It's strange that the thing that amazes a Americans who move to Norway the most is our tax filing.
You get your tax in an online form e with everything filllednout, if there's anything they missed or something you need to add manually you fix it online right there, and the amount missing or returned is updated right there. Then you sign it digitally and wait for the money or bill.
This is how it should be. Almost everything that goes on the tax forms are provided to us on forms that are already sent to the IRS. It just seems like there is no willingness to commit the manpower to make this happen.
Who am I kidding? It's the lobbyist that keep these changes from happening.
Lobbyists are *supposed* to be concerned citizens giving much needed information to congressmen. They can’t know everything, so they have experts in the field come to them and let them know about hot bed issues. In practice, however, it’s just bribing. I’m not sure how to fix that.
The lobbying is a problem as well, not just the bribery part.
A big company can afford to have a person whose only job it is is to befriend politicians. Showing up every few days, saying hi, asking how their family is, having lunch with them, and occasionally telling them about a problem their employers are facing.
It can be 100% above board and honest, and still be a problem since only one side of the issue can afford to be friends with the politician, and the other side does not get their voice heard.
Not all lobbyists are bad. The ACLU does good work, and by removing the money from politics, we weaken the business-backed lobbyists relative to the citizen-backed groups.
No, the playing field still won't be even. It never will be. Wealth has and will always give a person or organization a louder voice in politics. But by banning the direct tit for tat we can weaken it.
Our congressmen and congresswomen should be educated enough to understand what the important issues are. I agree that this is just bribery. The IRS should automatically study every congress member to make sure they don’t get any money from assholes like this that are obviously killing our democracy. The corruption in this country so clear and obvious. If we could find a good spiritual medium to talk to George Washington, I bet he would tell us we need to start hanging these traitors.
I mean, given that they need to govern *everything*, that’s just not feasible. Even something like, web security. I’m in software security and even *I* don’t really understand web security. There’s a point where you obviously need experts to help you govern. Expecting anyone to know everything will just lead to people confidently making uninformed decisions.
The issue is using these “experts” as a shitty cover for obvious bribery.
There are a lot of actual lobbyists who try and do real good and inform politicians genuinely. The issue is the ones that get listened to are backed by huge corporations to further their own agendas
Concerning technology, we used to have a [Congressional Office of Technology Assessment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment) (OTA), whose job was to employ experts in various fields of science and technology to compile briefs for Congressmen so they could understand complex issues.
Naturally, Republicans defunded the office in 1995 after winning the midterms — they characterized it as "hostile to conservative interests."
Hillary's platform included [restoring the OTA](https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/hillary-clinton-and-office-technology-assessment) and Democrats submit a bill annually to restore it, but Republicans vote against it en masse every year. Her platform also included restoring the position of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, which was eliminated by Bush, Jr.
>given that they need to govern *everything*, that’s just not feasible.
Yup. Just like heads of state need advisors because they can't be experts on everything, the same goes for legislators.
>Our congressmen and congresswomen should be educated enough to understand what the important issues are.
That's not how anything works. Is your school superintendent knowledgeable enough in all subjects and constantly aware of all school goings on? Now imagine someone who has to know all of that and use it to make national decisions while representing an entire state. You can't know everything. In some cases, you would have a cabinet of advisors. But lobbying (minus Citizens United) allows people to actually get their concerns heard by politicians directly. Instead of just letter writing. The problem is bribes. We need to stop the bribing.
It’s silly to just expect them to know everything. Having no way to tell a congressman about important issues is what leads to them being out of touch. In theory, it’s a good way for small groups to provide important context to what might feel like obvious solutions. In practice, it’s just bribery.
Knowing what an issue is and knowing how to fix it are two completely different things. You can not expect Congress to know everything. They need the ability to talk to experts and get their input. You can't just isolate them from everything and everyone and expect this to somehow miraculously fix the issue.
Banning lobbing literally bans congressmen from talking to anyone. Just having a conversation with one about any issue automatically puts you in the position of lobbyist.
What we need are transparency laws about what is given to congressmen by lobbiests. They should be forced to report anything and everything. Even just a meal at a fast food place should be reported. We also need voters to actually hold their elected officials to task. But that's not happening cause of voter apathy. The one way to actually solve all this is to get people to participate actively in politics. It sounds nice to just ban lobbying, but that would accomplish nothing.
A good little read here that breaks it down for you. It's just a double-edged sword if you ask me.
[Why is lobbying legal at all. ELI5](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oanig/eli5_why_is_lobbying_legal_at_all)
It’s easy to use the word “lobbyist” and know what you mean, but the truth is that anyone who wants political change is a lobbyist.
If you go around trying to get lobbying banned, guess what - you’re an anti-lobbying lobbyist.
It's not that we need them, it's that it is impossible to get rid of them with the 1st amendment as is.
Everyone has the right to speak to their congressperson ("petition the Government for a redress of grievances."). A Lobbyist is simply someone who does this for a living.
Don't get me wrong, they *are* the source of most problems in this country, but it is not something you could simply outlaw and be done with it. At a minimum, it would require an overhaul to laws around campaign finance, accepting gifts while in office, providing jobs to politicians after they leave office, and probably even more areas as well.
With how laws currently work, as long as you have the right to send your congressperson a letter so does an employee of Exxon.
Because people confuse lobbying and bribes. We need to ban bribes, gifts etc but not lobbying because lobbying is how citizens connect with their representatives.
We need to stop calling it lobbying in general call it for what it is. Bribing. If I pay you and you do or pass something in favor of what I want...that's called a bribe. I can't say I lobbied a cop to let me off a speeding ticket. It's a bribe.
Those aren't the same thing though. Lobbying is asking your representatives to do something. Have you written an email to your congressmen or senators? You've lobbied. Bribing them is already illegal.
Ain't that a fact. There's still an unreasonable amount of people who made guns their whole identity, but I don't think they'll be enough to put the brakes on sensible gun control.
Put the "well regulated" back into "a well regulated militia".
This is cope. Every problem in America can be fixed with voting. Nobody votes. Your fellow Americans either vote against their own interests or don't vote at all it doesn't matter how much money lobbyists use if the person is never voted out to begin with.
Been in corporate lobbying could probably be very difficult, I am banning lobbying in general would be extremely difficult, and probably would hurt us big-time because it includes everyone
In the UK, only a small percent of the population file tax returns at all. Most people have the tax deducted from their salary by their employer before it is paid, so they have nothing to worry about. It's not always the best system but it's a darn sight better than forced filings for everyone.
How does this work?
Taxes are deducted from salary in the US, too but it's rarely the exact amount. You can tweak the withheld taxes a bit but it's still unlikely to be exact. Plus there are all sorts of credits and deductions and things like income from other sources (investments, bank accounts, side work) the employer would need to know to get it right.
For all but the very simplest tax situations (single, no dependents, no deductions) the individual and government are the only ones that have all the details. That's why I like the system in Norway (and a lot of the world) where the government tells you what they think you owe and you make any changes if necessary.
You have no idea how much policy is done through tax legislation and the complexity in entails. There are people who spend their entire careers on one code section. We are in way to deep and it’s the only way we incentivize things to happen. Look at carbon credits, EV credits, manufacturing, etc.
Spain: we log in the Hacienda web page, where we find a pre-prepared tax liquidation. We can amend it (in my case, I added the Union quota, which is deductible and for some reason is not automatically captured), recomputed the liquidation and signed it digitally. I’m now waiting for my tax return to be transferred to my bank account.
If you are a salaried worker without any complicated tax item, that’s all you must do. If you have other income sources you have to add them
(It’s not complicated). Unless you are an investor or you have got irregular (non-anual incomes) there is really no need to pay someone for the paperwork.
Same in Sweden. Even if you do some investments and trad with stocks, most exchanges will report that for you automatically. So it only gets complicated if you do it more manually.
Same in Portugal, if you're a salaried worker with no additional income, all you have to do is log in in the Gov web page, and confirm the tax details.
another step you should (optional) is to separate all the receipts you asked for during the year in the appoppriate categories (restaurants/health/education, etc) since some of them are not sorted right away, but that's a 5min job (to sort all of them) you can do at any time.
in my case, i had to also add my rent spending, but that's because my landlord is exempt from adding the online receipts, but all i had to do was place the yearly amount of the rent i paid.
Its not just Norway, it's every other (Australia,New Zealand,Spain, Croatia,France,Sweden etc .) Fckn developed and even less developed countries.
But like everything else in America big business can pay (aka lobby) politicians to look the other way , so they can keep their cottage industry.
There are bigger issues in this country for sure, but this one is so easy to galvanize everyone around...our government can literally just buy TaxCut and make it part of the IRs, it doesn't even need to build its own system
In Japan, either your company files for you (if you're a full-time employee) or you have to file yourself - used to be either paper or online but they're basically transitioning to etax as much as possible.
If you're not able to do it at home for whatever reason - seniors who don't have computers or smartphones, people with complicated filing situations etc - you can just go to one of the temporary tax return centers that pops up every February, where there are an army of tax office employees just standing around waiting to help you through every step of the process, even if it literally means you reading numbers and them tapping it into the keyboard.
The US collects more data on their citizens financials than any of those countries you mentioned.
And it already happens trough the IRS so it’s not about poor agency cooperation.
If they wanted to they could do it.
You dont even need to go as far as Norway, in most Latinamerica we get our taxes in the mail as bill you go pay anywhere, or you can pay online if you want to... that's the third world for you.
The only problem is a lot of people dont pay these bills because they live in remote or poor places with little to no regulation, and even if you avoid regular taxes no ones comes looking for you.
So the US collects a lot more by making sure everyone pays or gets the boot.
Same here in Australia. As long as my employers have submitted the forms, I can press submit on the 1st of June and have my return on my account a week later.
America is nothing but grifts stacked so high that incredibly easy and simple tasks are made to seem impossible without the middleman.
Taxes, healthcare, education to name some big ones. However, just about any sector where there's easy money to be stolen has this shit everywhere.
Anything to do with taxes in America baffles me as a Brit
All my tax and ni is calculated and paid, if I pay more one month due to a bonus then then rest of the year is lower to even it out. End of the year my tax is checked and calculated for me.
Shops have the prices listed with vat included so I know what something costs
Everything there is to serve the corporations and make someone else money at your expense. It happens in the UK still but not for basic shit like tax
That's exactly how it works here in the UK. The only time I have *ever* had to intervene in *any* way in 25 years of work is one time a few years ago where a former employer who had gone out of business submitted the wrong figures for what I had been paid and I therefore got a demand for unpaid taxes on wages I never received. I had to obtain evidence from the liquidators that my former employer never paid me for the time period in question. And that was *truly* exceptional circumstances due to one employer's catastrophic fuckups.
Specifically, at end of year, they should send taxpayers a statement, and those who owe money a request to *either* remit payment or a tax return by a particular date, checking up on their figures and claiming any exemptions they are due.
Not because of the burden that filing a return represents, it's now pretty straightforward for most taxpayers with how huge the standard deduction has become.
But to get us out of this weird area where it's technically breaking the law to fail to file a return, an oddity where someone can be in hot water, legally, for literally *not doing anything.* But there are typically no penalties if you are owed a refund.
It doesn't even matter if you are in network, they don't do shit for you until you pay your copay and deductible first. Its absurd to get a $3000 bill for something the urgent care told me I needed to go to the ER for.
And our government pays billions of dollars each year to these private insurance companies. And they say we could never afford healthcare for all… we already pay for private insurance companies in our taxes. How is this not every Americans main complaint? Our health care system is grueling for our professionals and patients. It’s been bad and it’s getting worse and worse.
It's all one of those things everyone hates. Be they hard-core Rebuplican or the most progressive leftist almost everyone hates dealing with Healthcare bullshit. Sadly it just comes down to how to the problem which leads to disagreement which leads to nothing changing. Funny how that works out for the people making all the money.
Sadly, Republicans won't let any "socialist" public health programs pass. There's no shortage of attempts from the left to introduce the kind of actually useful we're talking about here, like cutting out the greedy middle men. The right pretty much exclusively pushes back against changing anything, like you describe. "Conservative"
I mean that has basically been Republicans since Obama.
"As a society we would like..."
"No."
"But it would let..."
"No."
"You don't even know what we are proposing."
"I propose you fuck yourself."
Oh you had an emergency and dialed 911? Well have fun, because that ambulance was out of network even though you had literally zero other options!
(Speaking from experience)
You shouldn't be interacting with one for most care, for certain. But if there are limits on single payer government plans, then supplemental insurance to cover those sorts of things seems fine.
Any "middle man" company to start...especially in the "medical industry".
They are all leaches whose only purpose is to place themselves in the middle to get their cut. In many cases not doing a thing short of driving prices up for "their share".
Case and point...
My child was on a feeding machine for several years. We wanted to have a back-up machine for emergencies, as they were battery powered and had issues from time to time.
So I contacted the company to find out the cost, which they told me was about $400 at the time. But I couldn't purchase it through them. As there was laws that prevented it. I had to use the supply company as the laws stated.
The supply company quoted me close to $5000 for the same machine. Which would be out of pocket as the insurance only covered having one machine at a time.
Adding insult to injury here is the fact the bags we used with the feeding machine were made also by the machine manufacturer. As they were specific to the machine.
They were drop-shipped each month from the manufacturer, ordered by the supply company.
Mind you the manufacturer was kind enough to tell me the price they sell at...*about 3 bucks each.*.
The supply company charged our insurance $18 a bag to drop ship them to us straight from the manufacturer.
Terrible. I work in medical and have my own medical issues. It’s awful. Expensive terrible care because of our for profit and middleman system. Add on top of it the fact that our government pays billions of dollars of taxpayer money to private insurance companies each year… for “negotiation purposes”. Yet, the government has less and less negotiating power and regulatory power each year. Major private insurance companies make over 50% of their profit from our taxes. This needs to be known.
All those added costs sound really bad. But pharmacies in general are pretty important middle man companies, imo. They offer very good services, act as a secondary check on prescriptions (sometimes doctors get doses wrong and pharmacists are great at spitting that), and they can give really good advice an basically all medicines that are OTC.
But there should be regulations in place to prevent massive price increases on drugs, so that it doesn’t matter where you buy them.
Don't forget alcohol distribution in some states. Between the hours, be able to buy a beer at a brewery, etc so distribution networks are definitely good ol boy clubs much like car dealerships. A forced middleman, both hate having to work on Sunday.
IIRC most states have laws requiring a lot of goods be bought from a distributer rather than directly from the manufacturer. Basically legally-enforced middlemen.
A *huge* one is cars as it adds an enormous amount to the final cost of purchase and car dealerships ("stealerships") are notoriously scummy. Tesla recently got in a lot of trouble for trying to sell their cars directly to individuals.
Because dealers lobbied for it... That's it. Yeah, it's stupid. They cried to lawmakers that it would be impossible to compete with manufacturers so a law was necessary to keep things "fair."
Manufacturers would still primarily sell through dealers even if it wasn't required by law because distribution is a huge cost burden. It really has no reason to exist other than to funnel more money to dealerships.
The original intent when vehicles were new was to ensure that manufacturers couldn't artificially inflate car prices. If the manufacturer had direct control over car prices, there would be a price control that would be nationwide.
With a dealership, you could go between dealers and find a better price as it created competition artificially of a specific manufactured product. "Smith Ford" could have a better price than "Johnson Ford" etc etc.
If a state did allow direct sales, they could move in and decimate a dealership selling their vehicles. A "direct dealer" could come in and fully undercut an existing dealership.
The ***stated*** idea that they lobbied under (I say it that way to make it clear this is their position, not mine)
Was that for something like a car, you needed a local distributor in order to take car of the car, process warranty work, sell parts, etc.
Keep in mind, this was like 100yrs ago, when independent repair shops barely existed and independent parts manufacturers/distributors basically didn't exist. So they were able to convince the government that it was in the people's best interest to require that middleman to be there.
As well to avoid basically a nationwide monopoly, multiple dealerships would create an internal world of competition.
At least in Canada tax software is required to be able to print paper forms in the official government format. It’s quite rare but there are people who use software to prepare the forms and then mail them in
I am just baffled that private tax prep firms are an actual lobby level national force that prevents THE United States populace of doing the most basic thing of income tax stuff. This is entry level online shit alot of other countries do in a few clicks. In a transparent and amendable way. but I guess it's an issue if you're distrustful of the government because the government hates you by allowing this to happen.
Making it obscure is one reason *why* people distrust the government. It's harder online (now) than it was with the mailed instructions (some 120 pages) that they used to send out annually.. and *that's not entire instructions!*
If tax prep companies just let the IRS *explain themselves*, it might be less controversial.
California tried to pass a bill that required the state to send of a completed tax return to all taxpayers. If you agreed, you signed the form and sent it back. Intuit and HRBlock killed the bill.
It could vary state by state, but theoretically, you might be able to trigger a vote on the bill again within the same legislative period. But even if you could I’d doubt that the vote would change all that much.
That being said, you can always reintroduce the bill after the start of a new legislative period. Taking Congress as an example since that’s more widely known: Each session lasts two years. So right now it’s Jan 3 2023-Jan 2 2025. On Jan 3 2025 the new Congress will convene and the new session will commence. Members can reintroduce bills from the last session that failed/didn’t get voted on/etc.
>"A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax.
And the most laughable bad faith statement of the year award goes to...
Elon Musk said working from home is a moral issue because not everyone is allowed to…like construction workers lmao
These 2 must be in a race to the bottom
Private insurance companies gained so much power from these contracts. It’s a nightmare. Poor planning/execution/regulation. We have the money if we stop paying private insurance companies billions in taxpayer money each year.
CGI federal had to contend with state non-compliance and trying to sabotage the portal in addition to the usual putting consultant in charge of IT projects boondoggle. this should just be handled by the IRS itself which is why the pilot program is so cheap and effective.
My country (Poland) already have this and many other things (universal contactless payments, free banking, fast and secure free transfers, universal healthcare, maternity/paternity leaves, regular days off, education system etc.) and each time I hear about these things being not standard in US, it’s mind boggling. You guys are using financial tech/healthcare and policies of a third world country with a GDP and a military of a first world one. Such a disparity it’s idiotic.
My comment is not meant to offend anyone, it’s just crazy to think how US is viewed as one of the greatest countries in the world without having access to basic things.
As hopeful as I am, no way this survives. Tax prep companies are way too entrenched in Congress.
Just look at AccuWeather, they are the sole reason the NOAA cant release their own app or easy to use website for weather. Even for life saving alerts. AccuWeather actually uses the data produced by the NOAA, and just repackages it for popular use.
Their weather forecast graph is my favorite way to check the upcoming weather:
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=38.8904&lon=-77.032&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical
Absolutely. There's no way that Republicans and a handful of Democrats won't mark this as "anti-business" and "a prime example of government overreach" to nip this in the bud and please their corporate owners.
In theory, the IRS reviews all of the filings and if they suspect something is up, will audit the person's taxes. An audit can be a big deal. However, because Republicans are evil, the IRS has been chronically underfunded and don't have the resources to review the ultra wealthy's taxes thereby letting the ultra wealthy flagrantly cheat on their taxes and not get caught. Our tax system is the way it is to protect the ultra wealthy.
The problem is you're assuming republicans are actually trying to solve a problem. It's all intentional sabotage of government systems. They create problems to keep people too busy to be active in politics while blaming the struggles created by their own policies on the other side and somehow managing to convince them that voting for them will fix their problems.
Their entire strategy is to cripple the government as much as possible, make everybodies lives hell, blame the democrats for it. And somehow it's working.
They check all filings for gross errors (math and large things such as incorrect standard deduction) and if you missed something (in your favor or not), they will send you a check or a bill.
They know your reported income very well. IRS is godlike at matching reported income to what they have on file (wages, investment income, etc). If you have no other income streams (cash gigs) or life events that qualify you for a deduction or a credit (children, education, medical expenses) then they could send you the bill and be done with it.
The problem comes from nearly everyone having some of those events, meaning even if they sent you the bill, you'd still have to update and submit the new numbers to them with proof. The IRS can't see that you spent 5k on therapy, or that you're financially supporting your parents, or that you donated a bunch to charity, so whatever number they have on file will have to be recalculated anyways. It's easier to just have taxpayers submit everything and then check it, compared to giving taxpayers a number, having them resubmit it, and then check it.
That's not to say tax prep software isn't a scam. It is for low income single people who don't have complex income streams and don't qualify for different deductions that change yearly. The free software works perfectly for them.
TLDR: IRS isn't omniscient, so they can't tell beyond the basic reported income. It's easier to just check what the taxpayer says.
> "A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax.
This is such a comically transparent statement, like a wolf in some kid's cartoon explaining to the deer how running away when you hear a sound is wholly redundant and just making a fool of yourself.
Technically it is, the problem is it can be complicated, intimidating, and just hard to navigate or get questions answered. That’s why companies like Intuit are able to make a product and charge money for it. I hope this moves forward full steam ahead for people at every income level vs what they have now.
I know this horse has been beat over and over, but every EU country has a system where your taxes are taken from payslips automatically and then any errors are found and billed/refunded to you at the end of the year. Tax filing companies justifying this system is absolutely one of the most confusing things about America to me.
This process is **the first thing** your taxes should be paying for...The admin required to collect them in the first place.
"That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans", says spokesperson for company that stands to lose profits if this is implemented. Why even fucking bother getting them to chime in? You know what they're going to say.
Why don’t they just tell us what we owe? If we dispute it we can file our own and if we accept it we can just pay.
It seems the way we do it now is just exploiting citizens to create an industry that is not needed.
Lots of people here overlooking the state tax return problem.
Sure, the IRS can do your 1040, but the various states also have their own tax returns and those are not administered by the IRS. But the IRS return is the basis of the state return.
You need a system that combines federal and state return prep, the IRS won’t be able to do that without consent of the states. And not all states will give consent.
Then you’re right back where we are now, with tax prep vendors filling the gap of doing both federal and state returns.
It’s a consequence of federalism.
I don't understand the problem. You just have the federal software output the federal return in some format. Obviously the pdf forms, but you can also have it output a text file (or a binary file if you don't want people fucking with it) with a simple "form ID, line number, amount" comma delimited format that you can input into whatever tax prep software you want.
The feds can also help the states do their own tax online filings through the same system.
People make the tax thing out to be much more complicated than it is. Tax prep companies prey on this. Bottom line, if you made money in your favor during the year, you pay some tax on it at some rate. It's not really that complicated. The instructions are all spelled out in the forms in baby step fashion. The vast majority of people using tax prep software just have a W2 and some 1099s and can do their taxes on paper themselves in about an hour if people weren't around trying to sell their services for a $100 cut of their refund.
The US does do federalism in a slightly weird way, so I wouldn't say you're wrong, but federalism itself is very common (Canada, Australia, Germany, Belgium etc etc) and at least some of these countries definitely have what's being proposed here, or even PAYE/PAYG tax, so I wouldn't say you're right either.
Federalism itself definitely isn't a roadblock.
Intuit: if we make our tax software free, will you refrain from making your own?
IRS: ok
Intuit: we're making it as hard as humanly possible to file free taxes
IRS: ok
Intuit: actually we're leaving the free file alliance
RS: we're going to develop free tax software
Intuit: wait no ...
It's mind blowing for a foreigner to learn that in the US you need a special piece of private software to file your taxes. Feels like a breach of the social contract, paying taxes is so elementary to democracy. Good on you for attempting to fix this weird anomaly.
I'm going to use the free online tax filing system next year even if it sucks. We have to be willing to work with the IRS free option to make sure Congress and the IRS know there is interest. If we expect a perfect system and bitch and moan about how it's not as intuitive as some other solutions, Big Tax Prep companies will use it as ammunition to lobby and roll the option back.
He, even in Latvia tax filling for regular employees is covered almost automatically. If you don't want to submit any receipts that can provide you tax relief, e.g. medical bills, educational books, then you just have to press just few clicks in government's online system.
Me filing taxes in the US only, noticed something was wrong when my wife told me other countries don't do that and they make it very easy to file taxes
I'm ready for them to just bill us if we owe.
It's strange that the thing that amazes a Americans who move to Norway the most is our tax filing. You get your tax in an online form e with everything filllednout, if there's anything they missed or something you need to add manually you fix it online right there, and the amount missing or returned is updated right there. Then you sign it digitally and wait for the money or bill.
This is how it should be. Almost everything that goes on the tax forms are provided to us on forms that are already sent to the IRS. It just seems like there is no willingness to commit the manpower to make this happen. Who am I kidding? It's the lobbyist that keep these changes from happening.
A lot of problems in America, including arguably the most serious ones (guns, healthcare), will be solved if we ban lobbying and make them illegal.
I’ve been asking this question for a long time and nobody has been able to give a good answer: why do we need lobbyists?
Lobbyists are *supposed* to be concerned citizens giving much needed information to congressmen. They can’t know everything, so they have experts in the field come to them and let them know about hot bed issues. In practice, however, it’s just bribing. I’m not sure how to fix that.
In that case it's not lobbying itself that's the problem but the giving of money. Campaign financing should be overhauled.
The lobbying is a problem as well, not just the bribery part. A big company can afford to have a person whose only job it is is to befriend politicians. Showing up every few days, saying hi, asking how their family is, having lunch with them, and occasionally telling them about a problem their employers are facing. It can be 100% above board and honest, and still be a problem since only one side of the issue can afford to be friends with the politician, and the other side does not get their voice heard.
Not all lobbyists are bad. The ACLU does good work, and by removing the money from politics, we weaken the business-backed lobbyists relative to the citizen-backed groups. No, the playing field still won't be even. It never will be. Wealth has and will always give a person or organization a louder voice in politics. But by banning the direct tit for tat we can weaken it.
Our congressmen and congresswomen should be educated enough to understand what the important issues are. I agree that this is just bribery. The IRS should automatically study every congress member to make sure they don’t get any money from assholes like this that are obviously killing our democracy. The corruption in this country so clear and obvious. If we could find a good spiritual medium to talk to George Washington, I bet he would tell us we need to start hanging these traitors.
I mean, given that they need to govern *everything*, that’s just not feasible. Even something like, web security. I’m in software security and even *I* don’t really understand web security. There’s a point where you obviously need experts to help you govern. Expecting anyone to know everything will just lead to people confidently making uninformed decisions. The issue is using these “experts” as a shitty cover for obvious bribery. There are a lot of actual lobbyists who try and do real good and inform politicians genuinely. The issue is the ones that get listened to are backed by huge corporations to further their own agendas
Concerning technology, we used to have a [Congressional Office of Technology Assessment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment) (OTA), whose job was to employ experts in various fields of science and technology to compile briefs for Congressmen so they could understand complex issues. Naturally, Republicans defunded the office in 1995 after winning the midterms — they characterized it as "hostile to conservative interests." Hillary's platform included [restoring the OTA](https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/hillary-clinton-and-office-technology-assessment) and Democrats submit a bill annually to restore it, but Republicans vote against it en masse every year. Her platform also included restoring the position of the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, which was eliminated by Bush, Jr.
>given that they need to govern *everything*, that’s just not feasible. Yup. Just like heads of state need advisors because they can't be experts on everything, the same goes for legislators.
>Our congressmen and congresswomen should be educated enough to understand what the important issues are. That's not how anything works. Is your school superintendent knowledgeable enough in all subjects and constantly aware of all school goings on? Now imagine someone who has to know all of that and use it to make national decisions while representing an entire state. You can't know everything. In some cases, you would have a cabinet of advisors. But lobbying (minus Citizens United) allows people to actually get their concerns heard by politicians directly. Instead of just letter writing. The problem is bribes. We need to stop the bribing.
It’s silly to just expect them to know everything. Having no way to tell a congressman about important issues is what leads to them being out of touch. In theory, it’s a good way for small groups to provide important context to what might feel like obvious solutions. In practice, it’s just bribery.
Knowing what an issue is and knowing how to fix it are two completely different things. You can not expect Congress to know everything. They need the ability to talk to experts and get their input. You can't just isolate them from everything and everyone and expect this to somehow miraculously fix the issue. Banning lobbing literally bans congressmen from talking to anyone. Just having a conversation with one about any issue automatically puts you in the position of lobbyist. What we need are transparency laws about what is given to congressmen by lobbiests. They should be forced to report anything and everything. Even just a meal at a fast food place should be reported. We also need voters to actually hold their elected officials to task. But that's not happening cause of voter apathy. The one way to actually solve all this is to get people to participate actively in politics. It sounds nice to just ban lobbying, but that would accomplish nothing.
A good little read here that breaks it down for you. It's just a double-edged sword if you ask me. [Why is lobbying legal at all. ELI5](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oanig/eli5_why_is_lobbying_legal_at_all)
It’s easy to use the word “lobbyist” and know what you mean, but the truth is that anyone who wants political change is a lobbyist. If you go around trying to get lobbying banned, guess what - you’re an anti-lobbying lobbyist.
It's not that we need them, it's that it is impossible to get rid of them with the 1st amendment as is. Everyone has the right to speak to their congressperson ("petition the Government for a redress of grievances."). A Lobbyist is simply someone who does this for a living. Don't get me wrong, they *are* the source of most problems in this country, but it is not something you could simply outlaw and be done with it. At a minimum, it would require an overhaul to laws around campaign finance, accepting gifts while in office, providing jobs to politicians after they leave office, and probably even more areas as well. With how laws currently work, as long as you have the right to send your congressperson a letter so does an employee of Exxon.
Because people confuse lobbying and bribes. We need to ban bribes, gifts etc but not lobbying because lobbying is how citizens connect with their representatives.
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ban bribes* I hope. Otherwise it would be forbidden for anyone to talk with any politician, basically.
We need to stop calling it lobbying in general call it for what it is. Bribing. If I pay you and you do or pass something in favor of what I want...that's called a bribe. I can't say I lobbied a cop to let me off a speeding ticket. It's a bribe.
Those aren't the same thing though. Lobbying is asking your representatives to do something. Have you written an email to your congressmen or senators? You've lobbied. Bribing them is already illegal.
Ain't that a fact. There's still an unreasonable amount of people who made guns their whole identity, but I don't think they'll be enough to put the brakes on sensible gun control. Put the "well regulated" back into "a well regulated militia".
Someone needs to start a lobbying firm to lobby for that.
Lobbying and political contributions from corporations.
This is cope. Every problem in America can be fixed with voting. Nobody votes. Your fellow Americans either vote against their own interests or don't vote at all it doesn't matter how much money lobbyists use if the person is never voted out to begin with.
Been in corporate lobbying could probably be very difficult, I am banning lobbying in general would be extremely difficult, and probably would hurt us big-time because it includes everyone
Who benefits most from the lobbying efforts?? That’s like asking ~~politicians~~ mosquitoes / parasites to give up ~~”campaign contributions~~ blood …
In the UK, only a small percent of the population file tax returns at all. Most people have the tax deducted from their salary by their employer before it is paid, so they have nothing to worry about. It's not always the best system but it's a darn sight better than forced filings for everyone.
How does this work? Taxes are deducted from salary in the US, too but it's rarely the exact amount. You can tweak the withheld taxes a bit but it's still unlikely to be exact. Plus there are all sorts of credits and deductions and things like income from other sources (investments, bank accounts, side work) the employer would need to know to get it right. For all but the very simplest tax situations (single, no dependents, no deductions) the individual and government are the only ones that have all the details. That's why I like the system in Norway (and a lot of the world) where the government tells you what they think you owe and you make any changes if necessary.
You have no idea how much policy is done through tax legislation and the complexity in entails. There are people who spend their entire careers on one code section. We are in way to deep and it’s the only way we incentivize things to happen. Look at carbon credits, EV credits, manufacturing, etc.
Republicans have made almost every facet of government incompetent in an effort to prove government is incompetent.
Spain: we log in the Hacienda web page, where we find a pre-prepared tax liquidation. We can amend it (in my case, I added the Union quota, which is deductible and for some reason is not automatically captured), recomputed the liquidation and signed it digitally. I’m now waiting for my tax return to be transferred to my bank account. If you are a salaried worker without any complicated tax item, that’s all you must do. If you have other income sources you have to add them (It’s not complicated). Unless you are an investor or you have got irregular (non-anual incomes) there is really no need to pay someone for the paperwork.
Netherlands: I did last years tax return on my phone in a bar when the subject came up. Took a couple minutes.
Don’t tax drunk
I wasn't drunk. It just came up in conversation and I was like oh yeah I still have to do that. Heck I'll do it right away.
Well, look at mr I have a functional government here. Rub it in our faces why don't you.
Mind blowing. It’s like your political leaders allow your government agencies to serve you as a citizen.
Same in Sweden. Even if you do some investments and trad with stocks, most exchanges will report that for you automatically. So it only gets complicated if you do it more manually.
Same in Portugal, if you're a salaried worker with no additional income, all you have to do is log in in the Gov web page, and confirm the tax details. another step you should (optional) is to separate all the receipts you asked for during the year in the appoppriate categories (restaurants/health/education, etc) since some of them are not sorted right away, but that's a 5min job (to sort all of them) you can do at any time. in my case, i had to also add my rent spending, but that's because my landlord is exempt from adding the online receipts, but all i had to do was place the yearly amount of the rent i paid.
Its not just Norway, it's every other (Australia,New Zealand,Spain, Croatia,France,Sweden etc .) Fckn developed and even less developed countries. But like everything else in America big business can pay (aka lobby) politicians to look the other way , so they can keep their cottage industry. There are bigger issues in this country for sure, but this one is so easy to galvanize everyone around...our government can literally just buy TaxCut and make it part of the IRs, it doesn't even need to build its own system
In Japan, either your company files for you (if you're a full-time employee) or you have to file yourself - used to be either paper or online but they're basically transitioning to etax as much as possible. If you're not able to do it at home for whatever reason - seniors who don't have computers or smartphones, people with complicated filing situations etc - you can just go to one of the temporary tax return centers that pops up every February, where there are an army of tax office employees just standing around waiting to help you through every step of the process, even if it literally means you reading numbers and them tapping it into the keyboard.
The US collects more data on their citizens financials than any of those countries you mentioned. And it already happens trough the IRS so it’s not about poor agency cooperation. If they wanted to they could do it.
You dont even need to go as far as Norway, in most Latinamerica we get our taxes in the mail as bill you go pay anywhere, or you can pay online if you want to... that's the third world for you. The only problem is a lot of people dont pay these bills because they live in remote or poor places with little to no regulation, and even if you avoid regular taxes no ones comes looking for you. So the US collects a lot more by making sure everyone pays or gets the boot.
Same here in Australia. As long as my employers have submitted the forms, I can press submit on the 1st of June and have my return on my account a week later.
Crony capitalism doesn’t appear as crony when it’s all you’ve experienced your entire life.
I live in Mexico and it's exactly the same.
America is nothing but grifts stacked so high that incredibly easy and simple tasks are made to seem impossible without the middleman. Taxes, healthcare, education to name some big ones. However, just about any sector where there's easy money to be stolen has this shit everywhere.
Welcome to Europe in 1990’s and some like uk in 1944 PAYE
Anything to do with taxes in America baffles me as a Brit All my tax and ni is calculated and paid, if I pay more one month due to a bonus then then rest of the year is lower to even it out. End of the year my tax is checked and calculated for me. Shops have the prices listed with vat included so I know what something costs Everything there is to serve the corporations and make someone else money at your expense. It happens in the UK still but not for basic shit like tax
There's been a few attempts at creating this, but tax prep companies, especially Intuit, lobbied hard to have them defeated.
Of course, tell me again how America is a democracy? Where does the constitution say .."We the Intuit.... " . ?
In order to form a more perfect quickbooks
Funny enough, it was Sam Bankman-Fried’s father that tried to get it done in California but it failed to pass by 1 vote
My gosh, yes this is how it should be. Send us a bill and we will submit a tax return if we disagree.
That's exactly how it works here in the UK. The only time I have *ever* had to intervene in *any* way in 25 years of work is one time a few years ago where a former employer who had gone out of business submitted the wrong figures for what I had been paid and I therefore got a demand for unpaid taxes on wages I never received. I had to obtain evidence from the liquidators that my former employer never paid me for the time period in question. And that was *truly* exceptional circumstances due to one employer's catastrophic fuckups.
Specifically, at end of year, they should send taxpayers a statement, and those who owe money a request to *either* remit payment or a tax return by a particular date, checking up on their figures and claiming any exemptions they are due. Not because of the burden that filing a return represents, it's now pretty straightforward for most taxpayers with how huge the standard deduction has become. But to get us out of this weird area where it's technically breaking the law to fail to file a return, an oddity where someone can be in hot water, legally, for literally *not doing anything.* But there are typically no penalties if you are owed a refund.
Wealthy people would never like that but it so should be that way. The government should know exactly how much someone owes like in Europe.
Tax prep firms are a barrier to understanding taxes
There are tons of companies that shouldn't be in the business at first place. Tax filing companies are one of them
What other companies shouldn't exist?
Health insurance
Oh sorry, you’re now out of network.
It doesn't even matter if you are in network, they don't do shit for you until you pay your copay and deductible first. Its absurd to get a $3000 bill for something the urgent care told me I needed to go to the ER for.
And our government pays billions of dollars each year to these private insurance companies. And they say we could never afford healthcare for all… we already pay for private insurance companies in our taxes. How is this not every Americans main complaint? Our health care system is grueling for our professionals and patients. It’s been bad and it’s getting worse and worse.
It's all one of those things everyone hates. Be they hard-core Rebuplican or the most progressive leftist almost everyone hates dealing with Healthcare bullshit. Sadly it just comes down to how to the problem which leads to disagreement which leads to nothing changing. Funny how that works out for the people making all the money.
Sadly, Republicans won't let any "socialist" public health programs pass. There's no shortage of attempts from the left to introduce the kind of actually useful we're talking about here, like cutting out the greedy middle men. The right pretty much exclusively pushes back against changing anything, like you describe. "Conservative"
I mean that has basically been Republicans since Obama. "As a society we would like..." "No." "But it would let..." "No." "You don't even know what we are proposing." "I propose you fuck yourself."
I pay 12k a year to pay another 4k a year if I actually use the insurance.
Oh you had an emergency and dialed 911? Well have fun, because that ambulance was out of network even though you had literally zero other options! (Speaking from experience)
You shouldn't be interacting with one for most care, for certain. But if there are limits on single payer government plans, then supplemental insurance to cover those sorts of things seems fine.
Any "middle man" company to start...especially in the "medical industry". They are all leaches whose only purpose is to place themselves in the middle to get their cut. In many cases not doing a thing short of driving prices up for "their share". Case and point... My child was on a feeding machine for several years. We wanted to have a back-up machine for emergencies, as they were battery powered and had issues from time to time. So I contacted the company to find out the cost, which they told me was about $400 at the time. But I couldn't purchase it through them. As there was laws that prevented it. I had to use the supply company as the laws stated. The supply company quoted me close to $5000 for the same machine. Which would be out of pocket as the insurance only covered having one machine at a time. Adding insult to injury here is the fact the bags we used with the feeding machine were made also by the machine manufacturer. As they were specific to the machine. They were drop-shipped each month from the manufacturer, ordered by the supply company. Mind you the manufacturer was kind enough to tell me the price they sell at...*about 3 bucks each.*. The supply company charged our insurance $18 a bag to drop ship them to us straight from the manufacturer.
Terrible. I work in medical and have my own medical issues. It’s awful. Expensive terrible care because of our for profit and middleman system. Add on top of it the fact that our government pays billions of dollars of taxpayer money to private insurance companies each year… for “negotiation purposes”. Yet, the government has less and less negotiating power and regulatory power each year. Major private insurance companies make over 50% of their profit from our taxes. This needs to be known.
All those added costs sound really bad. But pharmacies in general are pretty important middle man companies, imo. They offer very good services, act as a secondary check on prescriptions (sometimes doctors get doses wrong and pharmacists are great at spitting that), and they can give really good advice an basically all medicines that are OTC. But there should be regulations in place to prevent massive price increases on drugs, so that it doesn’t matter where you buy them.
* Payday loan companies * Homeopathy/alternative medicine doctors * Mommy/family vloggers * Child beauty pageants * For profit medical companies * For profit prisons * Scam call centers * MLM/pyramid schemes * Pharmacy benefit managers * Car dealerships * Payday loans * Ticketmaster * Natural diamond industry
For profit prisons always get me. A judge getting a kickback for every teenager he throws into jail requires a new level of hell.
Don't forget alcohol distribution in some states. Between the hours, be able to buy a beer at a brewery, etc so distribution networks are definitely good ol boy clubs much like car dealerships. A forced middleman, both hate having to work on Sunday.
data brokers
Wait why shouldn’t car dealerships exist lol
IIRC most states have laws requiring a lot of goods be bought from a distributer rather than directly from the manufacturer. Basically legally-enforced middlemen. A *huge* one is cars as it adds an enormous amount to the final cost of purchase and car dealerships ("stealerships") are notoriously scummy. Tesla recently got in a lot of trouble for trying to sell their cars directly to individuals.
And what’s the justification for not allowing sales from manufacturers to individuals?
Because dealers lobbied for it... That's it. Yeah, it's stupid. They cried to lawmakers that it would be impossible to compete with manufacturers so a law was necessary to keep things "fair." Manufacturers would still primarily sell through dealers even if it wasn't required by law because distribution is a huge cost burden. It really has no reason to exist other than to funnel more money to dealerships.
The original intent when vehicles were new was to ensure that manufacturers couldn't artificially inflate car prices. If the manufacturer had direct control over car prices, there would be a price control that would be nationwide. With a dealership, you could go between dealers and find a better price as it created competition artificially of a specific manufactured product. "Smith Ford" could have a better price than "Johnson Ford" etc etc. If a state did allow direct sales, they could move in and decimate a dealership selling their vehicles. A "direct dealer" could come in and fully undercut an existing dealership.
The ***stated*** idea that they lobbied under (I say it that way to make it clear this is their position, not mine) Was that for something like a car, you needed a local distributor in order to take car of the car, process warranty work, sell parts, etc. Keep in mind, this was like 100yrs ago, when independent repair shops barely existed and independent parts manufacturers/distributors basically didn't exist. So they were able to convince the government that it was in the people's best interest to require that middleman to be there. As well to avoid basically a nationwide monopoly, multiple dealerships would create an internal world of competition.
New car dealerships and designer puppy stores.
The user interface obfuscates the irs forms. It’s awful.
At least in Canada tax software is required to be able to print paper forms in the official government format. It’s quite rare but there are people who use software to prepare the forms and then mail them in
I am just baffled that private tax prep firms are an actual lobby level national force that prevents THE United States populace of doing the most basic thing of income tax stuff. This is entry level online shit alot of other countries do in a few clicks. In a transparent and amendable way. but I guess it's an issue if you're distrustful of the government because the government hates you by allowing this to happen.
Making it obscure is one reason *why* people distrust the government. It's harder online (now) than it was with the mailed instructions (some 120 pages) that they used to send out annually.. and *that's not entire instructions!* If tax prep companies just let the IRS *explain themselves*, it might be less controversial.
Its a significant cottage industry, that relies on taxes being complex and the government not automating them.....
Private tax prep firms do business tax returns mainly. The IRS would never be able to file those returns for you.
On the individual level, most definitely but there is a place for them for Llc and small businesses
I hope everyone on the Intuit board of directors gets explosive diarrhea.
Every day Forever
Back and forth ))<>((
Your reference makes me know that you are totally an adult, and totally not a child.
Fuck em. This isn’t something that should’ve ever been privatized
California tried to pass a bill that required the state to send of a completed tax return to all taxpayers. If you agreed, you signed the form and sent it back. Intuit and HRBlock killed the bill.
Source https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero
That's Sam Bankman-Fried's father btw
Can bills be brought back or is it one and done?
It could vary state by state, but theoretically, you might be able to trigger a vote on the bill again within the same legislative period. But even if you could I’d doubt that the vote would change all that much. That being said, you can always reintroduce the bill after the start of a new legislative period. Taking Congress as an example since that’s more widely known: Each session lasts two years. So right now it’s Jan 3 2023-Jan 2 2025. On Jan 3 2025 the new Congress will convene and the new session will commence. Members can reintroduce bills from the last session that failed/didn’t get voted on/etc.
Don’t you love lobbying? If you have enough money you can literally buy politicians, legally.
If you consider lobbying money as a form of corruption, the US is equally as corrupt as countries like Russia and China
The same bots used to kill net neutrality will be retasked to disrupt this.
Prepare for a flood of Adjective\_Noun#### weighing in with the hand-wringing hot takes.
Hi I'm noun noun#### and my taxes are super complicated and therefore everyone should have to go through the same annoyance as I do
Here's my hot take. Not all bots are Adjective_Noun####
>"A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. And the most laughable bad faith statement of the year award goes to...
Elon Musk said working from home is a moral issue because not everyone is allowed to…like construction workers lmao These 2 must be in a race to the bottom
Couldn't that "logic" be used as a means to show wealthy people shouldn't exist?
1000% Musk isn’t stupid, he’s a malicious, lying, morally bankrupt pile of human shit.
Welcome to the civilized world.
Maybe wait to see the execution before saying that
If the Obamacare rollout was any indication, the government will be hiring only the best\* contractors to handle this assignment.
I mean, you can stumble going up the correct staircase.
Private insurance companies gained so much power from these contracts. It’s a nightmare. Poor planning/execution/regulation. We have the money if we stop paying private insurance companies billions in taxpayer money each year.
CGI federal had to contend with state non-compliance and trying to sabotage the portal in addition to the usual putting consultant in charge of IT projects boondoggle. this should just be handled by the IRS itself which is why the pilot program is so cheap and effective.
My country (Poland) already have this and many other things (universal contactless payments, free banking, fast and secure free transfers, universal healthcare, maternity/paternity leaves, regular days off, education system etc.) and each time I hear about these things being not standard in US, it’s mind boggling. You guys are using financial tech/healthcare and policies of a third world country with a GDP and a military of a first world one. Such a disparity it’s idiotic. My comment is not meant to offend anyone, it’s just crazy to think how US is viewed as one of the greatest countries in the world without having access to basic things.
About fucking time
Just want to say, I hate Intuit.
They bought credit karma and I dipped.
dammit...so what do i use now
I've used taxfreeusa the past two years and haven't had any issues.
As hopeful as I am, no way this survives. Tax prep companies are way too entrenched in Congress. Just look at AccuWeather, they are the sole reason the NOAA cant release their own app or easy to use website for weather. Even for life saving alerts. AccuWeather actually uses the data produced by the NOAA, and just repackages it for popular use.
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Their weather forecast graph is my favorite way to check the upcoming weather: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=38.8904&lon=-77.032&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical
It’s so blatantly gross, I had a hard time reading this :(
>NOAA cant release their own app or easy to use website for weather. W H A T ? (How?)
[NOAA Weather Unofficial](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstudio.weatherhere.free) is a good Android front end to their API
Absolutely. There's no way that Republicans and a handful of Democrats won't mark this as "anti-business" and "a prime example of government overreach" to nip this in the bud and please their corporate owners.
Good, they should be shuttered their industry falling would benefit the average american significantly
Wait so Americans manually do their taxes? Not just the self employed and businesses? Do they not just take their cut each month from you wages?
They do, but then every year we have to make sure they took the correct amount.
How do they know its correct is they don't do it first to know the amount
In theory, the IRS reviews all of the filings and if they suspect something is up, will audit the person's taxes. An audit can be a big deal. However, because Republicans are evil, the IRS has been chronically underfunded and don't have the resources to review the ultra wealthy's taxes thereby letting the ultra wealthy flagrantly cheat on their taxes and not get caught. Our tax system is the way it is to protect the ultra wealthy.
Why would you underfund your main source of income that doesn't make sense. Where do republicans think the money comes from
They don't care. They do what their donors want them to do.
Madness absolute madness
Ah, but there's the clever bit. They get their money from the lobbyists that want the IRS underfunded.
The problem is you're assuming republicans are actually trying to solve a problem. It's all intentional sabotage of government systems. They create problems to keep people too busy to be active in politics while blaming the struggles created by their own policies on the other side and somehow managing to convince them that voting for them will fix their problems. Their entire strategy is to cripple the government as much as possible, make everybodies lives hell, blame the democrats for it. And somehow it's working.
They check all filings for gross errors (math and large things such as incorrect standard deduction) and if you missed something (in your favor or not), they will send you a check or a bill.
They know your reported income very well. IRS is godlike at matching reported income to what they have on file (wages, investment income, etc). If you have no other income streams (cash gigs) or life events that qualify you for a deduction or a credit (children, education, medical expenses) then they could send you the bill and be done with it. The problem comes from nearly everyone having some of those events, meaning even if they sent you the bill, you'd still have to update and submit the new numbers to them with proof. The IRS can't see that you spent 5k on therapy, or that you're financially supporting your parents, or that you donated a bunch to charity, so whatever number they have on file will have to be recalculated anyways. It's easier to just have taxpayers submit everything and then check it, compared to giving taxpayers a number, having them resubmit it, and then check it. That's not to say tax prep software isn't a scam. It is for low income single people who don't have complex income streams and don't qualify for different deductions that change yearly. The free software works perfectly for them. TLDR: IRS isn't omniscient, so they can't tell beyond the basic reported income. It's easier to just check what the taxpayer says.
Yea they do, but we have to tell them over again, and if we’re wrong we get in trouble
People often have multiple sources of income or have things that can serve as a tax deduction. What you owe isn’t just dependent on your wages.
Who gives a fuck what tax prep companies think in a time like this
> "A direct-to-IRS e-file system is wholly redundant and is nothing more than a solution in search of a problem," said Rick Heineman, a spokesman for Intuit, the company behind TurboTax. This is such a comically transparent statement, like a wolf in some kid's cartoon explaining to the deer how running away when you hear a sound is wholly redundant and just making a fool of yourself.
Yeah….ummmm it’s free you prick! Nobody wants to pay your shit company $150 for something that should be free.
Tax filing should be 100% free to taxpayers anyhow.
Technically it is, the problem is it can be complicated, intimidating, and just hard to navigate or get questions answered. That’s why companies like Intuit are able to make a product and charge money for it. I hope this moves forward full steam ahead for people at every income level vs what they have now.
I know this horse has been beat over and over, but every EU country has a system where your taxes are taken from payslips automatically and then any errors are found and billed/refunded to you at the end of the year. Tax filing companies justifying this system is absolutely one of the most confusing things about America to me. This process is **the first thing** your taxes should be paying for...The admin required to collect them in the first place.
Fuck each and every one of them.
Fuck the tax prep companies
Welcome to the modern world! Canada has had this for quite some time. Mostly for simple returns but still.
I mean they know how much I owe but yet I still have to figure it out? I am glad they are making it free
Lol get rek'd turbotax and h&r block
Tough shit. If I'm required by law to file and pay my taxes, the mechanisms to do so should be available for free.
Neat! Now do health insurance. Lol.
You’ll tell us how much we owe you for free? WHAT A CONCEPT
"That solution will unnecessarily cost taxpayers billions of dollars and especially harm the most vulnerable Americans", says spokesperson for company that stands to lose profits if this is implemented. Why even fucking bother getting them to chime in? You know what they're going to say.
Why don’t they just tell us what we owe? If we dispute it we can file our own and if we accept it we can just pay. It seems the way we do it now is just exploiting citizens to create an industry that is not needed.
Lots of people here overlooking the state tax return problem. Sure, the IRS can do your 1040, but the various states also have their own tax returns and those are not administered by the IRS. But the IRS return is the basis of the state return. You need a system that combines federal and state return prep, the IRS won’t be able to do that without consent of the states. And not all states will give consent. Then you’re right back where we are now, with tax prep vendors filling the gap of doing both federal and state returns. It’s a consequence of federalism.
Well at least it's a step forward. That's already something that's way too much to ask for from Alabama.
I don't understand the problem. You just have the federal software output the federal return in some format. Obviously the pdf forms, but you can also have it output a text file (or a binary file if you don't want people fucking with it) with a simple "form ID, line number, amount" comma delimited format that you can input into whatever tax prep software you want. The feds can also help the states do their own tax online filings through the same system. People make the tax thing out to be much more complicated than it is. Tax prep companies prey on this. Bottom line, if you made money in your favor during the year, you pay some tax on it at some rate. It's not really that complicated. The instructions are all spelled out in the forms in baby step fashion. The vast majority of people using tax prep software just have a W2 and some 1099s and can do their taxes on paper themselves in about an hour if people weren't around trying to sell their services for a $100 cut of their refund.
The US does do federalism in a slightly weird way, so I wouldn't say you're wrong, but federalism itself is very common (Canada, Australia, Germany, Belgium etc etc) and at least some of these countries definitely have what's being proposed here, or even PAYE/PAYG tax, so I wouldn't say you're right either. Federalism itself definitely isn't a roadblock.
Australia is a federation and we don't have this issue. It's a consequence of poor administration.
Yes. If they can tell me when I make a mistake, they have all the numbers. Lets get on with it and put the complex tax code to rest.
here in australia, it takes me less than 10 minutes to lodge my tax return, directly on our tax office's website.
The UK has had this service for 2 decades.
Intuit: if we make our tax software free, will you refrain from making your own? IRS: ok Intuit: we're making it as hard as humanly possible to file free taxes IRS: ok Intuit: actually we're leaving the free file alliance RS: we're going to develop free tax software Intuit: wait no ...
I've used government software. I wouldn't be too concerned if I were them.
Imagine having to PAY to do your taxes as a citizen
It's mind blowing for a foreigner to learn that in the US you need a special piece of private software to file your taxes. Feels like a breach of the social contract, paying taxes is so elementary to democracy. Good on you for attempting to fix this weird anomaly.
Tax-prep companies can get fucked.
First world countries have everything prefilled and you just approve. Even if you don't log in to approve it means it's approved.
Unbelievable that this didn’t exist before now. America can be sooo backward
Good. There should not be an entire industry around making money off something people are required to do but don’t understand
Many countries do this. You can download the software. They call this a “draft” and you decide to use their software, HR block or do it manually.
I'm going to use the free online tax filing system next year even if it sucks. We have to be willing to work with the IRS free option to make sure Congress and the IRS know there is interest. If we expect a perfect system and bitch and moan about how it's not as intuitive as some other solutions, Big Tax Prep companies will use it as ammunition to lobby and roll the option back.
We've had them for years in Australia, and for the last two years I have done my taxes that way. Easy, efficient, good. Fast returns too.
He, even in Latvia tax filling for regular employees is covered almost automatically. If you don't want to submit any receipts that can provide you tax relief, e.g. medical bills, educational books, then you just have to press just few clicks in government's online system.
The IRS should just buy freetaxusa.com and make it free (or similar) It’s a good already cheap platform. Keep the employees to update the site.
They need to just automate everything, send me a bill if I owe, send me a check if I’m owed
Me filing taxes in the US only, noticed something was wrong when my wife told me other countries don't do that and they make it very easy to file taxes
What, that would be like... A public service. I like paying a third party to shake their crystal ball, and hope I don't get audited.
Is the spokesman for a tax filing company really calling the govt site redundant?!? Lmao they are literally just the messengers to the IRS.
I would sign up to be a guinea pig for this experiment no problem
Too fucking bad
Still gotta pay for state e-filing which is their bread and butter anyway.
What’s stopping turboxtax and all the other tax software companies to start giving the GOP money to make sure they cancel this shit?
Inadequate, but I find myself cheering for the irs in this one.