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America, one of the few developed nations where doing your taxes involves paying a third party to help you tell the government what it already knows. TurboTax
by splitrocket 8y ago
America, one of the few developed nations where doing your taxes involves paying a third party to help you tell the government what it already knows.
TurboTax and HR block lobby considerably to prevent the government from making the process of paying taxes free, fast, and painless for the overwhelming majority of taxpayers.
https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bob_theslob646 8y agoLink is dead.
- eh78ssxv2f 8y agoThere are lot of things that government does not know e.g., how much I donated to Goodwill or other charities, or if I have multiple homes with mortgages , then which one is my primary residence. We can argue that the tax code should be simpler but that's a different argument.
- splitrocket 8y agoThe overwhelming majority of folks don't donate enough to charity to hit the tax write-off level. Countries with sane tax collection systems make it easy for you to add those deductions, either on paper or with a web service run by the government, for free. And your mortgages, unless they are from international banks, yes, the IRS already knows about those too. Let me put it this way: if it goes through a US domiciled bank, the IRS knows about it already. Yes, people with complex tax returns do use accountants to file their taxes in countries with sane systems too, but the overwhelming majority don't need the complexity for the equivalent of a w2 and/or a couple of 1099s.
- bajsejohannes 8y agoInteresting (and not entirely surprising). Reposted that article for more visibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16841449