 4 times a day or twice a day depending on your choice Firefox would download the page locally, compare it and tell me if there were changes. Yes, we oldtimers mostly complain about TST, but there were an entire ecosystem of brilliant extensions - so brilliant I figure it would habe been hard for me to believe today if I hadn't experienced it back then. That's what you can have when you have brilliant people making brilliant software to empower you :-/ Edit: seriously, I would pay $20 a month for someone who would fix the new Firefox. If someone made a realistic Kickstarter I'd support it right away and then monthly if necessary.
ehsankia 6y ago
No wonder I've been seeing so much ads about WealthSimple tax. It's literally every other ad on TikTok for the past 2 months. That and every other WealthSimple app (trade, invest, etc).
trishume 6y ago
For people who haven't used it: SimpleTax just absolutely nails UI quality, it's so nice and smooth that every year I've used them I've been done in under 15 minutes (other than time spent double-checking because it can't have possible been that easy) and come away so grateful for their existence that I gladly throw money at them. One year the Canadian Revenue Agency even introduced a new API that lets SimpleTax pre-fill most of the information like employment income from the stuff the CRA has on file. I've since moved to the US and I'm dreading doing my taxes using probably TurboTax for the first time this year. At least it probably won't be as bad as previous years when I had to file non-resident US taxes for internships, where you can't even use TurboTax and have to use Glacier or TaxAct, which were terrible compared to SimpleTax.
nikon 6y ago
Can't find the source, but the CRA will be bringing out their own free software too soon
Germanika 6y ago
I can honestly say that SimpleTax has been life changing for me, and is a great example of just how important UX can be. My partner used to have literal panic attacks trying to file taxes, even with TurboTax/UFile/etc. Since we've started using SimpleTax, it's done in one sitting and is not even a source of stress anymore.

parliament32 6y ago

Unfortunately, the "we promise not to sell your personal data" disappeared from the privacy policy during the acquisition, so we know why they remain donationware post-acquisition. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-canadian-tech-company-that-changed-its-mind-about-using-your-tax-return-to-sell-stuff-1.5471400 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/the-canadian-tech-comp...

jcun4128 6y ago
Ooh ToS/privacy policy diffing service alerts as a service ha
- eitland 6y ago
  Used to be a plain Firefox extension back in the days. It was really simple, something like: - You clicked a button in the toolbar or right clicked and chose menu option - a dialog showed up, you chose how often it should check the page and how big differences it should tolerate and clicked OK. - once every hour or 4 times a day or twice a day depending on your choice Firefox would download the page locally, compare it and tell me if there were changes. Yes, we oldtimers mostly complain about TST, but there were an entire ecosystem of brilliant extensions - so brilliant I figure it would habe been hard for me to believe today if I hadn't experienced it back then. That's what you can have when you have brilliant people making brilliant software to empower you :-/ Edit: seriously, I would pay $20 a month for someone who would fix the new Firefox. If someone made a realistic Kickstarter I'd support it right away and then monthly if necessary.

ehsankia 6y ago

No wonder I've been seeing so much ads about WealthSimple tax. It's literally every other ad on TikTok for the past 2 months. That and every other WealthSimple app (trade, invest, etc).

trishume 6y ago

For people who haven't used it: SimpleTax just absolutely nails UI quality, it's so nice and smooth that every year I've used them I've been done in under 15 minutes (other than time spent double-checking because it can't have possible been that easy) and come away so grateful for their existence that I gladly throw money at them. One year the Canadian Revenue Agency even introduced a new API that lets SimpleTax pre-fill most of the information like employment income from the stuff the CRA has on file. I've since moved to the US and I'm dreading doing my taxes using probably TurboTax for the first time this year. At least it probably won't be as bad as previous years when I had to file non-resident US taxes for internships, where you can't even use TurboTax and have to use Glacier or TaxAct, which were terrible compared to SimpleTax.

nikon 6y ago

Can't find the source, but the CRA will be bringing out their own free software too soon

Germanika 6y ago

I can honestly say that SimpleTax has been life changing for me, and is a great example of just how important UX can be. My partner used to have literal panic attacks trying to file taxes, even with TurboTax/UFile/etc. Since we've started using SimpleTax, it's done in one sitting and is not even a source of stress anymore.