11 ms·

Intuit will no longer be a part of IRS Free File program

112 points by watchdogtimer 5y ago

eyeball 5y ago
is taxation as fucked up in other countries as it is in the usa? rules set up to encourage people to have to pay some shady third party to know how much they owe (even though the irs could tell them directly).
- Zizizizz 5y ago
  Expat living in the UK, I don't do anything for taxes here, I still have to file through free file in the US each year. It's a right pain.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    The fact that the US demands you file taxes as an expat is a wee bit ironic if you consider the founding myths of the United States.
- yladiz 5y ago
  In Germany a lot of people don't need to file taxes. If you have a job that takes taxes out automatically, like an office job, you aren't obligated to files taxes, but if you freelance or have some additional income that wouldn't be taxed then you are obligated to file. As far as I understand the rule of thumb is if all of your employers deduct taxes you don't need to file. I moved here from the USA and it feels simpler for the average person. You don't declare how many withholdings you get (I always used 0 so I could get some money at the end of the year), you just tell your employer your tax class and everything else is handled, and any refund is based on if you paid too many taxes somehow (there are some situations where you might have overpaid taxes inadvertently, like if you have a change in income part way through the year, and if this is the case when you file the return they analyze your income data and give you a refund).
- OJFord 5y ago
  No, in the UK the majority of people don't need to 'do taxes' at all. ('Normal' income tax is taken through 'Pay As You Earn' by employer's payroll, you only ever receive net pay; capital gains, dividends, 'innovation', etc. have tax free thresholds that mean you don't have to worry about it until (if) it's big. And then you can just file it online (or paper) directly with HMRC (IRS equivalent), or pay a tax advisor if you want of course, but that's certainly exception not norm.)
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  My impression is that most countries either withhold taxes correctly, or send you a bill at the year end without you having to file, unless if you have a complex setup like owning a business.
- Lionga 5y ago
  In Germany it is a clusterfuck of special rules and millions of forms and extra deductions. Much easier in Romania, if you have only employment income nothing to do. For capital gains or other incomes basically a single form, only 10% flat taxes so you know what you owe.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- fridif 5y ago
  Taxes are not hard. You enter in your income and see if you can get any deductions. Be an adult.
  - Telemakhos 5y ago
    Taxes are not hard for people with one job and one SSN and no schedule Ks filing in one place. Last year I had four TIN/EIN/SSNs, filing in up to three states, depending on the TIN/EIN/SSN, along with a federal return. That meant a dozen different filings. Hiring an accountant was worth it for me. On the other hand, when I was young, I did my own taxes by hand on paper, and it was easy: they are easy if you just have a W2 and maybe some 1099s. But I was not an adult then, nor did I have adult finances.
    - fridif 5y ago
      Does it stand to reason that the average person does not have multiple business entities in multiple locations? You are getting scammed by the government, who have made it burdensome to report all of this income. A tax professional or a service like Intuit are trying to help here. If the government wanted to make this process easier for the small percentage of people like you, they would have done so, but they haven't, because they have weak volition and desire for creativity.
      - yladiz 5y ago
        Does it stand to reason that the average person needs to actually file taxes if the government knows the information necessary to calculate a tax refund or bill anyway?
        fridif 5y ago
        How would the government know what deductions you are applying for before you apply for them?
        yladiz 5y ago
- Snild 5y ago
  Nope. Here in Sweden, your employer reports your pay to the tax authorities, and deducts your tax from every paycheck. Banks report your capital gains and losses. In March or April, everyone gets sent their pre-filled tax form for the previous year. You can change it as needed, for example adding income from a side hustle, or making deductions -- though those are fewer and less complicated than the US from what I understand. Many common deductions (e.g. for mortgage interest) will be pre-filled too. Most people will not need to change anything, and so can approve the pre-filled form through text message or digital signature (or phone robot for old people iirc). If you do need to make changes, it can be (but doesn't have to be) done online without too much trouble. Don't get me wrong, it's not always trivial, but it seems significantly more pleasant than what I hear about the US system. And, again, the vast majority of people just have to send a text message some time in March or April.
  - iandanforth 5y ago
    Sweden has the mortgage interest deduction too? I wonder how wide spread that is. I thought that was a US financing lobby invention sold under the guise of the "American Dream of Home Ownership."
    - Snild 5y ago
      My understanding (based on no research at all) is that it was introduced here for a similar reason: "homeownership is good". And it probably is. But I don't know if the deduction helps with that. People buy what they can afford, so the "discount" is probably consumed by higher interest rates and inflated prices. It can also be argued that it's a form of regressive taxation: the rich are eligible for bigger mortgages, and therefore have more to gain from the policy. Personally, I would like to see it removed. Any serious attempt to do that it's probably political suicide, though, since it would have a noticeable impact on many people's finances. And who knows how it would affect the housing market. Maybe if it was done gradually over many years.
      - unilynx 5y ago
        The Netherlands have been passing various restrictions on mortgage interest reductions over the past few years. Many are phased in over 30 years. With the current interest rates it's an ideal time to pass any tax changes anyway - they won't hit new mortgages nearly as hard as 10 years ago, and the housing prices can use some downward pressure anyway.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  France, my employer reports how much they pay me to the state. I tell the state how much I made, in a pre-filled form of everything they know. That includes salaries, donations, as well as the default 10% tax write-off. I can of course adjust this form. I can also tell the state how much I expect to make this year, and the state will tell my employer to directly deposit a specific percentage of my salary directly for taxes to the state. When doing my tax declaration, if anything has changed, it gets all settled in September. If I didn't pay enough yet, I'll be asked to finish paying it (ex: this year, where my estimation of what I'd make was too low, and I'll owe 1000€ by September). If I paid too much, I'll be reimbursed (or it'll be paid in advance for next year.) All in all, revenue tax takes about 5 minutes a year for me to check that what they have is correct (since I am salaried, which is the easy path), and maybe 5 more minutes to adjust my monthly tax rate.
- cesarb 5y ago
  Brazilian here. For us, there is no third party; we must use the tax filing software from Receita Federal (our IRS), available for free on the website (Java version, for desktops), within the website itself (web version), or the smartphone app. This software has been available since the 90s; initially a DOS-only application, later a Windows-only application, then a pair of the Windows-only application and the Java application, then the Windows-only application was dropped in favor of the Java application, and later came the web and smartphone versions. For a while, we could also use the older paper forms, but that hasn't been an option for over a decade.
underseacables 5y ago
This didn’t take long. The word must’ve gotten out finally that you don’t need to pay to file your taxes.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ftc-is-investigating-intuit-over-turbotax-practices https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ftc-is-investigating-... Based on what I’m hearing from folks inside the gov, this administration will encourage and support the IRS in flexing to be more citizen friendly and focused instead of rolling over for Intuit and Co (which personally I find to be refreshing). Stay tuned, progress ahead.
  - artificial 5y ago
    The administration plans to hire 87,000 more agents, effectively doubling its size to… be citizen friendly? They’re going to use audits like the Death Star. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-489830 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-4...
    - overtonwhy 5y ago
      Holding tax cheats to account benefits all of society that plays by the rules.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      I don’t see the problem, as someone who pays their tax due and isn’t aggressively avoiding paying taxes. As the saying goes, “I like taxes, with them I buy civilization.”
      - prepend 5y ago
        I pay my taxes too. But hiring more audit agents will have them finding work to do. An audit for me, even though I’ve kept good records and everything is on the up and up, is a lot of time and money and I want to avoid. This sounds like all those police departments who hire cops and then end up writing lots of speeding tickets to pay for the cops.
newsyyswen 5y ago
We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. They certainly have enough information from employers, banks, estimated payments from contractors, etc. Otherwise, how would they decide who to audit? How would they know to mail you an adjusted return for a past year? It feels completely ridiculous that we need to calculate these things ourselves, only to be bugged by the agency for entering the wrong numbers. Just tell us what you think the bill is, and let us make a counter-claim if we think you're wrong! But this has been true for years, decades. I'm not holding my breath.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. It’s incredibly obnoxious, but the amount of money made is so obscene that it makes bribing[0] Congress people trivial. 0 - Yes, I know it’s technically a donation. But if it walks like a bribe and it quacks like a bribe, I see no reason to arbitrarily let them off the hook.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    It walks like a bribe, it talks like a bribe, it quacks like a bribe, it flaps like a bribe, it lies like a bribe, it hides like a bribe, it looks like a bribe, it feels like a bribe, it smells like a bribe, what is it? Lobbying, duh. Definitely not a bribe. It's pretty wild that legal lobbying + the realities of campaign finance effectively mean that our government has instituted a policy of mandatory bribery. I mean, democracy is always going to have warts, but this one is really special.
    - duped 5y ago
      You're 100% right except for one thing - you're describing campaign finance, not lobbying.
      - jjoonathan 5y ago
warglebargle 5y ago
Intuit can eat shit, their business model is to lobby against any meaningful tax code simplification
- davisr 5y ago
  Right on, but you forgot to mention the other part of their business model with is to sell out their customer's financial information to the highest-paying bidder.
  - throwaway413 5y ago
    This is simply false. Legally they can’t do this because they collect information for tax purposes. It is against the law.
    - commoner 5y ago
      In addition to TurboTax, Intuit owns Mint.com, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and other services. All of these services are covered under Intuit's global privacy policy, which states that Intuit uses personal information in multiple privacy-violating ways: > For joint features, sales, promotions and events. We may share your information with third-parties companies who are jointly providing features, sales initiatives, promotions or events with us. > With financial services providers. We may share personal Information with collection agencies, credit bureaus and loan service providers, and payment card association members. We may also share your personal information with other companies, lawyers, credit bureaus, agents, government agencies, and card associations in connection with issues related to fraud, credit, defaults, or debt collection. > We may share your information with our affiliates and subsidiaries for everyday business purposes as described in this Statement, including for marketing purposes. https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ Considering that Mint.com and Credit Karma are free of charge, it's obvious that Intuit is using personal information harvested from these services to generate revenue in the ways described. TurboTax and QuickBooks are mainly paid products, but have the same privacy policy.
blakesterz 5y ago
I almost feel like "doing your taxes" is one of those things that is like going to buy a new car. Everyone hates it, but when Saturn came along and said "no haggling, just best price on every car" people didn't actually like that. I go to buy a new car and I HOPE I got a great price, I worked on it, I bargained, I did the research. They say I did really good this team, I got such a great deal! I "do my taxes" and I HOPE I paid as little as possible. I worked on it, I kept my receipts, I did the research, and maybe I even paid someone to do all that for me and they say I did really good this year, low tax bill! Both of these things suck, but if I just got a bill from the IRS I'm just going to think "maybe I could've done better" just like if I see a car that just has a price I am going to think "maybe I could've done better" I really don't like thinking like this!
- jolux 5y ago
  It’s funny, I don’t really feel that way about spending money on stuff, especially not cars which are a total nightmare. I guess I consider my time a lot more valuable? Probably why the higher prices for Apple products don’t bother me. I just want something consistent that I don’t have to think about.
- monster_group 5y ago
  For virtually everything in life (not just cars and taxes), there's always "maybe I could have done better". This attitude is a recipe to be always dissatisfied and unhappy. The approach should be "did I do a good job?". For example, if you were able to get $1000 off on the car but most people are able to get only $800 then the answer is "yes" and you should be happy and content even though someone may have gotten $1200 off. Once you start evaluating your actions and decisions like that, life becomes much happier and content.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  > Both of these things suck, but if I just got a bill from the IRS I'm just going to think "maybe I could've done better" I don't think anyone is advocating for removing the option to file taxes manually. Just let the IRS send a bill by default, and give you the option to file your taxes yourself if there's something wrong or you think you can do better.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I agree with the many comments here calling for an IRS-driven system. But I'd also like to see improvements for the 10-13% of people who cannot be correctly billed by the IRS (I'm one of them). I say this because we're already so close to how it ought to be ... for several years now, I've used freefilefillableforms.com to file my taxes as a self-employed person with periodic capital gains and other stuff. It's not really a great model for how such a website could be designed, but it's not actually terrible and generally gets the job done. However, it has been intentionally hobbled: there are several places where you must manually transfer numbers from one field to another, or from one form to another. There's clearly no technical reason for this, and the system will also not report any error if you do not do so (making it trivial to have major errors, despite all the data being input correctly). I can only conclude that it has been hobbled by the same motivations that affect the tax reporting/return field in general. I'd definitely like to see this done even better, but a good small step would be a bill for force this site to do 100% of what it clearly already can, rather than 95%.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  The freefillableforms website is run by Intuit, so that might give you a clue why it is the way it is.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    So I wonder what will happen if they are somehow exiting this space. The announcement seems to only be about the no-fee for < $75k income folks side of things. I wonder if they will continue to run this, if it will shut down, or be transferred elsewhere.
hirako2000 5y ago
Why do we even have to pay income taxes in the first place. Even companies get a far better treatment as they can at least deduct their expenses. Humans are treated worse than a register entity. And for what? To send troops abroad for some killing, ultimately benefiting only a tiny few. For health care, infrastructure, police, education? The whole thing is a joke. Perhaps this move will make people wake up and ask for income tax on individuals to be voluntarly, somehow I still doubt so.
sthkr 5y ago
Thankfully I live in a country where I've never had to pay income taxes in my entire life :)
sschueller 5y ago
I am waiting for the day when some ransomeware attack happens to Intuit a day before taxes are due and it causes such a disruption that congress will act and this shit is over but I guess I am dreaming...
NotSwift 5y ago
Intuit has been scamming low income users into paying for their services that were supposed to be free: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you... Intuit just decided that it could not make enough money with this scam, so they stopped using this particular one. It's probably a wise decision. Claiming that you're providing a free service, while making it pretty difficult for users to find it so they will use your paid services instead, is definitely wrong from a moral point of view, but it might also be shaky from a legal point of view. The bottom-line was probably just the profit.

112 points by watchdogtimer 5y ago

is taxation as fucked up in other countries as it is in the usa? rules set up to encourage people to have to pay some shady third party to know how much they owe (even though the irs could tell them directly).

Zizizizz 5y ago
Expat living in the UK, I don't do anything for taxes here, I still have to file through free file in the US each year. It's a right pain.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The fact that the US demands you file taxes as an expat is a wee bit ironic if you consider the founding myths of the United States.
yladiz 5y ago
In Germany a lot of people don't need to file taxes. If you have a job that takes taxes out automatically, like an office job, you aren't obligated to files taxes, but if you freelance or have some additional income that wouldn't be taxed then you are obligated to file. As far as I understand the rule of thumb is if all of your employers deduct taxes you don't need to file. I moved here from the USA and it feels simpler for the average person. You don't declare how many withholdings you get (I always used 0 so I could get some money at the end of the year), you just tell your employer your tax class and everything else is handled, and any refund is based on if you paid too many taxes somehow (there are some situations where you might have overpaid taxes inadvertently, like if you have a change in income part way through the year, and if this is the case when you file the return they analyze your income data and give you a refund).
OJFord 5y ago
No, in the UK the majority of people don't need to 'do taxes' at all. ('Normal' income tax is taken through 'Pay As You Earn' by employer's payroll, you only ever receive net pay; capital gains, dividends, 'innovation', etc. have tax free thresholds that mean you don't have to worry about it until (if) it's big. And then you can just file it online (or paper) directly with HMRC (IRS equivalent), or pay a tax advisor if you want of course, but that's certainly exception not norm.)
ashtonkem 5y ago
My impression is that most countries either withhold taxes correctly, or send you a bill at the year end without you having to file, unless if you have a complex setup like owning a business.
Lionga 5y ago
In Germany it is a clusterfuck of special rules and millions of forms and extra deductions. Much easier in Romania, if you have only employment income nothing to do. For capital gains or other incomes basically a single form, only 10% flat taxes so you know what you owe.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
fridif 5y ago
Taxes are not hard. You enter in your income and see if you can get any deductions. Be an adult.
- Telemakhos 5y ago
  Taxes are not hard for people with one job and one SSN and no schedule Ks filing in one place. Last year I had four TIN/EIN/SSNs, filing in up to three states, depending on the TIN/EIN/SSN, along with a federal return. That meant a dozen different filings. Hiring an accountant was worth it for me. On the other hand, when I was young, I did my own taxes by hand on paper, and it was easy: they are easy if you just have a W2 and maybe some 1099s. But I was not an adult then, nor did I have adult finances.
  - fridif 5y ago
    Does it stand to reason that the average person does not have multiple business entities in multiple locations? You are getting scammed by the government, who have made it burdensome to report all of this income. A tax professional or a service like Intuit are trying to help here. If the government wanted to make this process easier for the small percentage of people like you, they would have done so, but they haven't, because they have weak volition and desire for creativity.
    - yladiz 5y ago
      Does it stand to reason that the average person needs to actually file taxes if the government knows the information necessary to calculate a tax refund or bill anyway?
      - fridif 5y ago
        How would the government know what deductions you are applying for before you apply for them?
        yladiz 5y ago
Snild 5y ago
Nope. Here in Sweden, your employer reports your pay to the tax authorities, and deducts your tax from every paycheck. Banks report your capital gains and losses. In March or April, everyone gets sent their pre-filled tax form for the previous year. You can change it as needed, for example adding income from a side hustle, or making deductions -- though those are fewer and less complicated than the US from what I understand. Many common deductions (e.g. for mortgage interest) will be pre-filled too. Most people will not need to change anything, and so can approve the pre-filled form through text message or digital signature (or phone robot for old people iirc). If you do need to make changes, it can be (but doesn't have to be) done online without too much trouble. Don't get me wrong, it's not always trivial, but it seems significantly more pleasant than what I hear about the US system. And, again, the vast majority of people just have to send a text message some time in March or April.
- iandanforth 5y ago
  Sweden has the mortgage interest deduction too? I wonder how wide spread that is. I thought that was a US financing lobby invention sold under the guise of the "American Dream of Home Ownership."
  - Snild 5y ago
    My understanding (based on no research at all) is that it was introduced here for a similar reason: "homeownership is good". And it probably is. But I don't know if the deduction helps with that. People buy what they can afford, so the "discount" is probably consumed by higher interest rates and inflated prices. It can also be argued that it's a form of regressive taxation: the rich are eligible for bigger mortgages, and therefore have more to gain from the policy. Personally, I would like to see it removed. Any serious attempt to do that it's probably political suicide, though, since it would have a noticeable impact on many people's finances. And who knows how it would affect the housing market. Maybe if it was done gradually over many years.
    - unilynx 5y ago
      The Netherlands have been passing various restrictions on mortgage interest reductions over the past few years. Many are phased in over 30 years. With the current interest rates it's an ideal time to pass any tax changes anyway - they won't hit new mortgages nearly as hard as 10 years ago, and the housing prices can use some downward pressure anyway.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
France, my employer reports how much they pay me to the state. I tell the state how much I made, in a pre-filled form of everything they know. That includes salaries, donations, as well as the default 10% tax write-off. I can of course adjust this form. I can also tell the state how much I expect to make this year, and the state will tell my employer to directly deposit a specific percentage of my salary directly for taxes to the state. When doing my tax declaration, if anything has changed, it gets all settled in September. If I didn't pay enough yet, I'll be asked to finish paying it (ex: this year, where my estimation of what I'd make was too low, and I'll owe 1000€ by September). If I paid too much, I'll be reimbursed (or it'll be paid in advance for next year.) All in all, revenue tax takes about 5 minutes a year for me to check that what they have is correct (since I am salaried, which is the easy path), and maybe 5 more minutes to adjust my monthly tax rate.
cesarb 5y ago
Brazilian here. For us, there is no third party; we must use the tax filing software from Receita Federal (our IRS), available for free on the website (Java version, for desktops), within the website itself (web version), or the smartphone app. This software has been available since the 90s; initially a DOS-only application, later a Windows-only application, then a pair of the Windows-only application and the Java application, then the Windows-only application was dropped in favor of the Java application, and later came the web and smartphone versions. For a while, we could also use the older paper forms, but that hasn't been an option for over a decade.

underseacables 5y ago

This didn’t take long. The word must’ve gotten out finally that you don’t need to pay to file your taxes.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ftc-is-investigating-intuit-over-turbotax-practices https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ftc-is-investigating-... Based on what I’m hearing from folks inside the gov, this administration will encourage and support the IRS in flexing to be more citizen friendly and focused instead of rolling over for Intuit and Co (which personally I find to be refreshing). Stay tuned, progress ahead.
- artificial 5y ago
  The administration plans to hire 87,000 more agents, effectively doubling its size to… be citizen friendly? They’re going to use audits like the Death Star. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-489830 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-4...
  - overtonwhy 5y ago
    Holding tax cheats to account benefits all of society that plays by the rules.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I don’t see the problem, as someone who pays their tax due and isn’t aggressively avoiding paying taxes. As the saying goes, “I like taxes, with them I buy civilization.”
    - prepend 5y ago
      I pay my taxes too. But hiring more audit agents will have them finding work to do. An audit for me, even though I’ve kept good records and everything is on the up and up, is a lot of time and money and I want to avoid. This sounds like all those police departments who hire cops and then end up writing lots of speeding tickets to pay for the cops.

newsyyswen 5y ago

We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. They certainly have enough information from employers, banks, estimated payments from contractors, etc. Otherwise, how would they decide who to audit? How would they know to mail you an adjusted return for a past year? It feels completely ridiculous that we need to calculate these things ourselves, only to be bugged by the agency for entering the wrong numbers. Just tell us what you think the bill is, and let us make a counter-claim if we think you're wrong! But this has been true for years, decades. I'm not holding my breath.

ashtonkem 5y ago
This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. It’s incredibly obnoxious, but the amount of money made is so obscene that it makes bribing[0] Congress people trivial. 0 - Yes, I know it’s technically a donation. But if it walks like a bribe and it quacks like a bribe, I see no reason to arbitrarily let them off the hook.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  It walks like a bribe, it talks like a bribe, it quacks like a bribe, it flaps like a bribe, it lies like a bribe, it hides like a bribe, it looks like a bribe, it feels like a bribe, it smells like a bribe, what is it? Lobbying, duh. Definitely not a bribe. It's pretty wild that legal lobbying + the realities of campaign finance effectively mean that our government has instituted a policy of mandatory bribery. I mean, democracy is always going to have warts, but this one is really special.
  - duped 5y ago
    You're 100% right except for one thing - you're describing campaign finance, not lobbying.
    - jjoonathan 5y ago

warglebargle 5y ago

Intuit can eat shit, their business model is to lobby against any meaningful tax code simplification

davisr 5y ago
Right on, but you forgot to mention the other part of their business model with is to sell out their customer's financial information to the highest-paying bidder.
- throwaway413 5y ago
  This is simply false. Legally they can’t do this because they collect information for tax purposes. It is against the law.
  - commoner 5y ago
    In addition to TurboTax, Intuit owns Mint.com, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and other services. All of these services are covered under Intuit's global privacy policy, which states that Intuit uses personal information in multiple privacy-violating ways: > For joint features, sales, promotions and events. We may share your information with third-parties companies who are jointly providing features, sales initiatives, promotions or events with us. > With financial services providers. We may share personal Information with collection agencies, credit bureaus and loan service providers, and payment card association members. We may also share your personal information with other companies, lawyers, credit bureaus, agents, government agencies, and card associations in connection with issues related to fraud, credit, defaults, or debt collection. > We may share your information with our affiliates and subsidiaries for everyday business purposes as described in this Statement, including for marketing purposes. https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ Considering that Mint.com and Credit Karma are free of charge, it's obvious that Intuit is using personal information harvested from these services to generate revenue in the ways described. TurboTax and QuickBooks are mainly paid products, but have the same privacy policy.

blakesterz 5y ago

I almost feel like "doing your taxes" is one of those things that is like going to buy a new car. Everyone hates it, but when Saturn came along and said "no haggling, just best price on every car" people didn't actually like that. I go to buy a new car and I HOPE I got a great price, I worked on it, I bargained, I did the research. They say I did really good this team, I got such a great deal! I "do my taxes" and I HOPE I paid as little as possible. I worked on it, I kept my receipts, I did the research, and maybe I even paid someone to do all that for me and they say I did really good this year, low tax bill! Both of these things suck, but if I just got a bill from the IRS I'm just going to think "maybe I could've done better" just like if I see a car that just has a price I am going to think "maybe I could've done better" I really don't like thinking like this!

jolux 5y ago
It’s funny, I don’t really feel that way about spending money on stuff, especially not cars which are a total nightmare. I guess I consider my time a lot more valuable? Probably why the higher prices for Apple products don’t bother me. I just want something consistent that I don’t have to think about.
monster_group 5y ago
For virtually everything in life (not just cars and taxes), there's always "maybe I could have done better". This attitude is a recipe to be always dissatisfied and unhappy. The approach should be "did I do a good job?". For example, if you were able to get $1000 off on the car but most people are able to get only $800 then the answer is "yes" and you should be happy and content even though someone may have gotten $1200 off. Once you start evaluating your actions and decisions like that, life becomes much happier and content.
Denvercoder9 5y ago
> Both of these things suck, but if I just got a bill from the IRS I'm just going to think "maybe I could've done better" I don't think anyone is advocating for removing the option to file taxes manually. Just let the IRS send a bill by default, and give you the option to file your taxes yourself if there's something wrong or you think you can do better.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

I agree with the many comments here calling for an IRS-driven system. But I'd also like to see improvements for the 10-13% of people who cannot be correctly billed by the IRS (I'm one of them). I say this because we're already so close to how it ought to be ... for several years now, I've used freefilefillableforms.com to file my taxes as a self-employed person with periodic capital gains and other stuff. It's not really a great model for how such a website could be designed, but it's not actually terrible and generally gets the job done. However, it has been intentionally hobbled: there are several places where you must manually transfer numbers from one field to another, or from one form to another. There's clearly no technical reason for this, and the system will also not report any error if you do not do so (making it trivial to have major errors, despite all the data being input correctly). I can only conclude that it has been hobbled by the same motivations that affect the tax reporting/return field in general. I'd definitely like to see this done even better, but a good small step would be a bill for force this site to do 100% of what it clearly already can, rather than 95%.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
The freefillableforms website is run by Intuit, so that might give you a clue why it is the way it is.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  So I wonder what will happen if they are somehow exiting this space. The announcement seems to only be about the no-fee for < $75k income folks side of things. I wonder if they will continue to run this, if it will shut down, or be transferred elsewhere.

hirako2000 5y ago

Why do we even have to pay income taxes in the first place. Even companies get a far better treatment as they can at least deduct their expenses. Humans are treated worse than a register entity. And for what? To send troops abroad for some killing, ultimately benefiting only a tiny few. For health care, infrastructure, police, education? The whole thing is a joke. Perhaps this move will make people wake up and ask for income tax on individuals to be voluntarly, somehow I still doubt so.

sthkr 5y ago

Thankfully I live in a country where I've never had to pay income taxes in my entire life :)

sschueller 5y ago

I am waiting for the day when some ransomeware attack happens to Intuit a day before taxes are due and it causes such a disruption that congress will act and this shit is over but I guess I am dreaming...

NotSwift 5y ago

Intuit has been scamming low income users into paying for their services that were supposed to be free: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you-into-paying-to-file-your-taxes https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-just-tricked-you... Intuit just decided that it could not make enough money with this scam, so they stopped using this particular one. It's probably a wise decision. Claiming that you're providing a free service, while making it pretty difficult for users to find it so they will use your paid services instead, is definitely wrong from a moral point of view, but it might also be shaky from a legal point of view. The bottom-line was probably just the profit.