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On some counts, he is not wrong. It will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars will be well spent, and may be a net 0 cost for taxpaye

by RajT88 3y ago

On some counts, he is not wrong. It will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars will be well spent, and may be a net 0 cost for taxpayers after the savings on eFiling. This is a revocation of the license to print money by the tax prep industry.

dartharva 3y ago
"Billions of dollars"??
digging 3y ago
I am always intensely skeptical of the phrase "cost the taxpayers" when presented as a pure loss. It is almost always the opposite. It's like saying "Exercise costs a person energy and nutrients." Well, no shit, but you get more value out of it than you input in the form of burned calories and muscle strain.
- throwaway4220 3y ago
  Really well put. It costs the taxpayers trillions of dollars to support the United States.
whiplash451 3y ago
Billions of dollars is a massive overestimate. It will indeed cost dozens of millions, but billions? Come on. We're not building the F-35 here.
- DigiDigiorno 3y ago
  Look up the cost of the healthcare.gov website project* People complain about government contractor costs for a reason *Last I checked it was north of a billion in 2014 dollars
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Great example. It was the genesis of the US Digital Service and 18F. Complaints are valid, but so should be recognition that the government took rapid action to course correct. Promises made, promises kept. https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/healthcare-dot-gov/ https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/healthcare-dot-... (US Digital Service: Stabilizing and Improving HealthCare.gov) https://archive.is/Boysy https://archive.is/Boysy (Washington Post: White House launches ‘U.S. Digital Service,’ with HealthCare.gov fixer at the helm) https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/projects/ https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/projects/ https://www.itdashboard.gov/reports https://www.itdashboard.gov/reports And a project close to my heart as an identity/auth wonk: https://login.gov https://login.gov
  - tzs 3y ago
    Healthcare.gov on the backend had to interface with systems from a bunch of different government agencies and companies. Many of those systems had not been designed to interface to other agency and company systems. They all had their own APIs and data formats. That all greatly increased the complexity of the project. An IRS e-filing system would just be adding a public interface for taxpayers to a system they already have.
- deanmoriarty 3y ago
  It will absolutely cost more than a billion dollars. Have you seen the cost of other government web services?
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    And, like all software, it is not a one-time cost. Maintaining a system like this is an ongoing cost for decades to come. Well-spent money.
- RajT88 3y ago
  Yeah, the article states some range between 64 million and a few hundred million. But over the course of years, total costs will surely be over a billion. I'm happy to indulge the lobbyist quote in that spirit.
- maybelsyrup 3y ago
  > We're not building the F-35 here. That's true -- one potential upside of the IRS plan is that an online tax submission site cannot constantly crash into the ocean.
morning-coffee 3y ago
One way for it not to cost tax payers billions of dollars to drastically simplify the tax code while they are at it. A big part of the cost is directly attributable to the complexity of the rules to be followed to figure out how much to pay based on your circumstances. Throw all that nonsense out and all that should be left is a relatively simple "You made X, so you owe X * rate"
- seunosewa 3y ago
  The complexity of the tax code is a result of negotiations between various political and commercial interests and lawmakers at the federal and state level. Simplifying it means changing a whole lot of laws touching taxation, which is practically impossible when the people negatively impacted by each change will be lobbying hard against. It's hard enough to get a single bill through congress. If they somehow achieved the impossible feat of changing all bills that touch taxation, the code will start accumulating complexity again starting from the next day.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    The complexity of the tax code is a result of the starting assumption that all income belongs to the government and anytime they exempt some kind or level of income that is a "cost" to the government that then has to be offset by other rules in the tax code
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  The tax code can't ever be simplified... simplification is effectively equivalent to eliminating all the various tax breaks that people are eligible for. A simple (perhaps the simplest) one sentence tax code is "everyone pays 10% of gross income"... this is considered regressive. As you add to the tax code to make it less painful, it grows more complicated. Some large fraction of the population effectively pays no federal income tax at all. The rules for exempting them and discounting them to the point of $0 owed alone accounts for some significant portion of the tax code.
  - 3y ago
Cerium 3y ago
Of course it will cost the taxpayers, that is the point right? I'm tired of paying out of pocket and would rather pay with my tax dollars which I will be paying regardless.
wl 3y ago
He's probably making the claim that his software, similar software, and tax preparers will find more deductions than the IRS system and cost taxpayers billions in lost refunds they're entitled to. Actually creating this system isn't going to cost billions of dollars.
- dylan604 3y ago
  that's being very generous, but i doubt that's what was truly meant. phrasing it that way would be a marketing statement on why to continue using their software over the free version from the gov't who would have a vested interest in you not using all of the deductions possible. those statements will absolutely be made soon. right now, they are only trying to get people to think it is a boondoggle that should be canceled like the superconducting super collider
bee_rider 3y ago
He might be right that it will cost a couple billion dollars. A one time expense of a couple billion dollars is, like… I mean the public servants working on it should take it very seriously but it is a drop in the bucket, the US budget is measured in trillions. This is one of those “the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is about a billion dollars” type things, except the billion is the little one. Edit: I mean there are like 300 million of us, so even it it was shared equally, it is like… for the price of a particularly fancy latte we can all collectively fuck over these middleman tax processing companies, let’s do it!
mminer237 3y ago
For reference, Inuit's revenue was $12.7 billion last year, so they single-handedly cost the taxpayers more each year than this whole free system will.
lern_too_spel 3y ago
Not just savings on preparation costs for tax returns in perpetuity but also savings in time for entering bank and wage data already sent to the IRS.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>It will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Why on earth would, or should it cost that much? Unless they go full on "not invented here" and write it running on a IBM Mainframe running COBOL that they then pay an over priced consultant to somehow make web compatible
- RajT88 3y ago
  A place I worked built out a SQL server which had a TCO of a million dollars a year. 1 Machine. Don't ask me how it all adds up; the manager over it just quoted me that at a work social one time. I don't know how much it cost a customer I had to build over a couple decades, but their eCommerce website had an operational run rate of at least 3 million a month just in cloud costs (not including all the other externalities). All this to say that I can see how it might add up.

by RajT88 3y ago

dartharva 3y ago

"Billions of dollars"??

digging 3y ago

I am always intensely skeptical of the phrase "cost the taxpayers" when presented as a pure loss. It is almost always the opposite. It's like saying "Exercise costs a person energy and nutrients." Well, no shit, but you get more value out of it than you input in the form of burned calories and muscle strain.

throwaway4220 3y ago
Really well put. It costs the taxpayers trillions of dollars to support the United States.

whiplash451 3y ago

Billions of dollars is a massive overestimate. It will indeed cost dozens of millions, but billions? Come on. We're not building the F-35 here.

DigiDigiorno 3y ago
Look up the cost of the healthcare.gov website project* People complain about government contractor costs for a reason *Last I checked it was north of a billion in 2014 dollars
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Great example. It was the genesis of the US Digital Service and 18F. Complaints are valid, but so should be recognition that the government took rapid action to course correct. Promises made, promises kept. https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/healthcare-dot-gov/ https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/healthcare-dot-... (US Digital Service: Stabilizing and Improving HealthCare.gov) https://archive.is/Boysy https://archive.is/Boysy (Washington Post: White House launches ‘U.S. Digital Service,’ with HealthCare.gov fixer at the helm) https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/projects/ https://www.usds.gov/report-to-congress/2016/projects/ https://www.itdashboard.gov/reports https://www.itdashboard.gov/reports And a project close to my heart as an identity/auth wonk: https://login.gov https://login.gov
- tzs 3y ago
  Healthcare.gov on the backend had to interface with systems from a bunch of different government agencies and companies. Many of those systems had not been designed to interface to other agency and company systems. They all had their own APIs and data formats. That all greatly increased the complexity of the project. An IRS e-filing system would just be adding a public interface for taxpayers to a system they already have.
deanmoriarty 3y ago
It will absolutely cost more than a billion dollars. Have you seen the cost of other government web services?
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  And, like all software, it is not a one-time cost. Maintaining a system like this is an ongoing cost for decades to come. Well-spent money.
RajT88 3y ago
Yeah, the article states some range between 64 million and a few hundred million. But over the course of years, total costs will surely be over a billion. I'm happy to indulge the lobbyist quote in that spirit.
maybelsyrup 3y ago
> We're not building the F-35 here. That's true -- one potential upside of the IRS plan is that an online tax submission site cannot constantly crash into the ocean.

morning-coffee 3y ago

One way for it not to cost tax payers billions of dollars to drastically simplify the tax code while they are at it. A big part of the cost is directly attributable to the complexity of the rules to be followed to figure out how much to pay based on your circumstances. Throw all that nonsense out and all that should be left is a relatively simple "You made X, so you owe X * rate"

seunosewa 3y ago
The complexity of the tax code is a result of negotiations between various political and commercial interests and lawmakers at the federal and state level. Simplifying it means changing a whole lot of laws touching taxation, which is practically impossible when the people negatively impacted by each change will be lobbying hard against. It's hard enough to get a single bill through congress. If they somehow achieved the impossible feat of changing all bills that touch taxation, the code will start accumulating complexity again starting from the next day.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  The complexity of the tax code is a result of the starting assumption that all income belongs to the government and anytime they exempt some kind or level of income that is a "cost" to the government that then has to be offset by other rules in the tax code
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
The tax code can't ever be simplified... simplification is effectively equivalent to eliminating all the various tax breaks that people are eligible for. A simple (perhaps the simplest) one sentence tax code is "everyone pays 10% of gross income"... this is considered regressive. As you add to the tax code to make it less painful, it grows more complicated. Some large fraction of the population effectively pays no federal income tax at all. The rules for exempting them and discounting them to the point of $0 owed alone accounts for some significant portion of the tax code.
- 3y ago

Cerium 3y ago

Of course it will cost the taxpayers, that is the point right? I'm tired of paying out of pocket and would rather pay with my tax dollars which I will be paying regardless.

wl 3y ago

He's probably making the claim that his software, similar software, and tax preparers will find more deductions than the IRS system and cost taxpayers billions in lost refunds they're entitled to. Actually creating this system isn't going to cost billions of dollars.

dylan604 3y ago
that's being very generous, but i doubt that's what was truly meant. phrasing it that way would be a marketing statement on why to continue using their software over the free version from the gov't who would have a vested interest in you not using all of the deductions possible. those statements will absolutely be made soon. right now, they are only trying to get people to think it is a boondoggle that should be canceled like the superconducting super collider

bee_rider 3y ago

He might be right that it will cost a couple billion dollars. A one time expense of a couple billion dollars is, like… I mean the public servants working on it should take it very seriously but it is a drop in the bucket, the US budget is measured in trillions. This is one of those “the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is about a billion dollars” type things, except the billion is the little one. Edit: I mean there are like 300 million of us, so even it it was shared equally, it is like… for the price of a particularly fancy latte we can all collectively fuck over these middleman tax processing companies, let’s do it!

mminer237 3y ago

For reference, Inuit's revenue was $12.7 billion last year, so they single-handedly cost the taxpayers more each year than this whole free system will.

lern_too_spel 3y ago

Not just savings on preparation costs for tax returns in perpetuity but also savings in time for entering bank and wage data already sent to the IRS.

phpisthebest 3y ago

>>It will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Why on earth would, or should it cost that much? Unless they go full on "not invented here" and write it running on a IBM Mainframe running COBOL that they then pay an over priced consultant to somehow make web compatible

RajT88 3y ago
A place I worked built out a SQL server which had a TCO of a million dollars a year. 1 Machine. Don't ask me how it all adds up; the manager over it just quoted me that at a work social one time. I don't know how much it cost a customer I had to build over a couple decades, but their eCommerce website had an operational run rate of at least 3 million a month just in cloud costs (not including all the other externalities). All this to say that I can see how it might add up.