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IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system
- niij 3y agohttps://archive.is/qFtw5 https://archive.is/qFtw5
- k2enemy 3y ago> A spokeswoman for Intuit, Tania Mercado, criticized the direct file project as a “half-baked solution” and a waste of taxpayer money. “The direct file scheme is a solution in search of a problem,” she said. Wow, I thought that Intuit would have gone for a little more subtlety.
- jacobyoder 3y ago...and Intuit knows a thing or two about "half-baked solutions". ;)
- idiotsecant 3y agoOn the plus side, intuit saying something like this is exactly what I want to hear regarding a program like this. I would have been deeply suspicious if they were anything other than enthusiastically opposed to it.
- vlovich123 3y agoOr they’re saying this because they know the IRS effort doesn’t have competent people on it (think what happened with the healthcare website when it launched) and is just prepping the waters for a “see we were telling you along this was a bad idea” criticism for congress people to spike it later. It’s really hard to intuit the strategy being employed so best to just ignore them altogether. And if this turns into a partisan issue at all (which an unclean launch might because people are dumb about government tech in the US), then expect the Trump administration to kill this if they win to prevent this from becoming entrenched and popular like Obamacare is.
- downut 3y agoI've used the US Free File Federal Taxes for the last five years and it just wasn't a problem, and I have yet to see anything that looked like programmer incompetence. Now, that said, the way you debug your submittal is to paste an entire page of error gibberish that looks like very low level database error output into an entry box they point you to. Sounds gross! Ewwwww! Well actually I've been debugging c++ templates since forever and hohum it doesn't bother me. However... every single time it decoded the problem and told me exactly what I needed to do. It has taken me 2-4 tries each year to get it debugged and then it sails right through. The final result I've fed into two different state forms and that has sailed right through too. All free, and not that much of my time. Now if they can get the UI for normies painless, which I suspect is the main programming problem (I don't say that UI programming is trivial), this will take off like a rocket ship and the US can the join the coterie of civilized nations that do this for all their citizens.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoIf you're referring to Free Fillable Forms, the error messages are not DB errors, but "business logic rules errors". They do look like gibberish, but buried inside them is a code that can generally give a pretty clue as to the error. I agree that it would be much nicer if they said "The amount of line 29 of Form ABCD does not appear at line 18 of Form WXYZ". Even nicer if you never had to manually transfer amounts between forms.
- downut 3y agoOh yes I am sorry; I didn't mean to imply that I thought that the DB was throwing an error. What the filing process email message body stated looked something like approximately "Form line xxx violates schema requirement such and such: <more gibberish>". I was thinking when I scanned the message was that I bet I could reverse engineer the problem from this back end generated text but why not do what the instructions say and just feed it into the parser box? And every time the next email message gave me exactly the thing I needed to do. It was cool, for a weird sort of nerd. So no, I was casting shade where the process was right in the sunlight: I made the mistake, and the business logic caught it, and told me correctly every time what I needed to do to fix it. I liked the whole process a lot.
- crazydoggers 3y agoThis is why we still have the income tax system that we do. It’s a $14 billion a year industry. I’ve talked to people who work the lobbying system very hard. There’s lots of wining and dining to make sure no one messes with the complexity of the system. We need more people who are immune to lobbying in government positions. We’ll see how this goes.. depending on the next election cycle this will either get quashed quickly, or, fingers crossed, might fight on against a growing backlash.
- jlarocco 3y ago> We need more people who are immune to lobbying in government positions. What we need to do is stop pretending people like that exist, and come up with a system that works despite people's self-interest, greed and corruption. Maybe what we have is the best we can do.
- bee_rider 3y agoMore transparency would probably be better. Make them wear NASCAR style jackets and all that.
- godelski 3y agoThis is always my frustration when people suggest things for governments. You cannot design a government that relies on people being good. You have to design a government that highly discourages bad actors, make it easy to eject them, and operates while they exist. It's a crazy hard optimization problem and isn't going to work if people are just smart or good. And I never understand why people suggest fixing government by giving government more power and nothing else.
- calamari4065 3y agoMaybe spending billions of dollars lobbying should be illegal
- ttyprintk 3y agoIt’s not that lobbying is a major slice of $14B, it’s that they actually spend only $3m and it’s effective: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2021&id=D000026667 https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
- GreedClarifies 3y agoFrom the article and from a poster below: "For the pilot participants will have to enter their own financial information, the I.R.S. said." It is indeed a complete waste of taxpayer money unless they actually prefill with the IRS' data.
- SMAAART 3y agoSo it's an endorsement from Intuit.
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoToo funny. So it's a solution in search of a problem... that they also try to solve?
- loceng 3y agoIndustrial complexes, all of the obvious ones, have gone too far; it only takes one to push for unfair-unreasonable terms. The next step of citizen's countering Intuit's particular complex is for automatic tax filing to occur.
- a_gnostic 3y agoThe W2 doesn't count as voluntary, unless you bear witness against yourself, by filing for a return and identifying yourself as a taxpayer –waiving your 5A rights.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- artursapek 3y agoRest in piss Intuit
- webwielder2 3y ago[flagged]
- nerdponx 3y agoNot only will they, but Trump's Secretary of Treasury will order the IRS to cancel the program as soon as he's elected.
- HarryHirsch 3y agoWhy? Trump is a populist. "Get your taxes done with me for free instead of HR Block charging you a couple hundreds" is a low-hanging fruit.
- jacobyoder 3y ago> Get your taxes done with me for free instead of HR Block charging you a couple hundreds" He had 4 years to do that and it never even came up. To the degree that he's an opportunist, and doesn't hold stock in Intuit, he might support it (or at least not oppose it).
- ttyprintk 3y agoIt makes more sense that his party maintains the image that paying taxes is arduous and better left to technicians (short guys wearing yarmulkes in Trumps view). Those who can avoid burdensome bureaucracy are “smart”, presumably tall and yarmulke-less.
- nerdponx 3y agoThis is pretty much how I see it too. I agree that he's an opportunist, but there's still tremendous political value in sticking to the Republican party line on this issue, even if he personally does not benefit from lobbying. However I do believe that he would flip sides if it seemed like popular sentiment was flipping, and he would claim that he's been in favor of it all along. If this program is successful, that might actually happen, and of course he'll be sworn in by the time the broader program is rolled out, and he'll take credit for it while finding some way to blame Biden for not having it sooner (even though he had 4 years of his own to do it and took no action).
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoWhat would be awesome is if the IRS software would automatically prefill all the data and forms sent to it. It would be nice of your W-2, 1099s etc were all included and all you had to do was verify the information and enter any income not already reported.
- gigel82 3y agoYou mean like they do in ... every other country on earth?
- asia92 3y agoNot canada
- mdtusz 3y agoI had high hopes that SimpleTax would have been bought by the CRA, but sadly now it's been absorbed by Wealthsimple instead. Still worth using though and is pretty straightforward and easy to use.
- mig39 3y agoFor the last couple of years, my T4, pension, RRSP, and some of my pension forms have all been imported automatically into CRA, and then into Turbotax. So maybe it's an optional thing for some employers? Of course, would be great to just skip the Turbotax portion.
- xav0989 3y agoI think that all employers are now required to input the T4/remuneration information in a way that CRA can machine-process it, which allows them to make it available to third-party systems like TurboTax or SimpleTax. But yeah, for the large majority of us, having the option to skip TurboTax and just use a pre-filled, government generated tax return would be great.
- worik 3y ago
- chewmieser 3y agoGift article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/your-money/irs-tax-filing-free-online.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Lk0.WeqO.hIL7g5vPEQGN&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/your-money/irs-tax-filing...
- ProcNetDev 3y agoopensource it, please.
- ttyprintk 3y agoFor reference, Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington State and Wyoming are participating.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freedomben 3y agoFor those who don't know, of those 12 states, only 4 actually have income taxes. The other 8 do not. This whole system stinks. The overly complicated tax code, the sleazy corporations making tons of money on it, the entrenched politicians and bureacrats who make a living on it, etc.
- hackernewds 3y agoWe can still appreciate progress. And this is progress. Although if the IRS is gonna audit when I under pay, they technically already know how much I owe. Why not just tell me? Reckon it's since people also over pay, and there's no refunds for doing that.
- ghaff 3y agoNot at all clear the IRS won’t refund overpayments. I’ve gotten a check in the distant past when I double-paid something.
- wolfgang42 3y agoI have overpaid my taxes several times due to clerical errors, and each time the IRS sent me a letter explaining what happened and a check for the overpaid amount, plus interest. One time I forgot to deposit the check, and after waiting a year they automatically sent me a replacement along with a reminder of why it was they owed me money. My general impression is that they’re tedious and bureaucratic, but scrupulously inclined towards accuracy in both directions.
- kelnos 3y ago
- practicemaths 3y agoI just file my taxes by hand and mail it in. Somewhat less concern with 3rd parties holding my information and losing it to leaks/hacks. It is free. A little obnoxious but the forms do have instructions/directions.
- fsmv 3y agoI heard that this sometimes takes them much longer to process the returns that way. Has that been your experience? One time I reproduced the forms in a spreadsheet following the instructions and it wasn't much different from doing the online wizards. I would have liked to mail it in but I just paid to e-file anyway.
- practicemaths 3y agoMy experience has been that it can be relatively faster. That is, the last time I filed online it took I think practically a year before they got to it (I think the year of the pandemic) I figure there's so few people filing by mail these days that they're able to process them faster than the huge amount of online filing. I'm guessing they're separate teams (online vs mail). However I have no idea. Regardless mailing has worked better for me the last couple years. Additionally I do not have to use the third party ID verify thing (might just be for accessing information on irs.gov) that I am just sure is going to have a breach and can not for the life of me fathom why our government (Federal) needs a private company to verify the identity of a citizen via government (State) resources.
- bombcar 3y agoThe IRS just does some very simple checking and then mails your refund (or accepts your payment) - the actual processing/checking of the return can happen months if not years later.
- LamaOfRuin 3y agoMy understanding is that it is generally under control now, but a couple years ago their processing of paper forms was in fact so backed up that the physical space was over capacity. There was a fair amount of news coverage of this, including photos of the cafeteria in one of their processing centers being packed with paper awaiting processing because there was nowhere else to put it. At one point they also basically declared paper processing bankruptcy and just told people if they had mailed something and were still waiting for a response to just send it again because the first one was probably a lost cause.
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoWill unfortunately probably have to use ID.me because an IRS decision-maker's cousin owns it.
- FireBeyond 3y ago[flagged]
- bschwindHN 3y agoIt's infuriating trying to log in with id.me as someone who lives outside the states. Your foreign documents keep getting denied with little reason as to why, so you have to keep uploading and trying again and again until you please whatever poor soul is mindlessly looking at pictures of documents all day.
- arbuge 3y agoI have a hard time understanding why the IRS doesn't at least have a basic web portal for individuals and businesses to do simple things like update addresses, send secure correspondence, check on the status of correspondence, file forms electronically, etc. A lot of paper forms and letters, human resources and time could be saved with such a system, even if it doesn't actually provide for any tax computations itself.
- nerdponx 3y agoThe answer is a combination of industry lobbying (see elsewhere in this thread) and partisan politics that result in deliberately under-funding the IRS (for a general notion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast, and for more directly relevant events see https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted)
- hackernewds 3y ago[flagged]
- nerdponx 3y agoThe $80B is new, and until recently they were understaffed and underfunded. It's like a poor person finally getting Section 8 housing, and then you turn around and accuse them of being wasteful and inefficient with their spending, because they have a house so they clearly aren't as poor as they say. Also the $80B and 87k agents is slightly overstating what they are actually going to get. See e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insider/2022/10/20/the-reality-of-increased-irs-funding https://www.forbes.com/sites/insider/2022/10/20/the-reality-.... Is it possible that the IRS lacks the engineering management expertise to build an effective in-house software team? Sure. Is it possible that they won't spend their money efficiently as a result? Sure. Is it possible that they'll hire B-grade programmers, because the top people won't want to move to some random suburb in MD to work for $120k/year? Sure. But to somehow accuse the IRS of having "massive" funding and imply that they are in fact well-supported is just disregarding the facts of recent history.
- arealaccount 3y agoWould be interested to see how the $60-250M annual price tag breaks down.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoI jest, but imagine them auditing you for entering numbers in one session and changing them later before submitting
- olliej 3y agoH&R Block and Intuit to begin their trial of "even bigger bribes to politicians"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- raybb 3y agoShoutout to Code for America for getting the state filing system going in New York. That's a lot of potential.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoAre there current or future opportunities to assist with remaining state integrations?
- unethical_ban 3y agoIf free e-file is so wrong then why is the IRS allowed to distribute forms to citizens with easy instructions? How do people against free e-file justify their anger, unless they are employees of a company leeching off taxpayers' money like Intuit?
- themadturk 3y agoI think those are the most vocal opponents.
- sirsinsalot 3y agoBecause think of the childr... Oh never mind
- _ihaque 3y agoFor anyone interested in why the system looks the way it does, I recommend patio11's insightful recent blog post, which is nominally about payroll systems but ends up discussing the history of taxation in the US because that's the origination of many of these systems: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/payroll-providers-power-respect/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/payroll-providers-pow... A relevant quotation for much of the discussion here: > And, relevant to the question of whether Intuit controls U.S. tax policy: it can’t, because that would imply they have wrested control from Norquist. Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically.
- nvr219 3y agoNorquist is so flipping ridiculous.
- leereeves 3y ago> Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically. When phrased that way, it sounds ridiculous. But those are the author's words, not Norquist's or ATR's. What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. In their words (from the article): "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier): > ATR [Norquist runs Americans for Tax Reform] is institutionally skeptical of withholding, because they believe that withholding allows one to increase taxes by stealth. I don’t think it is excessively partisan to say that, if one phrases that claim a bit more neutrally as “withholding increases tax compliance by decoupling public sentiment and policy changes,” the people who designed the withholding system would say “I’m glad the National Archives makes our design documents so accessible. We wrote them to be read!”
- koolba 3y ago> "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth.
- proc0 3y agoThey should also work with companies and have an opt-in for automatic filing since a lot of people just have one job. Not only do you have pay them a chunk of your salary but you have to also do the work to report it accurately according to a complicated system.
- ghaff 3y agoIf all you have is a modest W-2 and are taking standard deduction (most people in the US) it would be nice if the IRS pre-filled out a form. It’s also pretty simple to just fill out a 1040 in those circumstances.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoThere's even a special version of the 1040 for just such circumstances.
- ghaff 3y agoUsed to be I think. I believe the EZ doesn’t exist any longer. Basic point is that if your taxes are simple enough to just say that yep these numbers square with the few pieces of paper I received in the mail, filling out a return is maybe 30 minutes work.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoIt's moronic that they got rid of that. I would say (as someone whose taxes will never take less than several hours) that those 30 minutes are about 28 minutes too many.
- wolfgang42 3y agoMy understanding is that they replaced the 1040/1040EZ split with a simplified Form 1040+Schedules 1/2/3, so instead of getting a short form (which only applied to a limited set of situations) or a long form, you always get a shorter one, plus only the addenda needed for your situation.
- bubbleRefuge 3y ago[flagged]
- terminous 3y agoFlagged as irrelevant to topic of discussion.
- worik 3y agoIt is wrong, not irrelevant The right of, and purpose for, the state to tax is very relevant to the methods used
- kelnos 3y agoAt the risk of doing what I'm about to ask you not to do: please don't comment just to talk about moderation decisions. It's boring and doesn't add to the discussion. If you want to flag or downvote, simply do it and move on. > If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- worik 3y ago> Federal income taxes are unfair and unnecessary. Since it had been demonstrated (via MMT) that taxes do not fund the Federal government, That is incorrect MMT does not propose that the state can fund itself without tax, except for some seriously deluded proponents who have lost their grip on reality The use of resources by the state requires those resources are unavailable to other actors Money is a slippery and an abstract concept. But it must always connect to physical reality
- bubbleRefuge 3y ago2 of the founders have said we don't need income taxes
- worik 3y agoArgument by oracle
- cpursley 3y agoCan we just have non-file tax system like other civilized countries? You know, like the ones that are able to provide for good roads and healthcare and housing? Often at even lower tax rates than America?
- gumballindie 3y agoCan you name those countries? In the uk we work for the government and health care, education and roads are bust.
- throw7 3y agoThe weakness is that state tax will need to be filed separately. Some type of smooth hand off with seamless data transfer is hopefully being planned. I'm in NY and interested, but I don't want to fill in data twice (yeah, i'm lazy sue me).
- apapapa 3y agoIts 20 years late but its a start
- iambateman 3y agoJust one thing to add… The “IRS will functionally increase taxes” argument is a distraction and I doubt anyone here takes it seriously. But the argument matters because it has given Congress political cover to let Intuit keep leeching off the system, so a response is in order. Congress should require the IRS to give every person an auditable receipt of every tax they paid in a standard format. Then, truly public-minded services can use the receipt to help people understand if their filings were correct. There’s no good reason automated IRS filing would result in tax increases for anyone, it’s a fixable problem, and good grief I’m ready to stop paying TurboTax $180/year.
- remarkEon 3y agoI don't think it's really a distraction. It seems illogical for the government to not have a free, easy way for the taxpayer to remit their taxes to the government (or submit the paperwork that should generate a return from that government). But at the same time I think it's fine to be skeptical that you should trust the government to be honest in showing you what amount of taxes you actually owe given how complicated the tax code is, and because there exists, ahem, a bit of an incentive problem there. Is the free-filing system designed to maximize your return? Is it designed for ease of use? Generally I agree that TurboTax is a leech, but just because they're leeches doesn't mean there isn't an incentive problem that should be addressed. >Then, truly public-minded services can use the receipt to help people understand if their filings were correct. Do you mean a private company does this? Or something else?
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago> Is the free-filing system designed to maximize your return? The solution to this is for the government to publish the source code in the public domain. Then anyone who can do better can fork it and sell it, which will make that market more competitive when it's cheaper to enter because the government has already done 80% of the work, but there will only be a market for this if the government isn't maximizing your return. "Better return than the free system or your money back" would be a great way to get customers, and they'd be viable with fewer customers when they're only paying the incremental cost of doing what the government failed to. And then the government system would be embarrassed if private forks could frequently beat them, which improves their incentives.
- LelouBil 3y agoIs there any documentation on how an average person living in the US files their taxes ? Are you forced to use third party services ? How exactly is it hard to do your taxes on your own ?
- alanbernstein 3y agoHave you ever done US federal taxes? I did my own as long as I could, but as your tax situation gets more complicated, your taxes get more time consuming. No, nobody is "forced" to spend $60 to save hours of their free time researching tax code. If the tax system were simpler, doing it yourself would be more appealing.
- LelouBil 3y agoNo I live in France, but I always see talks online about how people in the US pay for software to do their taxes and didn't really understand the scope of it.
- mminer237 3y agoThere are PDFs you can fill out yourself and either paper or e-file, but very, very do it. It's not really hard for most people. Probably 40% of people can put their wages in box 1 and be done. But most people's eyes would glaze over at seeing a 1040. Every February everybody who paid you or got paid tax-deductibly mails you a form with the finals amounts for last year. On the back are instructions for where it goes on the forms. The basics are simple, but few people really understand taxes at all let alone care to look at the forms. Instead probably 70% of people go to an accountant and give them the forms to punch into a program which generates the IRS forms and e-files them. Cheap places are maybe $100, but complicated returns at good accountants run like $500. The other option most people who "do their own taxes" do is to purchase a yearly license to software which you can punch the numbers into yourself and it'll generate and e-file a return for you. It's like $50–$70 normally but some are free. Most complications arise either from: * You run your own business and have to do two returns basically without getting nice filled forms for all the numbers. * Congress constantly wants to incentivize behaviors and give people breaks on their taxes so there are a lot of little things you can get credits for like having kids and buying electric vehicles. It's really easy to miss deductions you're entitled to. * States have their own separate taxes, so you have to do everything twice and lots of programs have less support and make you pay extra too.
- breadwinner 3y agoA better idea would be to simplify the tax code so that you don't need complex software to calculate taxes. Maybe even simplify it so much, and make it automatic, so that most people don't have to file tax returns, which is how it works in the UK [1]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/how-you-pay-income-tax https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/how-you-pay-income-tax
- hedora 3y agoOne advantage of universal basic income plus a flat tax is that you get a progressive tax system, and it drastically simplifies both the tax code and welfare systems. It also eliminates tax loopholes, and prevents people from accidentally being paid not to work, being denied bending on a technicality, etc.
- artursapek 3y agoThe agency's plans have met resistance from tax preparation companies??? Wow that's shocking.
- neycoda 3y agoYay long overdue
- andirk 3y agoMy taxes are kind of complicated. I'm happy to do them. It's a little walk down memory road of the past year. Most people do 1040-EZ, and the "EZ" stands for "easy" because it takes 5 seconds to do. Turbotax is one of the best pieces of software I have used. I don't understand the issue.
- cushpush 3y agoIf they drag their feet on this I will create the nonprofit to do this, so hurry up.