Congress is About To Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing (propublica.org) 449
Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. ProPublica reports: Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Mike Kelly (R-Pa). In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits.
"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.
"This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program," said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.
Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
US corporations actually run the US, the elections are only there to change the people whom are told what to do, and to give the voters the false impression they have a choice.
"If Voting Made a Difference, They Wouldn't Let Us Do It" - Mark Twain (?)
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We could have a better democracy than this one, but that'd mean you'd have to take money out of the equation.
I mean, why should my tax dollars be used to do something (anything?) that actually benefits me? Jeebus, if it did, the fucking Right would probably start screaming <<<Socialism>>>
Instead we just legalized Intuit and H&RBlock being able to pick our pockets every yea
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Yeah. I used to live in Massachusetts for a time. They have state income tax, and they had something like three different tax rates for different sources of income. I don't know if it is still like that. Regardless, that was when my wife finally insisted that I stop suffering through the tax returns, and hire someone to do if for us.
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Informative)
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It would be better if we could fire^H^H^H^Hrecall our congress critters
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While we're at it, let's ban the government from negotiating the cost of drugs that they buy, let companies certify their own products, get rid of Net Neutrality, and start a forever war or two. Nothing like the Rule of Industry to really help a country flourish.
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...and this is why I still do the taxes myself (takes about 30 minutes or so), and file the thing viz. printed paper/envelope/stamp, then pay with a paper check when needed.
(fuck it - make the IRS earn their keep. That said, the IRS now requires an additional form to be filed when you pay by check... nice twist, you bastards.)
PS: I sincerely pray that someone in Congress has a sense of humor, and tacks on an amendment to that bill which requires the tax software companies to buy an expensive bulk-filing lic
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Claude Raines from Casablanca
uh... pretty sure "Claude Raines" was the invisible man from Heroes...
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Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd need a constitutional amendment for a national sales tax or VAT. Plus those are regressive tax schemes.
Interestingly, you could probably do a national sales tax if all the money went directly to some sort of UBI - the requirement is that the money be sent to the states in proportion to population, can't be spent directly by the federal government.
A flat tax on all forms of income (including dividends, interest, inflation-adjusted capital gains, and so on) would be ideal. Make it progressive by sending everyone a check for a fixed amount on top of that tax. No need for an income tax at all: a payroll tax will cover all wages, sine it's a flat tax. But we'll never get this, because the very rich would pay a lot more.
Now as soon as you allow any deductions whatsoever to the flat tax, it's ruined as loopholes will immediately be added for the 1%, and the tax rate will neeed to double to bring in the same total. But if there were no deductions or exceptions of any kind? Golden.
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I would happily settle for a minimum corporate income tax, like 0.5% of gross revenue. While corporations never actually pay taxes (their stockholders or their customers do, duh), an end to profitable corps avoiding taxes is overdue.
And a similar minimum on individuals, aimed roughly at a day's wages, like 0.4%? Since nearly everyone is in withholding, this should give back the interest-free loan you've made, minus at least a little. And then, filing as minimum, see the withholding go way down, so you get t
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While corporations never actually pay taxes (their stockholders or their customers do, duh),
You realize that stockholders only pay for stock once, and usually they buy it from other stockholders, not directly from the company. And when a customer gives you money it doesn't belong to the customer anymore. What you're saying is like saying I don't have to pay any taxes, my employer does that.
Re: Absolultely shocking... (Score:3)
Imagine your employer didn't withhold some of your salary to pay taxes. That would be yours. To pay taxes with.
You may be mixing different things (Score:4, Insightful)
Article 1 section 8 says:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Duties, imposts, an excises are taxes on transactions, on doing things, as opposed to a tax on being (either a tax on a person being alive or a thing existing). A sales tax is an excise tax. The requirement, then, is that the tax is uniform - the feds can't set a different rate in California than Florida. Note there is no mention of census or population. So no Constitutional issue with a national sales tax.
So where DO we find a mention of population?
We find that regarding "direct taxes", which are taxes on being (either a person, being a alive, or a tax on a thing based on what kind of thing it is - a tax being a car or being a house). This as opposed to taxes on transactions, on doing. Direct taxes therefore are:
Real Property taxes
Capitation ($x per person)
Personal property taxes
See
Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service and United States, case no. 05-5139,
For these direct taxes only, the Constitution provides that:
--
Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.
So the feds can't tax each of the states $1 billion for property, direct taxes (taxes on people or property) have to be apportioned by population.
What does "apportioned" mean? Well, we're talking about taxes here, not spending. Apportioning TAXES means how taxes are levied amongst the states. As mentioned previously, this applies only to direct taxes, so it has no relevance for transaction taxes anyway.
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Just get rid of the income tax. All we need is a tax on land and certain other types of property, and fines for pollution.
Re: Absolultely shocking... (Score:2)
How erudite of you
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Ok but tax only carbon emissions and refund everyone an equal share of the revenue so it doesn't burden the poor.
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do we need a "flat tax" or a "fair tax".
For 90% of Americans, who take the "standard deduction", tax calculations aren't even "calculations". I could write an Excel spreadsheet to do them in an hour. The govt has ALL of the relevant information and could just do them for the people. You don't need to do some kind of "flat tax" or "Fair tax". It already is EASY
The problem is that most Americans don't understand it because of laws like this one.
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Informative)
--- Here's the podcast episode [npr.org]. Hit play and enjoy. (I say "enjoy" as in get boiling mad.)
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For 90% of Americans, who take the "standard deduction", tax calculations aren't even "calculations".
I could write an Excel spreadsheet to do them in an hour.
Or... you can download [google.com] an existing Excel spreadsheet -- even if you itemize -- that looks like and prints a completed 1040 form. It also includes sheets for many (all?) related forms and schedules.
[ Pretty sure this took longer than an hour to create though. ]
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Interesting)
I had one tax form I did in the 90s while in graduate school, or possibly immediately after while my income was very low. It wasn't 1040EZ, it was simpler. Large type, one page, less than 10 lines, and when done I filed this in on a touch-tone phone and punched in the final number directly to the IRS.
After that I used 1040EZ a lot and it was straight forward as nothing was complicated if all your income was salary and interest. It could have been simpler, but in any way that it was simpler it meant removing someone's tax benefit. (I believe that any simplification that keeps the same tax rate is essentially a tax increase for someone)
It only got complicated really once I had a mortgage and larger investments. (possibly in the past I failed to include income from mutual funds...) Then the tax prep software was very useful and helpful. However the most complicated parts were never the itemized deductions (mortgage, charities, etc), the complex parts were always the minutiae of your income. Detailing all the interest, dividends, capital gains, figuring out the basis, and such. Where I've got most of the money it won't import into tax software, and the places I did import this year it didn't report basis to IRS so I had to still manually enter the numbers.
The stuff that drives me the most nuts getting exactly correct is data that is already reported to the IRS. If I get those numbers wrong they'll notice immediately and have interesting questions for me. And that data is very often highly detailed. I'd rather just report what they don't know.
The overall trajectory here is that the more money I made the more complex the taxes were. If you're poor the taxes are already simple! If you're really rich then you just pay someone to do taxes for you to take advantage of all the loopholes. So when politicians are calling for simpler taxes I would think that this is not done for the benefit of the poor or the rich.
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Interesting)
I listened to a great podcast from NPR the other day called Tax Hero [npr.org], about a Stanford professor who created a system in California called ReadyReturn to basically do this with the state taxes.
It is a fascinating podcast so if you have the time it's worth a listen (I say this as an Australian that finds US taxes a byzantine mess), but the basic gist of it is this professor was all like, why the fuck doesn't our government do what every other government in the world does and take the pain out of taxes for our citizens?
So he banged out a system to do it in California and after a successful trial tried to roll it out further. Then he discovered Intuit and the tax lobby and Grover Norquist and that mob and was basically stonewalled by (you guessed it) Republicans.
He spent tens of thousands of dollars of his own money on a lobbyist and made a ton of progress but ended up losing out on getting into the legislation, or whatever (I can't remember the gritty political details) by a single vote.
There's some commentary from Norquist and the other side is well represented in the discussion, IMO - I have a better understanding as to why people are against it. I just think it's not at all worth it at all and the massive amount of pain, stress and financial burden could be better spent literally anywhere else.
Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because those slackers making 15k a year should TOTALLY pay a third of their income to make filing easy. No other possible solution could exist. All those countries which fill their citizen's tax forms out for them are merely fake news.
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Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Income - PovertyLine = Taxable income. With a flat tax, calculating the amount is easy.
You make 30,000. You subtract the 25,000 Poverty Line (or whatever it is) from your income. That leaves 5,000 that is taxable. A 10% flat tax rate means a $500 tax
Even the rich guy with a 500,000 income gets to subtract that 25,000 from his income. Not that it will make much of a difference in his taxes. The tax would be $47,500, assuming a 10% flat tax.
But I have three kids. Where's my deduction?
You don't get a child deduction. Having kids was your choice that other people should not be required to subsidize.
What about my mortgage interest deduction?
You don't get a mortgage interest deduction. Buying a house was your choice that people stuck in apartments should not have to subsidize.
Incomes and tax rates chosen at random for illustration purposes only.
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I rebut.
Children are themselves citizens and would be entitled to support from the government anyway via foster care or an orphanage if their parents were too broke to take care of them.
That said however I would opine that yes, supporting them shouldn't be subsidized directly through the tax code. However, using some sort of needs based welfare program to help the children out, possibly using taxes saved from revoking the dependency deductions, would be better.
Children don't deserve to suffer just because
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Re:Absolultely shocking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it this way - for the vast majority of Americans, the IRS already knows about you and how much tax you owe. They get all that information from your employer(s), your banks, etc. Turns out they pretty much do your tax return for you. Hell, even if you buy and sell shares they get that information as well.
So you doing your tax return is redundant - there is no reason for it since the IRS has already done it. They could just as well present their calculations to you and say "If you agree, just sign here and pay the amount owing (or to release your refund)".
Of course, the tax industry would hate that, since they built up empires on ensuring people are forced to do taxes so they'd get business every year. And yes, many countries already do this as well - they realize that they already have every document you have, and every deduction you claim they know about.
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There is a regulation in the tax code, perpetually renewed, which bans the IRS from sending you a pre-filled tax form. Guess which lobby got it put there?
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For people in the US with only income from a single employer to report, filing is very easy.
You miss my point. In the UK with only income from a single employer to report, filing is not necessary. You don't do it. It's not easy, it's non-existent.
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You made X? You pay Y.
The problem is determining X.
What counts as "income"?
Once you determine your income, multiplying by the rate to determine Y is just 0.00001% of the work.
A flat tax fixes nothing.
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Audit targeting is also driven by congress. There was a thing on the local NPR station (MPR) today where they were talking about some kind of family/child credit, and how the Republicans (mostly) are super wound up that people who don't qualify are getting it, and there's some law that requires the IRS to audit it.
So they plug in the variables and send automated audit forms to hundreds of thousands of people over family/child credits. The real kicker is that audit compliance is a paper-and-pencil kind of
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I am pretty sure that this is by design; anything that would make it easier to audit the very rich is exactly what these Congressional Critters want to prevent.
An IRS-provided electronic filing would also be easier for IRS to audit. To the extent that they don'
The best government money can buy... (Score:2, Informative)
This isn't capitalism at work, this is its friend cronyism.
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Cronyism isn't a thing.
Sure it isn't [wikipedia.org] The word crony has only been around 300 years or so, don't let that bother you.
Well at least they're consistent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like health care, they throw the good of the population under the bus to protect existing industries that profit from the horribly broken status quo. And a large chunk of the population has been tricked into liking it that way.
Re:Well at least they're consistent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame Grover Norquist and the Anti-Tax Faction (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it the _basic_ role of the IRS to make it as simple and automated as possible ?!?
A lot of the blame can be put on Grover Norquist, the leader of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax, small government group. One of the things his group advocates for is to make filing taxes as hard as possible. The group fears that if filing taxes is easy, then people won't resist paying them or the growth of government. [politico.com] For those of you who may not be aware, Norquist pushes aggressively for politicians to sign a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" that basically fights any new taxes. For Republicans, it's almost mandatory less have one of the largest right-wing groups move against you.
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What's interesting is that for-profit prisons aren't the only group. Even if the government runs the prisons:
https://theintercept.com/2016/... [theintercept.com]
"POLICE AND PRISON GUARD GROUPS FIGHT MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION IN CALIFORNIA"
I'm against for-profit prisons, but I'm also against public-sector unions since they have the same perverse incentives.
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Although the for profit prison system is completely bonkers, you should start from lobbying itself. In Europe we call it bribery and it is part of the usual corruption that does exist virtually everywhere (it's politicians we are talking about), in various amounts depending on the country and now and then gets exposed, as there is at least some agents actively fighting against it. In America instead of trying to combat such corruption, they simply institutionalized it and gave it a nice name. As long as you
It's a lot of "I got mine, fuck you" (Score:2)
There's an easy fix to this (Score:2)
Either way it'll come out later this month when he's forced to declare the number of unique donors. You'll need to watch out
Wait a minute, I just filed for free online (Score:3)
For the past three or four years I've used freefilefillableforms.com, which has no income limit and is linked directly from the IRS website. Yes, you're basically filling in a web form which is laid out exactly like the paper 1040... but so what? It's free, and it's online.
Obviously they're not referring to that program, since it already exists.
Re:Wait a minute, I just filed for free online (Score:5, Informative)
They're talking about the IRS creating tax filing software themselves, which the IRS has never done. Any free filing systems that you have used have all be created and run by third parties.
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For the past three or four years I've used freefilefillableforms.com,
This means you gave all your private financial information to a 3rd-party, who then transmitted a copy of it to the IRS.
They still have a copy, which can use, bundle, aggregate, and sell... that's why it's "free". It's also sitting on their servers, vulnerable to exposure by hackers.
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Exactly. Most countries you just send in a postcard or file taxes online with the tax agency. Only in America do we have lobbyists of unnecessary expensive software to give you "choice" to pay through the nose to support their obsolete industry. Years ago there was an attempt to provide a free service for low-income households, the threshhold was raised in the GWB years. Now Intuit is going for the kill.
We need a free IRS "public option" at the very least, which of course everyone would use, but this law
Well (Score:4, Funny)
IRS should just open-source it.
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The problem is that once you get past the simplest of cases (single job the whole year, non-itemized deductions, no capital gains, and moderate income) then things get complicated and lawyers get involved way to quickly. You are probably going to correctly cover most people (so 80%+?), but any project without serious funding is going to have troubles quickly, and someone is going to get a call from the IRS, take that personally, and sue the project... which does not have the serious funding to pay for the l
One silver lining (Score:2)
"In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013."
Given the government's security track record, is there anyone here who thinks pre-filled tax forms being sent to us (or made available online) is a good idea?
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Given the government's security track record, is there anyone here who thinks pre-filled tax forms being sent to us (or made available online) is a good idea?
Well, several private companies send me pre-filled tax forms (W-2s, 1099s, etc). And private industry's security track record is far worse than the government's.
I gotta say (Score:2, Insightful)
given how often the IRS gives bad advice on taxes, and the fact that they're not responsible for errors, I really don't have a problem with this. Nobody in their right mind would use any software made by the IRS anyway.
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California did that for a few years on state taxes. It was convenient. No idea why they stopped, but it likely wasn't because of any security concerns. (The state government here is too stupid to be able to spell "security concerns.")
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If it was their software, I expect that they *would* be responsible for the errors caused by their software.
Okay. Name one single instance where a government screwed something up and the people in government were voluntarily responsible. It's never happened.
I'm really torn on whether this is a good idea or not, but right now there are plenty of free filing sites so I'm not sure what the problem is.
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You'd think that, but you'd think they'd be responsible for the accuracy of information they give out on their advice line, too. And they're not.
Plus, of course, if they were exactly as liable for bad software as, say, Microsoft, or Apple, they'd be . . . not liable at all.
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given how often the IRS gives bad advice on taxes, and the fact that they're not responsible for errors, I really don't have a problem with this. Nobody in their right mind would use any software made by the IRS anyway.
I've been using Turbotax for several years. It is riddled with errors. I answer the questions literally as they are asked by Turbotax, but the results it gives back to me make no sense. I often have to reverse-engineer what Turbotax thinks it's supposed to be asking, then read the relevant IRS documentation, then go back and fill out Turbotax now that I know the authoritative truth.
I'm a software engineer. I think logically and precisely. The IRS documentation is written for people like me. Turbotax by cont
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The IRS is responsible for errors, just make sure you get your tax advice from them in written form.
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Even then, they rarely waive the penalties. And good luck getting it in writing in the first place.
Ban makes sense for widely used material products (Score:2)
Re:Ban makes sense for widely used material produc (Score:5, Insightful)
Software is different though - it has essentially zero cost of duplication and distribution. That's the entire premise behind the open source movement - leveraging that zero cost of duplication and distribution to maximize benefit to society. Essentially you can view what the IRS is doing as hiring a few people to write tax software for them (so, maybe $200k in development costs), then duplicating and distributing it to everyone for free. Even if the IRS charged double their development costs for it, I doubt Intuit and H&R Block could compete with that price (e.g. if they sell 10 million copies, then each copy should be priced at less than 4 cents).
One other important point - the IRS already needs this software anyway, since they have to know if people are paying the correct amount. And really, as the summary points out, the IRS already receives most of the data that people enter in their tax forms, so forcing people to transcribe all of the data is a waste of time and obvious source of errors.
The IRS actually *doesn't* know (Score:2)
Of course, completely backwards. (Score:2)
This is completely backwards.
The IRS should develop more free online filing systems that meet the needs of 99% of the typical consumers who are not in business for themselves. The IRS should only certify tax software that produces, at no additional cost, the standard output needed to input to the IRS's free online filing system. In the long run, it would likely save the IRS money as they would receive less handwritten dead tree forms and those with math errors in them.
Tax filing companies can make their mon
Taxpayer First (Score:3)
I am unsurprised by the notion of taking away a free service that is really not encroaching on the private sector to many meaningful degree, but what's with the Orwellian langauge? No-one is fooled about who this is putting first.
EMAIL or CALL your congressional delegation (Score:2, Insightful)
it is not to late to stop this monstrosity
if just 10% of the people on slashdot actually bothered to contact their congressional delegation (1 rep + 2 sen) this wouldn't
you don't call you loose your right to complain
call email telex wire now
this is something you can do
States Have This... (Score:2)
Americ truly is a strange place (Score:5, Insightful)
What a dystopian shit hole.
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You don't "have to pay a company to fulfill your legal obligation" -- you can file on paper and pay the USPS (a quasi-government) agency to deliver your return to the IRS.
The tax preparation industry should not exist (Score:3)
The entire US tax system has been purposely made more and more complicated by industry lobbyists, in order to create work for their entire industry. Any congressman that votes for this is a criminal.
Telemetry? (Score:2)
Tin-foil hat mode here... What if this awesome "free IRS app" were to store and report on things like changes in values, corrections, etc.. In theory, they could use that as one of the factors in evaluating whether to audit somebody or not (ex. "if income value changes more than X times, add Y to we-should-audit-this-guy score). Given how well I type, that would be a bummer...
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They could do that. But then I could always run my 'What if' test cases with some other SSN. And then cut and paste the final numbers into my own form. I like to use the number I found in my wallet [ssa.gov].
If an industry can't survive.... (Score:2)
It just really shows you...our representatives don't work for us. They work for corporations. They work for the rich. They work for whoever can put money in their pocket instead of the people that they're supposed to represent.
This is why political parties need to go...they're just two sides of a "fuck the people" coin. Until people in this country can l
Australia already does this, and it's good (Score:2)
Taxpayer First? (Score:2)
I think we need a "Name acts the opposite of what they are" act so that we can finally get acts that are named what they are.
I'm dumb and can't read (Score:2)
In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing.
Where in the text of HR 1957 is government prohibited from offering online tax filing?
Bill naming law (Score:2)
Short titles of all legislation should be required to be determined by an independent nonpartisan committee.
Yeah, fuck the Common Good! (Score:2)
Nearly all members of Congress were never interested in serving the Common Good, only in serving their own pocketbooks and those of their friends in their own little tribal circles. There's scarcely an egalitarian in the entire bunch. It's nice to see them be blatantly honest about their true motives once in a while, as opposed to the usual doublespeak and obfuscation.
An effective countermeasure - overwhelm (Score:2)
Everyone should fill in returns hand-written. It would crush the system. It would mean delays, but it would make them look terrible. And that is necessary.
On another front, airport security theater, if 5% of people requested manual searches at airports that system would implode. Myself, I don't request such a search but I travel with baby powder. It's not a liquid but they have to test it manually with me at a table (take a sample, add some solution, wait - they also go through the bag, I pack underwear
Finally, bipartisanship! (Score:3)
Maybe its better when both sides are at each other's throats. When both sides agree we usually end up invading somewhere or get crap like this.
Not sure if my recollection is 100% on this, but I recall a similar issue with the National Weather Service (NWS). They put up the satellites, staff professional meteorologists, run super computers, etc. But lobbyists were trying to get the NWS's weather forecast website shutdown because it challenged weather.com, and other weather sites for views. And being completely un-American, the NWS site didn't even have ads (!)
How about banning data harvesting ? (Score:2)
Supposedly, they only sell "anonymized" data.
But there's fast growing shadow industry of data "de-anonymizers".
Tax data is easily one of the most valuable data sets out there.
Ever wonder why there's an explosion of "free online tax" services ? .
Must be data harvesting. .
I'm politically active, so I always TRY to do my taxes in "tin-foil hat mode".
It's getting to be more and more insanely difficult.
I get the TurboTax disk, put it on a clean VM or hard drive, run the updates, and do all of the rest offline.
At
While unpopular, I'm not 100% against (Score:3)
Nothing is free. Using tax revenue to undercut an entire industry that creates jobs doesn't really sit well. There is no free, everyone is paying for it. And everyone has a choice to do them for free the old fashioned way, find a 'free' service, or pay for it.
The job of the IRS is to collect taxes, not prepare them. Now if you could show it actually saves the government money I'd likely be all for it as a cost savings.
Re:While unpopular, I'm not 100% against (Score:5, Insightful)
"The job of the IRS is to collect taxes, not prepare them."
except that how is the IRS supposed to know if you filed and paid the correct amount?
that's right, the IRS has to also compute its version of what you owe to see that it matches, i.e. it has to "PREPARE" your taxes ANYWAYS. And they have to already have almost all info needed. Its all duplicate effort -- a waste of your time.
No thank you (Score:5, Funny)
I'm like Donald Trump: I don't want the government seeing my tax returns.
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They look at a small sample of them, or anything that an automated check flags as flagrantly bullshit, then they put the screws to you.
The vast majority of returns are never looked at by any human, and no machine is doing any sophisticated logic. They have income reported to them and they determine what you owe, if you report that you owe significantly less, you get flagged. If you're not flagged by those basic sanity checks or flagged for random sampling, you're in the clear.
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Nobody is saying that they want to outlaw accountants. That's a gross misreading of the law. If you want to having someone look for savings in your tax bill then that's your prerogative. If you don't think those people are worth their fee because your return is simple then a free government service will probably save you money. The only people who l
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
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The government service not being free doesn't lead to the conclusion it also has to be more expensive than a private company's equivalent. Of course ultimately it must be paid, but the increased taxes are not necessarily higher than the "free and open market" price.
This is especially true when the "free and open market" actually is dysfunctional, with competitors not competing that hard but actually colluding, legislators not keeping things under checks and balances and the consumers getting milked as hard
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Maybe... but my tax office actually spotted and corrected a mistake in my tax filing a few years ago, which ultimately resulted in a *lower* due tax...
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This happens all the time. I have no idea what the GP is smoking.
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And yet you choose to trust the people who are influencing the rules designed specifically to limit the choices you have. Incredible.
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This is precisely what lots of countries let you do. The government can file the 'basic' no fancy claims or deductions filing for you, which covers a lot of people, and if you need to file something more specific or different, you just do it.
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Devils advocate: I'm assuming the code that checks if a return is valid is also the code that flags returns for audits. You wouldn't want to make that open source because then people would know exactly how much they could steal and not caught buy the automated system.
But they should totally have a "Is this information correct" online version of the tax forms.
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Filling out a W4 is going more complicated too. [usatoday.com]
I read that earlier today and had to take some Tums.
Whatever happened to filling out your taxes on a postcard?
They'll be changing the size of postcards to accommodate this ...