Slashdot Mirror
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..."
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."
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/.
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?
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
"I bought a VISA gift card at AAA(that travel place), and they got my social security number"
Those gift cards are are something you have to pay up front for, correct? If so, why did you give out your SSN for a cash transaction?
>>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.