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The Almighty Buck

IRS Opening Free Online Tax Filing Program To All States (axios.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the more-the-merrier dept.
The free online tax filing program known as IRS Direct File will be made permanent for the 2025 tax season, with all 50 states and Washington D.C. invited to participate. Axios reports: Treasury announced earlier this month that more than 140,000 people participated in the Direct File pilot program in a dozen states claiming more than $90 million in refunds. The pilot exceeded its 100,000-person target during this past tax season.

"President Biden is committed to saving Americans time and money and ensuring families receive the tax benefits they're owed," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. "Providing a free tool to all Americans who want the option to file directly with the IRS is key to achieving those goals." The pilot program targeted people with simple tax returns based on W-2 forms. In her remarks today Yellen said that over the next few years they will expand Direct File to support more situations. The announcement from the Treasury Department comes a week after the IRS' Free File program was extended through 2029.

"Free file is where some of your tax dollars go to create the bridges between 3rd parties and the IRS filing system," notes Slashdot reader slack_justyb. "Direct file is the taxpayer to IRS direct system that we got a taste of this year. We want to keep on the direct file path, but the free file path helps breakup the larger entities out there that lobby hard to keep the return-free system from ever getting started."
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IRS Opening Free Online Tax Filing Program To All States More

IRS Opening Free Online Tax Filing Program To All States

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  • I am pleasantly surprised.

    • I've been saying that so often with Biden. He had a very low bar to clear when elected (be less evil than Donald Trump) but he's been consistently good in a bunch of areas. Now if he'd only just stop the genocide in Gaza...

  • Probably going to be better than CA (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Up here Turbotax does it, the amount of trying to up sell you is pretty fucking annoying. This way at least seems more enjoyable to do (as enjoyable as taxes are).

    • Re:Probably going to be better than CA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @03:05AM (#64512363)

      I dropped TurboTax this year with their mandatory Intuit account to activate the software. How many users read the EULA and TOS to noticed that creating an Intuit account gives them permission to pull your credit rating and share it with their "partners". That little nugget of profiting from my personal information is pretty well buried in their licensing fine print and remains profitable throughout the year and perpetually until I cancel my account on their website.

      I don't mind an activation process to limit software piracy, but tying that activation to an agreement to access and share my credit report was a step too far.

      You understand that by using certain Services, you are providing written instructions in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other applicable law to permit Intuit Inc. and its affiliated companies to obtain and periodically refresh your credit information and other information about you from third parties for marketing, eligibility, and other purposes described in Intuit's Global Privacy Statement . You understand that your instructions authorize Intuit and its affiliated companies to obtain such information now and periodically in the future for as long as you have a registered Intuit account. We will stop refreshing your credit information when you cancel your account through your account settings.
      https://turbotax.intuit.com/co... [intuit.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gawbl ( 941021 )
        First: Thank you for pointing this out. I've been a TT customer for years, and I was blissfully unaware of this. This may explain some of the spam I've been receiving recently.

        I use TurboTax because my taxes are a bit more complicated than most. Yes, I could study the IRS forms and do it all myself, but that's another cost. TurboTax is a good deal for me; if I hired a CPA, I'd be spending about $1k every year.

        But I didn't know about TT snarfing and sharing my credit report.

        Are you aware of any tax-prep s

        • I switched to H&R Block software this year as a test. It imported my TT-generated PDF from last year without issue. I found it about 99% similar to TT, with slightly less complexity in asking for all the information about itemized deductions (I haven't intemized in the last 15 years) but less information about inherited IRA handling.

          I plan to use H&R Block software again next year and probably will continue until the free IRS program includes retirement and annuity income.

  • Finally, good IRS news! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday May 30, 2024 @07:06PM (#64511849) Homepage

    As much as we all love to hate the IRS, this at least will remove one burden from taxpayers, even if small. TurboTax, H&R Block, and all the others, have a real racket going. Although I use tax software, I hate that it's a necessity, and that they always find some reason to force you to buy the "Premium" version every time.

  • Tax “refund” (Score:2, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 )

    By the way, there is no such thing as a tax refund. Dumbasses. It’s change. If you pay for a $2 candy bar with a $20 bill, the amount they give you back is called change, not a refund. They only call it “refund” because it fires dopamine in your brain when you hear that word. It also makes you OK with them withholding extra.

    • Re:Tax “refund” (Score:4, Informative)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Thursday May 30, 2024 @09:35PM (#64512065)

      It also makes you OK with them withholding extra.

      You're reading too much into a simple word. If you don't like making excess payments that get returned to you, you can always change your W4 to withhold less. Then the whole return of your excess payments goes away, and you pay your deficit at the end of the fiscal year.

      Bitching about change vs. refund is absurd.

    • Re:Tax “refund” (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @02:19AM (#64512303)

      If you pay for a $2 candy bar with a $20 bill, the amount they give you back is called change, not a refund.

      That's because that's the word we use to describe cash you receive to balance a cash transaction before it can close.

      In contrast, a "refund" is money that's returned to you after a transaction, such as if you bought the wrong item and then returned it, or you got them to retroactively price match it after the purchase, or you discovered after you got home that they scanned the wrong item and rushed back to the store to demand a refund. The words have different meanings, and contrary to your assertion, yes, what we get back from the IRS is a refund.

      It's fine if you want to encourage people to stop providing Uncle Sam with what is effectively a 0% loan every year. Tell them to update the W-4 form they have on file with their employer to have a lower withholding. Remind them that they don't need to wait for a change of life event, new calendar year, or new plan year to do so. That's all fine.

      But stop reading evil intent into the correct use of words.

      Moreover, as you stand here accusing them misusing words to trigger dopamine responses, what exactly do you think you're doing right now? You're using deliberately incendiary remarks to incite an anger response that will trigger dopamine in people [youtube.com] who read your remarks and think "Yeah! You tell them!".

      You're writing clickbait. Be a better person.

      • So wait, you believe the dopamine thing is true? Well, then you know I'm counteracting it with reason and logic and hopefully a side-effect of that is a dopamine hit because (unfortunately?) we need that for any idea to get communicated and propagate.

        • So wait, you believe the dopamine thing is true?

          If by "the dopamine thing" you mean that they are mislabeling our money as "refunds" in a deliberate effort to trigger a dopamine response, of course I don't believe that. It's ludicrous. If by "the dopamine thing" you mean that there exist companies, people, or organizations who engage in such activities, yes, I believe that, and I accused you of being one such person.

          Specifically, I was pointing out the hypocritical disconnect between your accusations ("...as you stand here accusing them misusing words to

          • It's deliberate in the sense that even if they didn't know there neuroscience of what they were doing they certainly knew that the phrasing matters. We know that the IRS was actively researching methods to make people want to pay taxes right at least a year or two before the concept of tax withholding was introduced in 1943. Even going as far as soliciting songwriters and instructing radio stations to play their songs "as often as possible" and "broadcast it as often as possible". Reference: https://web.arc [archive.org]

    • Would you care to explain what a refund, in your opinion, *does* mean, and how it differs from the tax thing?

    • "there is no such thing as a tax refund"

      Even if we stipulate your bespoke definition of "tax refund", there are refundable tax credits that can make your net tax liability negative.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      I prefer to call it the government repaying my loan to them with 0% interest.

      (yes, I know that inflation actually makes it negative interest, yada yada...)

  • here comes the lawsuits (Score:5, Informative)

    by v1 ( 525388 ) on Thursday May 30, 2024 @07:19PM (#64511863) Homepage Journal

    just I bet H&R Block has an entire floor of one of their buildings churning with lawyers looking for ways to derail or delay this

    • I'd imagine that the sales pitch coming from the likes of H&R Block and Turbotax is that their tax software will be easier to use (because it can do both federal and state filing in one application), and/or that their software does a better job at finding deductions and getting you a bigger refund.

      Or, maybe people will just be afraid of change. Cash App offered a program this year that allowed for free federal and state filing with no income limits, and most people still used another tax prep service. N

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )

        Dealing with federal and state at the same time is worth money to me.

        But the amount of fake time "were doing the maths" screens in turbo tax had me not use them.

        If I were to be their lobbyists though, what I'd work for is authorization to get all the forms prefilled and fight allowing the federal government to do that.

    • No, they have indirectly contracted a few hundred lawyers trying to find ways to kill this; they are called Republican politicians.

  • "President Biden is committed to saving Americans time and money and ensuring families receive the tax benefits they're owed,"
    They consider taxes to be a benefit?

    I think it is a shame that the tax code is complex enough that many need software to file.

  • Around here the income tax software has been provided for free since 1991. [www.gov.br] Taxation is theft regardless, but at least they made it easy!

    • Taxation is theft regardless, but at least they made it easy!

      Taxation is your membership fee for modern society. Nobody likes paying taxes, but the alternative would be far worse.

  • Not as simple as India (Score:3)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Friday May 31, 2024 @05:24AM (#64512461)
    In India, based upon your PAN (Permanaent Account No), the IT (Income Tax) dept generates a Form 26 which you can download from their website. It states how much was your income, how much tax you already paid , what are your deductions and what is your refund if any. The IT dept gets all this information from companies , banks, insurance and investment companies. Your only job is to go through it and see if everything was reported. If some company did not report your deductibel investment you can dispute it but if everything looks Ok you just say OK , I agree. Thats it , your taxes are done.

    Of course its more complicated for people owning businesses etc but for most salaried folks with just mutual fund investments, health insurance, house rent, stock investments and bank FDs; its pretty simple. You already provide all information to your employer so they can deduct tax at source and they pass it on to the IT dept so its not that complicated for the IT dept to calculate what you owe.

    IRS could do the same. They also get all info from employers , banks and financial firms. Thats how they check if you lied on your returns. But the lobby of tax preparation companies in the US prevents this from happening.
  • How many hundreds of millions are we paying for this free service?
  • the IRS takes money out of my paycheck every pay period.

    The IRS gets information telling them exactly what I make from all my employers.

    And yet, if I do not file a document telling them how much I made and comparing the tax on that with the tax I actually paid to determine if I either owe money or should receive money back (Hint: I always get some small pittance back), I am told I am LATE paying my taxes. How can I be late when I have already paid all the money to them via payroll deduction, AND THEY KN

    • You're talking about Return Free Filing, where yes, the govenrment tax body tells you what you owe them, and then it's on you to update them with your deductions and what not.

      Many countries already do this.

      America doesn't do this for the same reason that they're only now having a free filing option: tax software and tax preparation businesses have been lobbying for decades to prevent it, as it would cut into their business.

  • Why couldn't the Feds provide some grants or free software to the states that links to this Direct File ? Majority of filers need to file State tax returns as well.

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