Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7168125

by jlebar • 12 years ago

37 61 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

bennyg3• 12 years ago

TurboTax.

notwedtm3• 12 years ago

You must be new here, welcome! On HN polls, you can submit your vote by simply clicking on the arrow next to your selection above.

Generally speaking, the comment section is specifically designed to provide additional details or commentary. Using the comments to cast your vote, or simply echo it, doesn't fall into the category of appropriate usage.

Again, welcome to Y Combinator News aka Hacker News!

bennyg3• 12 years ago

Haha definitely not new - just commenting from an app I made to read/contribute to HN without going to their website. It apparently doesn't parse polls (good to know) well. All I saw was the question. Thanks for not down voting me though!

You can download my app for iOS here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt

Encosia• 12 years ago

I voted for TurboTax because I've been doing my own bookkeeping throughout the year in Quickbooks and then using TurboTax each year for years now. I'm hiring an accountant this year though.

alistairSH• 12 years ago

H&R Block personal software, except for the years I have more unusual situations (AMT, non-qualifying options, etc), then I hire a CPA.

zdw• 12 years ago

FYI, this exists: http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net

Linked from there, this will take JSON input and fill the IRS's PDF forms: https://github.com/codehero/OpenTaxFormFiller

All of it's a bit rough, but if you're looking for a place to start on the problem from a programmer perspective, these are pretty good.

SeoxyS• 12 years ago

I'm actually curious, does anybody have any insight as to whether there are any pitfalls to using something like TurboTax for startup employees who have had to deal with stock options.

For example if one has:

- Exercised stock options. (Filed an 83(b) - or forgotten to file an 83(b).)

- Sold stock.

- Sold derivatives contract on stock using something like ESO / EquityZen / Equidate.

notwedtm3• 12 years ago

I haven't specifically used it for these, but I have seen workflows with in TurboTax that are geared towards stock options and similar.

jnazario• 12 years ago

i've done the first two (never dabbled in derivatives) and turbo tax was no problem, but then again the paperwork for my options was all clear, too - dates, prices and cost basis, exercise dates, etc.

NomenNudum• 12 years ago

I am a US/EU citizen that has stock options in a start-up based in the UK, where I am a permanent resident. I am absolutely clueless on whether or not I need to file something...

akgerber• 12 years ago

'If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside.' http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/U.S.-...

yetanotherphd• 12 years ago

Fun fact: the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns. However this has been prevented by lobbyists from the tax preparation industry

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100124/1836527884.shtml

techsupporter• 12 years ago

That seems to be the way things are going an awful lot lately.

"Fun fact: the {federal|state|local} government has the {information|resources|capability} to {something}. However, this has been prevented by lobbyists from the {group that opposes something or makes a killing doing something very inefficiently}."

Feel free to insert everything from tax filing data to broadband-as-an-infratructure.

mynameishere• 12 years ago

They do it anyway. I've been surprised by how many times the IRS have told me about mistakes...and then send me a check since I paid too much.

szx• 12 years ago

NYS actually sent me a letter saying I missed this and that credit, refund check enclosed. Pretty crazy.

greenyoda3• 12 years ago

"the US government has the ability to tell you how much you should be paying in taxes, and to pre-fill your tax returns"

This is only true if you have a relatively straightforward tax return. Once you itemize deductions, there are all sorts of things the federal government doesn't know about, like how much real estate tax you paid, how much you gave to charity, what your medical and miscellaneous expenses were, etc. They only know about what's on your W-2, 1099s, K-1s, etc.

For the really simple tax returns (like 1040-EZ), I think there's already an option to have the IRS compute your tax for you.

erichurkman• 12 years ago

Up until now, TurboTax. Now, CPA.

Having assets in other states that don't recognize same-sex marriages just makes things too complicated; it's no longer "married filing jointly."

valgaze• 12 years ago

There was an interesting series of articles last year about how TurboTax/Intuit & other groups opposed a simple/clean "pre-fill" tax return arrangement

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-...

http://www.npr.org/2013/03/26/175332655/what-would-the-u-s-b...

http://theweek.com/article/index/241919/why-turbotax-tried-t...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburman/2013/04/15/the-tax...

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4150900/intuit-lobbies-aga...

Intuit's statement on the matter: http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/621241-intuit-state...

rubiquity• 12 years ago

Usually e-file but I have to file a form W-7 this year (I married my wife who is canadian) so I'll be going to an accountant or H&R Block at a minimum.

gergles• 12 years ago

It's a shame ReadyReturn[1] is so nerfed (due to intense lobbying from Intuit) - as otherwise it'd be pretty great.

1: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/readyreturn/

A federally-based solution for this would be ideal; the government is already well-aware of the relevant data. The only reason we have to do any work at all is because of the bizarre vagaries and loopholes of the tax code (and the gigantic amount of lobbying from the 'tax prep industry').

idle_processor• 12 years ago

Can you please elaborate a bit on the imposed constraints that nerf it?

1wheel• 12 years ago

Joseph Bankman, a Stanford Law School professor who helped design ReadyReturn, says he spent close to $30,000 of his own money to hire a lobbyist to defend the program in the legislature. Intuit made political contributions to scores of legislative candidates, Bankman said, and gave $1 million in 2006 to a group backing a ReadyReturn opponent for state controller.
ReadyReturn survived, but with essentially no marketing budget it is not widely known. Fewer than 90,000 California taxpayers used it last year – although those who do use it seem to be happy. Ninety-eight percent of users who filled out a survey said they would use it again.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-...

Jtsummers• 12 years ago

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/21/opinion/la-oe-ventry... - an op-ed from 2010

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/intuit-turbotax-... - another, more recent, report.

Intuit's lobbying is intended (it seems) to reduce funding to the program and replace it with their own variation. Not in CA so this whole thing is news to me, otherwise I'd probably have been paying attention to the details (like I did when Time-Warner-bought legislators were screwing over city-owned broadband in NC).

tannewt2• 12 years ago

There is some information on the Free File Alliance and their restrictive agreements with the IRS here: http://www.irs.gov/uac/About-the-Free-File-Alliance

It would be cool if someone not associate with the FFA would create a tax prep site. The IRS APIs and standards are here: http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/e-File-Providers-&-Part...

thyrsus• 12 years ago

By "manually", I assume we include self-generated software assists? I have a spreadsheet that is specific to my circumstances, and which I modify (quite lightly) each year according to changes in the instructions and circumstances (e.g., children age out of dependent status).

jebblue• 12 years ago

I was going to select H&R Block Online but that's not an option, guess I could select other but when I think probably a lot of people use it, it should be a poll option.

Why do we use it? Simple, TurboTax Online _still_ in _2014_ says my system is not supported. I run Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

H&R Block Online is just fine with my system, doesn't complain and works great, we've used it for six years, on Ubuntu.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

It complained for me as well. I just overrode user agent for many years and never had a problem. I think I pick IE or Firefox. So I still stick with TurboTax.

jlebar2• 12 years ago

Is H&R Block Online different from H&R Block At Home? If so, I apologize for omitting it.

greenyoda3• 12 years ago

H&R Block Online is a web-based application. H&R Block At Home is a program that you install on your PC or Mac.

fink0136• 12 years ago

I very much like OnLine Taxes; have been a customer of theirs for four years now. My experiences with their customer service have been great (this matters most to me), and they're very cost efficient. You must be willing to put up with a somewhat antiquated UI (think circa-2007 PHP app).

RexRollman• 12 years ago

Personally, I don't understand why the IRS doesn't give me a way to electronically submit my taxes to them directly. I hate having to use a third party.

sheetjs• 12 years ago

There's a service called "FreeFile" for federal taxes: http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-...

States have their own programs (e.g. New York http://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/efile/pit_webfile.htm )

briancurtin• 12 years ago

They do. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Free-File:-Do-Your-Federal-Taxes-for-...

tannewt2• 12 years ago

They aren't allowed to. Their agreement with the Free File Alliance says they can't compete with members of the Free File Alliance.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/Free_Online_Electronic_Tax_Fi...

Under Summary: "During the term of this Agreement, the IRS will not compete with the Consortium in providing free, online tax return preparation and filing services to taxpayers."

yesimahuman• 12 years ago

I used to do mine on TaxAct, but since starting a company and having the accountant do the business taxes, my co-founder and I started to add ours to that as well. Yea, it costs more, but it really took me a long time to do it myself and I'm much happier letting someone else take care of all of it.

ausjke• 12 years ago

TurboTax by far, looking for a CPA.

NamTaf• 12 years ago

Here we have a little program called e-tax [1] that we can download. It'll download a whole heap of pre-fill info for you [2] such as wages earned and tax paid throughout the year, your medicare (our dirty socialist public healthcare) info and any private health insurance you may or may not have (since that affects your tax contributions), any share dividends/transactions, bank savings interest accrued, etc etc.

You then just go through and answer a bunch of questions, entering relevant info wherever you need to and at the end you press submit. The info you enter essentially amounts to any deduction claims you want to make, plus any other niche pieces of info you may have to supply.

It covers the vast majority of people who don't have crazy complex tax returns. You can still do it by hand, or pay someone else to do it, but for most people it is an hour or two long exercise to do it via e-tax and at the end your return is either directly deposited into your bank account or you receive a bill to pay your tax owing.

It's nice and easy and makes tax return for most of us a pretty painless affair.

[1] http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/E-... [2]: http://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/In...

lukeholder• 12 years ago

"Here in Australia" (you forgot to mention). etax is a very user friendly program and works great on mac and pc. So awesome you can submit everything and even put in your back details to get your return within a few days deposited into your account.

newset• 12 years ago

curious

l4r2m• 12 years ago

I prepare and file all my personal and business taxes and forms without any software, other than excel.

Filing by hand means the IRS copies only the most important information, then archives/destroys the original. The end result is less chance of an audit, as there is less information up front. At least that's the rumor.

hippich• 12 years ago

i believe all forms get scanned and not read. probably free-form attachments will get discarded, but you rarely attach these anyway.

gst3• 12 years ago

I used TurboTax in the past, since a few years I'm using a tax advisor as this is essentially cheaper. With TurboTax I always ended up being not 100% sure if I'm eligible for certain deductions. So I could either not claim them (and potentially lose a lot of money), claim them (and in case I wasn't allowed to claim them also potentially lose lots of money), or spend lots of time researching the law. With a tax advisor I just describe my situation, pay a relatively low fee, and don't have to care about those things.

migrantgeek• 12 years ago

It was H&R Block until tonight.

I started my 2013 filing in H&R but hadn't submitted. I stumbled on this post and saw all the votes for TurboTax and re-entered my info into TurboTax and it saved me 5K.

Even the UI and help sections are nicer in TurboTax than H&R.

kyrra• 12 years ago

H&R Block @ home here because they sent me a free copy (since I did TurboTax last year). I don't do anything too complicated and both seem to get the job done. I like the flow of H&R block a bit more than TurboTax, but both really get the job done for me.

andrewem• 12 years ago

What was the thing that H&R did differently than TurboTaxthat accounts for the difference?

whbk• 12 years ago

My father's worked in international tax at a Fortune 100 for the bulk of his career after starting as a CPA - I was talking with him yesterday and he mentioned that he knows several people in his department that still use TurboTax despite presumably being well-equipped to handle it on their own.

Bahamut• 12 years ago

As they say, time is money.

Although I used TurboTax because as military, I get service for free, including direct deposit. I could've filled out the tax forms myself (done so multiple years in the past), but it's a lot of time, and I had 3 W-2s to do this time.

dajohnson89• 12 years ago

I do them manually, using pen and paper and snail mail. This is my eighth year straight doing it this way, and so far it's worked perfectly. The technical overhead of e-file, or TurboTax and its ilk, puts me off.

Every year I have one or two W-2 forms, and a income deduction form for interest paid on student loan. For federal, state, and local combined, it all takes no more than 3 hours. Invariably, the state taxes have the worst instructions, and they are usually very poorly designed, compared to the federal IRS-1040. That goes for KY, CA, and MD, the 3 states I've filed taxes in. My refund (if any) never takes more than 4-6 weeks to arrive via direct deposit.

Doing taxes manually gives me (a perhaps false) sense of control over the process. Most importantly, it only costs two postage stamps.

swalsh• 12 years ago

You ever consider how much power Turbotax and H&R block have? The government could behind the doors make a deal with them that could potentially make billions of dollars of revenue by simply omitting a question for example.

greenyoda3• 12 years ago

I think that's a highly unlikely scenario.

It would be very hard to keep a deal like that secret, since many of the companies' employees would potentially know about it (the executives who made the decision, plus anyone whose job it was to make sure the code was working correctly: accountants, programmers, testers). Also, any outside accountant who looked at the software would be able to figure it out.

And think of the risk to these companies' and the IRS' reputations if they did something like that and it was exposed by the media. The people involved in the decision would almost certainly lose their jobs, and the whistleblowers who leaked it to the media would become heroes.

null_ptr• 12 years ago

Does TurboTax work on browsers with "Linux" in their user-agent string this year?

transfire• 12 years ago

When the average person is excessively burdened in the duty of filing his or her own taxes, and consequently must rely on a computer program or third party to do them, then the tax laws are defacto non-democratic. Therein, any congressman that does not avail themselves to fix such a system of taxation promptly is in utter violation of the nations charter and wholly impeachable.

jhight• 12 years ago

Tax law complexity and democracy are two entirely unrelated concepts. Including the US, there are several democracies with complex tax laws. And several undemocratic with simple tax laws.

I'd venture a guess that complexity of taxes is more related to health of the economy than the particular system of government.

raintrees• 12 years ago

Not sure why the down vote, I agree with this response, as well as others. I recently read that tax laws can be treated as the government's way of encouraging behavior.

Now we study the tax laws to find out which parts we can qualify for and are advantageous to us. For example, knowing certain laws ahead of time can suggest which entity to form for a given business venture.

jlebar2• 12 years ago

Thank you to everyone who responded to this poll! I used TaxACT for the past two years -- I'd avoided TurboTax because intuit is evil (see other comments here). But based on the responses here, I decided to try out TurboTax, and it is /way/ better than TaxAct, in just about every way. I guess evil and competent is something...

Poll: US residents, how do you do your taxes?

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