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That still doesn't respond to the issue regarding why it is Intuit's TurboTax, and not a free solution provided by the government. I mean free, both in terms of
by rmxt 11y ago
That still doesn't respond to the issue regarding why it is Intuit's TurboTax, and not a free solution provided by the government. I mean free, both in terms of cost to the end user, and cost to the government to implement. (I would imagine that long-term, it would even have negative cost to the government.)
- harryh 11y agoBecause the US government isn't capable of building software at this level of complexity.
- rmxt 11y agoI can't tell if this is a serious comment or a sarcastic one, but I'll bite. This is blatantly false. I'm not asking them to replicate the full features of TurboTax. These low-income households do not need a full-featured free program. They pretty much just need a single field filled in on their 1040EZ from their W-2, with maybe some questions about child support, local taxes, and the like. This is well within the reach of the US government. For example, both Federal and State governments are able to automatically link household names and addresses together with tax returns to automagically populate college financial aid forms. [1] [1] https://fafsa.ed.gov/help/irshlp9.htm https://fafsa.ed.gov/help/irshlp9.htm
- harryh 11y agoIt was serious. I agree with you here though about simpler tax filers. They should be able to make it easy and free for 1040EZ filers. State taxes make it a bit more complex but whatever. I'm not holding my breath though.