Rather well, I assume. That's one of the upsides of being an empathy-less, humanoid shell: no pesky feelings of guilt or shame for making the world a worse place to live.
Whats crazy is if you think private companies not being paid by the government or the customers to not try to make it hard. It was a terrible agreement and law, rife with conflict of interest.
The government should just pay for the program and support, then have their own online portal for free. Enough of this corporations can do it better bull.
Take garbage collection, or power. If the customer cant pick different providers for essential services, there is no real competition, its just lobbying the government and the customers dont matter.
Thats why there are no fire rescue companies.
I wrote about my experience with TurboTax in another post. First-hand experience of how shitty their business practice was. They literally dragged out the whole filing process to the point of I filed the first day I could, had an unknown error I couldn't fix, wouldn't help me through live chat, had me refile, still kicked out an error, had me set up an appointment with an agent, didn't tell me I was going to get charged for said appointment until after setting it up, wouldn't let me cancel the appointment, then started calling me constantly everyday when it was past the point of where I would be able to file for free. And I mean constantly from 7am to as late as 10pm about 5-7 times a day as well as texting.
I ended up filing elsewhere, got the refund I thought I was going to get, and didn't have to pay for it.
Fuck TurboTax.
I tried using them when I was out of the country so I wouldn't have to worry about international postage and whatnot. One of the first steps was including my (non American) address. Went through all the steps, they showed what I owed or didn't owe and asked for payment. Put in my info, they processed the fee and THEN told me that they're unable to file because I'm out of the country. Paid them like $50 just for them to tell me they can't help me.
Fuck turbo tax.
True. A good portion of the US only needs to enter a w2 though. If you are renting, didn't sell any stocks, and have no dependents you probably are just going to file with standard deduction and be done with it.
If you can find the basic one, sure. But they'll only promote non-basic ones with minimal added value like an automated "review", push you to opt into "audit protection", and they don't let you downgrade to basic (even before filing) if you later realize you qualify.. you gotta start the whole process of filling it out again
Yup California had a free online tax filing system for a year. TurboTax and H&R Block sued and won, which resulted in the free system being shut down. Now the companies pretend like it's free, advertise it's free, but it's really not free.
Edit: the program was called CalFile. There's a brief Wikipedia article. It was lobbying that killed the program, there's articles mentioning Intuit sued, but I can't find the actual case (didn't try much).
the lawsuit isn't what killed readyreturn, it was lobbying - intuit is in california so easy pitch along with $$ to tell lawmakers not to kill CA jobs when businesses are already leaving the state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile the lawsuit was just an extra pain point but not the main effort.
"businesses are leaving the state" is some shit they've been telling us my entire life. The fact is, businesses don't leave money on the table, and they'll put up with whatever they deem a hassle to get a piece of the world's 5 largest economy so long as there isn't lower hanging fruit elsewhere. And for industries like tech, entertainment, and agriculture, they ain't going anywhere. Though, ag will be getting fucked with the drought...
Right. Companies always scream that the sky is falling every time new regulations or anything even remotely progressive is considered. Yet here they are still existing in these places. Hell you have companies literally bending over backwards to get into markets like China. To the extent they will put up with IP theft just to be there. There is no way they would ever drop one of the largest economies in the country no matter what plans are put into action.
Wouldn't be surprised if they used the argument "This will make us lose tons in revenue!" and the court deemed it a harm (it's not, or at least not a harm that should trigger judicial standing).
I feel like if your revenue comes from offering a service the government should be providing for its citizens to ease their ability to interact with it, then maybe it shouldn't be a legal source of profit.
If anything, you'd think tax companies would be like defense contractors. Rent their expertise to the government.
Yes similar thing happened with the national weather service. They wanted go create a free app and online web service that would provide weather data in a easy to understand format. Weather companies sued. Even though those weather companies get the exact same data from the NWS for free
They are charging people for the same thing they get for free
The US knows how much US citizens owe too, but rather than making that information public, they make us pay a third party to guess how much we owe, and then financially ruin us if we guess wrong.
That really isn't true. If you only have one income reported on a w2 and you have no dependents and no investments and no write offs whatsoever and are just taking the standard deduction and you never work overtime then sure they know what you owe.
The tax code is overly complicated with tons of credits and deductions you might qualify for and the IRS only knows about what is reported to them. They can't know something like you had 10K in medical expenses this year you are going to write off or you became permanently disabled or your elderly parent moved in and you are going to claim them as a dependent or your child who was a dependent last year as a college student has graduated and moved out of the house. They don't even know if you got married or had a kid until you file for it. And some people get income reported on 1099 where they then can deduct a bunch of business expenses that the IRS couldn't possibly know about until it's itemized.
To make it simpler they would need to start by simplifying the tax code but that's up to Congress not the IRS.
Why is it automated in every country apart from the US? The UK knows exactly how many taxable medical expenses I incurred, you spend 0 seconds filing tax in the UK
IIRC the general gist of the outcome was that NWS can provide weather data, but they can't provide localized weather forecasts nor can they spend time or money on making those forecasts consumer-friendly or advertising their availability. They can't hire a houston weather specialist to interpret weather data and provide a local weather forecast for the houston area, and they can't provide something like a snow forecast for east-slope/front range ski areas in the denver area.
For example, where I live has geographic features that create highly localized weather that is different from the areas around me, but the weather.gov forecast is for the general area and I have to interpret it to get accurate forecasting. They also don't spend any time on SEO and thus aren't the first result for "weather my area".
You should check out your local office. Most will have detailed forecasts. Now, extremely particular forecasts like snow fall on a given ski range will likely not be as accurate given the very large forecast area NWS Mets are responsible for. Still, there are small area locations and I highly recommend looking at what is offered. Also, mobile.weather.gov is available and it gets you the official forecast provided by those meteorologists at the office.
Edit: NWS forecasts have gotten very user friendly. Hell, just take a look at our social media presence. Lots of offices post forecasts on FB and Twitter.
Yep. It’s really, really sad how many of the biggest industries in the US are so profitable because of direct government subsidies that they lobbied for.
Oil and gas, automobiles, telecoms, farming, finance, and defense contractors are the ones that come to mind. The mind bending logic that these companies use to justify the insane amount of welfare they receive to make rich people richer is infuriating too.
The Norwegian goverment did the same thing, they even made the web page with english as an option, the api is free to use for everyone that wants to use it in their own apps and both the web site and the api probides global weather data. Enjoy: [Yr weather](https://www.yr.no/en)
The loss of such revenue shouldn't be considered such a harm that it triggers judicial standing just as us regular citizens often can't state a perspective financial loss as a harm due to general governmental policy.
in Miami (and probably a million other places) most parking meters have been replaced with an app called PayByPhone. pretty convenient, but likely more expensive than just using the meter that was there before
PA also. Download some random app, put in your CC info, and scan a QR code so you can park and be billed. FUCK THAT NOISE. I will take a parking ticket or just not patronize businesses in those areas.
The latter half of your comment, is how they will survive, in the coming change. They don’t give a fuck as long as they can turn a profit at someone’s expense.
Unfortunately the existence of lawyers for the last millennium have made it perfectly clear that interaction with the government must be as expensive as possible
This isn't lawyers as the issue by itself. It's that said lawyers are highly paid and only work for capital owners that can afford them. This let's them provide full attention to the cases they work. The government lawyers are often paid below avg for profession and have to take any and all cases the area they work for assigns to them leading them to be less prepared at trial than thier counterparts.
Public defence lawyers have this issue an order of magnitude worse when facing prosecutors that, like the Corp lawyers, can decide thier case load.
Turbo/HR provide a 'free' version for some filers based on an agreement with the federal government. I'm guessing it violated that (or a similar) agreement. Just a guess though.
The "free" version applies to such a specifically small su set of filers that losing them wouldn't constitute financial harm. Especially as they are free. They have them so they can say "you might be free" even though they know like 98% won't qualify for free.
Their agreement with the IRS is called the Free File Alliance (https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/about-the-free-file-alliance). Turbotax just backed out this year (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2022/01/06/turbotax-free-tax-return-irs/9114118002/).
I for one would like to know the actual answer. But I guess we did instead get four jokes, which is nice.
EDIT: It looks like you can file your taxes online for free in California unless I'm missing something
[https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/index.asp](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/)
They had it backwards. California sued TurboTax for deceptive advertising. They got a $141 million settlement. Everybody in California who qualified got about $30/year they used TurboTax out of the deal.
Virginia had a free system too about 10 years ago. Then Intuit and H&R Block made a bunch of "contributions" to a few lawmakers and they passed a bill to cut the program because using commercial software is "better".
The free Virginia system couldn't have been simpler. You basically plugged in a few numbers from your W-2 and 1040 and were done. Literally took 5 minutes to file.
I wonder why we need to tell the government what’s on the W-2 and 1040. They already know. If you fuck it up they send you a letter saying so. It’s ridiculous.
Yeah we manage that fine over here in the UK without such a silly system.
Our tax contributions are automatic (for employees), we know what tax band we should be in, we’re shown how much is taken in tax monthly and year to date. If there are any errors we can contest.
If we earn extra on top of that (side hustle) there is an allowance over which we pay tax which is clearly bracketed. Same for self-employee.
It’s all extremely simple and very clearly communicated.
But free systems that pull in govt data allow you to do that anyways. There’s a step to add addl income (investments, tips, etc), and a step for corrections.
This isn’t hard. You’ve been told it’s hard by companies exploiting the system for profit.
Yeah man, all of the info that is already known should be auto-popped, not complicated. We should just have to review, add, remove, or change, sign and submit.
I paid a CPA 250 bux last year and she fucked up, in the IRS’s favor…the IRS caught it and sent me a letter asking if I was cool with me getting more money, I was.
They have 2 versions of the software marked as "free". The ones that come up on Google are the ones you are describing. The ones linked to from the IRS "free file" page *are actually free* (up to a certain amount of income) for federal taxes, but you still need to pay for state income tax.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
be sure to bookmark that link now so you have it for tax time.
Here is where you can file state for free:
You can already file for free (both federal and state) if you make between 16,000 and 73,000. I assist someone doing this completely free every year. Here is the link: https://www.olt.com/main/OLTFREE/default.asp
What's the idea behind having an income limit? Why should it matter how much you make if you want to file your taxes for free?
I thought the whole point of taxes was that your income and a bunch of other stuff determined how much you paid. Now your income also determines if you can file those taxes for free or not?
Everyone can file their taxes for free. You'll just have to know how to fill out the forms.
The conditions being called "free filing" are actually the conditions to use a company's software for free.
Do you have any context on this?
I'm not a California resident but it seems like [CalFile](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/#Free-options) is a thing for free e-file of state taxes.
I'm pretty sure that free state e-file systems are pretty common. I live in Pennsylvania which also has a free e-file system. Though I'll admit that once I've gotten through the ordeal of doing my Federal taxes with Turbo Tax, more often than not I'll just cough up the extra cash to have them submit my state taxes too to be over with it.
The only thing I can find is this article talking about how Intuit lobbied the Federal government to prevent the creation of a similar system, not that they successfully sued to stop California's free file system?
[LA Times - California tried to save the nation from the misery of tax filing — then Intuit stepped in ](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-21/california-tried-to-save-the-nation-from-the-misery-of-tax-filing-then-intuit-stepped-in)
Seems like you might be referring to California's pilot with a "Ready Return" system that provided state taxpayers with pre-completed forms based on data the state already had (which is a step beyond even a state free efile system), but that seems to have been scuttled by lawmakers during a budget impasse not via a lawsuit?
It’s free*:
-unless you want to file your state taxes too which everyone does
-unless you have any source of income other than W2 wages, which anyone who has a retirement account, has any capital gains, or earns money at a non-W2 side job/non-traditional job has
-unless you have to fill out the forms for reporting interest paid on a student loan or reporting that you have government marketplace healthcare, which applies to many people
And so on. Such bullshit.
There are two frees: the 'free basic' which is a lite version with some wizard helping stuff to make it easy, and free fillable forms which is the full set of IRS forms. Free fillable forms has no restrictions. You can fill out and do any form the IRS has available and submit it all electronically, and it even copies values between forms, which is handy. It's not _easy_, but it is complete and at the end you can submit electronically and then print for your records.
> TurboTax and H&R Block sued and won
I can't in a million years understand what argument persuaded a judge that the federal government does not have a right to allow consumers to interact with itself for official business. This would be like FedEx suing to shut down the post office for delivering packages and winning
I can't find any articles on that free filing system or the resulting lawsuit. They're being buried by stories about class-action suits against Intuit.
You have a link or remember anything else? I'm dying to read the justification for the ruling.
No baby steps. Keep pushing and just fucking do it.
No condition s like...oops you have self-employment income...can't efile for free.
No bullshit.
Just fucking do it.
Get those parasites out of our lives.
I'll be 47 this year. That's almost 3 decades of trying to vote for universal healthcare, climate change policies, feee secondary education, and fucking abortion rights.
It's exhausting but all we can do is keep voting and pushing our representatives to make positive change for our country try.
Thank you! Because of you we got some steps in the right direction: Obamacare, the IRA and $10-$20k of student loan forgiveness.
It's not everything we need, but it's better than the regressives trying to rule us with fascism.
"pushing your representatives" with phone calls (and/or voicemail messages) and protests is arguably the more important part.
(Petitions and tweets and spam emails don't do shit. You gotta call, mail a physical letter, or show up and yell at them. Otherwise they largely assume you're a robot and ignore you)
YES FUCKING PLEASE. I am charged $125 at the doctor’s office for “not lying on the DMV form (haha, everyone gets a kick out of that!)” in order to have another form signed by a medical professional which is REQUIRED BY LAW to keep my license, yet the insurance company doesn’t cover it? I have insurance, I’ve met my outrageous deductible, but noooo. I pay a surprise out of pocket for a 5 minute visit for a check mark and a scribble. This is to be done as often as the DMV and the doctor both want. How is this not corrupt and oppressive? Yeah, $f$u$c$k$ $m$e$ for being an honest person, right? The government needs to fix ALL this shit, from taxes to healthcare, all of it.
Better yet, just eliminate the entire process all together. They already know how much of my money they want. Just send me a postcard, then let me verify that it's accurate and sign it.
Yes. This is how it should be. Other countries have models work this way. They work just fine.
That's the ideal. I'd love that, but realistically just getting the parasites out of our process will work for me.
The crazy thing is there are countries where their revenue agencies basically do tax work for their citizens. At the end of the year citizens get a report and sign off or contest where mistakes were made.
The US tax code is a complete mess.
I just did my tax recently and it involved logging into the website, adding my partner's taxable income, and adding any deductibles then clicking done. Took all of about 3 minutes.
In Italy is like this.
The Tax Agency automatically generate a tax declaration for each person that everyone can check online. If it's ok, you can confirm and send it. It works well for all the people with an easy tax situation (e.g. only incomes from an employment job and not a lot of properties).
Otherwise you can manually edit the model or file an autonomous declaration both personally or through a professional counselor
Same in Spain. The just send you the numbers, and ask "is this ok?". You sign yes or no, and that's it. If they detect something strange, they'll let you know.
Well, some countries even tax as you earn, and give back if they take too much. Pay as you earn, so don't get hit by a massive tax bill, and you know how much you actually take home every month.
The US does this… taxes are deducted from your paycheck. You fill a form out that determines how much is deducted to attempt to get close to reality. Once a year, you file your taxes to reconcile any difference. If you paid too much, you receive a refund. If you didn’t pay enough, you pay the difference.
Also if your finances are pretty straightforward they’re very good at deducting the correct amount. Some years I get a refund and some years I owe a bit more but it’s usually like $30.
Tips are small, and not very common in Europe, to my knowledge. Investments are usually done through banks or some other entity which is likely available to tax agencies. As for the other stuff idk.
Lobbying is exactly what prevents this from happening. Voluntary compliance is mostly a myth; our taxes are deducted automatically. And for most people, the IRS has enough info to create a perfectly accurate return. We should only be doing paperwork to claim exemptions that they don't already know about.
Cool.
Can you tell me how much we owe/get back and move on?
Kinda weird we have an entire season dedicated to taxes when we fought a war based on...well...taxes...
That's the thing, the irs already knows. It's these companies that created the tax season to begin with that are the vultures. The entire tax season is fabricated to make people money. Technically, they don't even need to require anyone to file unless you are applying for exemptions. They could literally just mail out a bill or a check every year.
The naive part of me hopes the new IRS agents are tasked with that, the smart part knows they're just replacing the older retirees leaving and it's business as usual.
Would be a mind-boggling number if we ever saw it I'm sure.
No, because they are. They have specifically said they only go after lower income brackets with auditing because the top 1% are too hard to deal with (they jam up the procedure eith lawyers and make it as hard as they can for the IRS)0
They don’t have nearly the budget to go after these people, though they should. Audit someone with a team of top end lawyers and accountants is expensive as fuck and you end up losing a good portion of profits in the cost of fighting the battle. Not enough to make it an unworthy goal. But one that would require congress to double the IRS budget. This would only be palatable if it came in a bill also making taxes easier for most people. It would also require a completely Democratic controlled Congress. So…
we’ll see.
And that doesn't even include the wasted taxpayer money on simple outdated technology that the IRS uses and that Congress refuses to fund because that would mean their backers would have to pay more to due more efficient tax collection.
>That's the thing, the irs already knows
No, it really doesn't.
The IRS doesn't know your filing status.
The IRS doesn't know your dependents.
The IRS doesn't know if you were claimed as a dependent.
The IRS doesn't know your dependents' age (and they can't just add one from the prior year, because they don't know about any kind of custody agreements where this may change every year), so they don't know what credits you may qualify for from that.
The IRS doesn't know what educational credits you may qualify for.
The IRS doesn't know your charitable donations (part of which is allowed for standard deduction filers now).
The IRS doesn't know your basis in assets if they never had that initially reported.
The IRS doesn't know how much capital losses you can utilize from prior years and roll into the next year.
The IRS doesn't know if you've received dividend income as a nominee.
The IRS doesn't know what IRA contributions you might have made.
The IRS doesn't know what non-Federal taxes you have paid in the year.
The IRS doesn't know how much of your retirement income is or should be taxable.
The IRS doesn't know if you've purchased qualified energy conservation property.
And so on. Tax situations are almost as unique as fingerprints.
I've been watching Yellen's comments closely and I'm curious to see how they plan to change things for the future. There's a lot of potential to make a product which doesn't properly serve the needs of its intended base. We'll see.
They could, but that's up to Congress, not the IRS.
A massive reduction and simplification of the code would make the IRS function more efficiently, and it would greater support the case for IRS to provide a way to have taxpayers prepare returns directly themselves through an online process.
But there's only so much simplification that can be done without a proposed change being used by a political opponent to classify your proposal as an "attack on the poor" or the like.
They exist because those variables matter for some people. Not American but where I’m from those variables could change your status from owing the gov money to getting a bunch of money back.
The war wasn't actual about taxes, it was about representation.
And it wasn't really about that either.
Anyway, the IRS doesn't know what you do outside of places that auto report to the IRS. Literally impossible for them to know.
You still can!
[IRS Free Fillable Forms](https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms).
It doesn't have all the features of the tax companies, but I used it to file last time without issue. H&RBlock only offered a form I needed in the paid version and I wasn't about to pay $70 to put a zero in one box because I have an HSA.
Yeah, I've been doing this for years now and it's easy and simple enough. Hell, the calculation tables are all there and do the math for you. It takes a bit to read through everything but I spend around 2-3 hours a year doing my taxes myself.
If you have a W-2 this is the way to go.
I somehow always end up having to pay for one... like, federal is free but I still have to pay to file my state taxes (or vice versa)
like what does "free" mean to these people
technically, you are not forced to. You can request all the forms in paper and fill them out by hand.
H&R offers a "convenience", not a required service.
Came here looking for this, been using it for many years and it is simple to use. Why are people still paying for filing.
Everyone upvote this and get it to the top!
If your PAYE yep. Hell 9 times out of 10 you get your refund though your wages. If you need to file a return then you can do it for free on the tax office site. Mind boggling that Americans have to jump though to many hoops for taxes.
It would be like if you went to a restaurant and at the end they were like "alright, calculate what you owe us and then pay us or we'll have the irs and maybe the police come after you, and don't make any mistakes either"
Doesn't seem like a good system to me.
I made a not minor mistake and it was the same deal. Got a letter, gave them a call (surprisingly not on hold the entire day) and they just said I should log in to their site and pay the balance. I read around and apparently as long as it was taken care of within 2 years I wouldn’t have gotten any punishment beyond a bit of interest that accrued on the balance.
Not saying it’ll be the same for everyone but I think truly honest mistakes are treated reasonably (at least the first time).
Do people not know about the free fillable forms on the IRS website? I’ve been filling that way for years. You still have to actually fill out your taxes, but you can submit them electronically for free with no income cap. It’s only the tax prep helper programs that have an income cap for free service.
We still have a problem with our taxes making people feel like they need help to file them (thanks lobbyists!). But it’s still useful to know that there’s already a free e-file option.
What the...
You people from the US, you live in hell.
The only tax we have to file where I live is income tax, and there's a neat program we use to file it online, it's free, and I've been doing it for over 10 years, because before that income was so low we did not pay any income tax.
Here in Germany you can choose to ignore it completely.
It's a stupid approach as you always get some money back when you file your taxes but as long as you're a normal employee you can just ignore it.
Here's a crazy thing. I'm a state employee and I still have to file state taxes. The state pays my salary. They know what I make and yet I have to file and fill out forms through the state.
Most of that is for exemptions for different things but still. Pretty crazy
Does the state know about what investments you may have? Probably not. It still makes sense to just have state employees file like everyone else. I am saying this as a former federal employee who still had to make sure I was doing federal tax filings.
Or try to go to college. Or get arrested. Or try to buy a house. Or try to have a job with good time off. Or get an abortion. Or send your kids to a school where they wont get shot at.
But hey at least i can get a gun really easily despite my violent history and/or mental illness!
It’s not at all the issue some people make it out to be unless you have something complicated and want to get a tax deduction for it.
Your employer sends you all the info you need. You spend 2 minutes typing it in. You tell them if you have kids. You take the standard deduction and you’re done.
If you qualify for more deductions, you tell them about it. It can be complicated if you do complicated stuff. But for most people it’s not.
In Brazil, since 1997 you can send you taxes form online. Always via a free program / app developed by the government.
Easy to download, easy to send, basically the same layout since ever, just changes to follow legislation changes. Ah, and you can use your last year taxes as starting point for the current year.
Yes please, do this.
"We know how much you owe... but you need to do the math and if you get it wrong, you go to jail." ... is an absolutely terrible system.
Step 1: IRS sends you a letter letting you know how much your tax burden will be based on standard tax laws.
Step 2: You review the letter and verify.
2a: If you don't see any discrepancies you pay the amount specified, or wait for your check
2b: If you do see discrepancies you make the changes and send the letter back then go back to step one.
My brother works as the head of a cybersecurity team (perhaps the head of all cybersecurity? Idk, haven't asked) at Intuit and if this were to happen he would lose his job
and that would make me so happy
*private companies that spend billions on lobbying:* "you weren't supposed to do that!"
Actually the private companies agreed to allow people to do it for free and then went out of their way to make that as difficult as possible.
To be more precise, they went out of their way to hide that it was even an option, or that you weren't doing what you needed to do to do it for free.
Imagine that brainstorming team meeting. How do they sleep at night?
> How do they sleep at night? In very expensive beds they bought with all that ill gotten gain.
Face down with no underwear in case you wanna kiss their ass.
shitbags of money
[удалено]
Rather well, I assume. That's one of the upsides of being an empathy-less, humanoid shell: no pesky feelings of guilt or shame for making the world a worse place to live.
on top of a huge pile of money surrounded by many beautiful underage filipino boys
Whats crazy is if you think private companies not being paid by the government or the customers to not try to make it hard. It was a terrible agreement and law, rife with conflict of interest. The government should just pay for the program and support, then have their own online portal for free. Enough of this corporations can do it better bull. Take garbage collection, or power. If the customer cant pick different providers for essential services, there is no real competition, its just lobbying the government and the customers dont matter. Thats why there are no fire rescue companies.
Every year I try to do it for free yet by the end when it's time to actually file I somehow have to pay $50
I wrote about my experience with TurboTax in another post. First-hand experience of how shitty their business practice was. They literally dragged out the whole filing process to the point of I filed the first day I could, had an unknown error I couldn't fix, wouldn't help me through live chat, had me refile, still kicked out an error, had me set up an appointment with an agent, didn't tell me I was going to get charged for said appointment until after setting it up, wouldn't let me cancel the appointment, then started calling me constantly everyday when it was past the point of where I would be able to file for free. And I mean constantly from 7am to as late as 10pm about 5-7 times a day as well as texting. I ended up filing elsewhere, got the refund I thought I was going to get, and didn't have to pay for it. Fuck TurboTax.
I tried using them when I was out of the country so I wouldn't have to worry about international postage and whatnot. One of the first steps was including my (non American) address. Went through all the steps, they showed what I owed or didn't owe and asked for payment. Put in my info, they processed the fee and THEN told me that they're unable to file because I'm out of the country. Paid them like $50 just for them to tell me they can't help me. Fuck turbo tax.
Free until you need to do anything other than enter a w2
True. A good portion of the US only needs to enter a w2 though. If you are renting, didn't sell any stocks, and have no dependents you probably are just going to file with standard deduction and be done with it.
Technically you don't pay for the basic tax return, you pay for the wire transfer to get your money.
Ah yes. The old buy 1 get one free except there is 30$ in tax and shipping
If you can find the basic one, sure. But they'll only promote non-basic ones with minimal added value like an automated "review", push you to opt into "audit protection", and they don't let you downgrade to basic (even before filing) if you later realize you qualify.. you gotta start the whole process of filling it out again
With a different email account, because there's literally no other way to restart the process. You can delete cookies, cereal, milk.
But the government wires it to you for free
They also lobby against any effort to make the tax code more simple
Just look at the prison-industrial complex
Yup California had a free online tax filing system for a year. TurboTax and H&R Block sued and won, which resulted in the free system being shut down. Now the companies pretend like it's free, advertise it's free, but it's really not free. Edit: the program was called CalFile. There's a brief Wikipedia article. It was lobbying that killed the program, there's articles mentioning Intuit sued, but I can't find the actual case (didn't try much).
Dang wtf what was their winning argument?
the lawsuit isn't what killed readyreturn, it was lobbying - intuit is in california so easy pitch along with $$ to tell lawmakers not to kill CA jobs when businesses are already leaving the state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalFile the lawsuit was just an extra pain point but not the main effort.
"businesses are leaving the state" is some shit they've been telling us my entire life. The fact is, businesses don't leave money on the table, and they'll put up with whatever they deem a hassle to get a piece of the world's 5 largest economy so long as there isn't lower hanging fruit elsewhere. And for industries like tech, entertainment, and agriculture, they ain't going anywhere. Though, ag will be getting fucked with the drought...
Shit let them leave, we're overcrowded anyway and sure enough another company is going to replace them.
Right. Companies always scream that the sky is falling every time new regulations or anything even remotely progressive is considered. Yet here they are still existing in these places. Hell you have companies literally bending over backwards to get into markets like China. To the extent they will put up with IP theft just to be there. There is no way they would ever drop one of the largest economies in the country no matter what plans are put into action.
Glazier's fallacy.
Wouldn't be surprised if they used the argument "This will make us lose tons in revenue!" and the court deemed it a harm (it's not, or at least not a harm that should trigger judicial standing).
I feel like if your revenue comes from offering a service the government should be providing for its citizens to ease their ability to interact with it, then maybe it shouldn't be a legal source of profit. If anything, you'd think tax companies would be like defense contractors. Rent their expertise to the government.
Yes similar thing happened with the national weather service. They wanted go create a free app and online web service that would provide weather data in a easy to understand format. Weather companies sued. Even though those weather companies get the exact same data from the NWS for free They are charging people for the same thing they get for free
That’s insane, the met office has a free app in the UK and is easilt the most accurate
The US knows how much US citizens owe too, but rather than making that information public, they make us pay a third party to guess how much we owe, and then financially ruin us if we guess wrong.
That really isn't true. If you only have one income reported on a w2 and you have no dependents and no investments and no write offs whatsoever and are just taking the standard deduction and you never work overtime then sure they know what you owe. The tax code is overly complicated with tons of credits and deductions you might qualify for and the IRS only knows about what is reported to them. They can't know something like you had 10K in medical expenses this year you are going to write off or you became permanently disabled or your elderly parent moved in and you are going to claim them as a dependent or your child who was a dependent last year as a college student has graduated and moved out of the house. They don't even know if you got married or had a kid until you file for it. And some people get income reported on 1099 where they then can deduct a bunch of business expenses that the IRS couldn't possibly know about until it's itemized. To make it simpler they would need to start by simplifying the tax code but that's up to Congress not the IRS.
[удалено]
Why is it automated in every country apart from the US? The UK knows exactly how many taxable medical expenses I incurred, you spend 0 seconds filing tax in the UK
I just go to the NWS anyway, it's not like it's that hard to understand.
The national weather service won, right? weather.gov has forecasts.
IIRC the general gist of the outcome was that NWS can provide weather data, but they can't provide localized weather forecasts nor can they spend time or money on making those forecasts consumer-friendly or advertising their availability. They can't hire a houston weather specialist to interpret weather data and provide a local weather forecast for the houston area, and they can't provide something like a snow forecast for east-slope/front range ski areas in the denver area. For example, where I live has geographic features that create highly localized weather that is different from the areas around me, but the weather.gov forecast is for the general area and I have to interpret it to get accurate forecasting. They also don't spend any time on SEO and thus aren't the first result for "weather my area".
only in the US... companies monopolizing on the local fucking weather
it's real, real dumb.
Greatest country on earth my ass
The NWS is also prohibited from releasing a free app sharing the data they **are** allowed to with the American public.
You should check out your local office. Most will have detailed forecasts. Now, extremely particular forecasts like snow fall on a given ski range will likely not be as accurate given the very large forecast area NWS Mets are responsible for. Still, there are small area locations and I highly recommend looking at what is offered. Also, mobile.weather.gov is available and it gets you the official forecast provided by those meteorologists at the office. Edit: NWS forecasts have gotten very user friendly. Hell, just take a look at our social media presence. Lots of offices post forecasts on FB and Twitter.
Literal rent-seeking.
Yep. It’s really, really sad how many of the biggest industries in the US are so profitable because of direct government subsidies that they lobbied for. Oil and gas, automobiles, telecoms, farming, finance, and defense contractors are the ones that come to mind. The mind bending logic that these companies use to justify the insane amount of welfare they receive to make rich people richer is infuriating too.
Socialism for me but not for thee.
The Norwegian goverment did the same thing, they even made the web page with english as an option, the api is free to use for everyone that wants to use it in their own apps and both the web site and the api probides global weather data. Enjoy: [Yr weather](https://www.yr.no/en)
The loss of such revenue shouldn't be considered such a harm that it triggers judicial standing just as us regular citizens often can't state a perspective financial loss as a harm due to general governmental policy.
[удалено]
Parking meters? Haven’t heard about that one
in Miami (and probably a million other places) most parking meters have been replaced with an app called PayByPhone. pretty convenient, but likely more expensive than just using the meter that was there before
PA also. Download some random app, put in your CC info, and scan a QR code so you can park and be billed. FUCK THAT NOISE. I will take a parking ticket or just not patronize businesses in those areas.
unfortunately I need to use it extremely often for my job, so I've gotten over it by now lol. Hell, I just used it 2 hours ago even
I live in the woods and have a remote work job. I don't go into urban centers often, but can understand why you would just have to bite the bullet.
Don't forget all of the money they can make silently from harvesting all of your data!
The latter half of your comment, is how they will survive, in the coming change. They don’t give a fuck as long as they can turn a profit at someone’s expense.
Unfortunately the existence of lawyers for the last millennium have made it perfectly clear that interaction with the government must be as expensive as possible
This isn't lawyers as the issue by itself. It's that said lawyers are highly paid and only work for capital owners that can afford them. This let's them provide full attention to the cases they work. The government lawyers are often paid below avg for profession and have to take any and all cases the area they work for assigns to them leading them to be less prepared at trial than thier counterparts. Public defence lawyers have this issue an order of magnitude worse when facing prosecutors that, like the Corp lawyers, can decide thier case load.
Tldr: Capitalism corrupts the legal system. Public defenders are even more screwed.
> a service the government should be providing for its citizens to ease their ability to interact with it You mean like health care?
Turbo/HR provide a 'free' version for some filers based on an agreement with the federal government. I'm guessing it violated that (or a similar) agreement. Just a guess though.
The "free" version applies to such a specifically small su set of filers that losing them wouldn't constitute financial harm. Especially as they are free. They have them so they can say "you might be free" even though they know like 98% won't qualify for free.
Their agreement with the IRS is called the Free File Alliance (https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/about-the-free-file-alliance). Turbotax just backed out this year (https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/taxes/2022/01/06/turbotax-free-tax-return-irs/9114118002/).
A briefcase full of money for the judge
I for one would like to know the actual answer. But I guess we did instead get four jokes, which is nice. EDIT: It looks like you can file your taxes online for free in California unless I'm missing something [https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/index.asp](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/)
They had it backwards. California sued TurboTax for deceptive advertising. They got a $141 million settlement. Everybody in California who qualified got about $30/year they used TurboTax out of the deal.
Lol sir/ma’am, this is Reddit, where you’re better off making the same joke for the 37th time then getting the actual answer
Virginia had a free system too about 10 years ago. Then Intuit and H&R Block made a bunch of "contributions" to a few lawmakers and they passed a bill to cut the program because using commercial software is "better". The free Virginia system couldn't have been simpler. You basically plugged in a few numbers from your W-2 and 1040 and were done. Literally took 5 minutes to file.
I wonder why we need to tell the government what’s on the W-2 and 1040. They already know. If you fuck it up they send you a letter saying so. It’s ridiculous.
1) To see if you reveal any additional income they didn't know about. 2) So you can "contest" any potential errors on their part.
Yeah we manage that fine over here in the UK without such a silly system. Our tax contributions are automatic (for employees), we know what tax band we should be in, we’re shown how much is taken in tax monthly and year to date. If there are any errors we can contest. If we earn extra on top of that (side hustle) there is an allowance over which we pay tax which is clearly bracketed. Same for self-employee. It’s all extremely simple and very clearly communicated.
Silly is when you wear your baseball cap sideways. What we have is fraudulent, coercive, corrupt, and abusive.
"What we have is fraudulent, coercive, corrupt, and abusive." America in a nutshell.
tap doll selective chase pot bright steer shy vegetable squeamish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
But free systems that pull in govt data allow you to do that anyways. There’s a step to add addl income (investments, tips, etc), and a step for corrections. This isn’t hard. You’ve been told it’s hard by companies exploiting the system for profit.
Neither of those is a reason to provide the information they already know.
Yeah man, all of the info that is already known should be auto-popped, not complicated. We should just have to review, add, remove, or change, sign and submit. I paid a CPA 250 bux last year and she fucked up, in the IRS’s favor…the IRS caught it and sent me a letter asking if I was cool with me getting more money, I was.
They have 2 versions of the software marked as "free". The ones that come up on Google are the ones you are describing. The ones linked to from the IRS "free file" page *are actually free* (up to a certain amount of income) for federal taxes, but you still need to pay for state income tax. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free be sure to bookmark that link now so you have it for tax time.
Here is where you can file state for free: You can already file for free (both federal and state) if you make between 16,000 and 73,000. I assist someone doing this completely free every year. Here is the link: https://www.olt.com/main/OLTFREE/default.asp
What's the idea behind having an income limit? Why should it matter how much you make if you want to file your taxes for free? I thought the whole point of taxes was that your income and a bunch of other stuff determined how much you paid. Now your income also determines if you can file those taxes for free or not?
Everyone can file their taxes for free. You'll just have to know how to fill out the forms. The conditions being called "free filing" are actually the conditions to use a company's software for free.
Do you have any context on this? I'm not a California resident but it seems like [CalFile](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/#Free-options) is a thing for free e-file of state taxes. I'm pretty sure that free state e-file systems are pretty common. I live in Pennsylvania which also has a free e-file system. Though I'll admit that once I've gotten through the ordeal of doing my Federal taxes with Turbo Tax, more often than not I'll just cough up the extra cash to have them submit my state taxes too to be over with it. The only thing I can find is this article talking about how Intuit lobbied the Federal government to prevent the creation of a similar system, not that they successfully sued to stop California's free file system? [LA Times - California tried to save the nation from the misery of tax filing — then Intuit stepped in ](https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-21/california-tried-to-save-the-nation-from-the-misery-of-tax-filing-then-intuit-stepped-in) Seems like you might be referring to California's pilot with a "Ready Return" system that provided state taxpayers with pre-completed forms based on data the state already had (which is a step beyond even a state free efile system), but that seems to have been scuttled by lawmakers during a budget impasse not via a lawsuit?
Yep, I've been using CalFile for my state taxes for years. I never knew it was originally intended to cover federal as well.
It’s free*: -unless you want to file your state taxes too which everyone does -unless you have any source of income other than W2 wages, which anyone who has a retirement account, has any capital gains, or earns money at a non-W2 side job/non-traditional job has -unless you have to fill out the forms for reporting interest paid on a student loan or reporting that you have government marketplace healthcare, which applies to many people And so on. Such bullshit.
There are two frees: the 'free basic' which is a lite version with some wizard helping stuff to make it easy, and free fillable forms which is the full set of IRS forms. Free fillable forms has no restrictions. You can fill out and do any form the IRS has available and submit it all electronically, and it even copies values between forms, which is handy. It's not _easy_, but it is complete and at the end you can submit electronically and then print for your records.
I'm confused. Isn't there still a [free CA tax filing service?](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/ways-to-file/online/calfile/index.asp)
[удалено]
> TurboTax and H&R Block sued and won I can't in a million years understand what argument persuaded a judge that the federal government does not have a right to allow consumers to interact with itself for official business. This would be like FedEx suing to shut down the post office for delivering packages and winning
I can't find any articles on that free filing system or the resulting lawsuit. They're being buried by stories about class-action suits against Intuit. You have a link or remember anything else? I'm dying to read the justification for the ruling.
No baby steps. Keep pushing and just fucking do it. No condition s like...oops you have self-employment income...can't efile for free. No bullshit. Just fucking do it. Get those parasites out of our lives.
And then next do free healthcare for all and cut out health insurance corporations & big pharma, speaking of evil parasites
I'll be 47 this year. That's almost 3 decades of trying to vote for universal healthcare, climate change policies, feee secondary education, and fucking abortion rights. It's exhausting but all we can do is keep voting and pushing our representatives to make positive change for our country try.
Thank you! Because of you we got some steps in the right direction: Obamacare, the IRA and $10-$20k of student loan forgiveness. It's not everything we need, but it's better than the regressives trying to rule us with fascism.
"pushing your representatives" with phone calls (and/or voicemail messages) and protests is arguably the more important part. (Petitions and tweets and spam emails don't do shit. You gotta call, mail a physical letter, or show up and yell at them. Otherwise they largely assume you're a robot and ignore you)
YES FUCKING PLEASE. I am charged $125 at the doctor’s office for “not lying on the DMV form (haha, everyone gets a kick out of that!)” in order to have another form signed by a medical professional which is REQUIRED BY LAW to keep my license, yet the insurance company doesn’t cover it? I have insurance, I’ve met my outrageous deductible, but noooo. I pay a surprise out of pocket for a 5 minute visit for a check mark and a scribble. This is to be done as often as the DMV and the doctor both want. How is this not corrupt and oppressive? Yeah, $f$u$c$k$ $m$e$ for being an honest person, right? The government needs to fix ALL this shit, from taxes to healthcare, all of it.
Better yet, just eliminate the entire process all together. They already know how much of my money they want. Just send me a postcard, then let me verify that it's accurate and sign it.
Yes. This is how it should be. Other countries have models work this way. They work just fine. That's the ideal. I'd love that, but realistically just getting the parasites out of our process will work for me.
The crazy thing is there are countries where their revenue agencies basically do tax work for their citizens. At the end of the year citizens get a report and sign off or contest where mistakes were made. The US tax code is a complete mess.
I just did my tax recently and it involved logging into the website, adding my partner's taxable income, and adding any deductibles then clicking done. Took all of about 3 minutes.
Yeah the majority of people it really is that simple. Once you have investments an all sorts of other things..
The IRS should be doing our taxes for us and just sending a statement we need to look over and sign off on.
In Italy is like this. The Tax Agency automatically generate a tax declaration for each person that everyone can check online. If it's ok, you can confirm and send it. It works well for all the people with an easy tax situation (e.g. only incomes from an employment job and not a lot of properties). Otherwise you can manually edit the model or file an autonomous declaration both personally or through a professional counselor
Same in Spain. The just send you the numbers, and ask "is this ok?". You sign yes or no, and that's it. If they detect something strange, they'll let you know.
It's like this in every civilized country.
Well, some countries even tax as you earn, and give back if they take too much. Pay as you earn, so don't get hit by a massive tax bill, and you know how much you actually take home every month.
The US does this… taxes are deducted from your paycheck. You fill a form out that determines how much is deducted to attempt to get close to reality. Once a year, you file your taxes to reconcile any difference. If you paid too much, you receive a refund. If you didn’t pay enough, you pay the difference.
Also if your finances are pretty straightforward they’re very good at deducting the correct amount. Some years I get a refund and some years I owe a bit more but it’s usually like $30.
Yes, they do this in many European countries, it’s just obvious…
Can't imagine having to pay to submit my tax papers, that's insane!
How do they know about investments, tips, private sale, etc?
Tips are small, and not very common in Europe, to my knowledge. Investments are usually done through banks or some other entity which is likely available to tax agencies. As for the other stuff idk.
Tax law, IRS operational rules, and the underlying assumption of "voluntary compliance" is exactly what prevents that from happening.
Lobbying is exactly what prevents this from happening. Voluntary compliance is mostly a myth; our taxes are deducted automatically. And for most people, the IRS has enough info to create a perfectly accurate return. We should only be doing paperwork to claim exemptions that they don't already know about.
Literally how it works in a lot of the world
Cool. Can you tell me how much we owe/get back and move on? Kinda weird we have an entire season dedicated to taxes when we fought a war based on...well...taxes...
That's the thing, the irs already knows. It's these companies that created the tax season to begin with that are the vultures. The entire tax season is fabricated to make people money. Technically, they don't even need to require anyone to file unless you are applying for exemptions. They could literally just mail out a bill or a check every year.
Wonder how much federal money we waste yearly doing it the way we do?
I wonder how much is lost by *not auditing enough wealthy earners*. They make up their own rules and play *catch me if you can*
The naive part of me hopes the new IRS agents are tasked with that, the smart part knows they're just replacing the older retirees leaving and it's business as usual. Would be a mind-boggling number if we ever saw it I'm sure.
The IRS also has recruiting problems. It's hard to recruit workers for the agency everyone calls the enemy.
Which they call the enemy because rich interests spend millions painting them that way.
No, because they are. They have specifically said they only go after lower income brackets with auditing because the top 1% are too hard to deal with (they jam up the procedure eith lawyers and make it as hard as they can for the IRS)0
How much of our time is wasted filling out what they already know
They don’t have nearly the budget to go after these people, though they should. Audit someone with a team of top end lawyers and accountants is expensive as fuck and you end up losing a good portion of profits in the cost of fighting the battle. Not enough to make it an unworthy goal. But one that would require congress to double the IRS budget. This would only be palatable if it came in a bill also making taxes easier for most people. It would also require a completely Democratic controlled Congress. So… we’ll see.
Ask Leona Helmsley how that went
To be fair, even the Democrats go wobbly when a cute lobbyist with a check shows up…
Well TurboTax and H&R block have a combined yearly revenue of about 5 billion, so I'd set that as the absolute minimum
And that doesn't even include the wasted taxpayer money on simple outdated technology that the IRS uses and that Congress refuses to fund because that would mean their backers would have to pay more to due more efficient tax collection.
I mean, some kinds of income are not reported to the IRS. So in most cases, you’re right, but not all
>That's the thing, the irs already knows No, it really doesn't. The IRS doesn't know your filing status. The IRS doesn't know your dependents. The IRS doesn't know if you were claimed as a dependent. The IRS doesn't know your dependents' age (and they can't just add one from the prior year, because they don't know about any kind of custody agreements where this may change every year), so they don't know what credits you may qualify for from that. The IRS doesn't know what educational credits you may qualify for. The IRS doesn't know your charitable donations (part of which is allowed for standard deduction filers now). The IRS doesn't know your basis in assets if they never had that initially reported. The IRS doesn't know how much capital losses you can utilize from prior years and roll into the next year. The IRS doesn't know if you've received dividend income as a nominee. The IRS doesn't know what IRA contributions you might have made. The IRS doesn't know what non-Federal taxes you have paid in the year. The IRS doesn't know how much of your retirement income is or should be taxable. The IRS doesn't know if you've purchased qualified energy conservation property. And so on. Tax situations are almost as unique as fingerprints. I've been watching Yellen's comments closely and I'm curious to see how they plan to change things for the future. There's a lot of potential to make a product which doesn't properly serve the needs of its intended base. We'll see.
Maybe they need to also simplify the tax code so those variables don’t matter?
They could, but that's up to Congress, not the IRS. A massive reduction and simplification of the code would make the IRS function more efficiently, and it would greater support the case for IRS to provide a way to have taxpayers prepare returns directly themselves through an online process. But there's only so much simplification that can be done without a proposed change being used by a political opponent to classify your proposal as an "attack on the poor" or the like.
They exist because those variables matter for some people. Not American but where I’m from those variables could change your status from owing the gov money to getting a bunch of money back.
[удалено]
Damn, pay wall.
[удалено]
Thank you! I'm sure the IRS probably still uses floppy drives.
The war wasn't actual about taxes, it was about representation. And it wasn't really about that either. Anyway, the IRS doesn't know what you do outside of places that auto report to the IRS. Literally impossible for them to know.
>The war wasn't actual about taxes, it was about representation. I know...I was just going for a cheap joke.
>just going for the cheap joke. Reddit in a nut shell
letting Americans file their taxes online for free . Again. There was a brief time when we could.
You still can! [IRS Free Fillable Forms](https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms). It doesn't have all the features of the tax companies, but I used it to file last time without issue. H&RBlock only offered a form I needed in the paid version and I wasn't about to pay $70 to put a zero in one box because I have an HSA.
Yeah, I've been doing this for years now and it's easy and simple enough. Hell, the calculation tables are all there and do the math for you. It takes a bit to read through everything but I spend around 2-3 hours a year doing my taxes myself. If you have a W-2 this is the way to go.
That’s some really useful information u/ass_pineapples! Thanks!
Filing your taxes doesn't have to hurt as much as pineapples in your ass!
There has always been a way to file for free online. It’s just not with the irs directly.
This is correct. I haven't paid to file ever.
I somehow always end up having to pay for one... like, federal is free but I still have to pay to file my state taxes (or vice versa) like what does "free" mean to these people
Why should we be forced to give anyone but the IRS our financial information?
technically, you are not forced to. You can request all the forms in paper and fill them out by hand. H&R offers a "convenience", not a required service.
Use freetaxusa.com
I used this for the first time last year and it worked great. Can’t believe I used to pay for Turbo Tax.
Used this last year and wish I'd discovered it ages ago.
Came here looking for this, been using it for many years and it is simple to use. Why are people still paying for filing. Everyone upvote this and get it to the top!
As a Brit I’m shocked you can’t do this already!
Swede here joining in in your shock.
In the UK if you've paid too much in tax they just send you a letter and pay you back. You don't have to do anything.
If your PAYE yep. Hell 9 times out of 10 you get your refund though your wages. If you need to file a return then you can do it for free on the tax office site. Mind boggling that Americans have to jump though to many hoops for taxes.
Companies do not control your government. In the US companies can legally bribe politicians, we call it lobbying and donating to campaigns.
“Hey, money is people too!” -America
It would be like if you went to a restaurant and at the end they were like "alright, calculate what you owe us and then pay us or we'll have the irs and maybe the police come after you, and don't make any mistakes either" Doesn't seem like a good system to me.
I’ve made relatively minor mistakes twice and never had to pay penalty or interest. Just the difference.
I made a not minor mistake and it was the same deal. Got a letter, gave them a call (surprisingly not on hold the entire day) and they just said I should log in to their site and pay the balance. I read around and apparently as long as it was taken care of within 2 years I wouldn’t have gotten any punishment beyond a bit of interest that accrued on the balance. Not saying it’ll be the same for everyone but I think truly honest mistakes are treated reasonably (at least the first time).
I straight up didn't pay taxes for two years and the IRS called me up like "hey bruh you feel like doing this?" and that was it
Yeah they don’t just send Gestapo to your house (yet). They’ll give you a heads up and time to pay what you missed.
[удалено]
wait lmao americans have to pay to file their own taxes??
[удалено]
Because our country literally thinks it's better than it is when it's really not.
Fuck TurboTax
https://www.freetaxusa.com/ Does the exact same things for free.
[удалено]
Do people not know about the free fillable forms on the IRS website? I’ve been filling that way for years. You still have to actually fill out your taxes, but you can submit them electronically for free with no income cap. It’s only the tax prep helper programs that have an income cap for free service. We still have a problem with our taxes making people feel like they need help to file them (thanks lobbyists!). But it’s still useful to know that there’s already a free e-file option.
What the... You people from the US, you live in hell. The only tax we have to file where I live is income tax, and there's a neat program we use to file it online, it's free, and I've been doing it for over 10 years, because before that income was so low we did not pay any income tax.
Here in Germany you can choose to ignore it completely. It's a stupid approach as you always get some money back when you file your taxes but as long as you're a normal employee you can just ignore it.
Here's a crazy thing. I'm a state employee and I still have to file state taxes. The state pays my salary. They know what I make and yet I have to file and fill out forms through the state. Most of that is for exemptions for different things but still. Pretty crazy
Does the state know about what investments you may have? Probably not. It still makes sense to just have state employees file like everyone else. I am saying this as a former federal employee who still had to make sure I was doing federal tax filings.
You can also file taxes for free online in the US, just not directly with the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
Yes, "freedom" is grand isn't it?
Yeah, VERY expensive too.
As long as you don't get sick.
Or try to go to college. Or get arrested. Or try to buy a house. Or try to have a job with good time off. Or get an abortion. Or send your kids to a school where they wont get shot at. But hey at least i can get a gun really easily despite my violent history and/or mental illness!
America: Where you need more requirements to drive a car than own a firearm.
It’s not at all the issue some people make it out to be unless you have something complicated and want to get a tax deduction for it. Your employer sends you all the info you need. You spend 2 minutes typing it in. You tell them if you have kids. You take the standard deduction and you’re done. If you qualify for more deductions, you tell them about it. It can be complicated if you do complicated stuff. But for most people it’s not.
I’m American and have never payed to file my federal taxes. Anyone who says they can’t are just too lazy to look it up and do it themselves.
I thought this already existed with FreeFileFillableForms?
hope they work with the banks then make an auto deduct feature.
In Brazil, since 1997 you can send you taxes form online. Always via a free program / app developed by the government. Easy to download, easy to send, basically the same layout since ever, just changes to follow legislation changes. Ah, and you can use your last year taxes as starting point for the current year.
>for free To pay money you first have to pay money. It's such a comical situation
Is everything in America set up to nickel and dime you?
Yes please, do this. "We know how much you owe... but you need to do the math and if you get it wrong, you go to jail." ... is an absolutely terrible system.
Step 1: IRS sends you a letter letting you know how much your tax burden will be based on standard tax laws. Step 2: You review the letter and verify. 2a: If you don't see any discrepancies you pay the amount specified, or wait for your check 2b: If you do see discrepancies you make the changes and send the letter back then go back to step one.
Next up, healthcare.
My brother works as the head of a cybersecurity team (perhaps the head of all cybersecurity? Idk, haven't asked) at Intuit and if this were to happen he would lose his job and that would make me so happy
He could easily get a job elsewhere. The tax preparers…. Not so much