There is no way I’m giving some third party a picture of my drivers license.
As a tax accountant, I sincerely hope this gets to a point where a vast majority of the population has no need for my services.
I used to play in the big leagues where none of my clients would ever qualify for this and their returns routinely took upwards of a hundred hours to complete. Those guys need to keep paying.
Now I play down in the minors a couple steps above the Block, and I hate seeing the owner sell these three or four hundred dollar returns that might take me an hour to complete in the first year and maybe thirty minutes in subsequent years.
That’s a very interesting transition. Was the catalyst neutral or happy one, or perhaps a sad one?
Mutual disdain was the catalyst. I did it for eight years and probably lost fifteen years of life expectancy from it. Ungodly toxic environment. Fuck big firm accounting. Fuck them all in the most demeaning, painful way imaginable.
I make roughly one third the money today, and I’m much happier for it. I still make a comfortable living where I don’t particularly worry about money, so what would the additional two thirds do for me outside paying medical bills it causes?
No matter how much I try to remove my name from searches, I still get recruited by ambitious young people on a regular basis. I generally make them stop with a response that goes something like this:
I would rather have my eyes gouged out by the white hot barbed penis of Satan himself while he spits in my mouth than return to public accounting for any amount of money.
Wait really? What’s the catch?
You get to pick which oligarch or corporation gets your tax money this year!
Only catch is Republicans probably launching some type of legal action to try and stop it.
No lawsuit launched yet to my knowledge, just sternly worded letters saying please stop helping taxpayers instead of letting predatory companies like Intuit fleece money off of them.
I would expect them to try something soon though with this announced.
I expect that you’ll have to pay the money according to the statement
I was in a pilot state (Arizona), and I looked into it. It’s only for federal taxes. You need to file state taxes separately.
There are already several online tax solutions that offer free federal and charge for state.
Does Arizona not have an online free system? Illinois has a very hand-holding guided set of questions and has for years, it’s always been our federal taxes that make my head hurt to fill out via the IRS’s FreeFillableForms site.
Doubt there is one. The hard truth is that most Americans’ taxes are pretty simple and straightforward. We can stop pretending that copying some boxes from a W2 and a 1099 is difficult.
I mean, personally I wish we’d stop pretending that the IRS isn’t already fully aware of what you owe and could just do the filling for you, like in other countries, but until Grover Norquist fucks off forever we’re stuck where we are.
step one for me is get out last year’s so i have a point of reference. just do the same thing again. numbers are a bit different, but the general ‘what-goes-where’ is usually the same–unless they split a form into multiple pages, or add an extra page to one.
once i get the new blank forms printed, it’s about 15 minutes for me to fill-out, copy, and stuff inside an envelope. this year’s added yet another sheet, i had to use a flat instead of the usual #10. cost more to mail, too, but i will not ever ‘e-file’.
one of the few perks of being poor—easy taxes.
I’ve been in the US for a few years now. All my colleagues told me that doing taxes is hard. So I used to reluctantly pay money to do it through Sprintax. This year, I decided to do it by hand. It took almost the same amount of time as it would’ve taken to do it through Sprintax, which is around 30 minutes.
Even with multiple savings accounts, IRA/401ks, an investment account, and two W2s; it’s still relatively straightforward. You just need to grab the forms, as they are legally supposed to be provided to you.
In italy the data is pre-filled, you just have to check if there’s something missing and you’re good to go, but you still have to send the module manually, like going into the website and doing the stuff.
It should be all automatic, wtf
Don’t they just assume that everything is good if you don’t reply? Works that way here
It’s not a “reply”, it’s a thing that you have to do, so that if you owe the government something you’d pay it, elsa you’ll receive money if the government owes you something (for example, a percentage of medical expenses gets “refunded”)
Here if you owe something you’ll get basically billed for it and if you are owed they just inform you about it and pay it to your account. If you are owed or you’re even then you don’t have to do a thing. No confirmation, nothing to do, you can ignore the whole thing. Is it the same for you guys?
Unfortunaly not 😂
Right. Filing taxes should only be necessary if you have itemized writeoffs or wish to contest the IRS’s statement of your tax liability. They already know what you earned their your employer, what’s been paid in taxes, what basic credits your qualify for, etc. They know what you owe so long as you didn’t have expenses to apply for that they couldn’t assume or know about. The only reason they don’t already do that or, at least until now, have a free public system for filing, it’s because tax companies have lobbied for decades to be able to milk the public for cash to help them file and navigate their tax liability.
They know what you owe so long as you didn’t have expenses to apply for that they couldn’t assume or know about
Solo 401ks/IRA also wouldn’t be something they know about until you file if I understand correctly. Guess you could that expenses?
They should (and do?) have the same information your employer, bank, or brokerage files. i.e. the same forms you use to fill out your taxes now. They know what you contributed to you 401k and your other retirement accounts.
Solo 401ks are where you’re the employer (guess technically there’s some wiggle room for others to be in your 401k, but from the perspective of such a person, wouldn’t it just be a normal 401k?). So you have to report it yourself. The brokerage firm holding it won’t.
Well, yeah. If you’re self employed, you have to report yourself too.
They would go in the sections for 401ks and IRAs just like they do on the paper forms. The online form will have the same way to enter the additional deductions.
The argument has been since free filing means only the wealthy will hire accountants, free filing would discriminate against the poor given a few mistakes will be made here and there.
I may not need to mention that disingenuous argument is made by the pirates at Intuit and their lobbyists.
Holy Christ someone using disingenuous appropriately, I’d almost given up on the word. Thanks for saving it!
Oh didn’t know it was misused!
🍻
How exactly is it usually misused? Its use here matches every other time I’ve seen it as far as I can tell
I can tell you’re being ingenuous and I believe you
I always see it being used in place or dishonest for people who think they are the same and feel it makes them sound more intelligent.
free filing would discriminate against the poor
As opposed to the current system where the richest among us can hire a whole team of accountants to find every deduction possible?
Shhhh!!!
It should also be noted that if the vast majority of people do nothing special on their taxes and just accept the government’s assessment, then that leaves a much smaller group of people to be audited. And a much larger portion of those people will be those who are trying to weasel their way out of paying their share. Right now, with the IRS being criminally underfunded, they only focus on low hanging fruit, the small fries. With those people being boiler plater auto-accepting tax payers, that would mean the IRS has no reason to audit them and can focus on the big boys where the real cheats are. That’s another big reason we do not have that sort of system and why the IRS is currently so underfunded (despite every dollar spent on the IRS generating between 5 and 9 dollars in revenue from tax fraud/evasion). Those kinds of people pay to make sure it doesn’t happen.
Ew
I understand why we do out taxes in the current situation, kinda. If the irs just sent you a bill it would be ripe for people thinking they were getting ripped off. People hating taxes and thinking they’re getting robbed is about as American as it gets. The whole boston tea party thing. People on both side doing the math holds people accountable. Also the current tax bracket situation kinda needs some end of the year math. Now, if it was a flat tax, a fixed percent… THAT EVERYONE pays no matter how much you make then it would be easy math. But they gotta make sure the middle class is paying 22% of their income to the feds and the billionaires pay one tenth of a percent… you know… for reasons. Then there are a billion write-offs and loopholes the rich can exploit, so they gotta keep those there.
If it was, say, 5% for everyone, no matter what you make, then it could easily just come out of your check as you get paid with no bs at the end of the year.
A flat tax is a poor tax. 5% of your income means WAAAAY more to someone working minimum wage with two kids than someone who has a second home, even if dollars and cents it’s way less. And the wealthy will evade a flat tax as much as they already do a progressive tax.
Now, if it was a flat tax, a fixed percent…But they gotta make sure the middle class is paying 22% of their income to the feds and the billionaires pay one tenth of a percent… you know… for reasons.
I fall into the lower end of the middle class (nationally) and my income tax is about 11%, but on top of that, after deductions and credits I end up deducting myself into the lowest tax bracket and collecting credits so I get a nice chunk back every year. To actually pay a full 22% of your income in income taxes, you must be making pretty good bank (and probably spending pretty good bank if you’re still considering yourself middle class)
Flat taxes are extremely regressive. The whole idea of tax brackets is that those with more ability to pay pay more and those with less ability to pay pay less. If you only make 22k/year you need all of that and that $2200 can be pretty lifechanging, but if you make 220k per year you can live without that $22k. There’s also fun stuff with how much tax revenue the government can actually bring in depending on who they tax harder, and generally it favors taxing the rich at a much higher percentage rate than they do the poor.
most Americans’ taxes are pretty simple and straightforward
Once the reporting for income over $600 from shit like eBay sales, Venmo, etc kicks in, the 1099 they issue would make free filing ineligible
removed by mod
All of those things you mentioned are edge cases which you would still be able to handle yourself if they auto filled everything for you.
I use an online tax service which scans my w2 and filles it out. It still gives me the option to edit stuff but I mostly just check to make sure things look good.
You’re acting like the filing that would come from the government would be the final record and you wouldn’t be allowed to correct it, which is not at all what people are suggesting.
Plus, audits will still be a thing.
y u no be nice about it :(
How would they know now? It’s the same answer. Stop being a dick.
Grover Norquist fucks off forever
This is the world I want to live in.
Unless it’s changed from the pilot, it’s only useful if you file a 1040EZ or take some really basic deductions. Anything beyond the basics, like any kind of investments, means you need to use a different tool.
But freetaxusa is still free for all but the most complex cases.
From the article:
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.
But even that would cover a large percentage of the American workforce, and I imagine over a few years, it will grow to cover all users that don’t need personal accountants. Progress is progress.
Personally, I hope this transitions into a system where they email you a proposed return and you do nothing to accept it (only needing to take action if there’s an issue).
I’d say it’s still a win, and I’m hoping they expand upon it.
The catch is that Turbo Tax and H&R Block are gonna lose a ton of revenue
It probably doesn’t do state taxes.
I tried to use it and it wouldn’t work for me. Got halfway through the process and asked some question about me that seemed basic, but resulted in me not being able to use it.
Good. Now make it work for everyone’s tax situation.
why isn’t this constitutionally protected.
Can we pass an amendment for this shit? It’s actually kind of fucked up.
I think that some companies like turbotax are employing lobbyists to make impossible filing for taxes unless you go through a gatekeeper
yep, which is why its weird that we don’t have a legally protected avenue of direct filing.
Kind of? Are you going to tell us that the US healthcare system is “sorta silly” next?
Sorta silly?! It’s fucked beyond belief. Source: me, someone who profits off the healthcare industry as a corpo. Sorry 🤷.
god if i had the arcane knowledge of the entire field of healthcare, i would do some unbelievably fucked up shit.
And by that i mean writing open documentation that is continually maintained and represents most healthcare providers in the US specifically to fuck up their entire existence.
Doo iiiiit! (If you can).
Honestly I do the best I can to fudge numbers and drive down prices, but I can only do so much. They’re eventually going to catch on and replace me with someone who doesn’t give a fuck.
lol, perhaps one of these days i will have enough expendable income and time to dedicate to this kind of shit.
It’d make for a rather fun experience.
From a certain point of view? Yes.
i mean, it is sorta silly. Not full sillyness, full sillyness would be forcing people in immediate life threatening injury to recite the ABC’s backwards before operation as protocol.
Sure, there’s degrees of silly
i spose there would be, but at the end of the day. Silly is a rather silly word to be using in this manner.
I have a couple of other constitutional amendments I’d like to advance before this.
idk man i think i disagree honestly.
Tax is one of the very few constants that we all have to legally deal with, aside from like, auto insurance.
deleted by creator
Sorry, but still very far behind on this and many other things.
No, we have 50 states to get through as well. And then all the municipalities.
God, it’s times like this where I wish we merge some states.
Fuck TurboTax, fuck H$R Block
All praise Deditutankh, the Egyptian god of taxes!
spoiler
asdfasfasfasfas
Thank fuck. Finally
I guess the donations weren’t big enough this year.
They have all the info, so this shouldn’t even be necessary. They should be able to just send me a tax bill/refund with the break down automatically. If I want to dispute it, then I’d have to pay the big bucks to get fancy accountants to dispute. Otherwise it should just be one less thing vast majority of the people would ever have to worry about.
Well, yeah, but seriously the first reaction to an improvement that never seemed possible before is to discard it as not enough?
Looks like state filing is excluded.
Why would the IRS make software for the states, it doesn’t make sense.
Biden did that, among many other great things for the average american citizen
