So, just so I get this right, it’s no longer possible to file your taxes for free anymore?
Not exactly.
There’s still freefile (where private companies that offer tax prep software give away free access to people, usually within certain limits such as a maximum yearly income or complexity, such as only W2s, but not W2s and also investment income) but Direct File, which is where the IRS was essentially just making their own proper, standardized software to do what these private companies would, that would be entirely made for and offered by the government for free, is the thing being potentially shut down here.
Thanks for the explanation. That is kinda wild ngl.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Trump could have held the Saudis up for $50 billion on Inauguration Day 2016. Five minutes with the ambassador and he could have walked away with plenty of loot.
Yosemite Sam could have figured it out.
Arab governments have been paying tributes for decades and hosting US troops all in exchange for the uncertain guarantee of not being turned into another Iraq or Libya. Any more extraction and the US risks them aligning with Russia or China instead. The mobs know that they shouldn’t bankrupt those who pay them protection money.
True, but $50 billion wouldn’t break the bank for the Saudis. Moreover, Trump’s recent actions show that he doesn’t really care about anything more than 15 minutes in the future.
The Saudis maintain a welfare state that’s the source for their legitimacy. They can’t tighten the belt on their citizens. It will break more than just the bank.
How many private airplanes and yachts do the princes have?
They could cut down to seventeen harems each and still have enough to pay off Trump.
It wouldn’t have to be a lump sum either.
Stock market manipulation or a similar scam would put the same amount in his pocket.
Aligning with China is looking cheaper by the day. It isn’t like Trump will be president for life, and even if, it isn’t like his dynasty will dominate US politics forever, and even if, it isn’t like the US will be mighty forever.
People keep talking about the American Empire falling.
Be careful what you wish for.
When the USSR fell there was a decade of genocide in Europe, followed by kleptocracy that makes the old KGB look sedate.
The US Navy has about a dozen nuclear aircraft carriers and three times as many nuclear subs.
The US used nukes and committed genocide even when it was rising, so doing so on the way out is characteristic. And no it doesn’t scare me, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I don’t you understand who actually controls the petrol-dollar.
Some of this is about accepting bribes. A lot more is simply ideology.
Trump’s people do not believe the IRS should exist and they are trying to dismantle it. DirectFile is just low hanging fruit, intended to make people more frustrated with tax filing and more easy to radicalized in an attempt dismantle and replace with tariffs.
Like, this is a real decades long project that goes way beyond Trump. Abolishing the income tax was Goldwater’s wet dream.
I agree with you that the Project 2025 folks are important, but I’m talking about Trump in particular.
The shoes, the NFTs, and the crypto schemes are all about fleecing his own people.
There was a lottery where the top prize was dinner at the white House with POTUS. They ran it for months and there was never a single winner.
I think he really likes stealing from poor people. Either that or he’s too chicken to go toe to toe with someone who might hit back.
Add to that that Grover Norquist runs an organization called Americans for Tax Reform. GOP politicians all have to sign a pledge with them that they will never vote for a tax increase or for anything to make filing taxes easier.
Supposedly, this is because if taxes are easy to file, Americans won’t hate them enough and it makes it easier for the government to raise taxes. But, it’s awfully convenient that this is exactly what Intuit, H&R Block, etc. all want too.
Hypocrite warmongering Robbie Reich forgets to mention Intuit Inc always pays more than 70% to Dems.
Million dollar is practically nothing for this kind of company, they will net billions from this.
Even their corruption is incompetent.
It’s not incompetent to give someone a penny and have them give you back $100. That’s a great investment. So I would have to say their corruption is very confident if they can give a million dollar bribe and get back a billion dollars of revenue.
I think they mean the government corruption. How cheap it is to buy votes. You can buy a Supreme Court justice with an RV.
I meant that the administration (i.e. Trump) is incompetent for selling the country for pennies.
Art of the deal baby
Historically senators and representatives side with companies who’ve only given them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in contributions. It’s very cheap to buy a vote.
Though often there’s also the understanding that a career spent supporting them will be rewarded with a cushy, high-paying lobbying job once they leave politics. Or paid speaking gigs if you’re the President.
Funniest part is how they’re bribing the government with the money they took from customers. Now they can take more money from customers, which is more money for bribes.
It also means they didn’t need to charge customers the prices they charged, since they have enough money to operate their business and bribe politicians.
It’s like, you’re paying them to work against you.
So backwards, but that’s by design. Don’t be a useful idiot.
If you know someone who works for one of these companies, you should ostracize them.
Stop giving free passes to people making our society worse.
I mean I feel like it depends on their role in the company. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing the work they do. I know at least a few people who work in billing for a healthcare company that don’t want to do that work and understand it’s bad but don’t really have another choice as they couldn’t get any other jobs. I’m not gonna blame someone for working at a bad company unless they’re like an executive or other high up person who could take their skills to a different industry.
Anyone who advocates for ostracizing fellow workers indiscriminately is doing it in order to keep the working class bogged down in endless internal feuds instead of organizing. Solidarity is the only solution.
Solidarity should also involve being united on what work is acceptable and what is not.
This doesn’t seem indiscriminate to me. I think we 100% should judge people who work for evil corporations, regardless of what their position is.
Wait, so I wasn’t supposed to punch that guy in the janitors uniform in the dick just because he said Intuit (turns out he was saying “into it”)?
Then they should do their job exactly as half-assedly as it’s possible to do without actually being fired. Steal coffee and creamer from the kitchen. Steal toilet paper. Accidentally deleted System32 on the office computer. Open all file attachments and links in emails. Crop-dust the bosses office. Start office rumours to sow discord and erode company loyalty. Slip and fall on a stair, go on extended paid medical leave. When fired, sue for wrongful termination, crowdfund the legal fees
That’s a fair strategy if you actually can organize with other people at your work to do things like that. But it still does rely on having enough stability to get fired and not end up homeless while getting a new job or trying to sue. Crowdfunding can work if you happen to get lucky and your story gets picked up by lots of people, but it can also reach no one and leave you with nothing. So at the end of the day it’s gonna come down to organizing, if only there was some kind of organized body of workers you could form to fight policies that are bad for people in general along with being bad for the workers.
I’ll stick to FreeTaxUsa even if they charge me. Fuck Intuit.
There’s… there’s a tax on taxes??
They might call it something like a convenience fee.
A million dollars is all it takes to buy whatever laws you want? That’s a really good deal for Intuit.
That’s the number we get to see.
Politicians are cheap, I remember once seeing a list of how much a lobbyist buys support from politicians for and the list was like $5k $2k $3k $6k. It’s ridiculous
That’s affordable. Maybe I’ll buy one
Now you need to save it for your tax filing fees
They’re cheap because they fully believe in ideologies that screw everybody else. They’re not doing it for the cash but for their god.
It’s much more complicated than that though. The lobbying firms hire people who are former politicians or former senior staffers who have all kinds of contacts all over Washington. Getting those guys on the payroll is extremely expensive.
Then, those lobbyists generally don’t just go off and bribe someone. They build and strengthen relationships. They know all the pain points that the politicians have, and they just make things easier. If a politician’s staffer is having trouble finding a good place to live in DC, the lobbyist knows a guy who knows a guy who can get them a great apartment.
Eventually, the lobbyist isn’t this guy who tries to get the politician to change some laws. He’s basically part of the team. So, when new legislation comes up, the whole team works on it together, including the lobbyist.
The end result is that the $5k or whatever is only the direct contribution to the politician’s re-election campaign or something. Most of the spending is hiring the lobbyist and paying all his/her various expenses that make them indispensable for the politician, so that they can step in at the right time.
Politicians get their jobs through an eagerness to bootlick capital.
Remember all those (exactly) 1 million dollar “donations” all those CEOs were giving to Trump’s inaugural campaign? Those weren’t donations, they were bribes and kissing of the ring. Pledge loyalty (and pay a small fee) and the government will work for you.
Except if you’re Google or Facebook. Trump will accept your money and still fuck you over. Why anyone trusts him is beyond me.
They don’t trust him, but they don’t want to get on his bad side. They’re basically hoping that he’ll ignore them or forget about them, and focus his attention on his other enemies.
There are a huge swath of self-serving, inwardly thinking, assholes that see themselves in Trump. That’s why they love him. With him leading they can be unabashedly racist and sexist… in other words they get to be themselves.
Anyone else starting to think since Trump likes Putin maybe he too would like to gather all of the nations wealth for himself and his leeches. Seems like they’ll get all the money and kick backs and business and we’re left with even less, causing us to work more and get less.
That’s entirely the point of all those tariffs. Raise taxes on everybody without calling it that.
Turbo tax made 1.6 BILLION in income. And that’s not enough. They need to lobby and change the landscape of the countries tax system to generate even more profit on top of the profit they already made.
This isn’t capitalism anymore this is something else entirely. It’s a metal disorder. A disease.
This isn’t capitalism anymore this is something else entirely.
That’s the thing, it is capitalism. It’s always been about those who have more exploiting those who have less.
The problem is this generation of workers has been duped into believing that corporate profits are a good thing, rather than an indication of workers getting taken advantage of.
It’s all bass-ackwards by design. I stopped trying to find rhyme or reason and just settled on “most people are dumb as shit.”
Capitalism demands that line must always go up.
Line goes up means businesses are taking advantage of customers.
Line goes down means customers are taking advantage of businesses.
Why are customers cheering when line goes up and angry when line goes down? Oh yeah, they’re useful idiots.
And this is just taxes. Capital also do this with our health, water, air, etc.
Thanos wearing a redcoat
💂 “And where did it bring you…”
Then stop accepting wealth in your country. You accumulate the capital of the whole world inside your country and then expect them to be there for any other reason than to control the policy there?
Make it make sense
Hooray for the spoils system
Intuit
donatedinvested $1million
