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I think the FSF's heart is in the right place here, but the real travesty is that the tax code and forms are so complicated for average people to navigate, and

I think the FSF's heart is in the right place here, but the real travesty is that the tax code and forms are so complicated for average people to navigate, and the consequences for a mistake can be so great, that even poor people with standard income sources feel they absolutely need professional help filing taxes. This is absurd. Particularly with W2s and 1099s and the like, the government knows what your tax bill should be anyway and is just sitting there waiting for you to mess up complicated forms and penalize you.

jonathankoren 3y ago
Poor people don't need professional help. There's certainly any industry telling people that they need professional help, but honestly, poor people just take the standard deduction, and if they have kids the Earned Income Tax Credit. If you can read a W2, and can do basic arithmetic, you're done. As my parents said years ago, "You think it's really that hard when they just grab a bunch of people off the street, stick them behind a folding a table call them H & R Block?" It's only when you start having to deal with itemized deductions, self-employment, multiple investments, and all the stuff that quite frankly poor people can't afford, do you start to need help, and even then, the filing isn't that big of a deal. It's the structuring to reduce taxes prior to tax day that's complicated as hell.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  I don't really know that having multiple investments is outside the reach of "poor people". If you want to put $100 in some stocks, it isn't going to cost anymore than that today.
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Poor people don't even have banks. Why do you think all those check cashing places are everywhere? Thinking they have savings is just the chef's kiss of out of touch.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    I think you are a bit out of touch. Many poor people don't even have access to a checking/savings account, let alone a brokerage account or 401k. And for many people, even $50 a month can mean the difference between being hungry or not, or paying rent or not. It's a very bad state of affairs.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    This comment was absolutely painful to read. It's just so out of touch, it's unbelievable. There was a time in my life when $100 was my monthly food budget. I had to get dental work done, and even with insurance, it was $400. I had to take out a god damn credit card to pay for it and cut my meager food budget even further to make payments.
coldpie 3y ago
> the consequences for a mistake can be so great In my (admittedly limited, personal) experience, the consequences are not so great. They send you a letter letting you know what the mistake was, and how to fix it. And then you fix it. The IRS isn't out to punish you, they just want what they're owed. Playing it up like screwing up your taxes will get you the death penalty is a myth perpetrated by the tax prep lobby.
- bombcar 3y ago
  In 80% of the cases where you mess up AND they notice they just send you a form saying “here’s our numbers” and you can say ok or complain. They’ve even done that to me when I made a mistake that resulted in a smaller refund; they sent the “you fucked up” letter along with a check.
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Same. Every time I got the EIC, I never understood why, but the IRS sent me a check saying, I should have gotten it. Even the year that I screwed up massively by not realizing I needed to pay the AMT, they just sen me a bill. The experiences left me thinking that the people that constantly fear monger about the IRS are just out and out committing massive tax fraud. Probably not a coincidence that these are the same people complain the loudest about tax enforcement.
  - logicalmonster 3y ago
    What happens in the other 20% of cases? It feels like you're just handwaving away a large part of the story and how people react to dealing with the IRS. And again, if the government already knows your income to this level, why don't they send you a tax bill and completely eliminate the time, energy, and stress that average people face preparing taxes.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The other 20% are where they might actually suspect you of something, but even those are much easier to deal with than people expect. The only one I know of personally was a friend misfiled his taxes and didn't allocate cost basis for day trading so the IRS had each sale marked as a cost basis of zero, and they sent a letter saying "you owe $800k in taxes based on this" but all he had to do was dig out the cost basis and refile. And yes, for the vast majority of people who do NOT own a business, they could just send you the 1040 already filled out (there's actually a way to get them to do that IIRC, something like you file for an extension and then request "what tax info do you have on me and the result is basically a filled out 1040).
nubinetwork 3y ago
I'm on the opposite side of the fence here... Intuit is a business, and can choose to do business as they please. If the FSF doesn't like that, they can write their own tax software. (And not on the IRS' dime/time) If that's too hard, that's not Intuit's problem. They shouldn't be forced to go FOSS if they don't want to.

jonathankoren 3y ago

Poor people don't need professional help. There's certainly any industry telling people that they need professional help, but honestly, poor people just take the standard deduction, and if they have kids the Earned Income Tax Credit. If you can read a W2, and can do basic arithmetic, you're done. As my parents said years ago, "You think it's really that hard when they just grab a bunch of people off the street, stick them behind a folding a table call them H & R Block?" It's only when you start having to deal with itemized deductions, self-employment, multiple investments, and all the stuff that quite frankly poor people can't afford, do you start to need help, and even then, the filing isn't that big of a deal. It's the structuring to reduce taxes prior to tax day that's complicated as hell.

sidewndr46 3y ago
I don't really know that having multiple investments is outside the reach of "poor people". If you want to put $100 in some stocks, it isn't going to cost anymore than that today.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Poor people don't even have banks. Why do you think all those check cashing places are everywhere? Thinking they have savings is just the chef's kiss of out of touch.
- kelnos 3y ago
  I think you are a bit out of touch. Many poor people don't even have access to a checking/savings account, let alone a brokerage account or 401k. And for many people, even $50 a month can mean the difference between being hungry or not, or paying rent or not. It's a very bad state of affairs.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  This comment was absolutely painful to read. It's just so out of touch, it's unbelievable. There was a time in my life when $100 was my monthly food budget. I had to get dental work done, and even with insurance, it was $400. I had to take out a god damn credit card to pay for it and cut my meager food budget even further to make payments.

coldpie 3y ago

> the consequences for a mistake can be so great In my (admittedly limited, personal) experience, the consequences are not so great. They send you a letter letting you know what the mistake was, and how to fix it. And then you fix it. The IRS isn't out to punish you, they just want what they're owed. Playing it up like screwing up your taxes will get you the death penalty is a myth perpetrated by the tax prep lobby.

bombcar 3y ago
In 80% of the cases where you mess up AND they notice they just send you a form saying “here’s our numbers” and you can say ok or complain. They’ve even done that to me when I made a mistake that resulted in a smaller refund; they sent the “you fucked up” letter along with a check.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Same. Every time I got the EIC, I never understood why, but the IRS sent me a check saying, I should have gotten it. Even the year that I screwed up massively by not realizing I needed to pay the AMT, they just sen me a bill. The experiences left me thinking that the people that constantly fear monger about the IRS are just out and out committing massive tax fraud. Probably not a coincidence that these are the same people complain the loudest about tax enforcement.
- logicalmonster 3y ago
  What happens in the other 20% of cases? It feels like you're just handwaving away a large part of the story and how people react to dealing with the IRS. And again, if the government already knows your income to this level, why don't they send you a tax bill and completely eliminate the time, energy, and stress that average people face preparing taxes.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The other 20% are where they might actually suspect you of something, but even those are much easier to deal with than people expect. The only one I know of personally was a friend misfiled his taxes and didn't allocate cost basis for day trading so the IRS had each sale marked as a cost basis of zero, and they sent a letter saying "you owe $800k in taxes based on this" but all he had to do was dig out the cost basis and refile. And yes, for the vast majority of people who do NOT own a business, they could just send you the 1040 already filled out (there's actually a way to get them to do that IIRC, something like you file for an extension and then request "what tax info do you have on me and the result is basically a filled out 1040).

nubinetwork 3y ago

I'm on the opposite side of the fence here... Intuit is a business, and can choose to do business as they please. If the FSF doesn't like that, they can write their own tax software. (And not on the IRS' dime/time) If that's too hard, that's not Intuit's problem. They shouldn't be forced to go FOSS if they don't want to.