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The IRS is rolling out its free tax-filing tool to 30M Americans
- beretguy 2y agoI’ll wait for other people to test it.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y agoJust curious, are you worried about anything in particular?
- w0m 2y ago'taxes' is a 4... erm, 5 letter word for some; almost taboo.
- bastawhiz 2y agoRight, but given the choice between the agency that decides whether you did your taxes correctly and a for profit company, why would you choose the latter?
- Scoundreller 2y agoWhat i’ve found delusional is the amount of duplicative entry of data by individuals that’s already been submitted to the tax agency electronically by employers and finance firms. At least in Canada for the last couple years, our tax software can download all that from the tax agency and plug that into your forms automatically. And for most people, that’s all the info there is. There aren’t a lot of “elections” or “decisions” to actually make when filing. And there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t happen automatically because you •could• have the same investments across multiple brokers, but that’s not the majority either.
- jokethrowaway 2y agoBecause the agency which decides whether I did my taxes correctly is likely going to have terrible UX and has an incentive to hide options for me to save on taxes? I pay private agents all the time to avoid having to deal with terrible governments interfaces and find shortcuts, wins for me.
- bastawhiz 2y agoAs opposed to the terrible UX of the for profit companies that have been providing the same services for years? For most people, the cost of TurboTax is higher than whatever mystical savings they might "find".
- jokethrowaway 2y agoI'm not in the US but in the UK and Estonia private accounting solutions are really good. Eg. I'm a huge fan of https://freeagent.com/ https://freeagent.com/ The problem is with your own government accepting bribes to keep things complicated and preventing new competing companies to enter the market, lowering costs and improving the experience. > Filing taxes is surprisingly complex, thanks in part to the lobbying efforts of Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, which in 2016 alone reportedly spent $2 million on lobbying to keep the tax code complicated. It’s not just Intuit, either. ProPublica reports that H&R Block spent $3 million lobbying in 2016, some of it on the same effort.
- neverartful 2y agoWhat makes you think that a division of the federal government is going to get it right the first time? I'm being serious (not snarky). Have you ever worked with the federal government? I have (as a contractor) and I was constantly amazed (not in a good way).
- bastawhiz 2y agoIt's literally not their first time. It launched for tax year 2023.
- neverartful 2y agoI still wouldn't use it this early.
- lotsoweiners 2y agoI completely agree. I pay like 80 or 90 bucks a year to file with TurboTax and can afford to pay that for a few years while the kinks are worked out on the IRS system.
- ahoka 2y agoIt always amuses my how indoctrinated Americans are.
- donjigweed 2y agoPut another way, if spending maybe $100, maybe even a couple hundred bucks, might save you thousands, is it really that bad of an idea? For the first few years?
- bastawhiz 2y agoTurboTax has never saved me hundreds let alone thousands.
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- AStonesThrow 2y agoObamacare Website Tips - SNL https://youtu.be/_rzQeDOGDxI?si=Op4NDMNL_9hedCPK https://youtu.be/_rzQeDOGDxI?si=Op4NDMNL_9hedCPK
- bastawhiz 2y agoThe USDS, which helped build this site, was literally started because of the embarrassing launch of healthcare.gov. And as the article states, the test launch for tax year 2023 went extremely smoothly.
- fragmede 2y agoit getting hacked is probably the top concern. if an attacker can access my information on that site, they can steal my identity and conveniently also know exactly how much that identity is worth stealing. Not that not using the system is any guarantee that I'll be safe either. my data's already been leaked by Equifax so I'm expecting someone will try something eventually. scammers have already tried calling my mom, telling her I'm in the hospital but fortunately she was able to call me and I was able to say that I wasn't. which is to say, that worry shouldn't stop anyone from trying their site.
- jonny_eh 2y agoIt was tested last year.
- ohples 2y agoGood
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoMore discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41737653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41737653
- alejohausner 2y agoThank God that they did it in house, instead of giving a contract to Accenture!
- ohples 2y agoBut will it support Login.gov?