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Tracking Your Taxes
CTealL writes "Apparently Intuit thinks it's okay to share information about taxes with third paries. According to this article,
Intuit is using a third party tracking technology on all tax forms submitted to the IRS. "We could capture your name, your Social Security number or any other information that you willingly pass to a Web site," acknowledged Matt Belkin, who serves as vice president of best practices for Utah marketing giant Omniture, which tracks the online activities of people using Intuit's TurboTax. The IRS disavows any knowledge of this, saying "The IRS does not take a position on Web tracking tools." Makes you wonder where your tax information is going..."
append an md5 sig to the bottom of all your AC posts. :)
You will be the only one who can decode it and confirm its your comment
So, on Slashdot, everyone will complain about the obvious privacy issues of having your personal information given away for marketing purposes. And, that's it. Now, if a Major Media Outlet were to carry this story, say, Reuters, then you would hear about it on NPR, you'd see it on ABC, and you'd read it in the New York Times. And it would be illegal in two months for these assholes to share your personal information while you trust them to do something as simple as file your taxes electronically. Of course, the Reuters author would have to write it up with a pro-consumer spin. It would have to cry privacy violation in every sentence.
People have no rights anymore because buisnesses stopped thinking about serving you. They now look at aggregates. You have become an after-thought on someones spreadsheet. We have 10,000 customers. We lose 50 this month because they don't like us sharing their information. But we get 500 new accounts from our marketing blitz. The bank is going to say it isn't worth their time to deal with 50 unhappy customers when an advertisment can bring in more customers.
BTW, this is unrelated to this story, but I need help and I have to ask (since all the smart people hang out at slashdot, and I don't know the ipa to any forus to ask). My damn internet connection is not working right. I can't get to yahoo.com, but if i type in the ip address, i get there. What the hell is wrong?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Once I bought a VISA gift card at AAA(that travel place), and they got my social security number and a month or so later I got a freaking cell phone bill in the mail for a phone I didn't even have. Turns out one of the employees there took the number and somehow used it to get a damn cell phone for his friend....I guess you really can't trust anybody.
Intuit notices that you trade a lot of stock. Merrill-Lynch agrees to pay Intuit .20 for every prospective customer lead given to them and will up it to .30 if they are not already a Merrill customer.
There's lotsa gold in them thar data mines.
CRS/GDS companies like SABRE/Worldspan/Apollo, etc do it all the time now. ( I worked for SABRE as a developer for several years )United Airlines gives SABRE a fee for every lead they give them for customers that have flown into ski resorts. More money per lead if these folks have done it more than one year. If they flew someone besides United, then United sends them a coupon for X% off their next flight to said ski resort destination city.
And who else pays for this data? Why the ski resorts themselves! Look for the trend and if you appear to be an outdoorsy type then maybe Jeep will send you a coupon for a special deal from one of their dealers.
If the IRS would actually come out with a method of E-Filing that does not require third party involvement, they would go a long way towards elimenating this type of problem.
It would also be a large taxpayer expense. As it stands now you could get access to send your tax return directly to the government. But you'd have to write the software, and pass the tests, and undergo a criminal background check. This ensures that the government needs to do the least work once it's received a return. It also makes it very hard for criminals to screw up the system by for instance filing false returns for people other than themselves.
Look at the E-Filing instructions and it's all about how to find the right third party to do it for you (for a Fee!).
Actually, at least one third party (the makers of TaxAct), offers e-file for free to everyone. They make it hard to find the link, but if you go to the IRS free-file page, scroll down to "TaxACT.com", click the link, click "Leave IRS Site", and then click on "Start Free Return" then you can e-file your federal return absolutely free.
Hardly. Not everyone pays a percentage. Almost half the workers in the U.S. pay no income tax at all. And, in fact, they get quite a sweetheart deal -- many of those people get a "refund" which is far larger than the amount that was witheld in the first place (refundable credits).
The problem with a national sales tax is that middle to low income earners spend a larger percentage of their earnings. Upper class earners spend a much smaller percentage of their wages. A national sales tax would hurt low wage earners the most as they would be using the majority of their wages on food & basic necessities. The little $ they might have left after their purchases and their tax burden won't be enough for an adequate savings.
It's been my experience that most upper class earners spend virtually everything they earn. They might spend a slightly smaller amount as a percentage of their income, but, 85% of $200,000 is a lot more real dollars than 95% of $25,000. Admittedly, I pulled those numbers out of my ass, they're just for illustration purposes ;)
As structured in H.R. 25, everyone gets a monthly check to prevent exactly what you describe. It's actually a pretty well thought-out plan. You can read more about it at http://fairtax.org/.
Not to mention the fact that the rich can avoid a large portion of that sales tax by shopping in another country. For instance, instead of buying their new wardrobe in New York, they could do it in Paris instead. Similarly for cars, they could buy it in Canada and hire somebody to drive it to the US.
this is absolutely correct. disclosure of information to a third party without explicit consent is illegal. i don't understand why the IRS is letting something like this happening at all. looks like someone high up is profiting from this in some way. yes, hopefully someone is going to sue them. as soon as i have enough time on my hands i am looking into that.
while I agree with you on a sales tax being regressive, the current tax system is still unfair. Those with a lot of money already, perhaps from inheritance (Paris Hilton, anyone?) only pay taxes on their interest, and can mostly get out of that tax too.
The current talk about repealing the inheritance tax is ludicrous. It's the only tax the Paris Hiltons of the world pay at all. Look at it like this: while Daddy worked his ass off, paid his taxes on his earnings, and received the benefits of those taxes (the military protected his investements at home and abroad), if they repeal the estate tax, once he's dead, poor little rich girl never has to work again. Now she gets all the benefits of that military and police protection, the roads, the schools, etc, but doesn't have to pay for any of it! Do we really want to create a landed gentry whose offspring never have to work again?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just use Firefox for all of your web browsing and most of your privacy issues will go away. In FF, just go into your preferences/options under security -> cookies and set that to "ask me everytime" and your good to go.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
" Inheritance is the most unfair, un-earned income imaginable."
Stealing from people only because they are dead is not cool.
That money has already been taxed and it is not your business with happens with it.
Can you understand that simple concept ?
Saying a sales tax will hurt the poor is stupid. Just don't tax the things poor people spend the most money on (food, housing, heating fuel).
And what do you do with the entrepreneur who builds a small business worth $2 million but has few other assets? He wants to pass the business to his children, but they can't afford the tax. The main reason Wal-Mart is so successful is because of government and sociological disadvantages to the small businesses, not economic or efficiency disadvantages.
Nothing. I "worked" at TaxCut last year (to not use quotes would imply that after 10am everyone in my cube wasn't so shitfaced that they had trouble walking to the cafeteria for food, let alone actually go through any work). Interesting times.
Every $8/hour agent has access to every return e-filed by HR Block (not just taxcut) - since 1999 at the click of the mouse. No oversight whatsoever and turnover was very high because the job quite frankly sucked for the PC phone people. They constantly had at least 3 classes of 40 people training because "shockingly" 75%+ would leave by the end of the first week on the phones.
I've heard that they have since changed to where every agent doesn't have access to the entire return, but "just" the social, address, home / work / cell phones, amount of refund (from which you can pretty much guess the income), their first 5 w2s, the date submitted, estimated date that the refund would arrive, spouses ssn, etc.
The only reason that a ton of tax data didn't get used is because most of the people working there were stoned off their asses virtually 24-7 and really couldn't care less about ordering up a couple credit cards in such and such person's name, or letting burglars know that someone at such and such address who works at such and such place just got a $15,000 refund and that they probably have a ton of new shit that could be looted.
If organized crime - or even a couple theives spread around the country - got in on it, they could of have made a ton of money. It would be weeks before the cops caught on - if ever. If someone wanted to, they could even start work there using a fake identity, there was no background check to speak of afaik.
I know this extends a little bit beyond the scope of your original question, but I'm sure that the situation is identical for the other tax programs.
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I guess size matters. I live in Estonia (pop. of approx 1.4 mio) and we have a very good e-tax office, they first introduced it like 3 years ago. Now it took a whole 15(!) minutes to complete my whole tax application and I got my refund in 2(!) days. The key is that our tax office owns and runs the software and all private enterprises are encouraged to e-file their tax info too + all government agencies use the same platform. For example, my tax-application was pre-filled with information about: - my incomes (info from my employer) - my loans (info from my bank, which I have agreed to enclose) - my stipends (infro from my school, which I have agreed to enclose) So I just parse through the information, accept it and submit my tax-form. And yes, it helps to have a simple legislation - no progressive taxations, no tax brackets, not too many write-offs. PS. The e-delarations reached more than 50% of the whole number this year.
Aww.. come on, I might just be succombing to popular myths here, but I seriously don't think that is true.
Morals and behaviour are what you make it out to be. Americans generally (or atleast; more than Europeans) equate money with success, have a high focus on making it the business-life and are generally extremely hard-working. Aswell,a larger percentage of Americans identify themselves by how much money they earn.
Add up all those factors, and I'll think you'll end up with Americans being much more greedy than others.
Just like Americans generally are more shallow (or rather, on the positive side; more friendly/open..which means pretty much the same just with different connotations) than Europeans, partly due to moving around more (more mobile work-force, lack of good social security making people have to move to where they get jobs) and thus less likely to keep the same friends for extended periods of time.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
In Finland the employer automatically deducts the taxes from the salary. It goes like this: I tell the tax-authorities the amount of money I will be earning that year (well, I don't really have to do it, they try to guess the sum based on my past earnings). you can tell them any amount you wish. End result is that if you tell a low amount, your tax-% will be low. But if you earn more than you told them, you will be required to pay extra taxes at the end of the year. Likewise: if you tell a high amount, you will get high tax-%, but you will get money back, if you don't earn that much in reality.
:). We don't have any software to help us pay our taxes, since the whole process is so simple.
After I have told the authorities the relevant information, they mail me a document wich says "your tax-% is this", and I hand that document to my employer, who deducts the correct sum from my salary.
I usually tell larger sum that what I think I will earn. Why? It's pretty simple:
a) That way I can get a raise during the year, without going over the limit I told the authorities
b) When I get my monthly salary and see the amount of money I receive, I plan my future expenses around that sum. When I get a tax-return in the end of the year, it feels like "extra" money, since I had already made my purchasing-decisions and the like based on an assumption that I pay certain amount of taxes and I get no tax-returns. The amount of money I lose on interests is neglible.
Related to this: the tax-returns and the like work like this: They mail you some forms where they tell you "we calculated your taxes like this, and this is the number we will pay you back/you have to pay us. If the numbers are correct, don't do anything. If there are some things you would like to change, use the attached form to do so". Basically you just fill in all kinds of extra expenses that you can deduct (commuting-expenses, interests on mortage, purchases of equipment you need for your work (books, computers, broadband, tools etc. etc. depending on your work)). Attach some receipts to the form, and you are all set. The whole preocess takes about 30 minutes if you have the receipts you need.
All in all, the whole process is very simple and easy. It seems like the tax-hell of Finland has alot simpler taxation than USA does
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
>>But yeah, the target is to owe $999 at the end
>Huh? Why?
Owing (rather than getting a refund) means you can earn interest on the money for a year rather than letting Uncle Sam have it.
$999 is the most you can owe without having to pay penalties and interest for underpayment.
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
More than that, if you know you owe the government money you want to wait until the last filing date. When my money is in a savings account I at least earn interest, once I pay the bill I quit earning interest on the money. Now granted today's interest rates are so tiny this isn't much money, but still an extra few pennies add up over time. (I pay most of my bills on the first of the month so that I can get an extra month's interest on my money, again it isn't much but it adds up over all my bills and time)
Just before April 15 in the US (Taxes are due then here) there is a news bulletin of which post offices are open until midnight. Some people really do wait that long to turn things in. Personally I try to turn mine in a week or two before that just in case something bad happens to me.
I don't know how UK taxes work, but in the US there are a large number of people who have an advantage of waiting until the last minute to pay their taxes. Then there are those who have the advantage of doing them early, but just lazily hold off. Combine together you are right, it is very short sighted to not have system that can handle the load of most people waiting to the last minute.