The IRS Has an Answer to TurboTax(theatlantic.com)
theatlantic.com
The IRS Has an Answer to TurboTax
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/irs-direct-file/677818/
11 comments
Related, but it's also unconscionable that the tax code is so complex. My CPA once had to bring in a specialist because he didn't know how to report something. A few times we've run into "gray areas" that were "open to interpretation". I double checked with a second CPA who said the same thing. This system needs an overhaul.
Free File Fillable Forms is offered without limitation, and should handle any situation. The problem is that this is still too intimidating for most people without a guided wizard or a human advisor because of the intrinsic complexity of our tax code and the amount of data entry involved.
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
Those are just paper forms online. I'm not talking about that.
Last time I tried this, the form doesn't do automatic calculations. Is that still the case?
After using TT and HRBlock for years, this year I used CashApp Taxes which is completely free and handles almost all cases (except if you earn income abroad and a few other edge cases). Surprisingly nice UI that walked me through all the questions with links to IRS site with form. Wasn’t expecting it to be so good. (And I have more complicated than most - rental props, investments, W2 plus self employed, college expenses, married etc. And it’s not trying to upsell anything (no ads, premium ver, annoying gimmicks). Looks like Dorsey decided to spend a bunch of money to make people’s lives easier. I hope it continues.
Sounds like your data is the product, then. From https://taxes.cash.app/pages/privacy-policy :
> Service Providers: We may share information with service providers, as permitted by law, in order to have them perform on our behalf activities we are permitted to conduct under this Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service. This includes things like helping us design or operate our Services, process and administer your financial transactions, preventing fraud and complying with state and federal law. These service providers are authorized to use Personal Information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
> With advertising partners who help us run our advertising campaigns, analyze our site, run contests, special offers, or other events or activities, and track metrics on our behalf or in connection with our Services.
> Affiliates: We may share certain information with our affiliated companies, such as Block, Inc., formerly known as Square, Inc. (the "Company") to help us provide our Services and manage your account.
> As Part of a Corporate Change: We may disclose and transfer information we've collected to a third party as part of, or in preparation for, a change of control, restructuring, corporate change, or sale or transfer of assets
The affiliates clause is incredibly broad and would let them sell your tax returns to anyone, as long as it helps them provide the service. If the service isn't profitable without selling your tax returns, then that is all the reason they need.
> Service Providers: We may share information with service providers, as permitted by law, in order to have them perform on our behalf activities we are permitted to conduct under this Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service. This includes things like helping us design or operate our Services, process and administer your financial transactions, preventing fraud and complying with state and federal law. These service providers are authorized to use Personal Information only as necessary to provide these services to us.
> With advertising partners who help us run our advertising campaigns, analyze our site, run contests, special offers, or other events or activities, and track metrics on our behalf or in connection with our Services.
> Affiliates: We may share certain information with our affiliated companies, such as Block, Inc., formerly known as Square, Inc. (the "Company") to help us provide our Services and manage your account.
> As Part of a Corporate Change: We may disclose and transfer information we've collected to a third party as part of, or in preparation for, a change of control, restructuring, corporate change, or sale or transfer of assets
The affiliates clause is incredibly broad and would let them sell your tax returns to anyone, as long as it helps them provide the service. If the service isn't profitable without selling your tax returns, then that is all the reason they need.
The IRS should open-source at least the ‘rules’ part of the code, with enough functionality to let people add new forms. I think they’d get a lot of contributions and good QA.
The IRS seems subject to FOIA. I wonder if people could get together and request that.
FOIA = Freedom of Information Act (United States)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act_(...
This is very interesting. Is it difficult and/or expensive to file FOIA? I have never done it but I am aware of a few academic friends who have used it for their research work. However, I believe their universities handled the paperwork and expenses.
No, it’s generally free or subject to small fees to cover labor involved in processing the requests. It’s how all these YouTube channels with police bodycam footage have become so popular.
Thanks
The rules part of the tax code has been open source for a century.
It's called the Federal Register.
It's called the Federal Register.
I meant the program’s code, to add more of the tax rules and forms to it.
What is the point? The IRS would never accept external commits, since there is too great a possibility of malicious code being inserted. It would require vastly more resources to verify external commits are safe and comply with losses and regulations than it would to simply do everything themselves.
I think review and approval would be faster than the coding, but certainly would need testing. Just adding tests would be valuable too.
People say a lot of bad things about the IRS, but my wife and I have had to call them a couple of times and the representatives are incredibly helpful and try really hard to solve the problems we've brought them.
The only complaint I have is that last year and the year before the IRS did not have enough representatives to staff the phone lines to have short queue times, so each call to the IRS took several hours to complete. So I was really excited to see the IRS get more funding this year. I believe they are trying to do the right thing but are often hampered by funding and by politics.
The only complaint I have is that last year and the year before the IRS did not have enough representatives to staff the phone lines to have short queue times, so each call to the IRS took several hours to complete. So I was really excited to see the IRS get more funding this year. I believe they are trying to do the right thing but are often hampered by funding and by politics.
> People say a lot of bad things about the IRS, but
that probably has more to do with having to pay them "their" hard earned money than anything to do with how pleasant it is to interact with their customer service department.
that probably has more to do with having to pay them "their" hard earned money than anything to do with how pleasant it is to interact with their customer service department.
Finally. Even with the limited scope it's still a step in the right direction
Fun fact, the US did not have a federal income tax until 1861 to help fund the Civil War. Also there are 8 states that do not have state income tax.
Some anecdata, but the freefillable forms interface has a LOT more validation on it this year than it did last year.
About half of Americans pay no effective tax anyway, why not set a threshold say 100k a year and if you are under it you owe no federal taxes and don't have to file anything. Can make up the difference by taxing capital gains at the same rate as W2 income.
Because of the earned income tax credit. It’s involved and stupid how much welfare is done through that program.
Plus congress wants the poor idiots who vote republican to feel like taxes are a punishment otherwise how will they whip up their base.
Plus congress wants the poor idiots who vote republican to feel like taxes are a punishment otherwise how will they whip up their base.
Correction: they want all poor idiots (I include myself here) to feel like taxes are a punishment so that they will want to vote Republican.
Two Santa Claus theory.
Not just the poor idiots, but the rich idiots too. Paying taxes isn't so bad once you realize that money was spoken for from the minute it hit your checking account.
Paying taxes is (mostly) fine. Filing taxes sucks. Politicians don't understand that making the filing process suck won't change how I feel about paying taxes. It will change how I feel about them.
Does the IRS have way to know all of your income?
Your bank, employer, cash app and brokerage all report to the IRS so unless you are a drug dealer or similar, yeah for the most part they already know it.
Heres the best bit, people working under the table are going to be making less than 100k generally so it doesn't really matter, anyone making real money will be making big enough waves in the financial system to be detected, small movements of cash doesn't matter at this scale. The highly taxed routes (capital gains) are also already highly policed for tax purposes so no transition is needed there.
Heres the best bit, people working under the table are going to be making less than 100k generally so it doesn't really matter, anyone making real money will be making big enough waves in the financial system to be detected, small movements of cash doesn't matter at this scale. The highly taxed routes (capital gains) are also already highly policed for tax purposes so no transition is needed there.
> unless you are a drug dealer or similar
IRS might not know about those activities, but that income is supposed to be reported.
IRS might not know about those activities, but that income is supposed to be reported.
Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.
My bank doesn't know whether a deposit came from a long- or short-term capital gain. (You may think that you've covered that with "brokerage" but there are lots of property types where there's no third party that knows the purchase date.) Said deposit may even be tax-irrelevant.
And then there's crypto...
And then there's crypto...
Banks don't report every transaction and even if they did it may not be "income". E.g. moving money from one account to another is a transaction but no income was earned and it is not taxable.
How does this meaningfully affect the thesis of the comment you're responding to? What is the point of nitpicking something like this? I conjecture there isn't a point beyond "I found someone wrong in a comment you spent less than 5 minutes on even though the core thesis is still correct."
Its not possible for the IRS to auto create a return for you from your bank statements full stop. The idea is flawed.
Surveys show as much as half of workers make money outside normal employment so this is not some obscure side effect but the common case.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/side-gigs-2023-50-americans-1...
Surveys show as much as half of workers make money outside normal employment so this is not some obscure side effect but the common case.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/side-gigs-2023-50-americans-1...
exabrial(2)
It's not really an answer to TurboTax, because it's not good enough. I'll continue to pay Intuit for now. It's relatively speaking a small price to pay for something done well.
This is correct. According the article:
> Direct File isn’t perfect—the program is available in only 12 states, and it isn’t able to handle anything beyond the simplest tax situations—but it’s a glimpse of a world where government tech benefits millions of Americans. In turn, it is also an agonizing realization of how far we are from that reality.
According to directfile.gov, those states are: Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
I have no great love of Intuit, but this is not ready for prime time.
> Direct File isn’t perfect—the program is available in only 12 states, and it isn’t able to handle anything beyond the simplest tax situations—but it’s a glimpse of a world where government tech benefits millions of Americans. In turn, it is also an agonizing realization of how far we are from that reality.
According to directfile.gov, those states are: Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
I have no great love of Intuit, but this is not ready for prime time.
I'm getting tired of posting here on HN at all, honestly. It's just a bad experience. Anyone can see TurboTax is clearly a better product. But whatever, sure the IRS releasing a product with a $1,500 interest income limit better than TurboTax?
You might as well just file your taxes on physical paper and mail it by snail mail.
You might as well just file your taxes on physical paper and mail it by snail mail.
I understand your frustration. Folks will tend to respond confidently in ways that align with their beliefs, often without reading the source or consulting any external material. They'll just say whatever. And those are the hard-working ones. Lazy disagreement just arrives as downvotes.
One way I've found to mitigate this is citing specific quotes and sources (that they should be aware of already if commenting), which often mitigates this effect, but commenting is nevertheless fraught. It basically amounts to defensive writing a lot of the time.
I keep coming back because I do think there are a bunch of us who do read, have expertise, and are here because we're curious and want to learn from others. But wading through the noise comes with that, sadly.
One way I've found to mitigate this is citing specific quotes and sources (that they should be aware of already if commenting), which often mitigates this effect, but commenting is nevertheless fraught. It basically amounts to defensive writing a lot of the time.
I keep coming back because I do think there are a bunch of us who do read, have expertise, and are here because we're curious and want to learn from others. But wading through the noise comes with that, sadly.
Thank you for your words. I appreciate you taking the time to reply. Those are some good thoughts, and I like your source-based strategy in particular.
What is an example of something that TurboTax does better?
State taxes as well. The IRS didn't partner with individual states for this initiative. They also don't have limits on interest income or household income, which make this worthless for people who file high income returns.
Your comments set off my spidey senses; they don't pass the sniff-test for a trustworthy, well-informed, pro-Intuit stance, especially on message board catering to tech.
Intuit practices the classic rent-seeking behaviors endemic to late stage capitalism. Who is this helping? They also actively lobby against tax reform because it's an existential threat to their cash cow.
Intuit practices the classic rent-seeking behaviors endemic to late stage capitalism. Who is this helping? They also actively lobby against tax reform because it's an existential threat to their cash cow.
Luckily, it’s easily confirmed[1].
The IRS service is only available in a few states, to people with very simple returns. I don’t see anything about an income limit (which may be a misunderstanding/conflation with the “free file partner” program). Even though my own tax situation is pretty simple, I’m specced out of the pilot system because mine is slightly more complex than dead simple.
(For the record, I don’t use TurboTax. I think Intuit is a bad actor, and I am very pleased that the IRS will now finally offer this basic, no-brainer service. However, the new system just isn’t there yet, so people aren’t crazy for continuing to use TurboTax even if they live in one of the pilot states.)
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
The IRS service is only available in a few states, to people with very simple returns. I don’t see anything about an income limit (which may be a misunderstanding/conflation with the “free file partner” program). Even though my own tax situation is pretty simple, I’m specced out of the pilot system because mine is slightly more complex than dead simple.
(For the record, I don’t use TurboTax. I think Intuit is a bad actor, and I am very pleased that the IRS will now finally offer this basic, no-brainer service. However, the new system just isn’t there yet, so people aren’t crazy for continuing to use TurboTax even if they live in one of the pilot states.)
[1]: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
There are a few different income limits that make you ineligible. https://directfile.irs.gov/income
[deleted]
(Don't come to me with paper forms or FreeTaxUsa or whatever. FREE IRS software should be able to handle taxes of any complexity and situation. If they can't handle a scenario in their software, they shouldn't be allowed to collect any taxes resulting from the law that created the scenario)