IRS Weighs Creating a Government-Run Tax-Prep Option (wsj.com) 167
The Biden administration is considering creating a government-run alternative to TurboTax and H&R Block, drawing resistance from Republicans and companies fearing a loss of business. From a report: Democrats and consumer advocates have been pushing for the Internal Revenue Service to offer free online tax filing on its website, particularly for people with straightforward returns. Their core argument: Tax-preparation companies charge middle-income Americans for what advocates think should be a free public service.
The companies, meanwhile, are boosting lobbying spending and leaning on lawmakers to fight a change that could shrink their revenue, and they are emphasizing free options already available for taxpayers. They see the changes under consideration as a first step toward an even bigger threat in which the IRS could use information it gets from employers and other sources to prepare a first draft of taxpayers' returns for them. The IRS is due to release a report this week on a possible Direct File system -- think TurboTax but on the agency's website -- and the Biden administration will then decide whether to pursue it.
The companies, meanwhile, are boosting lobbying spending and leaning on lawmakers to fight a change that could shrink their revenue, and they are emphasizing free options already available for taxpayers. They see the changes under consideration as a first step toward an even bigger threat in which the IRS could use information it gets from employers and other sources to prepare a first draft of taxpayers' returns for them. The IRS is due to release a report this week on a possible Direct File system -- think TurboTax but on the agency's website -- and the Biden administration will then decide whether to pursue it.
This is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: This is good (Score:3)
Re: This is good (Score:5, Interesting)
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Just reading the page you linked, that's not "doing your return" in any meaningful way - it's just helping you fill out the form. Still very useful! But doesn't really do much.
Re: This is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious. Is this something a license is needed for? Why not make a simple program to file simple returns and open source it?
It's like some states outlawing communities providing their own internet service. Some company will lose money, so they pay some politicians to create a law, a rule, or some other obstruction to prevent the more efficient or more fair competitive service.
The big problem is that it's really easy to see that the tax prep companies are overhead that isn't necessary for most people, but that overhead is someone's livelihood and wealth generation. So, they will fight for their livelihood. Whether they succeed or not depends on how many and the quality of politicians they can buy.
This is also the reason that the US will never allow a single-payer healthcare system. There are too many people that depend on the healthcare overhead for their livelihood. And because these companies have so much money, they can buy enough politicians to prevent the obvious solution. Of course, this sounds really slimy of the companies and politicians, so they resort to illogical but highly effective appeals to ideological mumble-jumble, e.g., socialism, communism, big government, capitalism, competition, free market, etc., but the real reason is that the market for buying politicians is really lucrative.
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It's been proposed many times, and even tried once or twice.
Honestly, the biggest obstacle is that it's not only an arcane, bloated, and extremely boring and unsexy domain, but it's a moving target on top of that. Even if you got an army of Programming/Accounting Hybrid-Nerds to work on it, and managed to nail down the whole tax code... you'd have to do it all over again the next year.
Re: This is good (Score:2)
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Because taxes are very, very complicated - and because if you give me software to help me prepare taxes, and it's wrong, there's legal liability there.
Re:This is good (Score:5, Interesting)
The IRS has campaigned for decades to simplify the tax code. They HATE the current tax code. It is companies like TurboTax that support keeping the tax code so complicated along with companies that want special loopholes.
If the IRS had their way we would have a very simple tax code, it would be almost totally automated. The IRS job would mostly be collecting the owed taxes instead of trying to show how much someone owed and that they had not paid it.
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I mean, the US has pretty strong anti bribery laws
Maybe the laws, as written, are strong, but the Supreme Court has gutted them when they might apply to politicians.
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No, corporations cannot make direct contributions to campaigns. But they can make contributions to PACs, which can contribute $5,000 or $3,300 to each campaign [fec.gov] (compared to an individual's limit of $3,500).
Also, entities can get around disclosure laws by setting up a 502(c)(4), to which they can contribute anonymously, and which in turn can contribute [campaignlegal.org]
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Notice the last part. "incite panic in a crowd" That is the key. Sure. Yell FIRE in a crowd all you want. You wont get into trouble until the crowd does.
You were stupid enough not to read the entire sentence or maybe you did.
Then you link me to something else. Similar. Close. Does not apply to what I said.
Which leads me to believe that you believe all speech should be allowed. Even if it would harm others.
And fuck the consequences. Why
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No, free speech is paramount. Free speech is non negotiable. But I also realize that free speech as exercised by lobbyists can work to the detriment of the general public. Maybe the fix should come from another angle then, either transparency and/or mitigation of conflicts of interest for elected officials.
The fix is actually very simple: require legislators to work remotely.
The Founding Fathers never intended for government to be a full-time job. Legislators were supposed to come to the capital every few months for a few days so that they could discuss issues and vote, then go back to their districts, where they would do their normal jobs and remain integrated with the community. That's what was supposed to keep them grounded in the needs of their districts.
But these days, the situation is exactly the oppo
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Too often free speech is for "us" but not for "them". This lets politicians be all for free speech without having to actually be fair about it.
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Citizens United was the worst ruling of the past century. It has done nothing but undermine the political process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:This is good (Score:5, Insightful)
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The existence of corporate personhood is not a problem in itself. It's a necessary part of our economy that corporations be able to own property and enter into contracts, and only persons are allowed to do that. But a legal "person" is not a human, and there's no reason to give corporations any rights at al
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The main reason is so the IRS can upgrade its computer systems as well - the IRS is still using the same 60's mainframes it got from IBM because every attempt to moving the sheer amount of legacy code to a new system has failed, and they've tried like once every decade to modernize it (only to have it fail every single time). It's just a huge ball of wax because the code is so complex. (I don't think the IRS is actually using computers from the 60s, because modern IBM mainframes will still run code from tha
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The IRS wants to simplify away valid deductions and exemptions by simply not having them. That isn't the simplification that most people are looking for. Yes there are some special exceptions that shouldn't be there like SALT exemptions but most deductions and exemptions are there for a reason, they represent things which aren't actually gains.
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So why is it then that most other countries in the world have very simple tax codes and no need for tax prep software. How do other 1st world countries manage to have a system that is trivial for 99%+ of the population?
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There is nothing complicated about HAVING a simple tax code. It is the outcome of doing so which is a problem. I know quite a few people who've fled the countries you are talking about to come here and get away from the tax system in those other '1st world' nations.
Easy answers are rarely GOOD answers, especially for the people.
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The tax code is already quite simple for the vast majority of taxpayers who work a W-2 job and take the standard deduction. Most individual complexity comes from the retirement system and the panoply of tax advantaged accounts: 401k, Roth IRA, Trad IRA, 403B, 529s, SIMPLE IRA, HSA, DCFSA, FSA, etc. The problem with simplifying the retirement system is that nobody wants their sacred cow killed, plus those plans are the biggest tax breaks for the upper middle class which collectively have tons of political po
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My taxes, in which I had a day job and then sold a house I once rented, was 17 pages long. I used TurboTax because I couldn't figure it out for myself. The state tax forms were even longer. Even with TurboTax, I'm still not sure if it is anywhere near correct.
Every year when I do my taxes, I discover that there were things I was supposed to have been keeping track of that I didn't keep track of.
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Once you start operating a business (renting a property is a business), you put yourself into a totally different category.
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My post was in response to the parent comment about needing to simplify the tax code rather than tax compliance. You can certainly have simple compliance even if the underlying tax code remains complex (or even complex compliance with a simple code).
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The burden of tax compliance is way too elevated.
That's not going to change, it's going to get worse. The people writing the tax law are now like Microsoft software engineers.
The politicians now assume that tax preparers have software, so they don't worry about how easy it is to prepare (by hand or otherwise). They are willing to put complicated algorithms into the code, with many "if" statements and edge conditions. It's not a problem because software preparers write the software once and can handle it.
Unless your an individual citizen, then you have
Re:This is good (Score:5, Funny)
The people writing the tax law are now like Microsoft software engineers.
You're quite unfair. Last time I checked my 1040 didn't have ads in it.
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"You're quite unfair. Last time I checked my 1040 didn't have ads in it."
Sadly, it's there, page 1 of 2022 1040 instructions:
"Free File is the fast, safe, and free way to prepare and e-file your taxes."
Drink your Brawndo today.
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Nope (Score:2)
> lets simplify the goddamn tax code.
That's not going to happen because politicians love handing out "discounts" (AKA "deductions") to special interest groups. It even plays well with conservatives because tax-breaks aren't usually considered the dreaded "socialism", meaning conservative politicians can hand out favors without directly handing out money, and progressives can give favors without conservative opponents calling it "socialism". Thus, both parties are drunk on specialized tax breaks.
That bei
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As long as X% seems reasonable to the majority of joe sixpacks, easy peasy. Let the people that want to game the system carry the burden of filing in excruciating detail, covering six different contingent scenarios.
Millennials don't have houses, savings or investments, so 0% 0 $0 is
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The problem with "simplifying the tax code" is that the people who want the things that make it complex are billionaires. The people who want it simple are poor.
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Pass. The IRS has claimed I owed them money three times and they've been wrong every time. Not only have they been wrong but they provided a figure with no detail to explain how they arrived at it and I've never managed to be able to reverse engineer that figure into an "oh, i'd have owed this IF...", it certainly has never matched the two or three word excuse that is on the notice. Never.
Once upon a time I worked for a tax repair company and as far as I can tell they randomly send these things out looking
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Also, an important ingredient in the discussion here is that tax prep software pushes the idea that they already have free filing options - the tax prep software makers have already CHEATED by tricking potential free customers into upgrading to paid tax filing instead. In other words: don't trust Intuit or H&R block to play fair!
Loopholes (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason that the tax code is so complicated that professionals need to be hired to fill out tax forms is that there are so many deductions and loopholes. Each loophole, of course, is something argued by some special interest group; and every attempt to eliminate loopholes or to simplify the tax code is met by (well-paid) objections from these groups saying "but this is just an attempt to increase taxes."
We need to simplify the tax code. How?
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Unless you're dealing with a lot of investments or other sources of income that a
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Oddly enough, the companies that offer tax prep services ALWAYS lobby against simplifying the tax code.
Also, as you said, most of those loopholes have well-paid lobbying efforts (since most of those efforts disproportionately benefit the wealthier folks, and wealthier folks can afford lobbyists).
So, the best way would be to limit lobbyist dollars. But this would involve removing most of the conservatives from SCOTUS, so that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
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Repair elections... rank choice voting!!
Somehow fix the toxic social media problem...
Digitally sign all media; to combat AI. unsigned means it could be fake. Fake stuff signed when discovered ruins credibility of the source.
Slowly get half the voters back into reality; how you do this? it's going to involve people tolerating things they don't like to hear... and everybody has been turning into snowflakes... except those of us avoiding the technology at the heart of the problem; or who enjoy South Park and
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One reason the tax prep is some complicated is that the tax prep people lobby Congress each time a move is made to simplify it. To the extent that I believe the companies should be nationalized without payment. They exist only because of bribes previously paid to legislators.
Note: They would have existed without the bribes, but not on the current scale. Not even on 1/10th of the current scale.
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The reason that the tax code is so complicated that professionals need to be hired to fill out tax forms is that there are so many deductions and loopholes. Each loophole, of course, is something argued by some special interest group; and every attempt to eliminate loopholes or to simplify the tax code is met by (well-paid) objections from these groups saying "but this is just an attempt to increase taxes."
I'm not sure about that. When my wife (an actual professional tax accountant) and I talk about taxes, all the complications come about because the tax code is trying to cover every single possible variation on how people live and work. It goes into mind-numbing detail how to report every kind of income in an attempt to make sure you don't evade taxes by shifting how your income is reported. It goes to crazy lengths to make sure "the rich pay their fair share" by phasing out all sorts of provisions and makin
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I love how people throw words and numbers around. Please explain how what you linked to makes any sense.
Here is what I see that makes your link unworkable. Replacing Income tax with a sales tax does not make it a fair tax. It just allows the rich to avoid all the taxes. UBI doesn't work because you can't pay yourself out of poverty. Work for works sake does not create wealth. Penalizing someone who is trying to better themselves while rewarding someone who doesn't care will not increase wealth.
The problem w
Re:Loopholes (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to simplify the tax code. How?
Here's an easy way: https://fairtax.org/ [fairtax.org]
Wow. That site consists almost entirely of ernest pleas to send them money.
Some people call it regressive,
They call it regressive because it is regressive. They just pretend it isn't.
but IMO it's the most progressive.
You are allowed your opinion, but basically, this is proposing to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, which is the devil to implement, with "exclusions", which is the place that they put in more loopholes than you can imagine.
This is millionaires and billionaires trying to reduce their own tax rates while telling you "it's for your good!
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I mean, sure. You could also "simplify the tax code" by eliminating all taxes. You could "simplify the tax code" by confiscating all private wealth. These are also easy ways. Admittedly, they're not QUITE as stupid as the "fair tax" proposal you linked to, but I think anyone would agree that both of those ideas are pretty freaking stupid.
Just not quite as stupid as "a national sales tax administered by the states."
About Time! (Score:5, Insightful)
The IRS already knows all the tax laws and has most of my tax documents, for 99% of people they should be able to fill in a few more fields online with other income/expenses and be done with it.
There would still be 3rd party services available for those with more complicated taxes (or those that don't trust the government), but I'd be happy to see TurboTax lose their monopoly
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The IRS uses software from 3rd parties to process taxes already so TurboTax is for you but the IRS uses their software to help process on their end so the company is working both ends. That is what I was told by somebody (i forget; think it was an accountant.)
At 1st, I think they should award contracts to some of these companies they already have worked with to handle the service for them. This may help ease the corruption for a while...
Keep in mind that the corrupt politicians purposely sabotage everythi
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Private companies help "ease corruption"... like when the FTC had to take action against Intuit for massive advertising campaigns for their TurboTax "free" filing that cost most filers a bunch of money?
The IRS has been contracting out electronic filing for years, and the companies that are opposing the IRS running their own system are the ones living off that teat. Those same companies lobbied hard to get Congress to pass laws banning the IRS from directly building a system... those corrupt politicians you
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IIRC
Intuit got into trouble for advertising "free" prep. (Federal + 1 state) and then pressuring people to their paid service(s)?
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IIRC
Intuit got into trouble for advertising "free" prep. (Federal + 1 state) and then pressuring people to their paid service(s)?
Yeah, they use dark patterns to trick you into paying when you don't need to, or paying more than you need to.
It's pretty evil.
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That would be so anti-capitalistic! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's the god given right of people with more money and power to exploit those without! /s
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What? No! Socialism is where all the lazy people just freeload off the 'social services' paid for with taxes paid by the people that either inherited their families wealth or figured out a way to exploit the stupid and gullible to generate the holy profits. /s
Bids are out... (Score:3)
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The IBM 360 is a fine machine. I especially like the tasteful choice of colors for the console.
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Until pretty recently the latest million dollar IBM mainframes had binary compatibility for the S/360. Banks don’t like losing money so they’re a bit hesitant to touch code that has already been vetted for a half century.
IRS should be sending out draft returns/free file (Score:5, Insightful)
The IRS knows exactly how much you earn from reported sources. I see no reason why they cannot send you (physical or electronic) a first draft, let you make any changes, and submit your return.
This also gives tax-dodgers a fun notice of "hey! here's what we think you owe".
Re:IRS should be sending out draft returns/free fi (Score:5, Informative)
This is already done in many countries. For most regular wage earners (not small business owners), taxes are quite simple.
Re:IRS should be sending out draft returns/free fi (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IRS should be sending out draft returns/free fi (Score:5, Informative)
Such a system was already proposed, called ReadyReturn. However, supporting such a system would violate the famous Norquist Pledge
Create the disease and cure! (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you know if you just made the tax simple say like no exceptions, flat rate, even a middle school student could do taxes.
But if it were simple, we couldn't make all the tax loop holes...
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No deductions is a fine idea. But flat tax? You're saying that a single parent working two minimum wage jobs to barely feed their kids should pay the same percentage of their income as tax as I do (single, work for big Tech company, large disposable income)? What a terrible idea.
Progressive tax system, with few or no deductions would work pretty well (better than what we have now!). Reasonable deductions might be for kids (I don't have any but I think folks who do should get a helping hand), maybe marit
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Well, taxing well-to-do people more than poor people is hardly a "loophole".
This is why improvements to the tax system almost never happen. Every lawmaker, liberal or conservative, insists on bundling in their own agendas as part of the change - so it stalls and dies. But the US tax system - even as it stands, without changes - could be automated by a competent team and run without adding huge amounts of new expense.
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the other comments around this are why it'll never happen.
they claim - flat tax will disprapaotionatly be a burden on the poor.
getting rid of the loopholes won't happen either... unless you also get rid of all lobbyist groups and all campaign contributions. The reality of this one is you need to learn how to play the game. how a w2 income works against you in the game, and what you can do to be better at playing the game. If you get good at it, you also will pay little or no tax. it's not just billionares t
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Wow, you know if you just made the tax simple say like no exceptions, flat rate, even a middle school student could do taxes.
But if it were simple, we couldn't make all the tax loop holes...
Yeah fuck the poor. Let's apply flat rate regressive taxation! Woooo.
If it sounds like I'm mocking you it's because I'm mocking you. Your view of how taxation and the world works sounds like you didn't even take highschool accounting.
Great, except... (Score:2)
That would be great, except...
Do I have to do it over the internet, or do I get a program that runs on my own machine? In what form do I get a copy? Do they log every keystroke?
Can I try multiple scenarios, such as married filing jointly vs married filing separately?
And, the worst of all, the software and UI is likely to be complete garbage and unusable. Then, it will become mandatory.
I don't see this as a good thing (Score:3)
That analogy was accurate even though it pissed off the Post Office and wasn't really accurate anyways. When the government tried to set up Healthcare.gov to manage the insurance exchange from the ACA, it was a complete and utter disaster and cost 10 times what the private industry could, and did, do. I remember using it many years later to enroll my kid, as my kid has been quite healthy and it was more affordable to have a high deductible plan rather than as a dependent on my work insurance. I've never seen a website or system so bad.
The IRS is the collector of money, but they are beholden to Congress' rules. They have no experience and are not good at things like an efficient web development project. They could copy feature for feature TurboTax, and it would ultimately cost them a lot more than Intuit and be less efficient. As sad as it is, the tax code complexity exists because of Congress, which creates the market for tax preparation. A bureaucracy can't fix that. More importantly, as much as people want to harp on for profit companies in a sector like this, profit provides a motive to make an efficient and helpful system. If it's garbage, someone does it better and competes with them and the bad site goes out of business. If the IRS makes a website for this process, there is no incentive for them to make a good system, and if (and when) it goes bad, there is no force to drive them out of the market ultimately delivering an inferior tax preparation service. Further it doesn't help with State taxes, which everyone still needs to file.
So no, just let them be the rules arbiter that they are. They're relatively good at that role. But building something to make people more efficient? The market has done a much better job at this and history says the government won't help here.
Re: I don't see this as a good thing (Score:3)
Interesting perspective, but let me speak of my actual experience: I use HMRCâ(TM)s (UK equivalent of the IRS) website to file my tax returns. Except when I was trying to figure out how to claim tax relief for Covid work from home costs (something temporary and non-standard), itâ(TM)s worked very well. I donâ(TM)t see why the IRS canâ(TM)t have a perfectly good website for people doing straightforward tax returns (I.e. the majority of people). Anything more complicated, pay for an acc
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When the government tried to set up Healthcare.gov to manage the insurance exchange from the ACA, it was a complete and utter disaster and cost 10 times what the private industry could, and did, do.
Healthcare.gov was contracted to private companies. As for "private companies do better", have you tried using Epic? Or maybe you should try to find the details of your coverage on the Anthem website.
Healthcare.gov is now perfectly acceptable, I bought my policy there. My local state government portal is perfectly fine too, I have just used it to renew the car tabs, everything worked just fine. A couple of months earlier, I used it to get a parking permit, again it was just fine.
The reason we got $35 insulin (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, this is a multi-billion dollar industry with no reason to exist. They're not going to just go quietly into that good night. Any more than the health "insurance" industry did. Getting this through would require a massive change to how people vote, and I think we're 2 election cycles away from that.
Let's just buy them (Score:2)
Why not just have the federal government buy TurboTax and hire them on to continue maintenance? It would probably be cheaper in the long run.
Either that or vouchers for most taxpayers to pay TurboTax for the service.
Better Solution (Score:3)
Free file works fine, except for dark patterns (Score:2)
The free file options I've seen work fine for the vast majority of taxpayers. The only problem is the dark patterns that manipulate people into paying when they don't have to. So instead of creating some new federal program that will cost a lot and probably suck just get rid of the dark patterns.
Turbotax deserves to be brought to heel (Score:3)
After the crap they pulled with the attempts to hide the free option and the constant up-sell that it's nearly impossible to remove without wiping your work out and starting over, not to mention the number of things that disqualify you from the free version without warning, I would absolutely love to see a free alternative. I hope the states follow suit.
Republicans against this? (Score:2)
For the common folk taxes are just simple math. (Score:2)
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they made taxes notably more difficult since I last did them on my own. Back in the 1990's I did them on my own with no real issues.
remembering that, I offered to help my kids do their taxes, which turned out to be so confusing (both state and federal) that it seemed they owed far more than what they really did. I ended up sending them off to a service, where it came out they owed no tax, and where getting a full refund.
I'd rather they just did away with tax and go back to the way things where for the first
Shortsighted Idiocy. (Score:3)
"...fearing a loss of business."
So, we think a Government drowning in trillions in debt that manages to shut itself down due to lack of funds every year, is suddenly the best entity to "help" citizens with the taxes they are levying, and somehow the only recognized concern here is a "loss of business"??
Which business would that be, the "business" of selling tax assistance, or the struggling Federal "business" of not collecting enough taxes from those who cannot afford it while continuing to kiss the ass of the billionaire Donor Class?
Sometimes I think American Ignorance, really does deserve what comes next.
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The real hangup is the state return (Score:2)
A new way to pay the maximum tax! (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be in their intrest to set you up to pay the maximum possible tax, rather than the least?
to me using the IRS to do my taxes for me... what interest do they have in trying to reduce my tax exposure... none!
it's a lot like giving your biggest enemy power of attorney over your life... why would you do it?
I guess my view would be, go to someone who's interests are aligned with your own, and is interested in allowing you to keep as much of your money as possible. Their interest is that if they do a t
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If you do not like the free service provided by the gov't, you may still hire a private company to do your taxes. You can examine the results of the free service, and not file it or amend it afterwards. Or you can start with a private service. You would still have your freedom. What are you complaining about?
Furthermore, your ideologically driven paranoia is untethered from reality. Twice now, the IRS informed me of small issues that meant they were sending me back more money.
There is a level of comple
Focus on root of the issue, maybe? (Score:2)
The problem being targeted here is that filing and paying taxes is an insanely complex task, necessitating the involvement of Very Smart People(TM) who know how to navigate the long laundry lists of rules and exceptions created not just by the IRS at the national level, but also by the various state agencies. But how do you know you've hired the right Very Smart People? Can we really assume that the IRS is going to outspend TurboTax to come up with a truly superior tax prep solution? After all, we are talki
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It is not complex for most people. The proposal on hand is to provide a free service for the simpler tax returns, that is easily accomplished.
Everything you just said is a red herring, and your points are completely irrelevant.
THIS (Score:2)
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Taxes CAN'T be computed. (Score:2)
The tax code is a non-solvable system, by design or by mistake, take your pick. There is ultimately no one right answer to any tax question other than, "how aggressive of a tax-avoidance posture do you wish to take?"
That is why it is so hard for the government to produce a tax filing system. For them to tell you precisely what your tax liability is would mean that they can never come back and audit you. Them providing such a service turns the entire model of tax collection on its head.
For simple situations,
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Get rid of all taxes and put in place a revenue tax. It would make more sense.