TurboTax’s fight against free tax filing

https://slate.com/technology/2022/04/turbotax-free-file-online-ftc.html

by xweb • 4 years ago

804 394 4 years ago

dang4• 4 years ago

Filing taxes could be free & simple. H&R Block & Intuit lobby against it (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30856968 - March 2022 (114 comments)

FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846071 - March 2022 (555 comments)

Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 - Feb 2022 (122 comments)

Filing Taxes Could Be Free and Simple. But H&R Block and Intuit Lobby Against It (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18 comments)

Killing TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330584 - March 2021 (662 comments)

Show HN: ustaxes.org – open-source tax filing webapp - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138446 - Feb 2021 (219 comments)

TurboTax Tricked You into Paying to File Your Taxes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26102695 - Feb 2021 (306 comments)

TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26060414 - Feb 2021 (199 comments)

FTC Is Investigating Intuit over TurboTax Practices - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24409093 - Sept 2020 (194 comments)

IRS Reforms Free File Program, Drops Agreement Not to Compete with TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923220 - Dec 2019 (448 comments)

IRS Tried to Hide Emails That Show Tax Industry Influence over Free File Program - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21393758 - Oct 2019 (188 comments)

TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21281411 - Oct 2019 (447 comments)

TurboTax to charge more lower-income customers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20461169 - July 2019 (81 comments)

Congress Scraps Provision to Restrict IRS from Competing with TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20119916 - June 2019 (18 comments)

TurboTax Uses a “Military Discount” to Trick Troops into Paying to File Taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19994118 - May 2019 (42 comments)

Listen to TurboTax Lie to Get Out of Refunding Overcharged Customers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19870242 - May 2019 (44 comments)

TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19810981 - May 2019 (143 comments)

TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19758126 - April 2019 (262 comments)

TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19718284 - April 2019 (274 comments)

Congress Is About to Ban the US Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725 - April 2019 (696 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19392673 - March 2019 (253 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Lobby Against Free and Simple Tax Filing (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18956883 - Jan 2019 (190 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17751383 - Aug 2018 (424 comments)

Why I'm boycotting TurboTax this year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844458 - April 2018 (23 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Lobbying Against Simpler Tax Filing (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449 - April 2018 (232 comments)

H&R Block and Intuit Are Lobbying Against Making Tax Filling Free and Easy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13922482 - March 2017 (234 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13853150 - March 2017 (439 comments)

TurboTax Takes Aim at Smaller Rival in Fight for Filers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11150694 - Feb 2016 (87 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9381437 - April 2015 (150 comments)

Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9380232 - April 2015 (124 comments)

Filing taxes: It shouldn't be so hard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5488084 - April 2013 (56 comments)

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 - March 2013 (330 comments)

jmercouris• 4 years ago

Couldn’t a program just do this automatically?

beckingz5• 4 years ago

Taxes? Yes.

No reason that most people shouldn't have the government do their taxes for them.

kevingadd• 4 years ago

The amount of code necessary would be pretty significant, even the software used by CPAs is somewhat complex and changes every year. But yes, software could do all of this - especially if the tax code were not intentionally convoluted in order to satisfy greedy lobbyists

jonny_eh3• 4 years ago

I'm convinced dang is at least part-machine.

dang4• 4 years ago

Do you mean build a list of related threads? One would think so, but it wouldn't be simple. You'd need to choose keywords, figure out relevancy.

This case is a good example of the difficulty—the only word that (sort of) appears in all these titles is "tax", but searching on that alone would cast too wide a net.

My sense is that we'd be better off writing software to allow the community to collaborate on a list of related URLs. That's the plan anyhow.

formerkrogemp10• 4 years ago

Due to lobbying from primarily Intuit and others, no, the IRS cannot legally file for you.

twoodfin3• 4 years ago

I kinda wish this particular topic could be banned from HN unless and until there's new news. It's just an endless re-run of the same outraged conversation approximately every 4 months.

dang4• 4 years ago

That's mostly true but given that it's tax season we might as well have a controlled burn.

acheron• 4 years ago

I flag it every time, but it doesn't help.

beckingz5• 4 years ago

Going to give a +1 for FreeTaxUSA. Significantly cheaper than H&R Block and a user interface that is just as good.

The large tax companies are engaging in regulatory capture and ought to be sidelined in favor of a healthy society.

drchiu• 4 years ago

And not just them, but accounting professional groups as well.

linsomniac• 4 years ago

This is my first year filing with FreeTaxUSA and I'm quite happy with them. I bought the upgrade version, it was like $6 or $7, and then state was $14 on top of that. Quite happy with them. One downside, because I had some investment sales this year, and they would only let me enter summarized information, I have to print, complete, and mail a form with the itemized data. Thankfully, it isn't too large in my case.

crazysim• 4 years ago

I really hope FreeTaxUSA improves their investment sales stuff, maybe with import capabilities or something. If you go for the unsummarized information, you don't have to mail anything. Unfortunately, you gave to go through a ton of screens and enter each trade by hand.

jonny_eh3• 4 years ago

I'd give a +1 for "Cash App Taxes" (formerly Credit Karma Tax), which is totally free and has a decent enough web-based UI.

LeifCarrotson• 4 years ago

Interestingly, Cash App Taxes was sold to Square just before Credit Karma was acquired by Intuit:

https://finovate.com/square-takes-on-taxes-as-justice-oks-in...

jetrink• 4 years ago

They do force you to prove you have their app installed on your phone to use it, though installing it and uninstalling it afterward isn't that much of a hassle.

mardifoufs2• 4 years ago

That looks pretty similar to Wealthsimple Tax (formerly simpletax) that we have here in Canada, which I also recommend. I used to hate dealing with the shady tax software we have here in canada and as always we had even less options than you guys have in the US, so simpletax was a gamechanger

vsskanth• 4 years ago

Yeah FreeTaxUSA is amazing. They organize their UI in income and deduction sections labeled with the form name so it's easy to link them to whatever forms you get from various sources. Took me a couple hours to file my taxes in a single sitting even though I had like 5 different types of forms to put in (W2s, HSA, 1099-DIV, 1099R, DCFSA).

All this for like $13.50 federal and state filed online. Can't get cheaper than this.

I love how they ask you again if you enter something that's "not common" in case you misunderstood what something is for.

deathanatos5• 4 years ago

One of the big points in the article, and the complaint against TurboTax, is that they're positioning their product as "free", when it isn't.

And here is this subthread, recommending "FreeTaxUSA" … for $13.50+state.

It might be cheaper, better quality, or better quality/price … perhaps. But is this not exactly the same thing? (Perhaps with less advertising, e.g., not running a commercial to millions of people repeating "free" a gajillion times.)

FireBy2024• 4 years ago

Agreed. Have been using it for 3 years and user experience is better than TurboTax.

AviationAtom3• 4 years ago

FreeTaxUSA for more "complex" fillings (i.e. multiple states, advanced investments, etc.), otherwise save coin and just use Cash App Tax (formerly Credit Karma Tax.)

P.S. Use FREETAXUSA 10 for 10% off, and go through TopCashback for cashback

usrn• 4 years ago

Or just use free form filler. Especially if all you have is a W-2 and maybe some stock sales there's no reason not to do it yourself.

ThatPlayer• 4 years ago

I used FreeTaxUSA for the first time this year and liked it, but am thinking I will not be able to do it next year because they don't support more niche state form that I want. Other than that, I just have 1099 and W-2 so it isn't even that complicated.

They support the federal version, and did leave them a message, so we'll see next year.

akvadrako• 4 years ago

OLT is another good option.

pc86• 4 years ago

Sad to hear about this after having paid $200-some for federal and two state returns last night, but I've already set a reminder to use them next year.

theonething• 4 years ago

same story here. Next year!

beckingz5• 4 years ago

This is why I posted the comment! Got burned last year and had such a low-pain experience this year that I felt the need to share this option.

neapolisbeach2• 4 years ago

I used FreeTaxUSA this year to file and was happy with them except for a pretty dark pattern.

If you google "FreeTaxUSA" and log-in that way, it'll change your free-file account to a paid account and there is no way to change it back. To free-file with them, you need to always log in using the special IRS link.

I thought this was pretty annoying, especially as there's no way for customer service to change it back. Their recommendation was to make a new account and re-enter all my tax info.

selykg3• 4 years ago

I did not have that experience. I went directly to the site and my federal was free. State was $15 or whatever it was. I did not use the IRS link.

jackson14422• 4 years ago

Weird, I just go to freetaxusa.com and have never had a problem.

beckingz5• 4 years ago

Huh. That's weird.

At least the paid accounts are cheaper than H&R block's gotcha upsells!

jandrese6• 4 years ago

That's weird, I've never used the IRS link and it always left me on the Free path. I'm not low enough income or with simple enough returns to qualify for the free filing that TurboTax used to offer either.

irrational• 4 years ago

Yes, FreeTaxUSA is terrific. I have fairly complex taxes and I've never had an issue with FreeTaxUSA.

mynameisash• 4 years ago

I've never heard of FreeTaxUSA, but with my tax situation this year, I'm probably going to look for something else next year. In short, my awesome tax guy retired, and the new people to whom he referred his clients ended up being less-communicative and more expensive ($750 vs $400). I was okay paying my tax guy for his amazing services, but I'm not going to pay exorbitant fees for crap service.

My concern is that my tax situation, while not extreme, is not exactly simple. How well does something like FreeTaxUSA deal with small businesses (K1), part-time employment (1099?), stock awards and ESPP, and so on? If I can do my taxes in a day and be confident that I don't severely screw anything up, I'll totally go with that next year.

outworlder4• 4 years ago

I believe it handles all that. Now if you do a lot of stock trading, that's seems to be a problem. Not that it can't do it, but in the amount of data entry that has to be done.

kaitai4• 4 years ago

Yeah I did not deal with stock awards or ESPP this year, but used Freetaxusa with K-1 and 1099-NEC and it was just fine. My understanding of the QBI was a little different than theirs but I think theirs is standard (given that I am very much not a tax pro, just an excessively literal person).

onlyrealcuzzo2• 4 years ago

Used FreeTaxUSA for the first time this year.

I found it MUCH more usable than TurboTax * and TaxAct. TurboTax was going to charge me >$300, and TaxAct was also > $150.

FreeTaxUSA was only $16.

* TurboTax can auto import your 1099s from most institutions. I did have to manually import 6 different forms into FreeTaxUSA - but I think the process was still faster.

ddoolin• 4 years ago

I run a pass-through entity (S Corp) and also have investment sales to list and I've been using FreeTaxUSA for three years now. I don't think I've paid for federal yet and state (single, CA) is always $15. I used to pay at least $60 for TurboTax for many years prior.

sfteus• 4 years ago

I don't have a crazy tax situation, just some freelancing, so I usually used freefillableforms.com because I didn't want to pay for TurboTax. For some reason it errored out when submitting this year and would not let me re-submit it, so I had to use an alternative.

Ended up using FreeTaxUSA and was pleasantly surprised. Was way easier to enter all my info in than TurboTax, and pulled up the same refund amount. I don't see why I would want to use TurboTax when the free alternative is free and easier to use.

rodric• 4 years ago

Lobbying is a two-way street: it would be good if for once the reporters that investigated this topic would name the politicians on the other end of it, rather than just (albeit deservedly) condemning Intuit for the thousandth time

micromacrofoot8• 4 years ago

It gets harder every year to find tax software that isn't owned by intuit... I don't think any of it is free anymore for anything beyond basic returns. The IRS' paper returns get more complicated every year. It seems Intuit is winning this despite all the complaining.

jonny_eh3• 4 years ago

"Cash App Taxes" is owned by Cash App which is owned by Square/Block Inc. It used to be owned by Credit Karma, which was bought by Intuit, but they (were forced?) to sell it.

micromacrofoot8• 4 years ago

Ah, thanks for the info. Last I knew Intuit bought Credit Karma (who I did taxes with previously) and I didn't realize they were spun off again.

briandear2• 4 years ago

But TurboTax does a great job. It’s a good product. Happy to pay for it. Not sure why all of the hate. The problem is the tax system itself, not the software.

micromacrofoot8• 4 years ago

Intuit lobbies the government to keep the tax system complicated so they can charge people to use their software.

The majority of the civilized world spends almost 0 time doing personal taxes. Intuit steals our time and money.

_jal• 4 years ago

Not sure why all of the hate.

.. I take it you have managed to post this without reading nearly every other comment?

et-al• 4 years ago

Not sure why all of the hate.

You're being facetious, right?

They have dark patterns every step of the way to try to get you to pay more and to share your tax information. Their "free" is oftentimes not free. And on top of all this, there are countless articles about them lobbying to maintain the status quo of complicated taxes.

formerkrogemp10• 4 years ago

Intuit has been spending billions to lobby for complicated tax filing process and against the government primarily filling out your forms for you based on data they should already have on hand from mandatory reporting. That's why people hate them so much.

Sohcahtoa822• 4 years ago

I'm not normally one to say "Bro, read the room", but...

Bro. Read the room.

The entire comment section answers the question of "why all of the hate".

avrionov• 4 years ago

TaxCut is probably the biggest alternative. Owned by HRBlock. Not sure if the they are better.

wtf_is_up• 4 years ago

I found TaxHawk to be really good when I did my own taxes. Mainly I sought it out because it took in K-1's where TurboTax would need an upgrade.

TMWNN• 4 years ago

I'd been satisfied with TaxHawk in the past, but when my tax situation changed this time around I tested it with the same inputs as TurboTax with upsells costing 10 times more. After getting the same results on both, I gladly used TaxHawk again.

morninglight• 4 years ago

Founding fathers wanted, "No taxation without representation."

Maybe they should have been more specific.

Apocryphon• 4 years ago

Shortly after the revolution they put down several tax protester uprisings with armed force, this has always been happening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fries%27s_Rebellion

rootusrootus2• 4 years ago

Any article on this topic is incomplete if it doesn't also include a paragraph on Grover Norquist. I'd argue that his influence has been far more effective than Intuit's lobbying.

patio11• 4 years ago

Came here to say this. I will try to avoid committing politics in the HN comments section, but it is a true fact that one side of the aisle has definite policy preferences on taxes and maximally does not want them to happen quietly without people noticing them. They will say this, at length and on the record, when asked about the topic. Their positions are sincere and flow logically from both their political preferences and incentives.

lkbm• 4 years ago

Milton Friedman once commented that property tax is particularly unpopular because it's the only tax for which people still have to write a check[0].

That said, we could make income tax more visible without requiring tax professionals. (e.g., end withholding and send me a monthly tax bill; show the money go into my bank account and then back out, whether automatically or forcing me to write a check.)

[0] https://youtu.be/yS7Jb58hcsc?t=120

pessimizer3• 4 years ago

Grover Norquist is dead.

rootusrootus2• 4 years ago

In what sense? He is alive, still active in politics, his political advocacy group is still active...

bigbacaloa4• 4 years ago

In Spain I log onto the tax agency website using my digital certificate. It tells me what I have been paid during the year, what I own, how big my mortgage is, etc. If I agree I click a button and pay whatever I owe. If I don't agree, or some info is missing, I add it in and then click the button.

It's astronomically easier than filing the same tax information in the US and takes far less time even though the tax code is less clearly written and user support is almost totally nonexistent.

The nonexistence of a national ID system makes digital identification unnecessarily difficult. The idea that an individual has to redeclare to the IRS what has already been declared to the IRS on W2s and 1099s is just stupid.

The US tax filing system is simply primitive.

chucksta3• 4 years ago

It is not primitive, it is intentionally complex and riddled with loop holes so it can be manipulate by those who know how to creating all kinds of new markets for law, filing, and enforcement.

gst2• 4 years ago

The US system is more complex, but I wouldn't attribute this to malice.

The reason why it's so easy to file taxes in lots of European countries is because the tax system (for the general population) is a lot simpler. For example in Austria you pay the same amount of taxes no matter if you're single or married, capital gains are taxed at a flat rate and directly withheld by brokers, and "social benefits" are typically handled outside of the tax system instead of being folded into the tax system.

In the United States the tax code is a lot more complex. You pay different taxes if you're married compared to if you're single, capital gains tax rate depends on your other taxes so brokers can't automatically withhold taxes, and there are a lot of edge-cases for certain other situations that can't be easily automated. Like tax credits if you're affected by natural disasters, different tax handling for railroad worker pensions, and so on.

With that complexity it is a lot harder to automate taxes, but it's also hard to retroactively reduce that complexity, as any changes will negatively financially impact some of the affected groups. Also I think that it might be easier in the US to handle those aspects as part of the tax system (instead of handling them independently), as the federal government has the authority to collect taxes, but direct payments (outside of the tax system) to individual groups might be harder? (But I'm not sure if that's true).

trevorboaconstr• 4 years ago

It’s intentional.

AviationAtom3• 4 years ago

The reason the US lacks a national ID system ties back to a strongly held belief about state's rights, and that a national ID system would violate those rights, IIRC. I think it's already somewhat happened though, as I understand REAL ID to more or less be that.

jackson14422• 4 years ago

Not to mention the fact that SSNs are horribly insecure and used as a national ID anyways because it's the only national number (almost) everyone has.

I just use a passport for govt identification because it usually only requires the passport, where most other ID methods require two.

Finnucane• 4 years ago

Having a national ID would make it harder for states to abuse minorities and low-income communities. That’s why states object to it.

sorry_outta_gas2• 4 years ago

I wish we used the covid vaccine system to finally push for it one of the best chances we've had in a while

johnnyanmac• 4 years ago

Yup, I heard the same. SSN's are the relatively recent "compromise" made in the 40's. Initially as a way to access your, well, social security. In post depression times where people wanted security more than freedom.

ofc it was never meant to act as a national ID (and thus never tried to be secure), but more and more things are hacked in to make it act as such since there's no better option. A bit ironic given the state of social security nowadays.

mardifoufs2• 4 years ago

Maybe it just optimizes for different things? I honestly don't see why you'd think your system is superior, we have a similar one to americans here in canada and it's just fine. No one really complains about it outside the internet, and to me the process you described wouldn't fit here as much. Having your own business, or side revenues, or not being a salaried employee is much more common here. And we (thankfully) don't have a mandated ID in canada or in the US, which makes it harder for the state to actually track all your income and expenses.

Yes TurboTax and the tax filling industry in general are pretty shady, and there should be free IRS/CRA tools for people to fill their returns directly. Unless you have a more complicated tax situation. But to me that does not have anything to do with doing away with tax fillings in general.

Mindless2112• 4 years ago

How do you incentivize people to provide missing info if it will increase their tax bill?

The US system is intentionally designed so that you don't know what the IRS does or does not know. If you leave something off of your taxes that the IRS knows about then maybe they'll audit you and give you a big fine. So the optimal strategy is to report everything and pay the taxes you owe.

In Spain's system, it seems to me that the optimal strategy would be to either go with what the tax agency says or to report more information, depending in which gives you a lower tax bill.

lovehashbrowns• 4 years ago

The US system is intentionally designed for companies like TurboTax to make money off of you and to be a political tool.

There's a lot you still have to report yourself, like cash payments or sales, crypto currency, dependents, charitable contributions, and so on.

It's not like the IRS magically knows everything. You're acting as if people only avoid tax fraud because the IRS has a general idea as to what you owe and they keep it secret from you. People are generally pretty decent. The people intentionally committing tax fraud are gonna try whether the IRS keeps your taxes secret from you or not.

ClumsyPilot• 4 years ago

'The US system is intentionally designed so that you don't know what the IRS does or does not know."

Sounds a lot like 'it's best for the plebs not to know the law is so they don't know what to hide from the police'

noasaservice• 4 years ago

The nonexistence of a national ID system makes digital identification unnecessarily difficult.

You can thank the Christians in the Reagan years for calling damned near everything "The Mark of the Beast", including social security numbers, attempted creation of a national ID, and more.

So we ended up with a de-facto national ID, being a hodgepodge of state IDs, RealID, SSN, credit scores from multiple (horrific) credit vendors, legal records, and plenty more.

rycomb• 4 years ago

Yet there are businesses like TaxDown and TaxFix trying to get in the middle (just look at how much they're spending on ads in Spanish TV).

I seriously hope they fail, and also that they're never able to influence the powers that be / the whole process with Hacienda (they surely would like to make it more complex, more like filing a return in the US).

2ion• 4 years ago

This sounds like a nice system.

Does it also tell you of its own volition if the tax office owes you money instead on a return without you having to declare anything? For example, if the tax office knows where you work as an employee and where you live, and the tax code has provisions that stipulate that an employee gains a tax advantage of 0.xx€ per kilometre commuting distance between his home and his place of work, does it factor that in or doesn't it? Because that would actually be _nice_.

midasuni• 4 years ago

In the U.K. if you’ve overpaid in a given year (usually only a few pounds) you get the option to either roll it over to the next year, or a direct bank transfer to the account you give.

I’ve had payments pretty much instant (maybe next day) of repayments that are 4 figures, and ones that are just a few pennies.

henrikeh• 4 years ago

In Denmark, so not the same as who you reply to.

Yes, if you pay too much in tax and their calculations reveal that, then, yes, you get money back on your bank account.

They don’t calculate commute deductibles for you, but mortgages, pension is something which is calculated for you based upon reports from the respective institutes.

jrochkind13• 4 years ago

Yes.

I don't think it's related to national ID system though. The Social Security Number (or Tax Identification Number for non-citizen non-residents) does serve as a national ID for tax purposes. The IRS certainly already does have your W2's and does know who you are, that's not an issue.

The main issue is what the OP is about, that the US was considering creating such a system, but the tax prep software people lobbied against it.

I also wonder how much of an issue is the crazy complexity of the US tax code; it seems ridiculously complex to me, even for people without complicated or large income, I suspect it's a lot simpler in Spain. But this is just me guessing.

kube-system14• 4 years ago

While this is a fair criticism of our federal tax system, it still wouldn't be simple for me to file my taxes even if the IRS filled out all of my federal forms. Many places in the US have state and local income taxes, so for some people, the IRS is only one of two or three agencies that they fill out tax forms for. There are hundreds of different governments that impose income taxes in the US.

dragonwriter2• 4 years ago

Many places in the US have state and local income taxes, so for some people, the IRS is only one of two or three agencies that they fill out tax forms for.

(1) In many of those cases, state/local filing requires very small additional paperwork plus same-year federal forms.

(2) In many of those cases, the same thing the IRS could do for federal forms could be done by state/local tax authorities for their own forms.

So, solving the federal case both solves most of the problem and provides a template for solving most of the rest of the problem.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

Not an excuse for not automating as much of the process as possible.

BrandoElFollito• 4 years ago

We do have several local taxes as well (in France). They are all handled by your equivalent of the IRS, everything is on the same web site (I do not even know what I pay in local taxes, I get an email telling me that it i due, and it is then direct debited from by bank account).

bigbacaloa4• 4 years ago

In Spain the tax filing includes local taxes as well as federal taxes. Spain has, proportionate to population, more subregions than the US does, and their fiscal policies in relation to taxes vary considerably.

The US system is just terribly implemented and there's no excuse for it.

IMSAI8080• 4 years ago

Never once seen a tax form here in the UK. Your employer deals with it. Every year they mail you a personalised table showing exactly how much each public service cost you (i.e. what they spent your taxes on).

makecheck• 4 years ago

The upsells on TurboTax are getting a lot more shameless in recent years. I saw the exact same one pop up at least 2-3 times.

The one that really aggravated me though was the one at the end: after you FILE your taxes, they present this damned progress-bar looking thing as if you are somehow “not done” yet, as if this totally optional product sale is a required step!! No, no, no, that is just misleading garbage, and it is so annoying to have to constantly hunt around the page for the magic text to get around these things. I mean, I couldn’t even reach the page that lets me download my forms as PDF until I skipped this upsell.

What’s more, the product itself is getting more expensive but worse. On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?) with all kinds of things unnecessarily hidden. On page after page, there is more than enough space to show everything but instead it’s giant white space everywhere; they HIDE things behind disclosure arrows, and with no logic whatsoever; e.g. on one page it shows the 2020 numbers by default but hides all the 2021 numbers behind arrows!?

Guess what isn’t an insultingly-small, truncated experience on desktop? The ads, the upsells. THOSE are full-page, taking full advantage of screen space and even scrolling off the edges.

Really shows their priorities.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 4 years ago

What’s more, the product itself is getting more expensive but worse.

The product must get more expensive for Turbo Tax to deliver growth to its shareholders.

______-_-______• 4 years ago

Can I ask, in spite of all this, why you continue to use their product?

bojo• 4 years ago

Not the OP, however, I haven't found a product that's easy to drop options trading data into. I'd love to switch off of TurboTax, but I'm not putting hundreds of trades into a system manually - their import function makes it a breeze.

Perhaps it's time to hire an accountant?

fullstop• 4 years ago

It depends on how much your time is worth. You can import prior returns and compare year-to-year.

ozzythecat• 4 years ago

You hit the nail on the head. Actually, we used TurboTax, got annoyed with the constant upsells, and the $80 fee (it was advertised as free), and then my husband redid our taxes using another website (freetaxusa). It was actually free.

sngz3• 4 years ago

i just did my taxes last night and checked freetaxusa seems like they charge for state though? I ended up using credit karma's app which was still annoying after intuit bought them and they were forced to sell the tax software to square, and it required I download the mobile app first. It was much better in the past

conductr• 4 years ago

I've used that service for a decade and never paid them a penny, I think there are a few services they bill for but I don't need. The UI gets only minor changes and it still basically works as it did ten years ago, so I appreciate the consistency as well especially for something I touch once a year.

jandrese6• 4 years ago

Huge upvote for freetaxusa. My wife was worried that it wouldn't be as good so we did our taxes one year on both services simultaneously. TurboTax's interface was so bad it took almost twice as long to complete the same work and the refund was the same.

Why would I pay for a worse interface? We don't have trivial taxes either, we have our own business and investment income. TurboTax was way worse about not letting us skip over stuff we don't have. It creates single question pages one after another instead of just sticking them in a list so you can skim through them all at once and select only the relevant ones.

kaitai4• 4 years ago

Agree, finished taxes with Freetaxusa and figured out backdoor roth conversion, included freelancing income, dealt with a schedule k-1. So much less obnoxious than TurboTax, which I have also used but which makes me angry for all the reasons discussed in this thread. Yes, Freetaxusa charges for the state return, but it's also the case that I can't file electronically for free in my state at all (?????). Spouse wants to do paper on principle, which I acquiesced to last year, but.... our paper federal return from last year has literally still not been processed (check was cashed 4/8/2021).

civilized2• 4 years ago

I'm on H&R Block, which I used to be pretty happy with, but it's also getting a lot worse. Much slower, pointless UI changes always in a bloaty direction, navigation is less functional, more upsell garbage, more expensive, etc.

I've kept coming back until now out of habit and because they've got a lot of data on me they can prefill, but maybe I should look at FreeTaxUSA now.

spear• 4 years ago

Same here. I couldn't get their discount codes to work this year and the IRA Worksheets seem to be broken now.

astrea• 4 years ago

This year was a nightmare for me. The UI wouldn't save state, going through the same steps would lead me to different results ("Your state was e-filed!","Your state isn't accepting e-file."), and there was an alleged error but it would never tell or show me what the error was. Customer service was just as confused as I was and the "Get virtual assistance" button eventually disappeared for me. I ended up giving up and going to a local CPA to get it done for me. I don't think I'll be using HR Block next year after being a customer for over 5 years.

Stratoscope3• 4 years ago

On desktop, the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI

Meanwhile, the traditional desktop software version of TurboTax remains quite good, and I have been using it year after year on Windows. They have several editions; here is the one I used this year:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09FW199HB/

It's much cheaper to buy it on Amazon than directly from TurboTax.

bubblethink4• 4 years ago

Why do all these tax companies have a web version and a desktop version ? Why isn't it all web at this point ?

loeg• 4 years ago

I wouldn't call it "quite good." It's also pretty crappy. There are arbitrary sleeps thrown in between pages to make it seem like the software is doing something; additional upsells, like GP is complaining about; they block paste when filling in bank credentials, which is super obnoxious; and the UI flow drops you back at "guided or self-service" every time you leave a section.

felipellrocha• 4 years ago

I've been wondering lately why hasn't someone just built an open source version of it. It would be less buggy and more up-to-date than anything a corporation could build. It would also create the incentive to eventually get rid of the industry all together

outworlder4• 4 years ago

The tax code is particularly complicated – and then there are multiple states to worry about. It would be difficult for a single person to do this. Not impossible, maybe there are some CPAs which are also software engineers. Once the project becomes big enough, maybe more people would help.

The problem is then: are they shielded from liability? If there's a mistake and people sue, they won't have Intuit's lawyer army.

But let's say we have the perfect program. Would people be OK with printing out and mailing their returns? Because you have to be an authorized provider to e-file.

kube-system14• 4 years ago

It has been tried, but I haven’t seen any projects that were able to keep up.It takes a lot of manpower to update all of the various forms for every tax season. Congress can and has done things like pass a 1700+ page bill changing the tax code on Dec 20th of the same tax year, and some users will want to start filing their returns within a month. And there are 50 states that can do the same thing.

Also it requires expertise outside of programming for which there is not much enthusiasm for open source.

caturopath• 4 years ago

Not the Wizard format, but https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home is a pretty popular project along those lines.

pinkythepig2• 4 years ago

There are already affordable alternatives. The people still using turbotax are the same people that spend 0 time looking into alternatives or there is some import feature that an opensource platform realistically would not have the manpower to replicate. Freetaxusa is $15 at a minimum (state fee) and $50ish at the max if you opt into everything. UI isn't loaded with fake loading screens, and they only try to upsell maybe 2 or 3 times during the whole process. My parents complain about turbotax every year and every year I tell them about alternatives... But they still won't switch because 'its what they know'.

trianglesphere2• 4 years ago

It’s not just federal taxes, but 50 states. I think you could get enough oss manpower for keeping up to date with federal taxes, but not every state.

jlund-molfese• 4 years ago

There is https://ustaxes.org , an open-source tax filing application, but I'm not adventurous enough to use it when a mistake could be very expensive.

HWR_142• 4 years ago

The IRS has the information to do my taxes. They should just send me a bill (or a check) with a copy of their math that I can accept or dispute.

asciimov• 4 years ago

are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?

More people than you would think. I have several coworkers with kids that don't have a single computer in their house other than their phones. If the kids need to use a computer they take home their work laptop.

techsupporter• 4 years ago

the whole thing is just a blown-up mobile UI (are that many people doing taxes on their phones!?)

Yes. According to Pew, in 2021 there were 15% of adults in the US who said they only have smartphone data for Internet access and do not have what we know as home broadband. By age, that number skews towards younger adults, with the largest share being people aged 18-29, however even older adults hover in the low teens of percent.

Even if someone does have broadband at home, the number of "traditional" desktop and laptop computers have been dropping. Mobile phone and tablet devices (but, let's be honest, mostly mobile phones) have been replacing regular computers at a pretty high clip. And where a household does have a desktop or laptop, they may only have one, where almost everyone has a mobile phone device so it's probably convenient to just pull up the tax prep web site and get to it on the handheld.

Pew data: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

hanniabu2• 4 years ago

I can't even imagine doing taxes on mobile....

viraptor• 4 years ago

Be careful with "there were 15% of adults in the US who said they only have smartphone data for Internet access" - it means that's how they get the internet, not where they use it. Due to broadband availability / quality there's going to be a non-trivial number of people relying on tethering either through phone or dedicated dongle.

thiht• 4 years ago

I’m in France and I do my taxes on mobile because « doing my taxes » is just checking 2 numbers and clicking « next » 2 times.

rrauenza• 4 years ago

Every time I opened it this year it begged me to register. So they could capture my personal information to market to next year, or try to get me to “subscribe.” It seemed to also prompt again at exit.

Really irritated me that I couldn’t opt out permanently but had to click skip every single time.

And I’m tired of the progress bars pretending to be calculating in order to make me feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.

And yet I buy it begrudgingly every year because it is what I know, and it imports data fairly well from my online accounts.

Do the alternative brands import w2’s and previous year’s turbo tax files? Does it integrate with online brokers for pulling 1099’s?

Teknoman117• 4 years ago

Their competitor TaxAct is being more brash as well. I've been filing the same forms for the last 5 years and the filing cost with them has risen gradually from $60 in 2017 to $130 this year.

gordon_freeman• 4 years ago

One bright spot in all this pay-to-file-taxes game is the "Cash App Taxes" [0]. It is just great and seamless to file taxes for free even for a bit complex taxes such as RSU, Stocks, Virtual currency sales etc. Usually what I do is just progress on TurboTax until the end so I could calculate my estimated refund and then go ahead and file using Cash App Taxes and it just saved me $150 this year.

[0] https://cash.app/taxes

ajdude• 4 years ago

I've been using Credit Karma the last few years for taxes until they sold to Intuit, at which point their tax division went to cash.app. Initially I tried going with them until I realized that I had to download their app on my phone to even sign into the desktop to do my taxes (it was requesting I scan a QR code or something). I couldn't even access my previous tax returns that were stored on Credit Karma without downloading the cashapp to my phone. Eventually I caved, but only to contact their support to retrieve my returns and formally cancel my account.

I shouldn't need to download an app to a smartphone for something that I exclusively intend to use on a desktop. I went with FreeTaxUSA in the end.

otikik• 4 years ago

I agree that all those are bad, but the main problem I have with it is that it should be a state-provided (or federal government-provided, I don't care) service. If a country wants taxes the minimum it should do is tell its citizens how much each of them owns. Relying on a private company to provide that "for free" (as long as you jump through the hoops) is ... shameful.

xyzzy21• 4 years ago

In general, ANYTHING mandated by the government should be available primarily in minimally sufficient form from the government. That goes for insurance, fees, services, etc.

sidewndr462• 4 years ago

I think you meant to say "owes", but yes I agree with this idea fully. When I pay sales tax, it isn't like I have to perform some long-form calculation to figure out what I owe. I get a bill and I pay it. When I pay property tax, same thing. I get a bill and I pay it. I register a vehicle as an on-road vehicle, I get the tax amount and I pay it.

Only the Federal government could come up with a scheme where you have to prove you made X, then prove you owe Y and pay that.

hanniabu2• 4 years ago

I mean, we even rely on a private company to login to the IRS now. ID.me is the gatekeeper even though they said they'd remove it.

dwohnitmok• 4 years ago

There's a large group of political organizations apart from just tax filing services and companies that believe that it is intrinsically bad for the government to just tell citizens how much they owe. They are very loud and influential.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848324

eyelidlessness• 4 years ago

If they actually wanted the taxes they’d be sending bill collectors. They don’t most of the time because it’s highly probable you already did pay, more than you owe, and they owe you. Their incentive to collect is to let private companies generate more revenue with their services, which in turn generates more taxes automatically collected.

Taniwha• 4 years ago

So that's how it works here in New Zealand - most people can go on line and fill out a 2-page web form, the IRD already has our equivalents to W2s, 1099s etc, you can look them over, make sure you think they're correct and effectively press a button - taxes done! And if you don't? then the IRD will do it for you anyway and send you a refund (with interest) or a bill.

Of course it's much easier for us because we have a much simpler tax system - virtually no exemptions - chances are if you have one job all year your employer got your tax right to the dollar.

I have to file in both countries, American taxes is like pulling teeth (the paper work side, I don't mind the actual paying of taxes, it's a civic duty after all)

svachalek• 4 years ago

Some of the interactions are even too granular to make sense on mobile. I can't remember the specifics but there are some sequences that go like:

Do you need to adjust the value here? (Yes) (No)

... new page slowly loads ...

Do you need help calculating this value? (Yes) (No) (I don't want to change this value)

... new page slowly loads ...

What should the value be? (I'll enter it manually) (Help me calculate it) (I don't want to change it)

Like other than some basic wording changes, the third page already supports what the first two pages did. And depending how many stock trades are in your form you might have to repeat this loop a hundred times. It's really enraging.

SilasX• 4 years ago

In fairness, that third paragraph is pretty typical (horrifying) web UX these days, not something unique to Intuit or tax software. Let me open subsections in a new tab, FFS!

clairity• 4 years ago

so just stop using turbotax, h&r block, taxact, etc. try https://www.freetaxusa.com/ or any other decent competitor not trying to monopolize or regulatorially capture the market. for simple returns, just doing it by hand and mailing it in is easy enough too. vote with your feet.

kaitai4• 4 years ago

I used to be able to do a return "by hand" (fine, using a spreadsheet). But now between the health insurance stuff and the child tax credit there is a whole raft of additional forms that did not even exist just a few years back.

ibdf• 4 years ago

After reading similar articles in previous years I finally decided to switch. After 10 years with Turbotax, I switched to the Cash App tax app. It was a bit more work to enter the data, but it was actually free. Turbotax free tier barely covers anything and they will bug you every step of the process to upgrade.

assbuttbuttass• 4 years ago

I also used Cash App this year to file. I found it remarkably simple and easy compared to completing the forms by hand.

slg10• 4 years ago

I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence. Countless companies do that. The real villains of this story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully lobbied.

The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing.

oo0shiny• 4 years ago

I would argue that perhaps both are the bad guys in this situation.

runnerup• 4 years ago

Truly. At some point, there is a person with far more money than their family would ever need, even only counting annual interest earned instead of principal.

Current CEO has net worth of >$100 million. In fairness, the poorest board member of intuit has half a dozen positions earning $150,000 to $350,000 and _may_ not have accumulated true financial independence. But other board members have over $200 Million.

Those people make the following decision Every. Single. Year: “let’s try to get the government to make taxes far harder and riskier for hundreds of millions of Americans so that I can be even more rich than I already am.”

It would be more excusable if they merely hadn’t lobbied for Americans at all, someone else did, and they reacted quickly to additionally reap the benefits of the same policy.

But when you are already well past having all the money your family could ever need, and choose to try to get the government to fuck over hundreds of millions of people, then the blame lands on you just as much as the politician.

slg10• 4 years ago

TurboTax/Intuit are bad guys for other reasons. Like trying to mislead customers like the article details, but I don't think lobbying the government to ensure their industry is not eradicated is necessarily immoral. They have perfectly reasonable motivations there. Most of us would act the same way in their position. It isn't their job to consider the societal ramifications of those laws. It is the governments job to see that lobbying and not let it outweigh the clear societal harm in just acquiescing to TurboTax/Intuit.

anticensor• 4 years ago

They are simply lobbying for their continued existence

Survival instinct.

Afforess3• 4 years ago

I hate how this story is always framed as the fault of evil TurboTax/Intuit. They are simply lobbying for their continued existence.

Fascinating way to reframe this as a natural survival instinct of...checks notes... a corporate entity. An entity that exists at the government's pleasure, and whose charter can be revoked by said government.

Let's reframe your own logic:

The real villains of this story are the politicians who TurtboTax/Intuit have successfully lobbied.

The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no?

You can go in circles with this kind of thinking.

Instead, we should look at outcomes. What do we want to happen with taxes? Ideally the government sends you pre-filled paperwork. Who is opposing this outcome? Intuit. Hence they are villians.

slg10• 4 years ago

The politicians did nothing illegal by accepting the lobbying on behalf of TurboTax, after all. Under what rule or law would you punish them? Surely you can not fault politicians for earning money to continue to survive in politics, no?

First off, I never said anything about a legal punishment. Secondly, politicians are ostensibly supposed to act for the good of their constituents. Corporations are motivated to act for the good of their shareholders. In this situation TurboTax/Intuit is operating as it is expected/supposed to act while the politicians are not.

BitwiseFool• 4 years ago

"this as a natural survival instinct of... checks notes ... a corporate entity"

There is no need for the glib "checks notes" snark on a forum like this. I feel like it undermines the argument and makes the post come across as adversarial rather than constructive.

jklinger4104• 4 years ago

The problem isn't people trying to influence the government to do the wrong thing. The problem is the government can so easily be convinced to do the wrong thing.

It's both.

If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass.

Also I don't really want to hear about how American citizens need to fix their government when they have no time for civic engagement. Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want, and they often have a rock bottom approval rating.

Let's start by making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world, let that marinade for a while, then let's criticize people for their lack of engagement.

Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.

slg10• 4 years ago

Trending outrage seems to be the only way to move the needle at the moment so trying to undermine this article is also undermining progress.

I am pointing out the root of the problem is not TurboTax/Intuit but instead the government. Your comment is effectively the doing the same thing to my comment that I did to this article so I don't understand your criticism that I was "undermining progress". It isn't like "making voting days holidays, guarantee a livable minimum wage, guarantee time off like the rest of the sane world" is a much easier to accomplish political goal than "fix lobbying".

twoodfin3• 4 years ago

If you tried to change the government to fix lobbying, every company would lobby against it. It wouldn't pass.

That's primarily because it would be unconstitutional to "fix" lobbying, at least they way detractors of the practice would likely consider adequate. It's right there in the First Amendment next to freedom of speech:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

tonguez• 4 years ago

"Independent polls show the US Govt has misaligned priorities to what the people want"

are you saying you think people in power care about the people they rule over?

"Let's start by making voting days holidays"

if voting could change anything they wouldn't allow you to do it. they literally shot JFK, the elected president, almost 60 years ago. the idea that everything is not completely fucked at this point, is so incredibly naiive.

sorry_outta_gas2• 4 years ago

is it? if people really cared they would put more money towards it than intuit could

briHass• 4 years ago

Perhaps the real bad guys are those same politicians, or others, that make the tax code so damn complicated that 50% or more of the population don't stand a chance of comprehending it.

If you're W2, and you have kids or 1099s the gov already knows about, there should be no need to file at all. State and local governments should tap into the federal feed, and there should also be no filing there. Any discrepancy that results in a bill or refund gets automatically sent out.

The amount of time wasted to do taxes, even a simple 1040EZ, is staggering. The fact that people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R) or crappy software is criminal.

Stratoscope3• 4 years ago

...people with relatively simple tax situations are persuaded to use expensive filing services (H&R)...

And when you go to an H&R Block office, you're talking with someone who doesn't really know taxes at all. They are just filling out forms like you might do yourself.

When my ex-wife and I had separated but were still legally married, she went to an H&R Block office and the tax preparer told her that she could file single. (No, you can't. It's married filing jointly or married filing separately.)

She also said our adult daughter didn't need to file at all because her income was below the filing threshold. (Yes, she did need to file because at the time she was on an ACA/Obamacare health plan.)

It's bad when I know more about taxes than the "expert" at H&R Block.

burkaman• 4 years ago

Companies are not alive. The human beings running Intuit are lobbying for the continued existence of an unnecessary and harmful organization. That is unethical/immoral/evil behavior. Accepting their bribes is also evil behavior. There's no need to pick the "real villains", everyone involved is a villain.

It's true that some employees would be hurt if Intuit went out of business, but paying someone doesn't magically make their behavior acceptable. You can't pay someone to harass people on the street and then say "sorry, I can't stop or my harasser will lose their income, the real villains here are the police for letting me do this."

qudat• 4 years ago

Companies are not alive.

Disagree. Nation-states, companies are entities with minds of their own.

memish• 4 years ago

"It wasn't my fault your honor, a lobbyist told me to do it!"

patrickthebold• 4 years ago

Why not the voters who voted for the politicians who were successfully lobbied?

maxerickson6• 4 years ago

I'm not engaged in directly lobbying the government to do stupid things that are profitable for me, so I feel pretty okay judging people that are.

TillE• 4 years ago

As an American living overseas, I'm forced to file taxes every year even though I pay the IRS $0. It therefore seems very silly to pay around $100 a year for tax software.

In previous years, TurboTax's free option was pretty great. This year, my only real option was TaxSlayer, since the others required a US mobile number. It worked, but it was very primitive compared to TurboTax. I could've e-filed IRS forms directly, except I also needed to file state taxes, which directed me to use private software.

A very stupid system of filing a bunch of paperwork through private companies just so I can pay/receive $0.

umvi• 4 years ago

Just to play devil's advocate though, there's a difference in the information conveyed between declaring you owe $0 and not making a declaration at all.

Or to put it into computer terms, IRS doesn't interpret "no return" as meaning you owe zero taxes but rather as a null (i.e. a person that didn't file a return).

kube-system14• 4 years ago

Look on the bright side, most of us who pay money for tax software get much less than a $108,700 deduction!

alfalfasprout• 4 years ago

I mean the stupid thing there is owing US taxes despite living and working primarily abroad. The US is only one of two countries that does this.

mattwad• 4 years ago

freetaxusa.org is a fine alternative

yetanother-1• 4 years ago

This is not 100% free (fanepalm)

outworlder4• 4 years ago

I've done my taxes on Turbotax for a few years, and didn't even check alternate options because I had the perception they were clunky.

I've tried for the first time FreeTaxUSA to prepare my mother's tax return. Guess what? It's even better than Turbotax in some aspects(the UI is similar, but doesn't waste your time with animations), and way cheaper. It only charges you to file state but, if you come from the Free File IRS website (and are under the income requirements), it doesn't even charge you that. There's one upsell for their tax consultants or whatever, but it's only done once.

It does not automatically import W2s though, but that saves you maybe 5 minutes per W2. Not sure about stock transactions import either, it seems they can't import from brokers. I will have to check next year. They do seem to have spreadsheet import, so maybe that's something we (as in, HN community) could fix until they have the feature.

The competition seems to have improved as well, although I don't have first hand knowledge (but watched some youtube reviews where they walk through the filing with every software).

It's time we ditch Intuit. If we can't have free IRS software, then we should at least bleed Intuit dry.

EDIT: it's particularly egregious that Intuit came up with the Free File program as a compromise so that IRS wouldn't have their own tax software, only to leave the program.

nosefrog• 4 years ago

I also used FreeTaxUSA. It doesn't import stock, but it's easy enough to just input the stock summaries yourself, and then mail the full stock tax forms from your stock brokers to the IRS afterwards.

techolic• 4 years ago

I really love the comparison with previous year(s) on some pages and that helped me spot a real error. The navigation is so much better than turbo tax too.

If anyone is looking to convert from turbo tax, you can import your previous return as pdf and that could cover a lot of details already that don't change year over year.

js2• 4 years ago

Note that if you do this and then change your mind, you can't delete your FreeTaxUSA account. You have to manually delete everything you've uploaded and replace your personal information with nonsense:

https://www.freetaxusa.com/help/display_faq.jsp?delete-accou...

depingus2• 4 years ago

There's one upsell for their tax consultants or whatever, but it's only done once.

It's also worth noting that the upsell is only $7.

thechao• 4 years ago

Hey, so, TurboTax has a 0% chance of correctly importing my W2s & stock transactions; so, it's not like I even get that. This was my last year of using TTax — if I'd known about FreeTaxUSA, I would've hopped.

dataflow• 4 years ago

Is this something about how they don't handle wash sales across brokers for you, or do they actually screw up importing that one form from your stock broker somehow? If so, how do they screw it up? Would be nice for everyone to know so they can watch out.

grogers• 4 years ago

I enjoyed freetaxusa as well. Only thing that was a little weird was that I ended up entering some forms out of order and because of that it was saying my backdoor roth ira rollover was taxable income, but when I went back through and re-entered the data it asked me the right questions and gave the right output.

FYYFFF2• 4 years ago

Millions of lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers exist only because the US tax code is so ridiculously complicated.

formerkrogemp10• 4 years ago

It's job security for accounting folks alright. Just like web advertising keeps all of you programming critters employed.

FYYFFF2• 4 years ago

Not me, but yes. Ads are the reason everything sucks. Adtech and its PPC / CTR have destroyed the world. Everything, in every media, is now clickbait.

therealbilly• 4 years ago

LOL, TurboTax is using every dark pattern in the bag.

navels2• 4 years ago

Does FreeTaxUSA have data integrations for banks and other financial services?

orev• 4 years ago

No.

And I find it concerning that many people seem to feel that this is a make or break feature (as this is always brought up in this discussion). It really isn’t that hard to sit down and focus for a half hour to actually look at your tax documents and type in a few numbers.

reducesuffering• 4 years ago

I find it concerning you assume my taxes look like typing in a few numbers that takes 30 minutes. Without Robinhood auto-import for stock sales, I'm looking at manually entering 100+ transactions with cost basis, sale price, sale date, and long-term vs. short term entries.

P.S. if anyone knows another tax-filer with Robinhood auto-import, feel free to mention.

bastardoperator• 4 years ago

A lot of people dislike turbotax, but compared to what? HR Block which is basically a payday advance company at this point? I've done my taxes with turbotax for awhile now and haven't had any major issues. Maybe they are evil, but not enough for me to care considering I use it for like an hour or two once a year.

jrochkind13• 4 years ago

Well, the alternative the OP is about:

…There’s been proposals in Congress on and off for years, from people like Elizabeth Warren, to appropriate money to the for the IRS to do what it was thinking about doing back in the George W. Bush administration 20 years ago, which is to join many other developed wealthy countries in having an online filing process that’s free and offered by the government to all of us as citizens.

missedthecue2• 4 years ago

So Turbo tax spending less than $2 million was more powerful than the agenda of POTUS? Boy, Amazon with their $20 million in annual lobbying is getting taken for a ride.

bluSCALE4• 4 years ago

A good example is CreditKarma. They came out with a great webapp and TurboTax immediately buys it and puts it behind a mobile app. They got rid of the webapp. Personally, I refused to even try the new version because I didn't want a mobile app.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

This whole situation is a depressing demonstration of the ratchet effect [1].

Intuit obviously doesn't want free filing. They'ee engaging in rent-seeking behaviour and free-filing would obviously hurt their business. Politicans are bought ("lobbied") for a pittance.

But the dirty little secret here is the complexity of the tax code. It's truly ridiculous. Everyone fights simplication of the tax code because every simplification will remove somebody's special exemption, write-off, accelerated depreciation schedule, tax credits and so on. Intuit loves this. The tax industry (not just Intuit) loves this: the more complex it is, the more money they make.

Worse, there's almost an institutional resistance to ANY simplification based pretty much on the slippery slope argument: well if they come for Acme Co's tax credits for not growing corn this week they might come for mine next week.

There's also an awful lot of dishonesty built into the system. Payroll and social security taxes are classified as "employer taxes" (in part at least). There are no employer taxes.

Simple example: Social Security is 6.2% on the employer and employee (up to a cap). So if you have a nominal income of $100,000, the employer is really paying you $106,200 and sending $12,400 to the Federal government.

Can't we just call this what it is?

And don't get me started on the bullshit that is the standard deducation.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see a consitutional amendment for universal basic income of $X per US citizen tax resident, a tax free income on the first $Y of personal income and just a flat rate tax beyond that. Congress gets to play with the values of X and Y.

I'm not holding my breath.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect

dlp2112• 4 years ago

Simple example: Social Security is 6.2% on the employer and employee (up to a cap). So if you have a nominal income of $100,000, the employer is really paying you $106,200 and sending $12,400 to the Federal government.
Can't we just call this what it is?

You seem to be under the impression that in the absence of the employer side of the FICA tax, you would be compensated the full $6,200. This however is not the case. It is almost certainly true that you would in fact see very little if that portion went away tomorrow due to how tax incidence works and how your salary is determined.

0xbadcafebee• 4 years ago

The government's forcing them to give away their software and services for free. Why would they not fight against that?

Have the government give a $100 tax credit to all tax-paying citizens to pay for tax software. You keep competition and private industry and companies get paid for producing their products.

lol1lol• 4 years ago

I paid $300 for TurboTax to fill two input boxes because I found the W2-C form too confusing

smm11• 4 years ago

PAYING to do your taxes is another scam we allow upon ourselves.

bogomipz2• 4 years ago

Agreed. At least until recently though everyone could claim a deduction for the costs of their tax preparation. This deduction is now only available to those who are self-employed and even that is scheduled to completely go away in 3 years. See:

https://www.thebalance.com/tax-preparation-fees-deduction-31...

anonymousnotme• 4 years ago

There is open source software that one can use for the main flows and forms:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/opentaxsolver/

It seems to work and will produce PDF of the forms with data filled in for one. I appreciated it. It will also handle some of the states. It took a while, but I did find how to check out via subversion:

svn checkout 'https://svn.code.sf.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo'

I use subversion so rarely, I always seem to have to figure out that the package name is "subversion" and not "svn" to install on my OS. Then I need to find a tutorial to know how to check it out. Then I just needed to build open tax resolver (no binaries are available for my OS). I have gotten way too used to git and github. :)

1024core• 4 years ago

My 2nd biggest[*] gripe with TurboTax (and Intuit) is that their software quality is low!

I filed my taxes on January 30, and still can't print out my tax return. They tell me that the tax return is not "finalized" (or something like that), along with the "helpful" comment that usually forms are ready by end of January... it's April now, FFS!!

[*] Biggest gripe being their effort to undermine auto-filing.

curious_cat_163• 4 years ago

IRS should build its own TurboTax equivalent and make it open source so all of us can contribute.

JohnWhigham• 4 years ago

That thing would be 5x over-budget, take 5+ years to build, there'd be a laundry list of contractors/subcontractors involved, and one of them would eventually leak customer data.

pilgrimfff• 4 years ago

I noticed that if you try to download a previous year's W-2, TurboTax will make you select "Why" before allowing you. One of the options is "considering an alternative tax software". Such an obvious dark pattern for retention.

Just lie and select "I need to fill out the FAFSA"

WYepQ4dNnG• 4 years ago

As soon as you have to import any investment data (who does not have at least $100 in S&P these days???) and you also have to file state taxes, then turbotax ends up begin expensive. I think I payed something like $300 or close to that. I used to pay my accountant $500. And he was taking care of everything. Now, I have to collect data, struggle with turbotax ugly interface. Next year, I am going back to my accountant. My time is worth more than $200 bucks.

atsushin• 4 years ago

I was heavily considering using Turbo Tax a few years back until I learned about the various Free File options on the IRS. Previously, I was dumb enough to rely on those tax-preparation services despite my taxes being simple enough to do on my own... I was worried some of the options wouldn't be 'feature-complete' as I had some money earned from self-employment, but they were just as good (or better) than Turbo Tax despite the 'older' UI.

Even if you don't technically qualify for Free File, the fees are much lower there than what you would pay on Turbo Tax. For example on 1040Now filing a federal tax return when ineligible for Free File only is about $20. Intuit can crash and burn.

bogomipz2• 4 years ago

Further both Intuit and H and R Block have now completely opted out of the IRS Free File system. See:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/intuit-will-no-longer-partic...

and

https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/irss-free-fil...

PaulDavisThe1st• 4 years ago

Big props to the state of New Mexico. Their online tax filing system was already pretty good last year, with a couple of rough edges. I went to file this year, and here was my experience:

1. login

2. enter my AGI from my federal return

3. enter my estimated taxes

4. done

Postscript: 36 hours later, refund in my bank account

I have no W2 income, am fully self-employed with no 1099's either. I had no capital gains/losses to report this year, but I have the feeling it would have been very easy to deal with that it had it been necessary.

dm319• 4 years ago

Capitalism at work keeping the rich rich and the public deprived of decent services.

oriki• 4 years ago

As someone who wanted to file taxes in Oregon this year without using anybody else's software, I was completely appalled by how inaccessible a system that literally every working American will have to interact with at some point is. They even got rid of the "Free Fillable Forms" option, so if you wanted to file and do your own taxes for yourself, you have to do the paper forms.

It's 2022, and I can't submit my government mandated math homework electronically as a private citizen. That should piss an incredible number of people off, but nobody ever seems to think about it.

aceki• 4 years ago

But Free File Fillable Forms still works? Of course, it's only for federal returns.

https://www.freefilefillableforms.com

crooked-v• 4 years ago

Blaming the current state of affairs solely on TurboTax is giving the Republican Party yet another free pass for their stated and explicit opposition to easily-filed taxes.

danrl• 4 years ago

Has anyone dropped https://ustaxes.org/start yet? OSS US tax returns.

fma• 4 years ago

2 hours before deadling I figure I'll post my experience. I tried to use TaxSlayer to file an extension but it was slow my sessions keeps ending...over and over (same complaints on their Twitter).

I had an account on TurboTax as well...tried to file an extension. Well, at least their system is up and running and responsive. They tried to sell me "Premium" in the middle of it. No, I don't want premium because I won't be able to finish my taxes in 2 hours. Just file my damn extension. Thanks!

it• 4 years ago

This year I had my taxes done by a CPA rather than by TurboTax as I had in previous years, and I'm so glad I did. There was no deceptive upselling. I never got confused and had to go hunting around on the internet for the meaning of some obscure question. I got to keep more of my money than I expected, and I plan to do the same thing again next year.

synicalx• 4 years ago

I honestly find America's tax system to be one of the most bizarre things about the country, TurboTax shenanigans being part of that.

Every year around this time I'm reminded how lucky I am to have at least a somewhat sane and pain-free taxation system here in AU. Me filing a tax return involves bringing a folder of receipts, a page of notes, and handing them over to my accountant who charges me about $120 (tax deductible) the end result of which is I normally get a small refund from the ATO a couple of weeks later.

YPPH• 4 years ago

For me, in AU, it's as easy as 30 minutes filling in information in a government web application, namely myGov. Information which is, for the most part, prefilled for me.

myTax is written by the Australian Taxation Office and is fairly simple and effective. It adopts a really simple design where you begin by ticking some boxes about your income sources and deductions, and then you only see the options relevant to you.

Tax returns competed via this method are back in less than a month. Probably half the people I know do their own tax returns for free.

spacexsucks• 4 years ago

Turbotax, H&R block, et al. lobbied heavily against state supported easy modern tax filing systems

xtat• 4 years ago

Afraid to ever use TurboTax after it put me into a multi-year audit cycle. I was also paying for maximally upgraded plan with all insurance and everything.

TurboTax’s fight against free tax filing

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