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There is no monopoly on tax preparation in the US. It’s a highly competitive market. Dozens of companies sell online products to file, and thousands of indivi

There is no monopoly on tax preparation in the US. It’s a highly competitive market. Dozens of companies sell online products to file, and thousands of individual providers are available too.

ethbr0 3y ago
There's a monopoly to a first-order approximation. Apparently TurboTax has ~70% market share for tax preparation software, and TurboTax + H&R Block have ~95% market share. [0] But even that's still a heck of a lot more competitive and responsive than if the IRS shipped the only tax prep solution. [0] https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/tax-prep-2021-turbotax-hrblock-blucora/ https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/tax-prep-2021-turbotax-...
- refurb 3y ago
  No, not even by "first order approximation" because plenty of returns are done without any software at all, or done by professionals with different software.
maerF0x0 3y ago
> It’s a highly competitive market. It's a competitive market on a stupid game. The market solutions (maybe mostly just intuit) fight to keep the game near impossible for the lay person to play. They generate "GDP" by making it more grievous than it need be. At least part of this is a symptom of a broken political system (the current process of voting encourages 2 party system which are incentivized to not experiment)
- lazide 3y ago
  The political system is this way because the cities/urban areas and the rural areas have fundamentally different interests, and the vast majority of the resources and land area isn’t in urban areas. The federal gov’t has enough power to make either of these groups miserable; and so each is using it to fight out who gets to do so. Picking one to win isn’t going to stop the conflict, but it could turn it into a shooting war.
vkou 3y ago
> Dozens of companies sell online products to file They all suck, and in a better society, that number for normal people would be close to 'zero', because the IRS could just send me a bill to attest to and sign.

There is no monopoly on tax preparation in the US. It’s a highly competitive market. Dozens of companies sell online products to file, and thousands of individual providers are available too.

ethbr0 3y ago

There's a monopoly to a first-order approximation. Apparently TurboTax has ~70% market share for tax preparation software, and TurboTax + H&R Block have ~95% market share. [0] But even that's still a heck of a lot more competitive and responsive than if the IRS shipped the only tax prep solution. [0] https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/tax-prep-2021-turbotax-hrblock-blucora/ https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/tax-prep-2021-turbotax-...

refurb 3y ago
No, not even by "first order approximation" because plenty of returns are done without any software at all, or done by professionals with different software.

maerF0x0 3y ago

> It’s a highly competitive market. It's a competitive market on a stupid game. The market solutions (maybe mostly just intuit) fight to keep the game near impossible for the lay person to play. They generate "GDP" by making it more grievous than it need be. At least part of this is a symptom of a broken political system (the current process of voting encourages 2 party system which are incentivized to not experiment)

lazide 3y ago
The political system is this way because the cities/urban areas and the rural areas have fundamentally different interests, and the vast majority of the resources and land area isn’t in urban areas. The federal gov’t has enough power to make either of these groups miserable; and so each is using it to fight out who gets to do so. Picking one to win isn’t going to stop the conflict, but it could turn it into a shooting war.

vkou 3y ago

> Dozens of companies sell online products to file They all suck, and in a better society, that number for normal people would be close to 'zero', because the IRS could just send me a bill to attest to and sign.