- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25117460
Summary
Elon Musk claimed on X that he eliminated the IRS team responsible for the “Direct File” program, which allows Americans to file taxes online for free.
His statement came in response to a right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
However, the Treasury Department confirms that the Direct File system remains active, offering free tax filing with customer support.
The program, available in English and Spanish, is optional, allowing taxpayers to choose between using it or filing their taxes manually.
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This unelected fascist has no authority. Fuck him. Ignore him and refuse access…
How the hell does this lower costs?
right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
They’re against the slaves not using TurboTax.
So the right is against self-service now?
No, fascists are. It just so happens that the right are fascists.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
Why are looking for coherence in their ideology? They’ve never made any indication that they are ideological consistent. Its projection on our part to do so, and the constant exacerbation at the obvious and consistent conclusion is tiresome.
I find it useful to look for ways to make their arguments coherent. What’s the underlying motivation where their actions make sense?
In this case, it makes a lot of sense if they’re in favor of billionaires profiting off something currently being provided by the government. In other cases (and somewhat on this one, too), “cruelty is the point” is what gets you there.
yes because it takes money away from companies like intuit and taxact and hrblock… ,sarcasm.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
You may want to look into Grover Norquist and his organisation Americans for Tax Reform. It is one of the most influential political lobbying groups in the United States, and it has the support of essentially the entire republican party. They essentially consider tax to be evil on principle and ask every politician to sign a pledge opposing any tax hike.
ATR is strongly against automatic filing, as they want to keep taxes difficult and complicated to stoke anti-tax sentiment. That is to say, they fear that if filing tax is easier, citizens would be less likely to fight taxes in the way that the ATR wants (mostly they like a low flat tax, because it’s simple and good for rich people).
This version of the right wing is against any service provided to the public for free which their own companies could profit from by charging for it. And they also, as a matter of principle, believe that the poor should be punished, and punished again.
It’s just a poorly constructed lie to funnel more money to their corporate masters.
Haha! Joke’s on them, people are so broke most just use the Form 1040 or Form 1040-SR (replaced 1040EZ) forms.
i always just look up this year’s 1040 and just fill it out myself. easy finances though…
been meaning to get an accountant this year. we’ll still do paper filing if e-filing is “deleted” lol
https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions
Read the instructions, download what you need, print it out, fill it out, and mail it in.
Even better, use the free fillable forms. You can fill them out and submit them all within your browser, no mail or paper required. Even has a
do the mathbutton that will add stuff up for you.Have been using it for the past two tax cycles and once you understand it it’s quite easy, only 2 pages needed if you’re doing the standard deduction with a w2.
If you don’t have capital gains taxes or deferred tax deductions, doing your taxes is really easy.
That said, this is a way to stop providing free services that private companies want to get paid to do. HR Block makes billions from people who are either too lazy or too bad at math to do simple stuff. Real accountants earn their living on complicated taxes, but millions of Americans can do a 1040 EZ, which takes about 5 minutes to fill out.
The statistics show that even though 70% of Americans are eligible to file for free with the IRS tools, only 3% actually use that tool to file for free. So I’m not sure how much business is even being lost here.
I have capital gains, capital losses carryover, foreign investment taxes withheld, bank interest, and the $50 I made on twitch I probably need to file as well.
So that means I need to do the capital gains worksheet to figure out the exact tax
Yet I still file free every year
I have all of that, too, but I just do paper taxes because I’m old and too lazy to figure out how to do anything else.
And get fined because I’m overseas and the mail takes so long to get there the IRS fines me for a late filing
Last time the IRS sent me mail here it took almost half a year for me to receive it
File for an extension now?
I really don’t know why, but every time I see Space Karen trying to be such a sooper kewl edgelord, I think of this clip…that and the very end of the movie, too…
Arrest his ass and lock him away for life!
We can buy rope at Home Depot.
I already got rope
Deport this asshole back to South Africa
Unfortunately, he’s now an American citizen. Fortunately, we have treason charges for this kind of thing :).
But I thought Trump already got rid of birthright citizenship?
He doesn’t have citizenship through birthright. That would be if his mom gave birth to him in the US while she lacked citizenship of her own, no? He just went through the standard naturalization process (allegedly)
He came here illegally under false pretenses meaning his citizenship can legally be nullified and expunged. To say nothing of the administration he supports trying to find ways to nullify citizenship of immigrants and natural born citizens who are and always have been here legally.
I say we ignore that and just charge him with treason.
He’s not a citizen. He never filed a 601a when he started with Paypal.
Everything he filed after not doing that should have been thrown out due to docket controls.
Including the charters for his other businesses? Meaning the $400B are ill-gotten gains?
I would hazard that $400B qualify as ill-gotten gains regardless of legality.
Really increasing efficiency there. You know… efficiency aside, making it easier to file taxes is one of the very few things that can actually make more money!
Yes, but by “government efficiency” they mean shutting down everything the government does that might make poor people’s lives less hellish. These are men who deeply need to believe they’re better than everyone else, and have to continually prove that to themselves by means of cruelty and power games.
They don’t want the government to take in more money. They just want it to cost less (and consequently do less).
A right-wing MAGA influencer called the “direct file” tax program a "far left /…/
Here in Estonia, the castle of “far left” in Europe (shh, don’t spoil the joke, comrades, we want them to think we’re dark red here ;) )…
…for something like 15 years already, you file your taxes like this:
- some day in February, your internet bank reminds you to send a report to the tax office
- you click “send”
- some day in February, you read in a newspaper that “you can file your taxes now”
- you open up emta.ee, log in with your ID card, and see a pre-filled declaration
- if you’re lucky (99% are), it’s been filled correctly and you click “confirm”, otherwise you click “edit”
- you get to see if you have returns or need to pay extra
- if you have returns, you can choose if you want the money (typically if it’s big, you do) or want to donate the small change to a non-profit
It typically takes about 15 minutes.
If it’s a bad year and the automatically filled declaration was incorrect, things will differ of course - then you wait until next winter for a court to resolve the dispute. If you can write a complaint in legalese, it costs about 20 €, but if you need a lawyer, you shell out real money. I’ve had a bad year once. Most people never have one.
Doing it this way would cost the IRS less than the way our current system runs.
It’s basically the same thing in Sweden, but in the rare chance that the tax agency makes a mistake, it’s usually resolved before summertime without any court issues.
Does everyone have to file taxes? In the UK, unless you’re renting a property or otherwise have some income on the side like that, you don’t file taxes at all, it’s just all done automatically.
Most everyone in the US files. Even if the gov withheld taxes from your payroll you still file. The gov knows how much you made, now you have to arrive at the same number or you can get fined if you claim more and they catch you in an audit.
What’s funny is, on the tax form there’s a field asking if you got money from illegal activity like selling drugs…they expect you to declare it and pay the percentage… The ultimate gov will look the other way as long as they get their cut.
They don’t expect that you’ll actually report illegal income. They just want to have tax evasion as another charge to add to the indictment in court. Wisconsin’s lawmakers were pretty open about that ploy when they added a tax on illegal drugs years ago.
In Hungary, the country of the far left Orbán quasi-dictatorship, the tax filing process is if you are an employee, in May you go to the website and click okay if you’re happy with it. If you forget, it’s just an implied acceptance of what you’ve seen, so most people never do anything and some don’t even know how to.
If Orban is far left I’d hate to see what you call right. Literal Satan establishing hell on earth?
Nah, they’re being facetious.
It was sarcasm, a reaction to Musk calling somewhat sensible tax filing far left.
That said Orbán did price caps on staples and petrol and 13th month pensions, so it’s not like these idiots have a consistent ideology.
BTW Hungary has a party that’s nominally right of Orbán, it’s made of antivaxers, literal neonazies and other assorted loons.
American here, I didn’t work this year (stay at home parent) and we only need to file my wife’s taxes. If it goes smoothly it’ll take an hour, minimum, and we’re usually unsure if we filed it all out correctly…
And even if they accept your return and pay you then you still can’t be sure
Cruelty is the point. The goal is to make the lives of impoverished people harder.
That’s never the point. The point is power, wealth, influence, remaking the world into one they like better. They’re stepping on poor people to get there.
Oh man.
In Germany this would mean dismantling the only functioning digital government service. Haha.
Is he heavily invested in TurboTax or something?
He’s invested in suffering and making a profit. So yes.
His statement came in response to a right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
… HOW??? This movement simply has no real agenda or philosophy - they just want to burn everything down.
They literally ran on dismantling our government and the majority of voting Americans voted for them.
For the first time in my life I’m seriously considering getting citizenship elsewhere. Nothing good can happen for the future of this nation with a populace that stupid.
It’s over.
The slimmest majority of the minority of Americans who voted
Anyone of voting age that didn’t vote is just as bad as anyone that voted for this.
There’s your supermajority of stupid Americans.
Have you ever seen someone on social media who CLEARLY did not read the post they are responding to but saw a mention of AI or the word “implication” and posted the same tired old meme for points? And then notice that actually works because the vast majority of the internet doesn’t want to discuss anything and just want to giggle at their comfort memes?
It is like that. Except they also want to enslave all lgbtq+ folk, brown people, and women. All while lining their pockets.
The government providing a free service that private companies charge for is considered overreach by the wealthy elite who stand to gain from holding a monopoly over access to a necessary thing.
That’s the agenda. Burn everything down.
Disclaimer: I don’t agree with this but providing a possible rationale. They believe the government is overreaching because “easy” tax filing has been privatized and it would harm those businesses. Never mind those businesses harm people
That seems a reasonable guess…
This movement simply has no real agenda or philosophy - they just want to burn everything down.
That is the agenda
Sorry - I don’t mean “agenda” in the weird meaningless pejorative way that partisans use it but rather in the more traditional “plan of things to be done” manner. Like - these people have no problem statement with “here is how we will fix it”.
Private companies and consultants make millions on tax advice. Wrongly filed tax returns result in fines. Need I continue?
I took what you said as the traditional meaning, there is no “fixing” unless destruction is fixing. Their “agenda”, imo, is to tear down as much as possible, crash the economy, then buy up everything that they can; housing, businesses, etc
Yes, causing chaos is part of their “plan of things to be done.”
If you want to know their agenda, read Project 2025.
Man who pays someone else to do his taxes makes it harder for people who do their own taxes because he doesn’t seem to understand how annoying and frustratingly difficult it is to file in USA
He understands. His cronies make big bank from paid services.
He thinks people with less money than him are inferior people, morally, intellectually and socially. If there’s anything he’s unaware of it’s what a pathetic little man he is, and how billions of dollars can’t fix that. But deep down I suspect he knows it.
Stop thinking that these people are stupid and don’t understand what they’re doing. They know exactly what they are doing.
