4 ms·

I would like the government to just send me a bill and/or check by default please. Sure let people get fancy tax preparation services and advice if they’re maki

by jitl 2y ago

I would like the government to just send me a bill and/or check by default please. Sure let people get fancy tax preparation services and advice if they’re making millions to do complicated things but honestly it’s so backwards to demand citizens compute their own bill and then penalize them if they get it wrong. Doing your own calculation should be opt-in, not opt-out (via annoying software). Among my tech friends Intuit’s reputation is already mud for standing against human decency on tax filing reform for 30 years, but non-tech-sphere people are always surprised to hear about the Intuit lobbying & deception stuff.

tombert 2y ago
I've told this story before here but it's relevant. A few years ago, I filed my taxes and forgot to report some stock sales and therefore some short-term capital gains tax. More than a year after I filed, the IRS sent me a bill for about $8000, $7000 for the unreported capital gains, and a $1000 fine. I wasn't really upset about having to pay the $7000; if I owe the money then I owe the money, fair enough, it was my dumb fault, and I wasn't even that upset about the fine, because again it was my dumb fault. What annoyed me is that if the IRS knows I owe the money better than I do, then why am I involved with this at all? I don't have enough money for the IRS to put a team together or anything elaborate like that, so it was almost certainly an automated program that determined I underpaid. Why not instead just send me a refund and/or bill at the end of the year and have me pay it, instead of having me write down the numbers that they already have, and then they can check to make sure I wrote those numbers down correctly by verifying it against their records. I understand having the option to use complicated tax software for cases where the taxes are complicated, but my taxes really aren't; I have a typical W2 job, a typical mortgage, and very occasionally selling stock, I think in my case the "default" would be fine.
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  Most places in the US send you a property tax bill with a provision to challenge if you think that it's wrong. I don't understand why the IRS can't do the same.
  - tombert 2y ago
    My property taxes (in NYC) are actually automatically paid as part of my mortgage payment. It requires literally no work on my end. If the IRS already has my stuff, I don't see what TurboTax (and its competitors) is actually doing that's necessary. I'm confident my employer is sending the IRS my W2, ETrade is clearly sending over my stock trading stuff, my bank is probably sending over my mortgage information. As I said, obviously some people are going to have more complicated taxes than the default thing that the IRS has access to, and for that then sure, TurboTax might be useful, but I don't think that's the majority of people.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    They can, if congress passed a law telling them to do so. The IRS isn't the entity preventing this from happening.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      >They can, if congress passed a law telling them to do so. Louder for the people in the back.
    - DrillShopper 2y ago
      Love living in a broken republic
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >if the IRS knows I owe the money better than I do, then why am I involved with this at all? Well they made an extra $1k by doing it this way. Maybe if you'd have lawyered up you could have got them down to $500 but the point still stands. Sure, the database and the developers and mailing the letters isn't free but you need to have basically all that overhead regardless of whether they're sending you a bill or a fine. The incentive is there. On top of that, it costs them nothing to make you file your taxes. In fact they probably rake in a whole boat load of money from all the people who report things the IRS didn't know about or didn't have enough sophistication to attribute to them.
  - schnable 2y ago
    Are the high level policies of the IRS really incentivized to generate extra revenue via fines? I think its more likely a statute or policy issue and then collecting on underpayment is incentivized downstream. If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo. The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good).
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      >Are the high level policies of the IRS really incentivized to generate extra revenue via fines? I think its more likely a statute or policy issue and then collecting on underpayment is incentivized downstream. ROI on the IRS's budget is a pretty frequently cited talking point in their favor so there's probable at least some pressure to keep it that way lest that point in their favor go stale. >If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo. Yeah, the media would do their usual thing and peddle fear. I think the benefit to the average person is so big that it wouldn't matter though. >The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good). I lay a lot of blame at the feet of the people who've normalized a tax break/penalty for any and every pet issue. Intuit is evil, sure, but they're capitalizing on and perpetuating a status quo they didn't create
BrandoElFollito 2y ago
You should not do any calculations. In France I go to the tax web site and they know all of my income. I press ok and I am done. It takes 30 seconds (this was also the ad of the tax service, to do your taxes during a short break). Of you want to go fancy, you have 5 or 6 pages to play with. But this is really uncommon because you were need to have stuff the taxes do not know about.

by jitl 2y ago

tombert 2y ago

I've told this story before here but it's relevant. A few years ago, I filed my taxes and forgot to report some stock sales and therefore some short-term capital gains tax. More than a year after I filed, the IRS sent me a bill for about $8000, $7000 for the unreported capital gains, and a $1000 fine. I wasn't really upset about having to pay the $7000; if I owe the money then I owe the money, fair enough, it was my dumb fault, and I wasn't even that upset about the fine, because again it was my dumb fault. What annoyed me is that if the IRS knows I owe the money better than I do, then why am I involved with this at all? I don't have enough money for the IRS to put a team together or anything elaborate like that, so it was almost certainly an automated program that determined I underpaid. Why not instead just send me a refund and/or bill at the end of the year and have me pay it, instead of having me write down the numbers that they already have, and then they can check to make sure I wrote those numbers down correctly by verifying it against their records. I understand having the option to use complicated tax software for cases where the taxes are complicated, but my taxes really aren't; I have a typical W2 job, a typical mortgage, and very occasionally selling stock, I think in my case the "default" would be fine.

DrillShopper 2y ago
Most places in the US send you a property tax bill with a provision to challenge if you think that it's wrong. I don't understand why the IRS can't do the same.
- tombert 2y ago
  My property taxes (in NYC) are actually automatically paid as part of my mortgage payment. It requires literally no work on my end. If the IRS already has my stuff, I don't see what TurboTax (and its competitors) is actually doing that's necessary. I'm confident my employer is sending the IRS my W2, ETrade is clearly sending over my stock trading stuff, my bank is probably sending over my mortgage information. As I said, obviously some people are going to have more complicated taxes than the default thing that the IRS has access to, and for that then sure, TurboTax might be useful, but I don't think that's the majority of people.
- coldpie 2y ago
  They can, if congress passed a law telling them to do so. The IRS isn't the entity preventing this from happening.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >They can, if congress passed a law telling them to do so. Louder for the people in the back.
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    Love living in a broken republic
potato3732842 2y ago
>if the IRS knows I owe the money better than I do, then why am I involved with this at all? Well they made an extra $1k by doing it this way. Maybe if you'd have lawyered up you could have got them down to $500 but the point still stands. Sure, the database and the developers and mailing the letters isn't free but you need to have basically all that overhead regardless of whether they're sending you a bill or a fine. The incentive is there. On top of that, it costs them nothing to make you file your taxes. In fact they probably rake in a whole boat load of money from all the people who report things the IRS didn't know about or didn't have enough sophistication to attribute to them.
- schnable 2y ago
  Are the high level policies of the IRS really incentivized to generate extra revenue via fines? I think its more likely a statute or policy issue and then collecting on underpayment is incentivized downstream. If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo. The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good).
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >Are the high level policies of the IRS really incentivized to generate extra revenue via fines? I think its more likely a statute or policy issue and then collecting on underpayment is incentivized downstream. ROI on the IRS's budget is a pretty frequently cited talking point in their favor so there's probable at least some pressure to keep it that way lest that point in their favor go stale. >If the IRS could just send a bill (or withhold), the way activism and the media work in the US, the first time a sympathetic family is overcharged and just files based on what they told they were told, all the pressure will move back towards the status quo. Yeah, the media would do their usual thing and peddle fear. I think the benefit to the average person is so big that it wouldn't matter though. >The root issue here is the complexity of the tax code (generally bad) and the decentralization of financial institutions (generally good). I lay a lot of blame at the feet of the people who've normalized a tax break/penalty for any and every pet issue. Intuit is evil, sure, but they're capitalizing on and perpetuating a status quo they didn't create

BrandoElFollito 2y ago

You should not do any calculations. In France I go to the tax web site and they know all of my income. I press ok and I am done. It takes 30 seconds (this was also the ad of the tax service, to do your taxes during a short break). Of you want to go fancy, you have 5 or 6 pages to play with. But this is really uncommon because you were need to have stuff the taxes do not know about.