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Congress is About To Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing (propublica.org)
Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. ProPublica reports: Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa). In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits.
"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.
"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.
Politicians from both sides introducing a bill that's bad for citizens based on the lobbying of an industry. To quote Claude Raines from Casablanca, "I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here!"
This isn't capitalism at work, this is its friend cronyism.
If lobbyists are involved, itâ(TM)s not an open marketplace.
Oh, boy. You do know that they actually LOOK at the returns, right? Try having them not tell you how much you owe when they audit you.
Filling out a W4 is going more complicated too. Whatever happened to filling out your taxes on a postcard?
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or if you are just an idiot.
Just like health care, they throw the good of the population under the bus to protect existing industries that profit from the horribly broken status quo. And a large chunk of the population has been tricked into liking it that way.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Are you seriously advocating for people to send their taxes to multiple services (paying a fee for each) to determine which can find your lowest tax bill?
Nobody is saying that they want to outlaw accountants. That's a gross misreading of the law. If you want to having someone look for savings in your tax bill then that's your prerogative. If you don't think those people are worth their fee because your return is simple then a free government service will probably save you money. The only people who lose are the middlemen who take a fee and fail to find any extra savings, which is an extremely common situation.
I read the internet for the articles.
For the past three or four years I've used freefilefillableforms.com, which has no income limit and is linked directly from the IRS website. Yes, you're basically filling in a web form which is laid out exactly like the paper 1040... but so what? It's free, and it's online.
Obviously they're not referring to that program, since it already exists.
#DeleteChrome
IRS should just open-source it.
Without doing my own research, I'd love to hear if someone has the industry rationale for why this is better for anybody beyond their shareholders. What's the twisted logic that gives the politicians cover?
There is no such thing as a "free government service." If you do not pay for it directly, you pay for it indirectly, with increased taxes. The only way to keep such things as cheap as possible is by using a free, open market like we currently have. Keep the government as uninvolved as possible.
Crony capitalism at it's worst (economic fascism).
What is itâ(TM)s and why is it in your message? I have seen things like this in other messages and do not know what that means.
Nuff sed, AE911Truth Org
If the IRS has to do their own system development for auditing purposes to check submitted returns against "their calculation", why haven't we opened that up to the public already? Sorry, that's a bit off topic, since we're talking about lobbyists thwarting a system that many of us don't qualify to use anyway -- but it's another case of pro-corporate politics in the US.
C. Griffin
"Can I keep his head for a souvenir?" --Max from Sam 'N Max Freelance Police
It doesn't have to be "totally free" to save me money. Currently to e-file costs around $45. It's nearly a guarantee that the government can run the service cheaper than that. Virginia had a service like that nearly a decade ago and it cost them about $40k/year for the entire state. Lobbying from the tax return industry killed it and now every taxpayer in the state pays on the order of $55 each year to e-file. Millions of dollars funneled to H&R Block, Intuit, etc... because they bought off some representatives. Not once has any service saved me a dime off of my state taxes. I can't think of any money they have saved me on federal taxes either. The only reason I use them is because there is no free way to e-file if you have a middle class income.
I read the internet for the articles.
"In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013."
Given the government's security track record, is there anyone here who thinks pre-filled tax forms being sent to us (or made available online) is a good idea?
#DeleteChrome
Maybe... but my tax office actually spotted and corrected a mistake in my tax filing a few years ago, which ultimately resulted in a *lower* due tax...
given how often the IRS gives bad advice on taxes, and the fact that they're not responsible for errors, I really don't have a problem with this. Nobody in their right mind would use any software made by the IRS anyway.
Itâ(TM)s saying youâ(TM)re retarded.
If the IRS makes a tool, we know it will only work on Windows.
The government should not pick and choose operating systems.
But not for widely-used software. If the government is paying for the cost to develop, manufacture, and provide a material product to the public, then it's not free. It's being paid for by taxes. And because it's being given away by the government without charge, there's no way to tell if the government's product or a commercial product is cheaper or more cost-effective. The government product will always be able to undercut the commercial product based on price, even if it's less cost-effective for the economy (i.e. costs more in taxes than if the users had simply bought the commercial product). So it makes sense to keep the government out of manufacturing.
Software is different though - it has essentially zero cost of duplication and distribution. That's the entire premise behind the open source movement - leveraging that zero cost of duplication and distribution to maximize benefit to society. Essentially you can view what the IRS is doing as hiring a few people to write tax software for them (so, maybe $200k in development costs), then duplicating and distributing it to everyone for free. Even if the IRS charged double their development costs for it, I doubt Intuit and H&R Block could compete with that price (e.g. if they sell 10 million copies, then each copy should be priced at less than 4 cents).
In other words, for a material product, the bulk of the cost is in the materials, manufacturing, and distribution. The engineering and design work is (for something which will be used by hundreds of millions of people) negligible. For software though, the materials, manufacturing, and distribution cost is nearly zero. And when you amortize the engineering and design costs over hundreds of millions of people, it becomes negligible. So the optimal solution in fact does become for the government to pay for it and give it away for free.
(Incidentally, I've used H&R Blocks tax software to file my taxes for close to a decade. Mainly for their guarantee against errors, and hotline where I can talk to an accountant if I have any obtuse tax questions. Those are the types of features and services they need to promote to distinguish themselves from the free IRS tax software.)
The government service not being free doesn't lead to the conclusion it also has to be more expensive than a private company's equivalent. Of course ultimately it must be paid, but the increased taxes are not necessarily higher than the "free and open market" price.
This is especially true when the "free and open market" actually is dysfunctional, with competitors not competing that hard but actually colluding, legislators not keeping things under checks and balances and the consumers getting milked as hard as possible in the name of profits.
There is no such thing as a "free government service." If you do not pay for it directly, you pay for it indirectly, with increased taxes. The only way to keep such things as cheap as possible is by using a free, open market like we currently have. Keep the government as uninvolved as possible.
There is no such thing as a "free, open market", that is an utopian concept. It is fun talking about utopia, but building your world view on it shows how naive you are.
USA is so great. Even shitty little backwater countries allow their tax agencies to provide free software and filing for their citizens, e.g.: eTAX is provided and maintained by the ATO in Australia for Windows, macOS and linux. They even provide and maintain a free web-based version.
This is completely backwards.
The IRS should develop more free online filing systems that meet the needs of 99% of the typical consumers who are not in business for themselves. The IRS should only certify tax software that produces, at no additional cost, the standard output needed to input to the IRS's free online filing system. In the long run, it would likely save the IRS money as they would receive less handwritten dead tree forms and those with math errors in them.
Tax filing companies can make their money offering better interfaces, more help, etc. (as, I expect, the IRS native solution would end up being usable, but clunky).
Every year, I'm actually tempted to file my taxes on paper -- copying, by hand, each field from my H&R Block forms onto IRS dead tree forms just to encourage the IRS to offer better, free, online filing options (although, since I use H&R Block, I can file Fed online for "free" -- for the state I have to pay something like $20 -- so the state still gets paper - but I don't bother copying it over by hand to state forms).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
They look at a small sample of them, or anything that an automated check flags as flagrantly bullshit, then they put the screws to you.
The vast majority of returns are never looked at by any human, and no machine is doing any sophisticated logic. They have income reported to them and they determine what you owe, if you report that you owe significantly less, you get flagged. If you're not flagged by those basic sanity checks or flagged for random sampling, you're in the clear.
I am unsurprised by the notion of taking away a free service that is really not encroaching on the private sector to many meaningful degree, but what's with the Orwellian langauge? No-one is fooled about who this is putting first.
it is not to late to stop this monstrosity
if just 10% of the people on slashdot actually bothered to contact their congressional delegation (1 rep + 2 sen) this wouldn't
you don't call you loose your right to complain
call email telex wire now
this is something you can do
Taxpayers first to get it from behind
This happens all the time. I have no idea what the GP is smoking.
"Old man yells at systemd"
And yet you choose to trust the people who are influencing the rules designed specifically to limit the choices you have. Incredible.
"Old man yells at systemd"
At least the US government *could* be convinced to release their source code, soon you will have to use proprietary software to pay taxes in the US.
In this case, what is there left to do, but to stop paying taxes & to start stocking up on guns and ammunition. Ballot box isn't working? Go to the ammo box.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Illinois has had online filing for free for quite some time. Despite the website being "outdated" (I call it a clean design), it works quite well. It's saved me quite a bit of money over the years.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The only reason I use them is because there is no free way to e-file if you have a middle class income.
You can print out the forms and mail them in for less than $2.00 (mine was $1.38 for postage). It still took two weeks to process, then an additional two weeks to mail me a check because something didn't match on my bank account (I don't know why I bother anymore).
Federal was electronically sent and processed in two weeks as well (then direct deposited in my bank account).
You're country is a joke.
Software is different though - it has essentially zero cost of duplication and distribution. That's the entire premise behind the open source movement - leveraging that zero cost of duplication and distribution to maximize benefit to society. Essentially you can view what the IRS is doing as hiring a few people to write tax software for them (so, maybe $200k in development costs), then duplicating and distributing it to everyone for free. Even if the IRS charged double their development costs for it, I doubt Intuit and H&R Block could compete with that price (e.g. if they sell 10 million copies, then each copy should be priced at less than 4 cents).
One other important point - the IRS already needs this software anyway, since they have to know if people are paying the correct amount. And really, as the summary points out, the IRS already receives most of the data that people enter in their tax forms, so forcing people to transcribe all of the data is a waste of time and obvious source of errors.
At first this annoyed me. Because I figure that if they're going to force me to pay them money they shouldn't be adding insult to injury by making me pay to do their paperwork for paying them money.
But then I thought about it for a second:
1. The IRS is infamously inept with technology (they're still using paper in 2019).
2. The government is infamously bloated, inefficient, inept, incompetent, and just... stupid in every way at actually getting things done.
3. Wouldn't I rather have something that actually works? (i.e. Turbotax)
4. If the government had to write its own tax software wouldn't they simply increase my taxes to pay for it? So couldn't I just think of the price of tax software as being part of the taxes that the government protection racket was going to take from me anyway?
5. Wouldn't I rather have the for-profit tax software company be liable for errors in the software instead of just being screwed if the government (inevitably) screwed up?
So I'm actually OK with this if it gets passed.
Isn't it the _basic_ role of the IRS to make it as simple and automated as possible ?!?
A lot of the blame can be put on Grover Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax, small government group. One of the things his group advocates for is to make filing taxes as hard as possible. The group fears that if filing taxes is easy, then people won't resist paying them or the growth of government. For those of you who may not be aware, Norquist pushes aggressively for politicians to sign a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that basically fights any new taxes. For Republicans, it's almost mandatory less have one of the largest right-wing groups move against you.
The agency in charge of collecting your taxes is not allowed to provide a portal where you can submit them your tax information, and instead you have to pay a company to fulfill your legal obligation to file taxes?
What a dystopian shit hole.
The entire US tax system has been purposely made more and more complicated by industry lobbyists, in order to create work for their entire industry. Any congressman that votes for this is a criminal.
Tax collection is the most inherently governmental function there is, yet for some reason we have to distribute taxpayer money to subsidize a bunch of redundant filing systems because "CAPITALISM!" or something?
The mind boggles.
I should cite it every time somebody blames democrats or republicans. Both are whores equally.
Tin-foil hat mode here... What if this awesome "free IRS app" were to store and report on things like changes in values, corrections, etc.. In theory, they could use that as one of the factors in evaluating whether to audit somebody or not (ex. "if income value changes more than X times, add Y to we-should-audit-this-guy score). Given how well I type, that would be a bummer...
then the government should not be there to prop it up. Period. This does nothing to benefit all those except a small few; it harms the country as a whole.
It just really shows you...our representatives don't work for us. They work for corporations. They work for the rich. They work for whoever can put money in their pocket instead of the people that they're supposed to represent.
This is why political parties need to go...they're just two sides of a "fuck the people" coin. Until people in this country can look past a fucking label...we will never be able to actually get to a point that any of this will do people any good.
That and I'm pretty pissed I had to pay about 20% of my income just to find out I had to pay the government another 10%.
In other words, eventually it'll never be possible to only submit your data to the government. All your tax data will end up going though 3rd parties and all of them will data mine it. Sure, you can use paper forms now. How long until you have to pay a large fee to file paper forms? That'll be the next goal of the industry. The IRS should pay for itself.
And the extra stupidity of it all, even with all the data mining we still have to fill out extensive forms for mortgage and the like despite companies already having that data.
not the way to keep bullets out of your body.
Australia has an online thing called etax, it lets you pre-fill almost all your data, all your employers are prefilled, health fund stuff is prefilled and even interest from your bank accounts (assuming you provided your bank with your tax file number). For people with simple tax needs (a normal job or two, maybe a few deductions for stuff you bought for work etc), it takes maybe 15minutes to do your tax. For people with more complicated tax needs it does take a bit longer, but it's still pretty quick.
News at 11.
https://twitter.com/superzar2000/with_replies
I think we need a "Name acts the opposite of what they are" act so that we can finally get acts that are named what they are.
Their plan is simple confiscatory taxation. They don't need no stinking website. At least no one actively DOS'es the private websites yet.
In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing.
Where in the text of HR 1957 is government prohibited from offering online tax filing?
Short titles of all legislation should be required to be determined by an independent nonpartisan committee.
Article 1 section 8 says:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Duties, imposts, an excises are taxes on transactions, on doing things, as opposed to a tax on being (either a tax on a person being alive or a thing existing). A sales tax is an excise tax. The requirement, then, is that the tax is uniform - the feds can't set a different rate in California than Florida. Note there is no mention of census or population. So no Constitutional issue with a national sales tax.
So where DO we find a mention of population?
We find that regarding "direct taxes", which are taxes on being (either a person, being a alive, or a tax on a thing based on what kind of thing it is - a tax being a car or being a house). This as opposed to taxes on transactions, on doing. Direct taxes therefore are:
Real Property taxes
Capitation ($x per person)
Personal property taxes
See
Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service and United States, case no. 05-5139,
For these direct taxes only, the Constitution provides that:
--
Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.
So the feds can't tax each of the states $1 billion for property, direct taxes (taxes on people or property) have to be apportioned by population.
What does "apportioned" mean? Well, we're talking about taxes here, not spending. Apportioning TAXES means how taxes are levied amongst the states. As mentioned previously, this applies only to direct taxes, so it has no relevance for transaction taxes anyway.
Nearly all members of Congress were never interested in serving the Common Good, only in serving their own pocketbooks and those of their friends in their own little tribal circles. There's scarcely an egalitarian in the entire bunch. It's nice to see them be blatantly honest about their true motives once in a while, as opposed to the usual doublespeak and obfuscation.
for the rich people.
See fixed that for you.
We need Bernie in charge so he can call these mother fuckers out. Can't even pay my taxes without hiring professional help? Our "democracy" is a sick joke.
Why does a populace owe allegiance to a government that is actively enacting laws to hurt it's citizens
... what's the rationale these politicians are relying on to push this?
Everyone should fill in returns hand-written. It would crush the system. It would mean delays, but it would make them look terrible. And that is necessary.
On another front, airport security theater, if 5% of people requested manual searches at airports that system would implode. Myself, I don't request such a search but I travel with baby powder. It's not a liquid but they have to test it manually with me at a table (take a sample, add some solution, wait - they also go through the bag, I pack underwear) to verify it's not drugs.
Props to President Kennedy (with an amendment):
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you â" ask what you let them do to you "for your country."
BlameBillCosby.com
Maybe its better when both sides are at each other's throats. When both sides agree we usually end up invading somewhere or get crap like this.
Not sure if my recollection is 100% on this, but I recall a similar issue with the National Weather Service (NWS). They put up the satellites, staff professional meteorologists, run super computers, etc. But lobbyists were trying to get the NWS's weather forecast website shutdown because it challenged weather.com, and other weather sites for views. And being completely un-American, the NWS site didn't even have ads (!)
refuse to vote for politicians who take money from Super PACs and big money donors. I'm adding the latter qualifier as Beto O'Rouke seems to have used the $2700 limit and a lot of repeated small donations to make his fundraising hall look like Bernie Sanders' when it's looking more and more like he got a few thousand rich folk in a donation network to fund his campaign on the sly.
Either way it'll come out later this month when he's forced to declare the number of unique donors. You'll need to watch out for that stuff now, but opensecrets.org is your friend.
Bottom line, just don't vote for anyone who takes PAC money, and watch out for fake populists and this crap just ends. Your Trumps, Bidens, Pelosis, Paul Ryans, etc of the world can't win if they can't outspend real populists 10 to 1.
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Supposedly, they only sell "anonymized" data.
But there's fast growing shadow industry of data "de-anonymizers".
Tax data is easily one of the most valuable data sets out there.
Ever wonder why there's an explosion of "free online tax" services ?
Must be data harvesting. . .
I'm politically active, so I always TRY to do my taxes in "tin-foil hat mode".
It's getting to be more and more insanely difficult.
I get the TurboTax disk, put it on a clean VM or hard drive, run the updates, and do all of the rest offline.
At the end, I create a PDF, put that on a USB stick -- then print and mail.
TurboTax continuous bugs you, trying to get you to connect to the internet.
Two years ago, TurboTax would not let a Mac "print to PDF" without connecting to to internet. (for PDF drivers ?)
That set off a bunch of alarms in the forums !
This year, on an old Windows laptop, I'm doing my taxes and -- I swear -- something keeps enabling WiFi that I deliberately left turned off !
private prisons are looked on fondly because they keep the riff-raff out of your neighborhood. Most people are on their parents insurance until they get a job, job funded insurance until they retire and Medicare (socialized medicine for old people who are otherwise uninsurable) after that. There's also a smattering of ex-military who get socialized medicine from our Veteran's Admin by virtue of having served and, well, a lot of them are big on IGMFY.... Free taxes is just one more check box. Why should _I_ pay for the poors to get money back?
It's counter productive. Recently the right wing Dems and GOP are attacking social security and Medicare (they want to means test it, which in America is a death sentence for any program) and have even started cutting the VA under Trump (who can somehow get away with saying and doing anything without taking a hit in the polls). It'll bite them in the ass eventually, but some of them will die before it happens. And in the meantime it just feels so damn good to kick down.
We call it stigginit. I used to think it was a bullshit concept made up by bitter left wingers, but I've seen way, way too much of it to think that anymore...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They actually don't know if you are paying the correct amount unless you are flagged for an audit; it's up to the taxpayer to ensure that they're calculating their tax correctly. And you're legally liable for penalties if you screw up in a way that doesn't work out in their favor. Sure, they have algorithms that compare some of the data they receive from your employer(s), investment accounts, and other sources like your health insurance provider, and wild discrepancies can be a red flag that gets you marked for an audit, but they don't calculate your tax owed automatically.
If you ever get audited, it sucks. Basically YOU have to do all the work to prove that you paid the correct amount of tax, and the burden is on you to provide extensive documentation to back up every penny, even information they already have. Can't find the documentation for that deduction? Estimated your income from savings account interest because you didn't want to look it up but you were a few dollars off? Claimed you donated so much to a charity but threw away the thank you letter they sent you at the end of the year? You're screwed.
That's the whole complaint with these for-profit tax preparers; the tax code is so complex, it's virtually impossible for the average American to accurately calculate what they actually owe. So in many people's minds it's better to spend a few $$ for a guarantee that if the TurboTax screws up your taxes (assuming you provided the correct info), they'll help cover the penalties for you.
I NEVER use Windows anymore, and I rarely use Macs -- except to do my taxes every year. ;)
There are the free web versions -- but I'm never gonna trust those
Why is not one talking about banning taxes all together? All taxation is theft. I guess you dick lickers just love giving your tithe to the 13 families that run the world (federal reserve)
Nothing is free. Using tax revenue to undercut an entire industry that creates jobs doesn't really sit well. There is no free, everyone is paying for it. And everyone has a choice to do them for free the old fashioned way, find a 'free' service, or pay for it.
The job of the IRS is to collect taxes, not prepare them. Now if you could show it actually saves the government money I'd likely be all for it as a cost savings.
Income - PovertyLine = Taxable income.
But I have three kids. Where's my deduction?
You don't get a child deduction. Having kids was your choice that other people should not be required to subsidize.
Your idiotic argument doesn't even define "ProvertyLine", which will definitively be affected by all the children born whose parents you're denying any deductions.
But hey, that's fine - don't have any kids! In 40-50 years we'll have an empty country, complete with cities, ready for colonization!
I'm like Donald Trump: I don't want the government seeing my tax returns.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I love the names they come up for these sorts of things. This one in particular must have come from the congressional sub-committee of ironic bill titling.
I have been filing free but in the last couple of years because of my puny business made me drop into a category where the online services want to charge me over $100 for my measly taxes I can mostly do myself with much effort. This would be yet another shot across the bow of those who don't really earn much.
Sad that the Pols think they should stick it to the little guy again.
On the other hand do we really want the IRS developing software that pretty much everyone will have to use? What if they get it wrong and create a big security hole? Or it is just super clunky?
I refuse to pay what is effectively a " ghost " tax ( purchase of software to do my taxes ) for the privilege of submitting my taxes to an entity who could, just as easily, calculate them without involving us at all.
In fact, just to be fun, I do them manually and MAIL the physical paper forms to the IRS. All schedules and whatnot stapled to it.
( Try to force me to spend $ so I can prove to you that I overpaid and you owe me $ will you. . . . watch this. )
Other than some stocks, Capitol Gains, etc. I really have no deductions to speak of so it takes me about an hour to do the math and double check it.
Costs me a stamp.
I see the big exemption at the bottom, but all that does is move the point of disadvantage. The person making $1,000 over the cutoff will feel the tax more than a person making $100,000 above the cutoff, who will in turn feel it more than the person making $1,000,000 more than the cutoff.
Consider the graph of the tax paid at each income level. A flat tax is by definition a straight line at a constant slope*. The left end of the sloping line intersects the X axis at the 'poverty level' cutoff. It doesn't matter where you put the cutoff. The people near the left edge of the sloping line (poor people) are more strongly affected by the tax they pay than people near the right edge (wealthy people, or more accurately, high income people).
*:Tax paid is a straight line with a constant positive slope, tax rate is a straight line with no slope.
Fuck them all: Intuit, H & R Block, the IRS as well as Congress. Everything involved in this is bad: inappropriate government programs and budgets that are a burden to the people, back-room deals with law makers that undercut the liberties of the people, immoral creation of tax code and their enforcement, cronyism from businesses that use government to create artificial markets and enforce them, ... etc. Fuck them all.
Think for a second how much it cost the IRS to enter the information from your paper forms, and consider overall cost. This is a simple optimization problem.
Those who neither harm nor steal from others are Moral.
Taxation *IS* Theft, Theft is Immoral.
That Theft is ultimately at Force of gunpoint Assault, such Force and Assault are Immoral.
Resisting that Theft and Assault *WILL* get you Murdered, Murder is Immoral.
Youtube search: Keith Knight, Larken Rose, Mark Passio, Gavin Seim, Taxation Is Theft
After watching 100 videos or on that so over a few weeks to get
your facts straight, then you can come back and talk proper Redpill.
Till then stay Sheeple, my Slaves.
Lookout!
Things are never darker than when the corruptocrat Republican wave and the corruptocrat Democrat wave meet to make a really big wave of government crap.
NEVER file your taxes online "for free"!!!!!
To do so, you must provide the provider [like TurboTax] all your most vital personal info INCLUDING YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER. Mark Z could only dream of getting the data that these tax firms get for free and with nary-a-thought from their "customers" [AKA "fools"] who are not actually customers at all, since they're not paying any money. The REAL customers of these tax preparers are all the same people who are Zuckerberg's customers: the people who buy data about users.
The founders of the USA specifically made it so people would have privacy in their personal papers (read the Bill of Rights). They did not allow a federal income tax nor an IRS. The only people paying the federal government were wealthier people and businesses who were importing junk from abroad instead of using American materials and evergy and workers. The entire US government was originally designed to run on tariffs and there was no reason for any American to dread April 15th or worry about something called an "audit".
Over the decades, the combination of (mostly the left's) wanting more government programs (driving up the cost of government) and rich people and big business wanting the burdens of all those tariffs reduce on them, resulted in a massive shift of federal tax burden from elites buying luxuries and businesses importing stuff, onto the very middle class whose jobs and wages were suppressed by "free trade" (i.e. the removal of tariffs on inbound stuff while doing nothing about foreign tariffs on US exports).
https://docs.house.gov/meeting... The only thing in the bill that even resembles a ban is a section on how they have to work with 3rd parties. Do yourself a favor and STOP reading the headlines (Sec. 1102. IRS Free File Program): "(4) The IRS Free File Program shall continue,to work cooperatively with the private sector to provide the free individual income tax preparation and the electronic filing services described in paragraphs (2) and (3)."
Some people wake and wonder, "how can I make things better?"
Others wake and wonder, "how can I make things worse?"
I think Congress is full mostly of the latter sort.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
I think it's just an opportunity for them to give the taxpayer room to make mistakes so that they can be penalized later.
Though that said, there's something to be said for giving taxpayers a chance to fib about their finances if it can weed people out of the market when they get caught
I fee like the government has become too corrupt, itâ(TM)s time for a sweep change.
Hard to understand why it's legal to name a bill/act/law the opposite of what it is. (Easy to understand why it's done.)
So basically if something says "for the good of the American people", you know that it's all about fucking over the American people.
https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
Free e-file for any income. It's not as easy as most tax software packages, but it does work.
Only a matter of time till we are paying for the privilege to breathe air.
Enabling the violent psychopath that is government via voluntary "cooperation" is to further harm people and that is immoral. Before you go off on me about all the good the government does there is nothing good that the government does you can't or couldn't do without or other by other means. Need security? Buy a gun- or hire security. Need an education? Cough up the cash. Need transportation? Did you think there were no roads before the government starting taking them over and monopolizing them? Hint: There was a long history of private toll roads in the United States prior to government takeovers.
Meanwhile in the rest of the world.
1. login to tax system 2 weeks after start of tax season (the system will 100% crash)
2.all information is prefilled so click submit.
3. there is no 3.
When the country runs on capitalism, and people freak out over *gasp* socialism, you can't have laws for protecting the people, only protecting profits.
If your industry is a parasite on the human race - then fuck your industry. Right up it's stupid ass, with a big dick. Lots of jobs were lost when slavery was banned in the United States - boo freaking hoo. More jobs were lost when asbestos was finally banned along with DDT and lead paint. Etc.
Your priorities are inverted, sir.
Capitalism is an inherently corrupting ideology. If you wont buy off regulators and politicians, your competitor will and drive you out of business, to the benefit of your competitor's shareholders.
The House passed a bill banning the government from creating 'free' tax preparation software like TurboTax, forever.
Quote: "Many of the lawmakers shepherding the bill through the House Committee on Ways & Means have benefited from campaign donations from tax-preparation companies like H&R Block and Intuit."
That "free and open" market also has an added cost called "profit," which the people who want to privatize government services never seem to think about. The IRS could do all of the work for most people with the information they get directly from employers and banks (and such), all this is is forcing people to give money to corporations for no reason other than the corporations wants it.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Taxation is Theft.
It's already a version of hell for expats; this change means that you'll be paying hundreds or thousands of dollars just to prove that you don't owe any taxes. And this will be necessary even if you only make $15k a year.
They may only exist in US military bases, depending on the country. If you are not affiliated with the US military, you will be shot, beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested (not necessarily in this order) if you try to go there.
$400/yr to H&R Block?
Typically, prior years kids were $165/yr to file their little returns. OK, they've progressed to W-2's and 1099's but $400 to file CA and FED is outrageous.
This passes and tax season will be on us like a Honey Badger in predator mode.
In New Zealand, to save hassle, the tax dept does calculate their view from the data to hand. The taxpayer makes claim if tax dept is wrong, eg rebate is due.
There are still leeches (indeed, that's the name of a Chritchurch tax agent) but it does allow for a simplified tax system.
Google "NZ Inland Revenue"
So anyone that can't afford the commercial alternatives will have to resort to paper forms?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Planet Money on NPR did a nice story about an effort in California to have a "Ready Return" like most countries that was already filled out for you. Episode 760: Tax Hero
Make love, not reality television.
Right now, they are NOT liable for giving you bad information, bad guidance, or doing incorrect calculations on your behalf. I wonder how many people would trust them to get your return right, when if they make a mistake they can come back and fine you for the error AND the interest on the error.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
CNN had and article yesterday that congress is working on new W-4 withholding forms and has delayed them til 2020. The tax companies say they are concerned that the new W4 being like a 1040 will make people wary to tell their current employer on the W4 all of their income (spouses income and any 2nd, 3rd jobs) they have, including interest dividends etc along with tax deductions since it allows your employer to know all your financial info before submitting it to the gov. The new W4 is supposed to make it more accurate on withholdings so people aren't shocked like this year when the gov. changed the 1040's and lost their refund and had to pay more. Thus taking out more reduced the complaints to the congress about how much the gov. takes which makes for a happy constituent.........I guess my answer to all of this is the answer to all the questions is zero dollars.
Because to most people, they'd rather shit the money down the drain than "give it to that goddamned government". This stops inherited wealth accumulating. If you're wanting "simple" then this is all. Family owned businesses? They are either passed on while the current owner is still alive to the next generation and dealt with as any such gifting would be or, if publicly owned/traded put up to the highest bidder.
Family owned massive businesses too, they should be sold on death on auction to the highest bidder, the money to be used in the tax pot.
Family homes: either you have your own or you still live with your parents, who will either pass it on to you while alive or you have to bid up to purchase it.
Each legal dependent gets up to 100k "tax free", the rest to be taxed at 100% or ponied up for auction (from which the dependent will get the 100k before the rest goes to the government coffers).
At risk the person with 10m/year has 10m each year and all their accumulated wealth and property. That person on 1m/year has a tenth, if that, of the wealth and property to protect by those services. Moreover, like every rightwing idiot, you "forget" the marginal value of money. Someone paying $3 for a loaf of bread to eat for the next two days will see a lot of value in their 3 dollars, whilst someone paying $300 for an egg white omlette at a fancy resturaunt sees a lot less valye for their 300 dollars.
So since the money is worth less to the wealthy, it needs to be taxed more because while the poor person is most likely to be accosted by the police, the toff is most likely to know the station captain personally.
Let them deal with 20 million returns on paper.
While it's certainly true that the vast majority of returns are never looked at by any human (it would be insanely cost-prohibitive), I would suspect that the logic applied by their automated systems is decent. My point was, they will tell you what you owe, even with the current system.
Why is allowing them to create and offer online filing any different from allowing them to create paper forms with instructions for the calculations? Feel free to go ahead and use tax preparers, accountants, etc., but if you choose not to, why is it necessary to pay some company for the privilege of filing online?
We've had a free, government-made, online tax filing system for years. We call it NetFile.
You know what it has done to the tax prep industry, such as H&R Block? Fucking *nothing*, because most of us Canadians are too damn lazy to use NetFile, we just pay those people to do our taxes for us like we always would, and then *they* use NetFile to make their lives easier. My mother used to work for Canada Revenue Agency (our IRS equivalent) and would always come home complaining about all the boneheaded mistakes made by H&R Block that she had to keep fixing for her clients.
United States government and corporations are being retards again. If they only could look North, they'd see that this is not a threat at all, and in fact would help these businesses be more profitable and get their jobs done faster.
Hell, it would work *better* in the U.S., because your tax code is more complicated than ours. More people would be inclined to just hand it over to a tax preparer for a fee than we would. The concept of "free" in this situation is more an exchange of money for time. Do you really have the time to even figure out your taxes, and if so, how valuable is that time?
Yes, it is nice to be obligated to pay a private firm to pay taxes to the govt. Nothing at all wrong with that. /s
Perhaps we should, as a protest, boycott H&R and friends, but use their systems to get the numbers, manually fill out the forms, and send them in and make the IRS enter the numbers into their system manually, then they'll stop paying Congress to subvert the will of the people.
... as long as you can pay for it.
More likely they'll lobby for banning the forms.
... I thought now at least in the House things would be all hunky dory? No wascally wepubwicans to do mean stuff like that?
Yes, and? Democrats are just another party of corporatist warmongers. Who as often as not are to the right of the GOP. See: Clinton gutting Welfare, Obama starting multiple wars without Congressional authorization, the last three years of Russiagate McCarthyism which sees the party attacking Trump from the right...
I use DIY tax. It's provided by liberty tax (those guys with the dancing statue of liberty out front) and doesn't seem to bug me about upgrading.
This year it wouldn't let me e-file my state return, so I mailed it in.
Cheap storage VM.
For someone who is regarded as a champion of minority and poor rights, this is a super crappy way to treat the people who most need tax help. Take this guy's name off all the public projects named after him!
The poorest people are paying negative taxes (consider EIC). Yes they absolutely are being subsidized by the higher income people. And yes, kind of by default the cutoff point and the size of the subsidy are deeply connected.
I remember when the top marginal rate (in the US) dropped from 70% to 50%. I'm not sure that a marginal rate of 50% is justifiable, much less 70%. Let's not even talk about 96%. To be clear: I am a leftist and many here probably call me a socialist, but I want Americans to be able to become fantastically rich. I mean Scrooge-McDuck-swimming-in-the-vault rich. I want Larry Ellison playing bumper cars with mega yachts, I want Elon Musk building spaceships, I even want Bill Gates flying around Africa trying to cure malaria. Honestly, I'm kind of pissed off that none of them have built a mega-zeppelin yet.
I don't want to tax anybody at 96%. But I do want to protect the poor ('cause I'm one of them!).
Wealth is a positive feedback system. The more wealth you have, the easier it is to grow wealthier. I'm not saying all rich people manage it, but it's easier than going from poor to rich. This positive feedback is a contributor to the growing wealth inequity in the US. I don't know what the answer is, but then, I never claimed to.
I just pointed out that flat taxes are inherently regressive.
It's not about some people are poor and some are less poor. It's about how hard it is for poor people to become less poor.
The first guy makes 26 and keeps 25.9. The second guy makes 100 and keeps 92.5. His boss makes 1M and keeps 902.5. His neighbor makes 10M and keeps just over 9M.
The guy making 26? You have to take that $100 out over the course of a year, because a lot of people living at that level are unable to cough up $100 all at one time. An extra $100 dollars going out the door can cause those people to be late on their rent.
The guy making 10M? That $1M tax bill will not affect his standard of living measurably. It will probably only slow down his investment schedule, delaying the day he becomes a billionaire.
Yes. I have a problem with that.
I meant inequality, not inequity.
But the government doesn't pick winners and losers, they let the free market speak. Are we still feeding people that line of BS?
I refuse to sign
and take out the trash
What does a cowardly pedophile who sits in the corner and eats shit out of his own asshole look like? Look in the mirror. Now fucking kill yourself you simpering, whiny little bitch.
— the pathetic living punchline that is impersonating gerald butler
I'm not arguing that I made it easier, cheaper, faster for the State. I just made it cheaper for me by not paying H&R an extra fee for something that was probably pure profit for them. I'm not hurting for that money (I've probably spent more on a toy for my kid when he didn't need it), but give me a cheaper option to accomplish the same task and I'll probably take it.
I've advocated for reverse tax forms. That is the IRS already has all the information (W2, 1098G, 1098T, etc) now, why don't they prepare a one/two page report, mail them out in late January. You can review the form and if it looks correct you either wait until April 15th or mail in a confirmation letter at which point they cut you a check, or you cut them a check. If the information isn't correct or you wish to contest it, you send back a rejection letter with a completed form of what you think it should be.
That wouldn't eliminate all forms, but for 80% of the people it would take just a few minutes to confirm the totals looked right and mail back a pre-made confirmation letter. For the other 20%, you get to explain why you should pay less taxes (because nobody would take the time to pay more, right?) Everybody would still have to do something, but the amount of work you need to do would be just a few minutes. The amount of work the IRS would need to do would be, a few minutes as everything would be done by a computer and automated equipment. Auditors and staff would only need to review the 20% (if that) of the paper forms that came back in. That would make it easier (almost all automated), cheaper (less people, less paper forms needed), and faster (review and mail back a yes or no letter).
But that's not how our government works. So I'll just keep mailing my form in, and they will just keep messing up the direct deposit, deal?
I'm sorry that your retarded uncle molested you while you were watching Children's Television Workshop and Mister Rogers. That must've been traumatic. But, please, don't take it out on other children. Get help now.
— gerald butler's coprophilic impersonator
When looked at from Europe, some things in the US are absolutely insane: for profit prisons (that'll want to maximize recidivism), for profit health insurance (that'll deny any expensive claims), guns everywhere, and now you have to pay to fill your taxes ? Isn't it the _basic_ role of the IRS to make it as simple and automated as possible ?!?
What are you talking about? G4S Security runs a private Prison in Europe.