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I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds… Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every

I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds… Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it.

conanbatt 4y ago
[flagged]
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  What liberty are we protecting here, exactly?
  - klyrs 4y ago
    Liberty to forget the "without representation" part of that rallying cry, apparently.
    - conanbatt 4y ago
      I pay taxes in the US and I am not allowed to vote, so the phrase applies specially to me and 25% of the California population.
      - klyrs 4y ago
        Ironic, isn't it? The party that hates taxes the most is also the most aggressive in the pursuit of disenfranchisement.
- knodi123 4y ago
  Well that's a bigoted attitude. As long as we acknowledge that taxes are necessary for the functioning of a country, I'd rather our tax agency be calm, professional, and boring.
  - mansion7 4y ago
    Bigotry against tax collectors is a new one. Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community?
    - knodi123 4y ago
      > Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community? Well, historically, yes. But in my dictionary, bigoted means "obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group". So you can certainly be bigoted against the IRS and its employees. No need for the "oppressed or marginalized" part.
      - komali2 4y ago
        > Well, historically, yes. Are we talking about the same people here? Cause when I hear tax collector I think sheriff of Nottingham lol. I feel like something has gone way off the rails here.
        knodi123 4y ago
        The "well historically, yes" was a silly quip, but I was thinking about the story of Saul in the bible, who was despised and endangered due to his career as a tax collector.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lmm 4y ago
      I met a guy in Cornwall who told me there are locals who won't drink in the same pub as him because his grandfather was the local customs man.
      - cultureswitch 4y ago
        That's them deciding for themselves not to associate with him on a personal basis. Though personally I wouldn't blame the kid for the sins of the father or grandfather.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - conanbatt 4y ago
    I am not american.
- wwweston 4y ago
  The cause of liberty will probably be better served if you distinguish aptly between general categories like "citizens" vs tax preparers lobbying against the state providing some margin of built-in tax prep services. Public defenders do not preclude private defense in the courts, they provide an option for people who don't have other options or don't like the ones they have. Public tax prep would probably work much the same. Mostly this expands liberty rather than taking it.
- emptybits 4y ago
  You're catching a lot of flak and downvotes for your comment. I'm Canadian yet your general sentiment, made famous by Thomas Jefferson, seems pretty reasonable to me: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Yet now it seems people think it's reasonable to fear an elected government (and its civil servants) as if we were subjects instead of citizens. Back on topic ... the effort involved in tax preparation here is also ridiculous. Millions of man-hours wasted every year on this. !!? Reform is needed.
  - skywal_l 4y ago
    The original sentence is: > I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds I am pretty comfortable with an elected government putting the general interest before Inuit's. I am pretty confident that Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.
    - conanbatt 4y ago
      Intuit is not the owner of the IRS filing process.
  - Brybry 4y ago
    "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country" -- Thomas Jefferson (12 November 1816) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0390 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0...
- komali2 4y ago
  They said tax preparation industry. That's not citizens, that's the major ruling class in the united states, directly and indirectly responsible for many laws at the federal and local levels. Sometimes various branches of the government even consult them to write policy directly, skipping the lobbying step.
- silisili 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - culturestate 4y ago
    > Don't forget that the IRS is one of the largest purchasers of ammunition of any govt agency. “The IRS purchases guns and ammunition for special agents in its criminal investigation division, a law enforcement branch established in 1919. The typical IRS auditors that Americans would encounter in a routine audit are unarmed. … Special agents train for weeks at the National Criminal Investigation Training Academy in Georgia, the 2021 report said. That includes firearms training and handgun qualifications for agents, which is a big reason for the large orders for ammunition.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/matt-gaetz/no-biden-not-arming-irs-guns-and-ammunition/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/matt-gaetz...
    - silisili 4y ago
      That explanation doesn't make me feel any better. I'm not blaming Biden or a boogeyman army. It doesn't make sense at all that a revenue department purchases guns and ammunition. Does your company's accounting department train with weapons and purchase large amounts? Why does the US Government? Let the IRS do money works, and any of the other armed departments do the shooting, I guess.
      - culturestate 4y ago
        > It doesn't make sense at all that a revenue department purchases guns and ammunition. Historically, it made plenty of sense. Financial crimes can’t always be solved behind a desk - there was a time when most tax evasion investigations were against gangsters running illegal liquor operations, for example. Al Capone was arrested by treasury agents, not the FBI. Whether it still makes sense in 2023 is different question that I’d never really thought about until this moment, but my knee jerk reaction is…maybe it does? Hoover taught us what happens when you concentrate too much power in a single law enforcement agency.
- adamlett 4y ago
  1. Corporations are not citizens. 2. From reading this thread, it seems US citizens are scared out of their minds. Scared of making a mistake, when filing their taxes. And it appears that Biden's proposed reform aims to alleviate that fear.
syradar 4y ago
Here in Sweden my employer reports my income tax and my investments app reports capital gains, to the Tax Authority. Last week I could log in, review the data, and e-sign it in less than 5 minutes. It turns out that I payed 53.80 dollars to much tax last year. Since I filed my taxes early (before March 30) they will pay it back on April 6 (instead of June 9).
- bouke 4y ago
  Same here in The Netherlands.
  - masklinn 4y ago
    I think at this point it’s probably easier to list european countries where you still can’t easily e-file.
    - Helmut10001 4y ago
      Germany
      - imtringued 4y ago
        I use Elster.
        Helmut10001 4y ago
        This was a reference to this statement: > Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it. There are so many duplicate fields and redundant parts in Elster and the pre-fill function is a joke.
        kybernetyk 4y ago
        I'm regularly filing taxes in the UK and in Germany. The German ELSTER system is a bad joke compared to how this is handled in the UK. In the UK it's a bunch of nicely designed web forms with clear worded explanations what they expect you to fill in the fields. In Germany it's ... well you can be masochistic and try to use ELSTER webapp which runs only on certain browsers. With explanations like "fill in here any amount if you fall under §223 EKST, 4 II". So you either get a paid 3rd party software which still isn't the quality of the official UK filling service (somehow Germans have a love for their cryptic explanations directly referencing laws - god forbid someone would use simple and clear explanations) or you pay a professional to do your taxes. Which is what most people do.
ge96 4y ago
Yeah I dread doing taxes. One time I forgot something and had to amend oh man that sucked.
- dguest 4y ago
  That's funny, my friend just fills out his taxes as soon as they are eligible to be submitted with rough guesses. The IRS sends the forms back to him corrected (they already had the correct form) and then he mails them back again. The US already has pre-filled forms, the interface for the "pre fill" button is just a bit convoluted.
  - cultureswitch 4y ago
    So really they already know what they expect you to write in your tax forms, they just want you to do this as if it was a written exam?
    - dguest 4y ago
      Yes, it's basically a written exam. The grading is done as a free service by the government, or a handout if you will.
    - tekla 4y ago
      They give you a chance to declare income that they may not know about at that very moment. It is a strong incentive to not lie on your taxes
dguest 4y ago
Them being scared out of their minds is the problem: that's why they are paying millions on lobbying to spread the fear. I would prefer that they quietly recognize that their time is up and die with whatever dignity they might have left.
Hilarity1 4y ago
The taxing authority is asking you to fill it out because they don’t know what deductions you will take. That’s why you do it.
coryfklein 4y ago
> an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ Sooo... the IRS knows that you installed solar panels last year and will be taking an energy credit for them? They know how much bitcoin you sold? How much mortgage interest you'll be deducting? The strike price of the stock options you exercised in your private company, and their current fair market value? There's a bajillion variables that go into filing a tax return, and only you are the one that knows all of them, and sometimes not even then! This idea that the government "already knows" how much you owe in taxes is a complete fiction.
xracy 4y ago
More than the tax prep industry being scared (which they clearly already are given the amount of lobbying that they do (I think the largest of any industry the last time I looked)), I hope that the Biden administration has the guts to actually follow through on this. This is a remarkably consistent topic that most of the populace agrees on, and is only at all difficult because of this lobbying.

conanbatt 4y ago

[flagged]

DangitBobby 4y ago
What liberty are we protecting here, exactly?
- klyrs 4y ago
  Liberty to forget the "without representation" part of that rallying cry, apparently.
  - conanbatt 4y ago
    I pay taxes in the US and I am not allowed to vote, so the phrase applies specially to me and 25% of the California population.
    - klyrs 4y ago
      Ironic, isn't it? The party that hates taxes the most is also the most aggressive in the pursuit of disenfranchisement.
knodi123 4y ago
Well that's a bigoted attitude. As long as we acknowledge that taxes are necessary for the functioning of a country, I'd rather our tax agency be calm, professional, and boring.
- mansion7 4y ago
  Bigotry against tax collectors is a new one. Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community?
  - knodi123 4y ago
    > Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community? Well, historically, yes. But in my dictionary, bigoted means "obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group". So you can certainly be bigoted against the IRS and its employees. No need for the "oppressed or marginalized" part.
    - komali2 4y ago
      > Well, historically, yes. Are we talking about the same people here? Cause when I hear tax collector I think sheriff of Nottingham lol. I feel like something has gone way off the rails here.
      - knodi123 4y ago
        The "well historically, yes" was a silly quip, but I was thinking about the story of Saul in the bible, who was despised and endangered due to his career as a tax collector.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmm 4y ago
    I met a guy in Cornwall who told me there are locals who won't drink in the same pub as him because his grandfather was the local customs man.
    - cultureswitch 4y ago
      That's them deciding for themselves not to associate with him on a personal basis. Though personally I wouldn't blame the kid for the sins of the father or grandfather.
KyeRussell 4y ago
[flagged]
- conanbatt 4y ago
  I am not american.
wwweston 4y ago
The cause of liberty will probably be better served if you distinguish aptly between general categories like "citizens" vs tax preparers lobbying against the state providing some margin of built-in tax prep services. Public defenders do not preclude private defense in the courts, they provide an option for people who don't have other options or don't like the ones they have. Public tax prep would probably work much the same. Mostly this expands liberty rather than taking it.
emptybits 4y ago
You're catching a lot of flak and downvotes for your comment. I'm Canadian yet your general sentiment, made famous by Thomas Jefferson, seems pretty reasonable to me: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Yet now it seems people think it's reasonable to fear an elected government (and its civil servants) as if we were subjects instead of citizens. Back on topic ... the effort involved in tax preparation here is also ridiculous. Millions of man-hours wasted every year on this. !!? Reform is needed.
- skywal_l 4y ago
  The original sentence is: > I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds I am pretty comfortable with an elected government putting the general interest before Inuit's. I am pretty confident that Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.
  - conanbatt 4y ago
    Intuit is not the owner of the IRS filing process.
- Brybry 4y ago
  "I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country" -- Thomas Jefferson (12 November 1816) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0390 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0...
komali2 4y ago
They said tax preparation industry. That's not citizens, that's the major ruling class in the united states, directly and indirectly responsible for many laws at the federal and local levels. Sometimes various branches of the government even consult them to write policy directly, skipping the lobbying step.
silisili 4y ago
[flagged]
- culturestate 4y ago
  > Don't forget that the IRS is one of the largest purchasers of ammunition of any govt agency. “The IRS purchases guns and ammunition for special agents in its criminal investigation division, a law enforcement branch established in 1919. The typical IRS auditors that Americans would encounter in a routine audit are unarmed. … Special agents train for weeks at the National Criminal Investigation Training Academy in Georgia, the 2021 report said. That includes firearms training and handgun qualifications for agents, which is a big reason for the large orders for ammunition.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/matt-gaetz/no-biden-not-arming-irs-guns-and-ammunition/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/matt-gaetz...
  - silisili 4y ago
    That explanation doesn't make me feel any better. I'm not blaming Biden or a boogeyman army. It doesn't make sense at all that a revenue department purchases guns and ammunition. Does your company's accounting department train with weapons and purchase large amounts? Why does the US Government? Let the IRS do money works, and any of the other armed departments do the shooting, I guess.
    - culturestate 4y ago
      > It doesn't make sense at all that a revenue department purchases guns and ammunition. Historically, it made plenty of sense. Financial crimes can’t always be solved behind a desk - there was a time when most tax evasion investigations were against gangsters running illegal liquor operations, for example. Al Capone was arrested by treasury agents, not the FBI. Whether it still makes sense in 2023 is different question that I’d never really thought about until this moment, but my knee jerk reaction is…maybe it does? Hoover taught us what happens when you concentrate too much power in a single law enforcement agency.
adamlett 4y ago
1. Corporations are not citizens. 2. From reading this thread, it seems US citizens are scared out of their minds. Scared of making a mistake, when filing their taxes. And it appears that Biden's proposed reform aims to alleviate that fear.

syradar 4y ago

Here in Sweden my employer reports my income tax and my investments app reports capital gains, to the Tax Authority. Last week I could log in, review the data, and e-sign it in less than 5 minutes. It turns out that I payed 53.80 dollars to much tax last year. Since I filed my taxes early (before March 30) they will pay it back on April 6 (instead of June 9).

bouke 4y ago
Same here in The Netherlands.
- masklinn 4y ago
  I think at this point it’s probably easier to list european countries where you still can’t easily e-file.
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    Germany
    - imtringued 4y ago
      I use Elster.
      - Helmut10001 4y ago
        This was a reference to this statement: > Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it. There are so many duplicate fields and redundant parts in Elster and the pre-fill function is a joke.
      - kybernetyk 4y ago
        I'm regularly filing taxes in the UK and in Germany. The German ELSTER system is a bad joke compared to how this is handled in the UK. In the UK it's a bunch of nicely designed web forms with clear worded explanations what they expect you to fill in the fields. In Germany it's ... well you can be masochistic and try to use ELSTER webapp which runs only on certain browsers. With explanations like "fill in here any amount if you fall under §223 EKST, 4 II". So you either get a paid 3rd party software which still isn't the quality of the official UK filling service (somehow Germans have a love for their cryptic explanations directly referencing laws - god forbid someone would use simple and clear explanations) or you pay a professional to do your taxes. Which is what most people do.

ge96 4y ago

Yeah I dread doing taxes. One time I forgot something and had to amend oh man that sucked.

dguest 4y ago
That's funny, my friend just fills out his taxes as soon as they are eligible to be submitted with rough guesses. The IRS sends the forms back to him corrected (they already had the correct form) and then he mails them back again. The US already has pre-filled forms, the interface for the "pre fill" button is just a bit convoluted.
- cultureswitch 4y ago
  So really they already know what they expect you to write in your tax forms, they just want you to do this as if it was a written exam?
  - dguest 4y ago
    Yes, it's basically a written exam. The grading is done as a free service by the government, or a handout if you will.
  - tekla 4y ago
    They give you a chance to declare income that they may not know about at that very moment. It is a strong incentive to not lie on your taxes

dguest 4y ago

Them being scared out of their minds is the problem: that's why they are paying millions on lobbying to spread the fear. I would prefer that they quietly recognize that their time is up and die with whatever dignity they might have left.

Hilarity1 4y ago

The taxing authority is asking you to fill it out because they don’t know what deductions you will take. That’s why you do it.

coryfklein 4y ago

> an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ Sooo... the IRS knows that you installed solar panels last year and will be taking an energy credit for them? They know how much bitcoin you sold? How much mortgage interest you'll be deducting? The strike price of the stock options you exercised in your private company, and their current fair market value? There's a bajillion variables that go into filing a tax return, and only you are the one that knows all of them, and sometimes not even then! This idea that the government "already knows" how much you owe in taxes is a complete fiction.

xracy 4y ago

More than the tax prep industry being scared (which they clearly already are given the amount of lobbying that they do (I think the largest of any industry the last time I looked)), I hope that the Biden administration has the guts to actually follow through on this. This is a remarkably consistent topic that most of the populace agrees on, and is only at all difficult because of this lobbying.