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TurboTax Maker Intuit Funnels Millions to Lobby Against Easier Tax Returns

• ryanobjc 13y ago
  It's really too bad, their basic product - turbo tax free file uses the 1040 EZ form and can be confusing. My gf who is a student was told by turbotax she owed over $300, after doing it on paper, the old fashioned way, the tax liability was 0. Why? The tuition deduction didn't apply on the EZ version of the form. Ultimately turbo tax takes a conservative, strict and rigid approach to taxes, but as anyone knows this isn't the reality of doing taxes. For anyone with a moderately complex return, I think it's better to hire a tax professional, then at least you'll LEARN something for your money (which can be about the same amount!).
  • jaredsohn 13y ago
    That seems unfair to TurboTax. I have found it to ask you about things that are beyond the form it is filling out (and then upsell you on upgrading to the other version) and I think it does a great job with educating you about how you can lower your taxes. If you want, you can avoid their fees by filling everything out through the program and remembering the relevant information when filling out the form manually.
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  • ams6110 13y ago
    I also file my taxes on paper and I do all the calculations manually (well, in a spreadsheet). Even though my tax situation is far from the most complex, it is more complex than TurboTax can handle. Also I like to keep tax preparation painful as a reminder of the burden that the ridiculous complexity of the tax code places on me. That said, I do agree with Intuit here. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that the government is capable of making software to either provide a service similar to TurboTax or to correctly pre-calculate your taxes. They don't have the technical expertise so they'd have to contract it out. We saw how well that worked with healthcare.gov. They are not incented to "find every deduction" like a private tax preparer is, quite the opposite in fact. They also simply don't know enough in many cases. They don't know what my self employment income and expenses are, for example, until I tell them. The only way that government can make taxes easier is to simplify the tax code itself.
    • pkaye 13y ago
      But why restrict the gov't ability to provide free online filing. If TurboTax can provide an alternative that is better then they can still make money by providing value.
    • bpeebles 13y ago
      I'm not sure you actually agree with Intuit. They're saying that the IRS and state-level agencies should not provide free online filing services--even though they already provide free paper filing systems. As far as I've seen, no one has done a movement to ban tax paperers (either online or in person). If Intuit or H&R Block can provide a better website for $39 or whatever, they can. The question is if the agencies in question shouldn't develop their own replacements to paper tax forms. Can you imagine it was 30 years ago and if, instead of getting tax forms mailed to you every year (or photocopies from the local library for a pittance 5 years ago), you had to walk down to the local H&R Block or other private company and pay them $40 to get the forms they wrote based on the tax code to file your taxes? It's pretty much the same thing.
      • ams6110 13y ago
        From a pragmatic standpoint, the forms already exist. They have to be updated, but the changes from year to year are not huge. Governments have a lot of experience creating forms. We don't hear about massive budget overruns and failed government projects creating forms. We do hear this about almost every software project they undertake. Nothing the government does is free, and implemnenting online filing services would be something they (and by that I mean we) would pay billions of dollars for, and it would be poorly implemented, insecure, and it would crash constantly from overload during the month of April and especially on April 15th. I'd rather let Intuit do it for 1/1000 of the cost, and even at that, a cost that I would only pay voluntarily.
        • Retric 13y ago
          Several states already offer a high quality, secure, stable, and fast online filing so your clearly mistaken.
  • nandhp 13y ago
    TurboTax Free did a 1040A for me this year. It's not limited just to 1040EZ. I think they may have adjusted things compared to last year; it imported my data from last year (a new feature), and I thought there used to be a "Basic" product between "Free" and "Deluxe".
    • clogston 13y ago
      > and I thought there used to be a "Basic" product between "Free" and "Deluxe". There is, but it seems like they're not pushing it as hard this year: https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/basic.jsp https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/online/basic.jsp
  • rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    "When all else fails, read the instructions." TurboTax specifically states that you only need to claim the tuition deduction if it benefits you.
    • ryanobjc 13y ago
      btw there are 3 different tuition deductions! Maybe its also an indictment of the tax code, but I don't see why I should give turbo tax a break.
• tn13 13y ago
  I filed my returns once with turbo tax since then I have been using that form as a reference to file my other returns myself!.
• bpeebles 13y ago
  Virginia's Department of Taxation used to have a pretty decent online tax website. It was shutdown because of lobbying such as this. There was a year when no free online filing so I took the extra effort to do a paper return that year. Even FreeFilableForms are run by the Free File Alliance which is part of the group that lobbies against the IRS and state taxation departments from doing their own filing websites for personal profit. So they make sure that their own free filing options are just good enough to be barely acceptable while making their paid (for filers with income over ~$58k) options seem much more attractive. Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders making the IRS more efficient and hides true tax rates that corporations and higher income people... I dunno, it's one of the blacker marks against America in this aspect of policy. But I've without doubt decide I'll try as hard as possible to never, ever pay a company like that to file tax returns.
  • Twirrim 13y ago
    One of the craziest things is, it save their tax department money for every single tax filing done online vs paper. Paper takes an obscene amount of human hours to process in comparison. Online tax filings should at the very least be free, or even give you an extra tax deduction.
    • dfc 13y ago
      Do you know of actual/estimated numbers for human/computer processed tax filings? It would be interesting to see how many minutes of human time are needed for the average paper return. I have a sneaking suspicion that the "human touch time" is not "obscenely high."
      • ajcarpy2005 13y ago
        It's subjective. But also I assume error rates are higher for those who file paper forms vs electronically.
        • dfc 13y ago
• webwielder 13y ago
  I used to boycott TurboTax because of this. But then I realized that Intuit is just playing the game. Why wouldn't they do everything they can to sustain their business (well, a sense of moral decency, I guess, but that's a big ask)? The real root of the problem is of course our broken political process.
  • kennywinker 13y ago
    Boycotting TurboTax is in your OWN best interests, is it not?
    • betterunix 13y ago
      That depends on how good you are at filing your tax returns. Intuit is lobbying for a complex tax code because that reduces the likelihood that you can actually do your taxes on your own without losing lots of money or getting in trouble with the IRS.
      • kennywinker 13y ago
        I guess it's a matter of balancing your short term interests against your long-term interests, and the likelihood of a boycott succeeding.
  • MartinCron 13y ago
    Moral decency is not a big ask. It should be the expected default behavior.
  • deciplex 13y ago
    The real root of the problem is people giving up on expectations of basic decency and moral conduct 'because capitalism'.
  • vbuterin 13y ago
    And out broken political process remains because of everyone in the government doing everything they can to sustain their own livelihood. Reality is a result of human action; to change reality you pretty much have to convince people to act differently in some fashion.
• 001sky 13y ago
  Intuit has spent $11.5 million lobbying the federal government... $10MM seems like a pittance. That's like what...2 minutes of superbowl ads? Can you really buy legislation for this cheap?
  • harryh 13y ago
    I'm sure that their lobbying helps a little but that's not really what keeps our taxes complicated. Lots of conservative/anti-tax/right-wing/libertarian types see the difficulty of doing taxes as a feature, not a bug because it makes people hate taxes in general and more likely to vote for Republicans/fiscally conservative politicians.
    • bnolsen 13y ago
      thats insane. huge numbers of conservatives (everyone i know) want the irs gone and a flat tax. sorry to burst your bubble.
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      • bpeebles 13y ago
        That is mostly true. So they oppose most things that make our current style of taxation--mildly progressive with a lot of deductions. So they want to make it as painful as possible for Americans so they can try to get what they want.
      • bbanyc 13y ago
        A "flat tax" means moving from the current 10%, 15%, ..., 39.6% rates to a single tax bracket. Tax brackets are one section out of thousands in the Internal Revenue Code and one line on the 1040. We could move to a flat tax and still have the current overcomplicated mess of deductions, credits and penalties in place, and that's what takes up most of the time and effort.
• nathan_f77 13y ago
  Just moved to the US last year, and used Turbo Tax to file my tax returns. It was alright, but in New Zealand, we don't generally have to jump through all these hoops. I guess it would be nice if there were a free alternative to TurboTax, but at the same time, I kind of don't really care, so I'm happy to let them get away with whatever they're doing. I know Lobbying isn't illegal in the U.S., and I don't think it's all that immoral either.
  • raverbashing 13y ago
    So you don't care to be made a fool of and be made to pay money to file your taxes? In Canada the BS is similar however I'll make sure to never buy the software from TurboTax.
  • IvyMike 13y ago
    > I know Lobbying isn't illegal in the U.S., and I don't think it's all that immoral either. I guess maybe Intuit is just "playing the game" but the fact that our government is being made purposefully obtuse and inefficient should make anyone mad. If you think "The government is purposefully obtuse and inefficient all over the place", I agree. I'm just trying to fight the good fight one thing at a time.
  • zobzu 13y ago
    The problem is that this shouldn't be there to begin with. It has no reason to be. If you accept that it should be there, then you can pile up a zillion other similar services, middle men, etc that have no reason to be but collect yearly money (and thats billions). Just think about the amount of human time wasted if money doesn't talk to you. When you multiply it by more than your own wealthy self, it's scary.
• Oculus 13y ago
  This makes me wonder how much of the government's incompetence is from companies lobbying for the government to keep its old ways.
  • asdfologist 13y ago
    Well, you really should wonder much of it isn't.
• CoachRufus87 13y ago
  Bigger story: our government can be bought for the low price of $11.5 million.
• clogston 13y ago
  Disclaimer: I used to work for Intuit/TurboTax and am now building a product in the same space. On topic: They rightly get beat up for this, and get beat up for their lack of pricing transparency, but somehow manage to always receive a pass on the software itself. IMHO it's pretty atrocious... Sure, the math is almost always right but the math is a commodity. The experience itself is overly-verbose and littered with repeat questions, confusing questions, open-ended questions. I don't know anyone who genuinely enjoys using TurboTax. I'm surprised there isn't more legitimate competition in this space.
  • yuhong 13y ago
    What do you think of these Ars comments: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing/?comments=1&post=26649199#comment-26649199 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-li... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing/?comments=1&post=26649771#comment-26649771 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-li...
    • clogston 13y ago
      Both of those comments seem to come from call center workers (i.e., they mention clocking in, etc). Each site has it's own culture (and each site has cultures within cultures). Like any mid-sized company, Intuit has a broad mix of personalities and talent levels. If I had to put them on the couch and nail down the core problem it's that they haven't really done anything groundbreaking lately. All the weird management issues you're reading about in those comments are because they're trying to hang on to what they have without moving the ball forward. All IMO of course.
  • dlevine 13y ago
    I don't particularly enjoy using TurboTax, but hey, who enjoys doing their taxes. However, after using it for 10 years, I'm pretty used to it. When I have a question about how to do something, I can just look a a previous year's return and find a similar situation. While it isn't the most straightforward, at least it's relatively consistent. I've been told by friends that there are less expensive programs out there, but the ~$80 that it cost me to do my taxes on TurboTax (Deluxe + State eFile fee) doesn't seem horrible (ie it isn't worth it to switch to something else to save an insignificant amount of money). It does seem a bit backwards to have to pay to eFile in CA - I used to mail in my returns to get around this. But, at the end of the day, it's easier to just pay to eFile, and it only costs me maybe $20 more (plus I save a trip to the post office). Overall, I've optimized to just using TurboTax, and I'm sure there is some laziness involved in that decision, but overall, unless something else is much much better, there isn't too much impetus to switch.
• eli 13y ago
  This TechCrunch post is a rehash of last year's ProPublica investigation: http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-... Might as well at least mention this year's revelation, which is that they fund fake Grassroots campaigns against tax reform: http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-grassroots-campaign-against-free-simple-tax-filing http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-g...
  • dan_bk 13y ago
    How realistic would it be to produce an open source replacement? (Maybe a Kickstarter-funded one, to speed things up, given the fact it concerns every US household?)
    • raquo 13y ago
      Someone please do this. You can charge for online chat with a professional, maybe business filings, etc. All glory will be yours.
      • Ygg2 13y ago
        Uggh, from what I've heard IRS makes time management look like a simpleton banging toy trains and making "wuwu" sounds. And time management is notoriously hard. Not to mention this will need security up the bum. How much would it cost just to read all the documentation and have the program certified, so it can do what it's supposed to do without writers getting sued?
    • cjoh 13y ago
      It's pretty difficult. E-Filing isn't as simple as a web service. I believe that if it were to actually do the e-filing, the people who ran the e-filing would have to submit to federal background and clearance checks at those people's expense and the servers it ran on would have to probably get FISMA High certification, provided it actually posted to the Efiling API. That's just my speculation, fwiw. But I think that's true.
    • 13y ago
• sunsu 13y ago
  If you were running Intiut, would you do anything differently? The TurboTax product is built on the fact that the Tax code is complicated. Of course they're going to lobby against tax reform.
  • prawn 13y ago
    Yes, I'd like to think that I would.
• mleonhard 13y ago
  According to Intuit's 2013 Annual Report page 41 [1] , they had $1.5B in Consumer Tax product revenue, which is primarily derived from TurboTax Online. That is 35% of their $4.2B total revenue in 2013. They're creating a lot of ill-will for 35% of their business. [1] http://investors.intuit.com/files/Intuit%20FY13%20Form%2010-K%20r221%20at%2009-13-13%20FINAL%20CLEAN%20to%20RRD.pdf http://investors.intuit.com/files/Intuit%20FY13%20Form%2010-...
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• bbanyc 13y ago
  Many foreigners are puzzled about why we Americans complain so much about our taxes, when they aren't particularly high by global standards. A major reason is that our taxes are particularly intrusive and annoying by global standards. This also goes for consumption taxes - a 9% sales tax added at the register feels more intrusive than a 20% VAT included in the price tag, even though the VAT is much higher.
  • StavrosK 13y ago
    I've been to the US a few times, and it puzzles me why you don't add the sales tax into the price. I mean, it's a certainty it will need to be added, you can't not pay it, so it's a sane default for 99% of cases (if you have some sort of reason not to pay, you can just think of it as a discount on price). Why waste all this time from millions of people tens of times a day just to add 9% to a price?
    • MrFoof 13y ago
      Part of it is that sales taxes are set by the state, and in some cases, municipality/city, since there is no federal sales tax. For example, in Massachusetts we pay a 6.25% sales tax. Though across the border in New Hampshire, there isn't a sales tax at all.
      • StavrosK 13y ago
        Hmm, you mean it's easier for inter-state businesses to have unified catalogs? I think local businesses wouldn't care much about that, since they're located in one state, no? Or do you pay different amounts of tax based on where you live, rather than where the business is?
        • eli 13y ago
          Sure, it also makes the prices look lower.
      • thisone 13y ago
        I believe that if you buy in tax-free (Salem) New Hamsphire but bring the goods back into Massachusetts, you are supposed to fill out a MA tax form. Assuming you are a Mass resident
• SeanKilleen 13y ago
  This is probably better left for "Idea Sunday", but I keep coming back to the fact that: * We have languages for defining business processes & workflows (e.g. BPMN/BPML); * We have open-source workflow engines (such as Activiti in Java and others all over the language spectrum) that utilize BPMN and terms; * We have open-source ways of maintaining changes to these things over time. I know it would be a monumental task, but why not start an open-source org to tackle Tax visibility at Federal and State levels? With enough civic-minded hackers and accountants (both of which I believe exist), we could begin the process of transcribing the tax code into an interchange format. Then as we begin to see the updates each year, we can track the changes via source control. Does anybody know if efforts like this have been undertaken anywhere else? Otherwise, I may have found my passion project. Furthermore, does anyone know anything about the process by which Intuit makes this happen? They clearly have workflows and inputs into them; they had to get there somehow. I'd be interested in any/all knowledge that could be opened up on this.
  • gfodor 13y ago
    it's a great idea, but there's a slight catch. in theory if this were to get so successful it drives TurboTax et al out of business, then the lobbying dollars evaporate, and suddenly we get legislation to simplify the tax code rendering your project unnecessary. (though I suppose there will always be some advantages to software to prepare taxes, regardless of how simple the tax code is.) then again, it could depressingly turn out this is the only viable strategy to actually get the desired outcome of a simpler tax code.
    • charlieflowers 13y ago
      But my god, if you pulled that off, it would be a HUGE success! You would be the catalyst that helped our nation get to a streamlined, efficient tax system.
    • snowwrestler 13y ago
      There seems to be a misconception that intuit is lobbying to keep the tax code complicated. In fact all they're lobbying against is federally-funded e-filing systems. The tax code is complicated because of all the other lobbying by every interest group in the U.S. For example, banks and realtors lobby super hard to keep the mortgage interest deduction. Tax simplification is politically hard because any change creates winners and losers, and they all fight hard one way or the other. One man's loophole is another's reasonable exemption, deduction, or credit.
• sirdogealot 13y ago
  Recently sitting down and manually preparing my taxes for the 9th year in a row now... I am not surprised. This type of tax-code-manipulation must certainly have been happening since the dawn of time. That, or it was written to confuse the public on purpose. Finding, reading, learning and understanding the tax code is no mean feat for a layman that was told nothing of it in school (none of us Canadians were taught taxes in public school). And this is coming from a relatively smart person who willingly reads cryptography papers and learns new programming languages for fun. How much more difficult does TurboTax propose that the IRS make filing? Should we get individually filed returns notarized by our deceased relatives as well? It usually takes me about 12-24 straight hours of work, and this is for a simple sole-proprietorship that just tallies up income and deducts expenses. I manage to get it done properly and on time every year, but realizing so many schortcuts along the way that "they" could be making for us yet fail to year after year... it's really quite infuriating. That, and the fact that I have to do the work to figure out how much I owe them. :/ I am proud to have completed my taxes myself and will strongly urge everybody I know not to vote for TurboTax with their wallets and why.
• christemmer 13y ago
  How can lobbying such as this not be seen as corruption, but as a perfectly legal (but most importantly "right") thing to do?
  • vbuterin 13y ago
    Intuit's argument generally is that if the government was allowed to create their own online filing system then that would create an imbalance of incentives, since the incentive of the people setting up the tax form would be to try to screw people into paying more if possible. Keeping it to a pure private market of tax preparation companies ensures that companies compete to make their returns as favorable to you as possible, thereby counterbalancing the IRS. I still think the lack of easy government-provided online tax systems is insane, but that's how the other side justifies itself.
• snowwrestler 13y ago
  I question the idea that the government could build better tax prep software than Intuit or other private companies. I don't think the Feds are known these days for performant, efficient, easy-to-use large scale consumer web applications. At a minimum I think discussion along those lines should wait until federal IT procurement is reformed. It's also worth noting that the article is not talking about the actual complexity of the tax code itself. As far as I know, Intuit is lobbying on the subject of tax preparation technologies, not lobbying against tax simplification in general. (As some comments seemed to imply.)
  • teacup50 13y ago
    California did a trial run of no-file taxes. They simply sent a copy of your return, and if it was accurate, you didn't have to do anything. The government already has the information to do most people's taxes for them. They don't need end-user web based tax prep software.
    • snowwrestler 13y ago
      A lot of the comments here are not talking about return-free filing; for example the top comment mentions the Virginia state form, which was a simple web form that replicated the fields of the paper form. California is still offering ReadyReturn but it only covers the simplest cases. Likewise a federal return-free system would only cover a fairly small portion of taxpayers unless there were significant changes to tax law and/or IRS operations.
  • lingoberry 13y ago
    Governments in most other developed countries have managed to develop better systems, why do you assume US government is so much more inept?
• arebop 13y ago
  I've been wondering if there's a PAC I could contribute to that would offset my Intuit funding.
• onislandtime 13y ago
  So pathetic to have to even have to debate the benefit of IRS providing a website to file taxes. The free filing for income lower than $58K is a scam. If you have a 1099 for $1000 or capital gains of $500 you are out of luck, it is impossible to know what they will charge until after you enter the data. That's what this assholes call innovation. The only explanation is that Intuit is influencing members of congress with money, that's a crime. There is no possible argument to justify forcing 100 million people to waste time on something that should be trivial for most people.
  • ewams 13y ago
    It creates jobs.
    • acjohnson55 13y ago
      So do broken windows.
    • stuaxo 13y ago
      At the price of a tax (heh) on everyone elses time.
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• brianstorms 13y ago
  This should not come as any surprise, really. This is what mature companies do once they achieve any level of monopoly that could be threatened with new legislation that benefits the public (and other businesses) but could hurt the monopoly. This is what the auto dealers are doing: after enjoying decades of control and a cozy relationship with legislators, they're threatened by upstarts like Tesla. But then at some point, if and when Tesla wins, it'll have to deploy its own army of lobbyists to keep the new status quo going. It is what every web and mobile startup, it seems to me, deep down aims for: a monopoly, an unfair advantage. It is what, between the lines, you are taught at YC and what every VC expects of the "unicorn" portfolio companies that strike it rich. Fight to get to #1, wipe out the competition, reap the winnings, and, oh yeah, strike down any threats from, you know, up-and-coming competitors. So it goes. It's business. It's ugly. If you don't like it, why are you doing a startup? If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?
  • mattgreenrocks 13y ago
    > If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators? It seems weak to beg the government to protect your precious company. It also smacks of hubris to believe your business is somehow so special that it needs to always be raking in cash despite 'progress.' Disclaimer: I don't understand business.
  • lmm 13y ago
    > If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators? No, I think I'd be sipping cocktails on the beach. (This is probably why I'm an employee rather than a founder)
• willtheperson 13y ago
  While doing my taxes I was wondering why there isn't a startup in this space. Turbotax: - Has a terrible UX/UI - It has to update itself with a 100mb payload every time you open it from Jan 1 - Apr 15 - Doesn't actually advise you how to plan for your taxes. It's reactive to what you did. - Uses shady pricing and lots of versions to get you to spend more instead of just being straightforward. - Works hard to make you dependent on them When you hear about the rich only paying 10%, 15% or whatever low bracket; they did it by putting their money in the right places and sometimes investing or spending it at the right time. Where is the startup that is basically my accountant without the cost? Can we really not programmatically understand tax code and financial strategy?
  • mscarborough 13y ago
    > Can we really not programmatically understand tax code Isn't that what TurboTax does? I don't know about a bunch of different versions, but the online version works just fine for me, and is pretty snappy. Sure, they upsell you to file your state taxes, but the $30 or whatever is worth it to me to avoid the duplicate work. Their lobbying is a separate issue, but I have no problems with the actual product.
• nness 13y ago
  As an interesting aside, Australia's taxation department, the Australian Taxation Office, provides a completely free piece of software each year called e-tax (http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/E-tax/ http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/E-...). It walks you through filling out your tax lodgement step-by-step and even calculates your expected return. It's not the nicest piece of software, but after having read this article, I am greatly appreciative that it exists at all.
• obeid 13y ago
  WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence, is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same. No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.
• japhyr 13y ago
  I don't mind paying taxes. But I was definitely cursing this last week as I spent hours filling out forms to calculate numbers that the IRS has already calculated on its own. I want a letter in the mail saying, "If you don't fill out any paperwork, this is the amount we will return to you/ bill you for. If you get a different number, send in your paperwork by 4/15." Doing taxes is a ridiculous waste of most people's time.
  • Figs 13y ago
    California's ReadyReturn program does this already for state taxes. I wish federal taxes could be that easy...
    • ghouse 13y ago
      They can be this easy, but companies like Intuit lobby (successfully so far) against it
• obeid 13y ago
  WHAT? a corporation that capitalized on the government's incompetence is doing everything in their power to make sure things stay the same. No come on you guys, April first was two weeks ago.
• zobzu 13y ago
  in my experience... in germany filling taxes took me about 5min.. that really because you need to go get a paper and give it to your company. Its otherwise more like 0 minutes since theres barely anything to do (which is.. logical, as its pointed out, they already have the data). in the US, after hours and hours of reading and trying to do it myself, its still hell. using turbotax means its going to take 30min instead of a month; all that for "$30 a year" or close to that. That's certainly fucked up.
  • brazzy 13y ago
    > in germany filling taxes took me about 5min.. I assume that what you meant by that is merely doing what is required for your employer to withhold taxes from your salary. The (for most employees optional) Einkommensteuererklärung might be doable in 5 minutes if you know it like the back of your hand, have all necessary data immediately available and no special cases apply to you at all. Otherwise, if you use the Germany equivalent of TurboTax, merely reading and answering "no" to all the questions that determine whether any special cases apply to you would take longer than 5 minutes.
    • zobzu 13y ago
      if you do the extra stuff its probably 10 or 15min which is fine. Sure the first time it might take a little longer. That's a far cry from what the taxes are in the US
      • brazzy 13y ago
        10 or 15 minutes?? Maybe if only one or two special cases apply to you, you know exactly in advance what you're going to do and have everything ready, but that's not a realistic scenario. Several hours of looking for documents and trying to understand what exactly you need, then probably waiting for days or weeks for some third-party documents to arrive, that's my experience. And the large number and high fees of tax advisors in Germany would seem to support my view rather more than yours.
        • 13y ago
• nixy 13y ago
  I lived in the US last year and just finished my taxes. It was unbelievably complicated and confusing—even using Turbo Tax. Never seen the likes of it. This is how I do my tax return in Sweden: 1. Receive equivalent of W2, but all returns are already pre-calculated since the Swedish IRS knows all it needs to know to be able to prepare my returns. 2. If I'm happy with my W2 and pre-calculated returns, I simply send a text message with a PIN code to submit my returns. 3. If I'm not happy with my pre-calculated returns, I make the necessary changes in a simple form and mail it back to the IRS. Most people never do this.
  • haakon 13y ago
    Norway has you one-upped: if you're happy with the pre-filled returns, you don't have to do anything at all; it will be auto-filed on the deadline.
    • hackerboos 13y ago
      I've never filed a tax return in the UK. It's automatic with PAYE. Only self-employed, business owners or those with unearned income from property or other investments need to file.
      • StavrosK 13y ago
        I think it is the same in Greece (I've always been self-employed). People who are employed don't file, they just get a cheque back at the end of the year if they're entitled to a tax return, as far as I know.
  • arbuge 13y ago
    And if you ever leave Sweden, your tax obligations to Sweden end there. Not so with the USA. Actually they become more complicated than ever unless you also renounce US citizenship. Renouncing is itself a bit of a feat tax-wise.
    • thisone 13y ago
      Indeed. The FBAR and FATCA are terrible. The incredibly heavy handed penalties for making a mistake can be quite frightening. The seeming assumption that anyone who has a foreign bank account or property must be a tax dodger is insane.
• sseveran 13y ago
  And anyone is surprised because...?
• wiradikusuma 13y ago
  While we're on this topic, if you're a US citizen and you have a company, I would like to ask: 1. If I incorporated a C-Corp on June 2013, and I told my lawyer I want my fiscal year to end by March 31, when is the deadline to file the tax? Is it still April 15? (I hope not, I haven't filed) 2. Is there any free tax filing solution for business? Considering my company has zero revenue (it doesn't even run, but that's another story). FYI, I'm not a US citizen.
  • acjohnson55 13y ago
    Please confirm this info with your own research and expert opinions. I'm not a lawyer or an accountant. 1. According to [1], you have to file by June 15. 2. You can do the taxes yourself if you're brave. My company didn't file a tax return for the year we operated and didn't have revenue. When I shut down the company this year, I paid for a tax accountant to help close up shop properly. He said we probably should have filed a $0 return. He went ahead and filed a late return along with our final return. It didn't really cost us anything extra, but based on my experience, you may want to find a tax accountant who's willing to give you some free advice--perhaps one who's doing good work for someone you know. [1] http://www.taxact.com/reference/library_calendar_fytaxpayers.asp http://www.taxact.com/reference/library_calendar_fytaxpayers...
• grandinj 13y ago
  Even "third-world" countries like South Africa have e-filing for taxes....
• harywilke 13y ago
  i'm surprised how many people do not use accountants to prepare their taxes. i tried turbotax or one of it's ilk my first year out of college. it showed me owing 7k. after freaking out i got in contact w/ my brothers accountant. i ended up getting a refund of 700. it's not my job to know the ins and outs of the tax code or to keep up on what has changed since last years filings. hire an expert.
• gamed 13y ago
  This is a typical example of rent seeking behaviour. Companies spending money on lobbying without creating wealth. Unfortunately tax is one of the core functions of government and will always be vulnerable to this sort of manipulation of the political process.
• yxhuvud 13y ago
  Swedish procedure (unless you have slightly more complicated stuff like stock ownership): Go to tax agency home page and login there. Go to the form for normal taxes. All values are prefilled. Check two boxes (if you want to register two very common deductions). Save and back up one step. Submit tax declaration by looking through all numbers again and clicking submit.
• whoismua 13y ago
  Before this is settled, the tax code should be made simpler with black or white options. A tax preparer saved me a few thousand dollars once by asking the right questions (school tuition). The same for my corp CPA. The "free" tax return would serve who exactly? What if the government "forgot" to mention a few tax breaks? Maybe the government should offer free tax returns for the plain and simple ones or for those with very low incomes. Paying $50 to $100 to do your taxes when you pay, say $10K in taxes, isn't much. US axes are very low compared to Sweden and most EU countries.
• AznHisoka 13y ago
  More reason to hate Turbotax. Their commercials are ridiculous too - NO, doing my taxes is not a way to summarize y year achievements...idiots
  • jaynos 13y ago
    Also, their constant reminders that I can pay for their software out of my refund or get an extra 10% refund by having it all placed on an Amazon gift card. Really annoying to see (and have to click through) when I OWE money.
• mfisher87 13y ago
  I don't understand. I asked them specifically not to do this in my survey after completing my return.
• joshdance 13y ago
  As the witch from Princess Bride would say, "Booooooooo! BOOOOOOO!".
• todd8 13y ago
  The crazy complexity of the US tax system is worse than it appears. There is a non-linear increase in complexity as one goes up the income scale. Have a few investments? More complexity. Real estate investments? More complexity. Starting a company? Even more complexity. Reasonably diversified individuals that have perhaps sold a company or two can expect a rough time. One reason the complex system is tolerated is that the people it really hurts are very few. A friend of mine has never been audited and does nothing shady but spends roughly $30,000 on tax accountants every year preparing his returns because they are so complex. Fortunately for the rest of us, we just have to waste an inordinate amount of time with Turbo Tax.
  • stephen_g 13y ago
    It's not just the complexity. In Australia, we have a ridiculously complicated tax system but the free application that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) provides walks you through it pretty easily. Usually it only takes me about an hour to file it online, and then you have a return deposited to your bank account (or you get an invoice if you're unlucky) in eight to fifteen days. The UI is pretty crap but on the whole the app works pretty well. It can 'pre-fill' quite a lot - stuff like salary that has been pre-taxed (called the PAYG system here), share dividends and franking information, bank interest details. I wish company tax returns were similarly simple, but those have to go in either on paper or electronically through an accountant.
• novalis78 13y ago
  Tax procedure on Mars: Go to your government's website and send them some Marscoin on the kickstarter project of the week or equivalent tipping addresses. Or have some AI distribute a percentage of your funds on your behalf based on some predefined rules.
• thrillgore 13y ago
  Well color me shocked. A company using lobbying to protect its sources of revenue.
• cpwright 13y ago
  The current software is also just bad. I used to use TurboTax, but now I'm using TaxCut. TaxCut has the following issues, which are really just stupid at this point: - Even though it could import last years return, it needs me to tell it how much of my 2012 tax refund from the state should be counted as 2013 income. I have to recalculate my last year's tax liability based on a lower deduction (because AMT may or may not erase the deduction anyway). - It tells you that you have a slightly increased audit risk for one of about 5 different reasons, that are mutually exclusive and only one of them applies to my return. This is the stuff that a computer can do very well, but is tedious and error-prone for me. Moreover, the last time I used TurboTax and I'm sure this is true with TaxCut still, it wants me to decide if I want to file jointly or separately. Why in the world should I have to make that decision or do the returns twice. The software should be intelligent enough to do the calculations both ways, and present the better answer, with the option to overrule it. If the government was making this software you could see it being this bad, but these companies are supposedly competing to do it; but it is still awful. Arguably, this is because the tax system is awful, but most of this is just coasting. I also would expect that the state software wouldn't be very good (at least for unpopulous states), but most of my issues are with the federal return.
• ecolner 13y ago
  * Not trying to piss off PG. I honestly don't know the rules about gathering supporters on HN, but this is in the spirit of the community I hope * If anybody would like to use their skills to fix this issue with me (ex Intuit TurboTax engineer) please hop over to this Ask HN and send me a message (email on thread). Also check the website for a bit more context: http://taxcompactor.com http://taxcompactor.com It's a pretty big project, but it's very doable by a small team from this community. Tax preparation is fundamentally a software engineering problem, which is convenient. Need everything from testing to project management with myself floating between roles. Remote is welcome - I'm in California. We'll use Basecamp, Github, Jira, Skype? to work - productivity suggestions welcome of course. True collaboration and fair equity. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599443 There are a few really great folks that have already reached out. Email me for details and we'll go from there. I'd love to hear from you.