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I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence. Countless companies do th

by slg 5y ago

I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence. Countless companies do that. The real villains of this story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully lobbied. The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing.

oo0shiny 5y ago
I would argue that perhaps both are the bad guys in this situation.
- runnerup 5y ago
  Truly. At some point, there is a person with far more money than their family would ever need, even only counting annual interest earned instead of principal. Current CEO has net worth of >$100 million. In fairness, the poorest board member of intuit has half a dozen positions earning $150,000 to $350,000 and _may_ not have accumulated true financial independence. But other board members have over $200 Million. Those people make the following decision Every. Single. Year: “let’s try to get the government to make taxes far harder and riskier for hundreds of millions of Americans so that I can be even more rich than I already am.” It would be more excusable if they merely hadn’t lobbied for Americans at all, someone else did, and they reacted quickly to additionally reap the benefits of the same policy. But when you are already well past having all the money your family could ever need, and choose to try to get the government to fuck over hundreds of millions of people, then the blame lands on you just as much as the politician.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    I think if you are going to be charitable, they aren’t just looking after their own bottom line. Intuit employs 14,000 people, so they are also doing as much as possible to keep their jobs. Of course, that is still a drop in the bucket compared to how many people suffer because of their lobbying, but it isn’t about simply one person being greedy for themselves.
- slg 5y ago
  TurboTax/Intuit are bad guys for other reasons. Like trying to mislead customers like the article details, but I don't think lobbying the government to ensure their industry is not eradicated is necessarily immoral. They have perfectly reasonable motivations there. Most of us would act the same way in their position. It isn't their job to consider the societal ramifications of those laws. It is the governments job to see that lobbying and not let it outweigh the clear societal harm in just acquiescing to TurboTax/Intuit.
maxerickson 5y ago
I'm not engaged in directly lobbying the government to do stupid things that are profitable for me, so I feel pretty okay judging people that are.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anticensor 5y ago
> They are simply lobbying for their continued existence Survival instinct.
Afforess 5y ago
>I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence. Fascinating way to reframe this as a natural survival instinct of...checks notes... a corporate entity. An entity that exists at the government's pleasure, and whose charter can be revoked by said government. Let's reframe your own logic: > The real villains of this story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully lobbied. The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no? You can go in circles with this kind of thinking. Instead, we should look at outcomes. What do we want to happen with taxes? Ideally the government sends you pre-filled paperwork. Who is opposing this outcome? Intuit. Hence they are villians.
- slg 5y ago
  >The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no? First off, I never said anything about a legal punishment. Secondly, politicians are ostensibly supposed to act for the good of their constituents. Corporations are motivated to act for the good of their shareholders. In this situation TurboTax/Intuit is operating as it is expected/supposed to act while the politicians are not.
  - Afforess 5y ago
    I'm confused why you are holding politicians to a standard that you are unwilling to apply to corporate entities, who serve politicians explicitly via the government and their corporate charter. Either both are acting according to their interests and we should examine outcomes, or neither are, and the system is broken.
    - slg 5y ago
      Because the corporations are acting amorally while the politicians are acting immorally. Corporations are not obligated to better society. Politicians are. The corporations are ignoring something that is outside their responsibility. The politicians are ignoring something that is within their responsibility.
jklinger410 5y ago
> The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing. It's both. If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass. Also I don't really want to hear about how American citizens need to fix their government when they have no time for civic engagement. Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want, and they often have a rock bottom approval rating. Let's start by making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world, let that marinade for a while, then let's criticize people for their lack of engagement. Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.
- slg 5y ago
  >Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress. I am pointing out the root of the problem is not TurboTax/Intuit but instead the government. Your comment is effectively the doing the same thing to my comment that I did to this article so I don't understand your criticism that I was "undermining progress". It isn't like "making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world" is a much easier to accomplish political goal than "fix lobbying".
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I certainly do blame our politicians for bowing to this type of lobbying, but I think it's a little weak to claim that the companies that do the lobbying deserve a pass. Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively against the interests of most of the people in the country is immoral, regardless of the reasoning behind it.
    - moate 5y ago
      "It's not my fault slavery is legal and I'm profiting off of it!"-Thomas Jefferson, probably Fully agree with you that saying "This rent seeking entity with a will of its own and deep pockets to spend on lobbying, is solely a byproduct of a broken system and not also fundamentally culpable at this point for the continuation of that system". Governments and corporations are made of people who make a choice. If a company choses to profit off a bad thing the government wants to do, we can decry the industry as well. At some point there was a complex tax code, and TurboTax et. al. didn't exist yet and were not to blame for it. At this point, they do exist and they must share in the blame.
briHass 5y ago
Perhaps the real bad guys are those same politicians, or others, that make the tax code so damn complicated that 50% or more of the population don't stand a chance of comprehending it. If you're W2, and you have kids or 1099s the gov already knows about, there should be no need to file at all. State and local governments should tap into the federal feed, and there should also be no filing there. Any discrepancy that results in a bill or refund gets automatically sent out. The amount of time wasted to do taxes, even a simple 1040EZ, is staggering. The fact that people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R) or crappy software is criminal.
- Stratoscope 5y ago
  > ...people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R)... And when you go to an H&R Block office, you're talking with someone who doesn't really know taxes at all. They are just filling out forms like you might do yourself. When my ex-wife and I had separated but were still legally married, she went to an H&R Block office and the tax preparer told her that she could file single. (No, you can't. It's married filing jointly or married filing separately.) She also said our adult daughter didn't need to file at all because her income was below the filing threshold. (Yes, she did need to file because at the time she was on an ACA/Obamacare health plan.) It's bad when I know more about taxes than the "expert" at H&R Block.
burkaman 5y ago
Companies are not alive. The human beings running Intuit are lobbying for the continued existence of an unnecessary and harmful organization. That is unethical/immoral/evil behavior. Accepting their bribes is also evil behavior. There's no need to pick the "real villains", everyone involved is a villain. It's true that some employees would be hurt if Intuit went out of business, but paying someone doesn't magically make their behavior acceptable. You can't pay someone to harass people on the street and then say "sorry, I can't stop or my harasser will lose their income, the real villains here are the police for letting me do this."
- qudat 5y ago
  > Companies are not alive. Disagree. Nation-states, companies are entities with minds of their own.
memish 5y ago
"It wasn't my fault your honor, a lobbyist told me to do it!"
patrickthebold 5y ago
Why not the voters who voted for the politicians who were successfully lobbied?

by slg 5y ago

oo0shiny 5y ago

I would argue that perhaps both are the bad guys in this situation.

runnerup 5y ago
Truly. At some point, there is a person with far more money than their family would ever need, even only counting annual interest earned instead of principal. Current CEO has net worth of >$100 million. In fairness, the poorest board member of intuit has half a dozen positions earning $150,000 to $350,000 and _may_ not have accumulated true financial independence. But other board members have over $200 Million. Those people make the following decision Every. Single. Year: “let’s try to get the government to make taxes far harder and riskier for hundreds of millions of Americans so that I can be even more rich than I already am.” It would be more excusable if they merely hadn’t lobbied for Americans at all, someone else did, and they reacted quickly to additionally reap the benefits of the same policy. But when you are already well past having all the money your family could ever need, and choose to try to get the government to fuck over hundreds of millions of people, then the blame lands on you just as much as the politician.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  I think if you are going to be charitable, they aren’t just looking after their own bottom line. Intuit employs 14,000 people, so they are also doing as much as possible to keep their jobs. Of course, that is still a drop in the bucket compared to how many people suffer because of their lobbying, but it isn’t about simply one person being greedy for themselves.
slg 5y ago
TurboTax/Intuit are bad guys for other reasons. Like trying to mislead customers like the article details, but I don't think lobbying the government to ensure their industry is not eradicated is necessarily immoral. They have perfectly reasonable motivations there. Most of us would act the same way in their position. It isn't their job to consider the societal ramifications of those laws. It is the governments job to see that lobbying and not let it outweigh the clear societal harm in just acquiescing to TurboTax/Intuit.

maxerickson 5y ago

I'm not engaged in directly lobbying the government to do stupid things that are profitable for me, so I feel pretty okay judging people that are.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anticensor 5y ago

> They are simply lobbying for their continued existence Survival instinct.

Afforess 5y ago

>I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence. Fascinating way to reframe this as a natural survival instinct of...checks notes... a corporate entity. An entity that exists at the government's pleasure, and whose charter can be revoked by said government. Let's reframe your own logic: > The real villains of this story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully lobbied. The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no? You can go in circles with this kind of thinking. Instead, we should look at outcomes. What do we want to happen with taxes? Ideally the government sends you pre-filled paperwork. Who is opposing this outcome? Intuit. Hence they are villians.

slg 5y ago
>The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no? First off, I never said anything about a legal punishment. Secondly, politicians are ostensibly supposed to act for the good of their constituents. Corporations are motivated to act for the good of their shareholders. In this situation TurboTax/Intuit is operating as it is expected/supposed to act while the politicians are not.
- Afforess 5y ago
  I'm confused why you are holding politicians to a standard that you are unwilling to apply to corporate entities, who serve politicians explicitly via the government and their corporate charter. Either both are acting according to their interests and we should examine outcomes, or neither are, and the system is broken.
  - slg 5y ago
    Because the corporations are acting amorally while the politicians are acting immorally. Corporations are not obligated to better society. Politicians are. The corporations are ignoring something that is outside their responsibility. The politicians are ignoring something that is within their responsibility.

jklinger410 5y ago

> The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing. It's both. If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass. Also I don't really want to hear about how American citizens need to fix their government when they have no time for civic engagement. Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want, and they often have a rock bottom approval rating. Let's start by making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world, let that marinade for a while, then let's criticize people for their lack of engagement. Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.

slg 5y ago
>Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress. I am pointing out the root of the problem is not TurboTax/Intuit but instead the government. Your comment is effectively the doing the same thing to my comment that I did to this article so I don't understand your criticism that I was "undermining progress". It isn't like "making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world" is a much easier to accomplish political goal than "fix lobbying".
- kelnos 5y ago
  I certainly do blame our politicians for bowing to this type of lobbying, but I think it's a little weak to claim that the companies that do the lobbying deserve a pass. Asking your government to adopt policies that is actively against the interests of most of the people in the country is immoral, regardless of the reasoning behind it.
  - moate 5y ago
    "It's not my fault slavery is legal and I'm profiting off of it!"-Thomas Jefferson, probably Fully agree with you that saying "This rent seeking entity with a will of its own and deep pockets to spend on lobbying, is solely a byproduct of a broken system and not also fundamentally culpable at this point for the continuation of that system". Governments and corporations are made of people who make a choice. If a company choses to profit off a bad thing the government wants to do, we can decry the industry as well. At some point there was a complex tax code, and TurboTax et. al. didn't exist yet and were not to blame for it. At this point, they do exist and they must share in the blame.

briHass 5y ago

Perhaps the real bad guys are those same politicians, or others, that make the tax code so damn complicated that 50% or more of the population don't stand a chance of comprehending it. If you're W2, and you have kids or 1099s the gov already knows about, there should be no need to file at all. State and local governments should tap into the federal feed, and there should also be no filing there. Any discrepancy that results in a bill or refund gets automatically sent out. The amount of time wasted to do taxes, even a simple 1040EZ, is staggering. The fact that people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R) or crappy software is criminal.

Stratoscope 5y ago
> ...people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R)... And when you go to an H&R Block office, you're talking with someone who doesn't really know taxes at all. They are just filling out forms like you might do yourself. When my ex-wife and I had separated but were still legally married, she went to an H&R Block office and the tax preparer told her that she could file single. (No, you can't. It's married filing jointly or married filing separately.) She also said our adult daughter didn't need to file at all because her income was below the filing threshold. (Yes, she did need to file because at the time she was on an ACA/Obamacare health plan.) It's bad when I know more about taxes than the "expert" at H&R Block.

burkaman 5y ago

Companies are not alive. The human beings running Intuit are lobbying for the continued existence of an unnecessary and harmful organization. That is unethical/immoral/evil behavior. Accepting their bribes is also evil behavior. There's no need to pick the "real villains", everyone involved is a villain. It's true that some employees would be hurt if Intuit went out of business, but paying someone doesn't magically make their behavior acceptable. You can't pay someone to harass people on the street and then say "sorry, I can't stop or my harasser will lose their income, the real villains here are the police for letting me do this."

qudat 5y ago
> Companies are not alive. Disagree. Nation-states, companies are entities with minds of their own.

memish 5y ago

"It wasn't my fault your honor, a lobbyist told me to do it!"

patrickthebold 5y ago

Why not the voters who voted for the politicians who were successfully lobbied?