14 ms·

FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign

1552 points by Kesseki 4y ago

briandear 4y ago
Let’s not blame Intuit for this. Blame the politicians. Here’s Milton Friedman on the reason the tax code is intentionally complicated: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8
chrisfrantz 4y ago
If you want to see an example, I took a screenshot[1] a week ago of the massive Intuit ad in Google Ads that blocks the results you may otherwise see. 1 https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1505942638704345094?s=21&t=g6zrBfP8WiOvC-eVrhux3g https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1505942638704345094?s...
soorya3 4y ago
This is insane and I get PTSD during tax time. You know simple task of adding a state refund into turbotax took 2 hours. I wrote to both of the representatives in my state, let's see what I hear back.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  If it is anything like my experience they will just add you to their bulk email list, and possibly send you a letter saying thanks for your comments. Unless you pay to play, your ideas will not influence them significantly.
musicale 4y ago
Amazing it took them this long. So when will Intuit be returning all of the bait-and-switch money?
bick_nyers 4y ago
A dark pattern I just learned about with TurboTax, is that if you attempt to downgrade from paid to free when it is time to file (even without utilizing paid features), they force you to completely start over from scratch. For a lot of people, they may not even know they are in "paid mode" until it comes time to punch in the debit card.
JRKrause 4y ago
I manually filed a revision to a previous tax year in which I had accidentally double-payed state taxes on a schedule K-2 disbursement two years back. Without any background in this I was able to follow the IRS and state-gov websites to get everything together and ultimately received my check for the difference (many thousands of dollars). All without paying a dollar.
- kaitai 4y ago
  I manually filed taxes on paper (federal) last year and they still have not been processed. Got a letter that the IRS is sitting on my 5-figure tax payment but haven't gone through the 1040 yet. There is an institutional (mainly Republican) commitment to strangling the IRS here in the US. Filing taxes should be free and easy.
  - cranekam 4y ago
    > Filing taxes should be free and easy. Or, ideally, not needed at all. In the UK having an average financial situation like a job (one that doesn’t pay megabucks, anyway), a pension, a tax-efficient savings account and a student doesn’t require any filing at all. Everything happens through payroll. If you do earn a lot or have other things that trigger the need to file it’s free and not overly onerous — certainly within the grasp of a mere mortal. (And before someone chimes in with “how do you know the government gets the figures right?!”: because the tax code, or at least the parts that face most people, is straightforward and most people have a bog-standard default configuration that is easy to verify.)
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Same in Finland. They get my income, loans for future capital gain deductions, have calculated in the basic deductions and so on. I wanted some extra deductions this year, so I simply went and inserted those on their own web site with simple boxes to fill. Even before the tax season. No problems... It is great when the tax agency isn't actually adversarial, but instead ready to help and even work with you if you are having troubles.
  - 4y ago
41b696ef1113 4y ago
Everyone should listen to this Planet Money episode [0] going into some of the politics surrounding making taxes easier. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
tormock 4y ago
Doesn't H&R block do that too? And they try to trick you at every step to "upgrade" to the paid version...
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Intuit was begging to be sued though. Literally the only word in the ads is "free", and they say it like 100 times to emphasize just how free it is. And of course it's not free at all. It can't get any easier than this.
msie 4y ago
And I just read this story about gun-tracing: https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-ma... Lobbyists have way too much power.
linuxhansl 4y ago
Finally! First Intuit lobbies to prevent free tax returns by claiming that can provide their own (very sketchy) free service for that. Then they have the gall to opt out that very program which they used to prevent free tax returns in the first place. I wish they would just go away.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
The Turbotax tax.
smcleod 4y ago
Hasan Minhaj on TurboTax: https://youtu.be/7xQQkzWhMOc?t=1290 https://youtu.be/7xQQkzWhMOc?t=1290 & https://web.archive.org/web/20210130180334/https://www.turbotaxsucksass.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210130180334/https://www.turbo...
Bud 4y ago
Deceptive is right. I filed using TurboTax today. Federal return plus two state returns. Their "free" service ended up costing me around $180 even though I suspect my return is much simpler than most.
webXL 4y ago
This is about as close as you can get to the government suing itself. Turbotax is the dominant player in an industry created by the government. Tax prep fees are just another tax.
ZephyrOhm 4y ago
So glad to see TurboTax held accountable for this deception. I have to help 24 of my friends get to the actual free version while filing their own taxes... The solution, use an adblocker, and click in an non-obvious area
oneoff786 4y ago
A well deserved twist of the knife to do this right before the tax rush.
- munk-a 4y ago
  And it couldn't have happened to a nicer company. These guys have been begging for some false advertising prosecution for a while.
markc 4y ago
I was 80% done with my taxes this year when TT suddenly demanded an additional $119 to list deductible expenses on income. That’s on top of $140 to file Federal plus 1 state. I’ve been using TT for 20 years. Never again.
- mynameisash 4y ago
  I'm not confident in my ability to get my taxes right (mostly due to my wife and I having owned small businesses plus my day job's stock awards and ESPP), so I've paid a local CPA to do our taxes for years now. He always did an incredible job, was happy to answer my questions for me (tax-related or not), helped us refi our house at an amazing price, and so on. His fees were something on the order of $400 or maybe even as high as $600 some years. But [a] I knew he always had our back, [b] his services partially or entirely paid for themselves in savings I probably wouldn't have caught, and [c] I was paying an individual who earned his keep as compared to a company like Intuit.
  - throwawayboise 4y ago
    It's not like an honest mistake is the end of the world. I've made tax mistakes. You get a letter from the IRS, with the amount you owe or are due back, and you settle up. There are no draconian penalties or full audits unless they suspect intentional fraud.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The IRS will even send you "you screwed up and paid us too much, you forgot X" letters at times. What they can't do for you is know about deductions sometimes.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      I was once on an IRS payment plan, and a) the interest rate was remarkably low and b) the folks I talked to when I needed to adjust it were the nicest customer service reps I think I've ever encountered.
    - kstrauser 4y ago
flerchin 4y ago
Freetaxusa is so great.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  Do you know if Freetaxusa supports declaring international income/taxes? Edit: I looks like they don't :( Items Not Supported Foreign employment income (Form 2555) https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp
- rhexs 4y ago
  Love the product as well. Great pricing, handles my complicated return fine. I do miss Turbotax auto importing everything, but doing it manually helps me understand what I'm doing better.
ed_elliott_asc 4y ago
Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money? Do them yourself. The IRS has guidance and resources for those who are interested [1]. [1] https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
  - lastofthemojito 4y ago
    You can absolutely do your own taxes, either on paper and mail the forms or (possibly) via the Free File Fillable forms mentioned on the page you linked (as long as you don't hit a corner case). The Free File Fillable forms page [0] says "Make sure we fully support the forms you need" and links to another page with a lengthy list of limitations [1]. So yeah, we're in a place where the IRS says taxpayers "should file electronically with direct deposit if at all possible" [2] but also informs taxpayers that not everyone can use the IRS's forms to file electronically. 0: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... 1: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms-program-limitations-and-available-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... 2: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-begins-2022-tax-season-urges-extra-caution-for-taxpayers-to-file-accurate-tax-returns-electronically-to-speed-refunds-avoid-delays https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-begins-2022-tax-season-urge...
    - CaptainNegative 4y ago
      Among unsupported forms, the validation step in Free Fillable Forms also has a number or bugs that prevents filing due to phantom arithmetic errors. It's beyond frustrating filling out everything on FFF, then needing to copy everything onto a third party service just to pay for the privilege of having my data harvested by a shady company and electronically filed exactly as it would have otherwise. The current situation is unworkable.
foxyv 4y ago
Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This has gone on too long.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Let me know if you find anyone that is better. I'm sick of TaxAct premium for the same reason. I'm ready to go back to doing my taxes by hand and mailing them in. (I'm old enough to remember doing that - it is faster than doing it on the computer except for the one year I forgot to copy line 13 of form 1234A to line 56b of form 9876B) So many dark patters where the software is pretending to take time doing a complex calculation that takes a computer a couple nanoseconds, not to mention all the time to skip over things that don't apply to me.
  - rajup 4y ago
    FreeTaxUsa is great for most usecases, including stock sales. It is free for federal filing, state is a bit extra ($10)
    - davchana 4y ago
      Plus until now they always have 10% off with code FTUSA10
    - 1991g 4y ago
      I also would vote for FreeTaxUSA, they have served me well. I do however note the irony of them being named FreeTaxUSA and in the same breath, mentioning that it costs to file. Especially given the context of the thread in general.
    - tomc1985 4y ago
      FreeTaxUsa forced me to manually enter my stock last year, I had to provide a supplemental PDF form outlining each transaction. Obnoxiously, this year TurboTax's integration with Binance is broken. I haven't checked in a few weeks but it won't accept Binance CSV's either. This needs to be fixed soon.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
> "In some TurboTax ads, "almost every word spoken is the word 'free.'" Really? There are some TurboTax ads where every word spoken is the word 'free.' ;)
- MBCook 4y ago
  Wait, it’s NOT free free free free?
- throwawaygh 4y ago
  Almost. I thought that was hyperbole too, but... holy shit, they aren't kidding: 1. https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
belval 4y ago
I know that ship has sailed, but I really wish politicians would go back to making promises that have an impact on everyone like abolishing tax fillings. It might be different in the US, but in Canada I file my taxes using the CRA's data directly. TurboTax even fetches it directly from their website. What's the point? They have my T4, my T2202 (studies) and everything else. Just send me a letter telling me how much money I owe/I am owed and that's it.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people to hate the idea of taxes in general.
  - belval 4y ago
    I don't think it's a Republican thing, the Liberal party and the NPD in Canada are both left-leaning and they have a majority yet they aren't pushing for this. Pretty sure it's just run-of-the-mill lobbying and corruption unfortunately. A typical "think of the jobs!" type of thing.
    - stainforth 4y ago
      Your counter to is that the politicians in a different country with an entirely different governmental evolution didn't arrive at the same thing?
    - monetus 4y ago
      I wouldn't say its not a republican thing, just also a many other people/groups thing. You're right, just wanted to emphasize that.
    - dwohnitmok 4y ago
      What parent is referring to is not just lack of pushing for it, but active campaigning against automatic filing. Not a "think of the jobs" but "automatic filing is intrinsically bad." See e.g. http://reason.org/files/ba148cd5babdda39f9ebb43b336b01d4.pdf http://reason.org/files/ba148cd5babdda39f9ebb43b336b01d4.pdf
tareqak 4y ago
FTC's own press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/ftc-sues-intuit-its-deceptive-turbotax-free-filing-campaign https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...
pianoben 4y ago
Fucking finally! Someday our descendants will have sane and automatic filing like the rest of the developed world; I can only hope to live long enough to see the death of this stupid industry.
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Not just TurboTax, H&R Block does this shit as well. "File your taxes free! Oh, you have to file an HSA contribution? Sorry, you'll have to buy H&R Block DELUXE ($79.99) to do that!" Kinda feels like blackmail, really. If I don't file my HSA contribution I'm technically committing fraud, right?
- zaphod12 4y ago
  Not sure why you're including the word 'technically,' in there - you are clearly and definitely committing tax fraud if you knowingly fail to include all of your financial information.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You could do it the hard way by doing the taxes in the app, printing it out, and then modifying the forms as necessary. But the companies know exactly how much to charge you so you avoid the hassle; though I won't shell out for state e-filing when I can print and mail.
    - throwaway48375 4y ago
      >though I won't shell out for state e-filing when I can print and mail. This is pretty much the only reason I own stamps.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > If I don't file my HSA contribution I'm technically committing fraud, right? The IRS will send you a corrected tax return, you sign it and mail them a check and you'll hear nothing from them again. Maybe you didn't get the form, or didn't understand the software, etc, etc. There are lots of honest ways to screw up your taxes. The IRS isn't going to assume fraud unless you refuse to pay them when they point it out. I've screwed up my taxes a lot of times. Not maliciously, but not having all of my forms, I've had clients report paying me a different amount than they told the IRS, forgot stock trades I made, etc. Every time, they've sent a letter asking to pay a balance, plus maybe a small fee, and all is good.
decebalus1 4y ago
I hate TurboTax with a passion. At this point, the only benefit I see from it is the fact that because my taxes are boring, I just update the information from the last return. Which is something the IRS could do EASILY. Because of all the 'tax freedom' which has been lobbied in America, I now have to pay a private corporation, navigate countless dark patterns to make sure I don't accidentally sign up for Super AuDiTProTec™ at every step of the way (God forbid I sell stock or do something soo complicated), to do something the federal government is more than competent to do on their own. Every piece of news in which Intuit gets slapped is good news to me. I just hope legislators start doing their jobs at some point and spare the taxpayer of this bullshit.
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840861
alephnan 4y ago
I'm curious how independent the FTC is from political pressure and lobbyists? In the way there is a revolving door with the SEC, is there a revolving door at the FTC?
- usednet 4y ago
  Yes. The FTC, BigLaw, and tech are highly interconnected. > Public Citizen found that just over 75 percent of top FTC officials (31 out of 41) over the past two decades have either left the agency to serve corporate interests confronting FTC issues, joined the agency after serving corporate interests on these issues, or both. https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=97f1bc62-2cbd-447d-8cc8-fbd40e030dbb https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-...
  - alephnan 4y ago
    Right, so when an agency like the FTC flexes their muscle, I’m a little bit cynical. Are they reminding BigTech that hey, they have political power and some palms needs to be greased.
kn0where 4y ago
Good, but the situation is so much worse than just this. Most Americans could just use the IRS Free File system, which the article mentions, instead of ever giving money to Intuit or H&R Block ever again. But we don’t heavily advertise that system, because that would encourage people to use it, and if you’re going that far, you might as well let the IRS build its own tax software with all your information prefilled like they do in civilized countries. As long as the job of Congress is to kiss the ass of every powerful industry lobby, we won’t have good things.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  TurboTax and H&R Block aren't part of Free File as of 2021, so the supported software under the program are now things most Americans wouldn't recognize, either. The problem truly is advertising, like you said. The government just cannot out-advertise companies that are doing $9 billion in revenue.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Of course the government could out-advertise them. It'd be like Google advertising its own products on its search engine -- the government controls all end-user tax related communications. They just don't want to because someone bribed them to not do so.
    - lelandfe 4y ago
      Everyone uses Google. How many more people see TurboTax's ads vs. government "tax related communications?"
      - notwedtm 4y ago
        Every single tax payer when they get paid, or when they pay their tax bill each year.
        lelandfe 4y ago
notch656a 4y ago
The fact that our government doesn't have the collective intelligence to just mail the tax bill using the information it already knows, with the option for the recipient to submit corrections/deductions, is a testament to the utter failure of governance in the US. Fortunately having an ineffective government can often be a feature instead of a bug.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The IRS wants to do it, they already have all the software internally to do it, they're legally barred from doing it. It's nuts. Intuit isn't worth that much.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    My understanding is that most Western European get what amounts to a "final bill" for the previous year sometime early on each year. It shows what you owe. If you don't want to contest it, you just pay it and you're done. The fact that our government has made such a process for fulfilling a legal obligation speaks volumes about the mafia-like nature of our federal government. I pay lots of property tax where I live. But its just a bill. I can and sometimes do dispute the amount owed. But imagine if each year instead of that process I had to hire an independent team to determine what I owe, make a case for that, then submit that to my local tax authority. That's basically what the IRS does with individuals.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here. They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood of winning)
  - cmelbye 4y ago
    If you are audited by the IRS and they find that you overpaid, they will issue a refund. It's not a one-way street.
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884
Melatonic 4y ago
Credit Karma had a free tax filing application as of last year but as they were purchased by Intuit who knows what is happening with that....
- tengkahwee 4y ago
  It's now Cash App Tax here https://cash.app/taxes https://cash.app/taxes as part of the acquisition agreement.
sofixa 4y ago
As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842175
- techsupporter 4y ago
  > The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent The argument I've heard is that so righteous indignation over the "staggeringly high" taxes "stolen from the hardworking American people" or whatever. This is one of the same arguments as to why sales taxes shouldn't be included in the shelf price of an item or service. Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file. (Paying taxes is straightforward; the vast majority of us have it done for us from our paychecks every interval.) And where I live, public votes to raise the sales tax for various projects, often public transit, rarely if ever fail. It seems to me just to be an excuse to not actually deal with our busted as hell tax collection system because that system benefits people who themselves have an excuse to rile people up about taxes.
  - nickff 4y ago
    I think there is room for a reasonable agreement which could result in a simplified filing system, without making it opaque. My modest proposal would be that each voter’s registration card (or equivalent voting voucher) be attached to a statement showing all the taxes they’ve paid since the last election, and where they went, along with some information on how many taxpayers there are, and the amount and percentage of income and payroll taxes paid by income decile. I think this would provide the transparency that conservatives want, along with the simplicity that liberals want. My only concern is that the data would be fudged, like the social security “statements” are.
  - 4y ago
mywittyname 4y ago
I found out from a friend that she paid $600 to have her taxes done because (presumably) she falls for the dark patterns that TurboTax uses. She's a low paid service worker whose tax return can probably be done for free. And it is a sizable portion of her income because of things like Earned income tax credits, child tax credits, etc. Fuck these companies.
- sillysaurusx 4y ago
  Realistically, how would you do your tax return for free? Keep in mind that every service worker is terrified of an audit. The cost is much higher when you don’t have resources. EDIT: I think I didn't phrase this very well. My point was that the average service worker is trained to be terrified of the IRS. These people are already usually paying hefty fines because they missed their returns in prior years. That's why they take the path of least resistance, and just pay someone else as a shield against this. So it's not particularly surprising that TurboTax has swindled this person out of $600 with their upsells. Nor should she be condemned as a fool. If you were in her shoes, you might do the same thing.
  - tonguez 4y ago
    I would get rid of the tax return process as the only purpose for its existence is to waste the time of poor people and thus keep the government boot on their face.
  - rurp 4y ago
    There are many free filing options for anyone with an average salary from a straightforward W2 source. I went years without paying to file, until I got into freelancing and a higher tax bracket. Being audited isn't much of a concern if your only source of income is a typical W2 job. The average service worker isn't throwing money around in stocks, crypto, blackjack, and corporate entities.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Even if you toss in a 1099 or two taxes are still mostly straightforward. I’ve always had mine done but it’s mostly only in the last ten years or so that they’ve gotten genuinely complicated.
josephd79 4y ago
Government: You must provide a free way for those that qualify. Intuit: OK. Intuits exec to its employees: Make this free system, but hide it from the public. Provide links that are broken, make sure it doesn't show up on search indexes. Scott Cook and all those involved should have all of their assets seized. About as slimy as you can get as a person. Made billions off of scamming United States citizens.
- anonresearcher 4y ago
  I'm curious what the original deal was, because Intuit doesn't even have the free system anymore. This year, they "elected not to renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program." [1] [1] https://freefile.intuit.com/ https://freefile.intuit.com/
  - josephd79 4y ago
    Allegedly the government had plans to make a completely free, simple way for you file your taxes electronically. Tax software companies knew if that took place their cash machines would die. They made an agreement with the government that they would provide a completely free simple way for individuals to file taxes electronically if the government wouldn't build their own. They technically did, they just made it pretty much impossible to find it. Broken links, hid it from search indexes etc.
a1371 4y ago
Intuit is one of the few companies that I don't hear any good things about them. They always do something shady, last one I recall was sharing employee salary info with Equifax. That's why despite my bookkeepers protests, we moved to another accounting service and when they bought MailChimp I pulled my whole company out of that too. I understand workplace is not always a place for activism, but I could switch with reasonable effort and it made me feel good not to fund this sort of behavior.
aidangrimshaw 4y ago
I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org https://ustaxes.org, an open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes. Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and California is under development!
- freedomben 4y ago
  That's really neat and I'm glad you're doing it. That said I worked on tax software once and the amount of changes each year are huge and often require expert analysis. Sometimes they get dropped on you with very little notice. How does the project plan to keep up with that? Will it require volunteers?
  - aidangrimshaw 4y ago
    Absolutely, yeah the project has a loose group of contributor volunteers but longer term we would probably have to have a larger, more formal structure. Right now, we're focusing on tooling to make onboarding new tax forms simpler and require a lower threshold of project understanding to allow a larger, less technical group of people to contribute
    - formerkrogeremp 4y ago
      Huh, as an aspiring tax professional how do I get in on this?
      - IggleSniggle 4y ago
        Go to the GitHub link above, read the README, and pay special attention to the “CONTRIBUTING” section. If you have questions and the README and CONTRIBUTING documents do not specify a way to communicate, then open Issues on GitHub with your questions. Try to avoid asking questions unless you’ve read everything and cannot figure out how to proceed: remember that everyone working on the project is volunteering their limited time, just like you, and try to be respectful of their time and energy. I am unaffiliated with this project, this is just the general procedure for contributing to open source projects.
perardi 4y ago
I know, I know, there’s so many dark patterns in TurboTax that it’s cliche to point them out… …but man, this was a particularly egregious example I came across this year. https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW You can pay for TurboTax using your refund…with an additional $39 processing fee. That is just wild.
- jackson1442 4y ago
  I think that's actually somewhat standard- even FreeTaxUSA (my personal choice) does this because they're essentially letting you use their product on credit.
  - lozenge 4y ago
    It's not a good way to present the option. Should be a radio button "Pay with refund (fee: $39)"
  - deathanatos 4y ago
    I think the objection is not that they're charging a fee, it's that the fee is $39. TurboTax (just the basic federal edition) is what, $30? And yes, this is essentially credit, extended for what, a month? So ($39/$30 * 12) is yearly rate of like 1,560% for that credit, aka., highway robbery — that, I think, is the parent's point. (I might be a bit off on the price, but not enough to change the result. TurboTax's loss if the debtor here "defaults" somehow is … what, even?)
    - perardi 4y ago
      Yes, the highway robbery of it, that’s my point. That is a huge percentage of the base price of TurboTax, and it is in no way less convenient than paying with a credit card, and they hide that fee down in the blah blah text.
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      Plus they themselves have calculated that you're due a refund that will cover that cost already at this point, and they're going to directly pull their fees out of it... while not 100%, it's got to be pretty near the bottom in terms of risk. Especially if they still wait to pay you the balance until the refund is actually paid by the Treasury.
aclindsa 4y ago
I recently started an open-source tax solver, partly because I'm not a huge fan of Intuit: https://github.com/habutax/habutax https://github.com/habutax/habutax It isn't perfect since its a young project, but I've attempted to simplify and modularize the process of creating/maintaining forms to allow for that part to be crowd-sourced as much as possible (and I'd love your help!).
- bschwindHN 4y ago
  Seems like you should combine forces with ustaxes.org? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848936
  - csb6 4y ago
    Here is another similar project that has been around a while for anyone interested http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net
    - aclindsa 4y ago
      Perhaps so. Though I found structural things with each of those projects that I did not like. For example, opentaxsolver's logic is a bunch of 'monolithic' C code, and I haven't been able to find any tests. UStaxes is better in that respect, but there I couldn't get past typescript, honestly, and they have code like https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes/blob/master/src/forms/Y2021/irsForms/F1040.ts#L619 https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes/blob/master/src/forms/Y20... where they're relying on position of an item in the array to indicate which field it is. Not trying to disparage anyone, but I did not see evidence of an attention to detail I felt I could trust (and maybe that's just me and NIH syndrome). What I would really like is to somehow extract out a representation of the tax logic into something separate from the business of collecting the data from the user, or even calculating the results. I'm not entirely sure what that would look like, maybe it would have to be some domain-specific language (eww) in order to be able to fully express the relationships and dependencies between different fields/forms. But I think that tax logic portion is the difficult-to-maintain part, and also the portion different projects would benefit the most from sharing.
dang 4y ago
Related: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.393685/gov.uscourts.cand.393685.6.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.39... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/turbotax-maker-sued-by-ftc-over-deceptive-ads-that-promise-free-tax-filing/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/turbotax-maker-s... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884, but we've merged the threads)
anm89 4y ago
I wouldn't say I usually get excited about something a federal regulator does but I'll make an exception for this one.
jawshoeadan 4y ago
https://turbotaxsucksass.org/ https://turbotaxsucksass.org/
- jawshoeadan 4y ago
  Oh shit didn’t even realize this “ ntuit has elected not to renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program and will no longer be offering IRS Free File Program delivered by TurboTax” Go to hell intuit. https://freefile.intuit.com/ https://freefile.intuit.com/
iosono88 4y ago
jxi 4y ago
Any way to donate to the cause?
Arubis 4y ago
Good. Fuck them and their predatory business model. I know this is where we’re supposed to decry the system of which this is symptomatic, and talk about campaign finance and such. And all that stuff is true, sure. But Intuit has been such a consistently abusive actor that they’re normalizing regulatory capture, with enormous financial, time, stress, and legal repercussions for the entire population. Seriously, fuck them.
MobileVet 4y ago
Not at all affiliated but Free Tax USA appears to be a great alternative. They have been around for quite a while, but I have only used them this year as it was the first I heard of them. Biggest downside is no import from brokerage, so if you trade a lot it could be annoying to create your schedule D. https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/
zw123456 4y ago
A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on and so on. Ok, so if they can do all that automatically for an "electronic audit" why am I filing a return, just run that thing and send it to me and I can file an exception if there is something on it I disagree with. I think the answer has already been identified in several other comments here, a heavy lobby effort on the part of Intuit, H&R and whoever else to keep it tricky and complex so you have to buy their B.S> software or services.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  That's exactly it.
- JSavageOne 4y ago
  Blaming "lobbyists" absolves the politicians of their responsibility. The fault lies with the politicians for creating and perpetuating this broken system.
- refurb 4y ago
  It's impossible to automate the tax filing process unless you simplify the tax code. And I've filed taxes in countries with simple tax codes where the government pre-fills out the forms. Guess what? You still need to go and double check everything because the information comes from your employer. I've found mistakes before. So I pretty much "do my taxes" myself to make sure what the govt sends isn't wrong.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    This is a misunderstanding of the actual ask from the federal government and "automating" is a bit of a misnomer. The reason the IRS could theoretically fill out your taxes on your behalf is because someone else already submitted their part of the forms. Your employer reports your income, your broker reports your capital gains and assets, your bank reports interest, etc.. The ask is less about automation more not having to do those parts twice. The IRS could send you everything they've gotten about you and you just fill in the rest and/or dispute -- for normal single income wage earners there would be nothing else to add so it's effectively automated. The gain is that we can make "doing your taxes" a non-issue for most Americans. Sure some people will still need accountants for complicated situations but in one swoop we can eliminate hundreds of millions of hours of useless work every year for basically no downside -- it's pure gravy.
Arubis 4y ago
Many users of this site aren’t especially price-sensitive; if you’re one of them and in the habit of using tax filing software, I urge you to consider hiring an accountant for your taxes. You’ll pay a couple hundred bucks, which may be offset by the CPA finding deductions or credits that your software didn’t highlight, and that money goes to someone you’ve picked out and hired rather than a corp that’ll use your money to lobby against your best interests. And you’ll save a bunch of time, which may be enough to make this worthwhile in and of itself for you!
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  What are some concrete examples of these deductions that people keep talking about? I'd actually like to know, so I can perhaps convince myself to get a CPA next year. The only deductions I have seen as a salaried person with some minor stock trades are things for home heating credits and such which I am always ineligible for on the basis of income.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Just mail your taxes in with a letter and a stamp, come on!
dang 4y ago
The saga continues: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18 comments) Killing TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330584 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 - March 2013 (330 comments)
beej71 4y ago
Here's what's worked for me in terms of not paying Intuit any money (as a W-2 and 1099 earner): If there's something you can't figure out, is risky, or a one-off, hire someone to do your taxes. Then use that as a template for subsequent years to do it yourself. Also, use the federal free fillable forms to e-file. They might be available for your state, as well.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Just do it by mail.
  - beej71 4y ago
    It costs the taxpayers less money to file electronically. And it's less error-prone. But as long as Intuit isn't making any money, I'm fine with whatever.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Turbotax is a tax on paying tax. I like paying taxes to the State because that money goes to military and entitlements, and keeping the lights on. I do not agree with every military action, or every entitlement, but it's not my place to decide what direction the country goes in, it is my place to push. I wonder how many orphanages Intuit runs, how much welfare they pay, where the bases they operate are, how many men they've put on the moon, to have the gall to demand taxes. That is an literally an act of sedition, literally a racket.
macinjosh 4y ago
Pro tip: when I was doing my taxes TurboTax asked me for a survey. I complained bitterly about their lobbying. I was suddenly able to file fed and state free.
nimish 4y ago
eFile could be free too but it's an enormous pain in the ass to even get registered as an IRS developer. IRS provides docs: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2021-modernized-e-file-schemas-and-business-rules-for-individual-tax-returns-and-extensions https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2021-modernize... but hides them from the public.
jprd 4y ago
I think we can all agree that discovery is going to be fun and lead us places we can only dream of.
neycoda 4y ago
Yay!
mikeInAlaska 4y ago
My last CPA had a dart board on his wall. The outside was NOT DEDUCTIBLE. The inner, smaller ring was DEDUCTIBLE. The bullseye was DEDUCTIBLE UNTIL AUDIT.
gpm 4y ago
Docket for the case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63193711/federal-trade-commission-v-intuit-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63193711/federal-trade-... Dang - it might be nice to include this in the "Related" comment pinned to the top, it's just the "level up in the filesystem" above the courtlistener link you already have in it.
korginator 4y ago
This is band-aid for a fracture. Suing Intuit does not address the underlying problem. It's not hard to collect income data automatically. Here in Singapore (as in many other countries) I get a message reminding me to check my tax data before the filing date. I just login and click "Submit". If I forget to do this, I may miss some deductions, but it goes through anyway. Tax filing can be made simple enough that a layperson can do it without employing an accountant.
bigjoedeez 4y ago
What's the problem? I file for free each year.
systematical 4y ago
I stopped using TurboTax after it told me I owed $20,000 to the District of Columbia. I went to an accountant and DC ended up owing me money. Clearly I entered something wrong in TurboTax, but the experience was enough for me to decide paying someone is worth the money and frankly saves me much time as it only takes me minutes to send my information by email and another few minutes to review the results and digitally sign. Most of my income is from W2 and some 1099 here and there. As others mentioned, America is backwards and the politicians and 1% keep fleecing it towards Romes fate. I love seeing those on the top get fleeced for a change, unfortunately this will just be a slap on the wrist.
assuringllama 4y ago
In my country, we rarely use software or professional services for filing personal income tax. Not for most people unless you have special circumstances which are usually reserved for super high networth individuals. What my local IRS did is sensible default. Employment income are submitted electronically to my IRS from most employers. Deductions and reliefs are automatically factored in if it relates to other government services (e.g. reliefs for child). What I love most is for information that they don't have information on, such as deductible expenses for rental income, they suggest a default of 15% expenses where we don't have to provide any proof or documentation. It is a 15% deduction over the rental income that's just given to you. Of course, we can challenge it if we feel we should have higher deductions, providing them with the necessary documents.
syastrov 4y ago
I wrote an article [1] a few years ago to vent about how messed up and backward the experience has been for especially foreign filers. The “free” options provided by commercial companies are as TFA states unusable by large portions of the population. Besides those, the IRS provides “free fillable forms online”, which looks like a scam website and also has many limitations (one of which, in my case, was that you must provide a US phone number). It’s all beautifully messed up. So there wouldn’t be this problem with Intuit if the government got their shit together. Why not spend efforts to improve the system rather than litigation? The answer? Lobbying. This is all in stark contrast to the system which exists in Denmark, where I live, where taxes are all filed online and the government automatically fetches most information so that you mostly only need to review it and add deductions. [1] https://medium.com/@syastrov/us-tax-system-a-fractal-of-bad-design-316e30cb7e9a https://medium.com/@syastrov/us-tax-system-a-fractal-of-bad-...
physicsguy 4y ago
From an outsider perspective, the US tax system is nuts. Here in the UK, the tax year runs from April to April. Your employer reports exactly your taxable earnings to the government every month. You can log in online and see exactly what you're taxed on. You do not need to fill out a self-assessment at all - it's all done automatically, except for under certain circumstances which don't affect most of the population, but roughly: * You have earnings over £1000 a year from outside of your normal employment (e.g. from interest on savings, selling things on eBay, whatever). * You are earning above £50,000 per year but want to continue claiming child benefit (which phases out between £50,000 and £60,000, so some needs to be repaid). * You earn over £100,000.
jeffrallen 4y ago
About. Damn. Time.
mike503 4y ago
Amusing. They lobby to keep the government and IRS complex, get sued back, but ultimately it’ll always be a net gain.
isolli 4y ago
In Europe (in most countries as far as I can tell), electronic filing is administered by the government, and it's easy to use (often prefilled for simple situations). As mentioned in the article, in the US, electronic filing is offered for free only to taxpayers below a certain income threshold, and the service is offered by private companies. They often pay themselves back with tax advances at usury rates. I can't help but think that it is another example of how the US tax system is beholden to private interests.
deleted 4y ago
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mwexler 4y ago
ProPublica has been hammering on this since 2019. Their series of investigations at https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap is very eyeopening, and teeth-gritting.
guenthert 4y ago
Yeah, it's 'free' unless you are unemployed. I believe those tax fellows just think differently.

1552 points by Kesseki 4y ago

Let’s not blame Intuit for this. Blame the politicians. Here’s Milton Friedman on the reason the tax code is intentionally complicated: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TruCIPy79w8

chrisfrantz 4y ago

If you want to see an example, I took a screenshot[1] a week ago of the massive Intuit ad in Google Ads that blocks the results you may otherwise see. 1 https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1505942638704345094?s=21&t=g6zrBfP8WiOvC-eVrhux3g https://twitter.com/frantzfries/status/1505942638704345094?s...

soorya3 4y ago

This is insane and I get PTSD during tax time. You know simple task of adding a state refund into turbotax took 2 hours. I wrote to both of the representatives in my state, let's see what I hear back.

encryptluks2 4y ago
If it is anything like my experience they will just add you to their bulk email list, and possibly send you a letter saying thanks for your comments. Unless you pay to play, your ideas will not influence them significantly.

musicale 4y ago

Amazing it took them this long. So when will Intuit be returning all of the bait-and-switch money?

bick_nyers 4y ago

A dark pattern I just learned about with TurboTax, is that if you attempt to downgrade from paid to free when it is time to file (even without utilizing paid features), they force you to completely start over from scratch. For a lot of people, they may not even know they are in "paid mode" until it comes time to punch in the debit card.

JRKrause 4y ago

I manually filed a revision to a previous tax year in which I had accidentally double-payed state taxes on a schedule K-2 disbursement two years back. Without any background in this I was able to follow the IRS and state-gov websites to get everything together and ultimately received my check for the difference (many thousands of dollars). All without paying a dollar.

kaitai 4y ago
I manually filed taxes on paper (federal) last year and they still have not been processed. Got a letter that the IRS is sitting on my 5-figure tax payment but haven't gone through the 1040 yet. There is an institutional (mainly Republican) commitment to strangling the IRS here in the US. Filing taxes should be free and easy.
- cranekam 4y ago
  > Filing taxes should be free and easy. Or, ideally, not needed at all. In the UK having an average financial situation like a job (one that doesn’t pay megabucks, anyway), a pension, a tax-efficient savings account and a student doesn’t require any filing at all. Everything happens through payroll. If you do earn a lot or have other things that trigger the need to file it’s free and not overly onerous — certainly within the grasp of a mere mortal. (And before someone chimes in with “how do you know the government gets the figures right?!”: because the tax code, or at least the parts that face most people, is straightforward and most people have a bog-standard default configuration that is easy to verify.)
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    Same in Finland. They get my income, loans for future capital gain deductions, have calculated in the basic deductions and so on. I wanted some extra deductions this year, so I simply went and inserted those on their own web site with simple boxes to fill. Even before the tax season. No problems... It is great when the tax agency isn't actually adversarial, but instead ready to help and even work with you if you are having troubles.
- 4y ago

41b696ef1113 4y ago

Everyone should listen to this Planet Money episode [0] going into some of the politics surrounding making taxes easier. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...

tormock 4y ago

Doesn't H&R block do that too? And they try to trick you at every step to "upgrade" to the paid version...

ModernMech 4y ago
Intuit was begging to be sued though. Literally the only word in the ads is "free", and they say it like 100 times to emphasize just how free it is. And of course it's not free at all. It can't get any easier than this.

msie 4y ago

And I just read this story about gun-tracing: https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-ma... Lobbyists have way too much power.

linuxhansl 4y ago

Finally! First Intuit lobbies to prevent free tax returns by claiming that can provide their own (very sketchy) free service for that. Then they have the gall to opt out that very program which they used to prevent free tax returns in the first place. I wish they would just go away.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

The Turbotax tax.

smcleod 4y ago

Hasan Minhaj on TurboTax: https://youtu.be/7xQQkzWhMOc?t=1290 https://youtu.be/7xQQkzWhMOc?t=1290 & https://web.archive.org/web/20210130180334/https://www.turbotaxsucksass.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210130180334/https://www.turbo...

Bud 4y ago

Deceptive is right. I filed using TurboTax today. Federal return plus two state returns. Their "free" service ended up costing me around $180 even though I suspect my return is much simpler than most.

webXL 4y ago

This is about as close as you can get to the government suing itself. Turbotax is the dominant player in an industry created by the government. Tax prep fees are just another tax.

ZephyrOhm 4y ago

So glad to see TurboTax held accountable for this deception. I have to help 24 of my friends get to the actual free version while filing their own taxes... The solution, use an adblocker, and click in an non-obvious area

oneoff786 4y ago

A well deserved twist of the knife to do this right before the tax rush.

munk-a 4y ago
And it couldn't have happened to a nicer company. These guys have been begging for some false advertising prosecution for a while.

markc 4y ago

I was 80% done with my taxes this year when TT suddenly demanded an additional $119 to list deductible expenses on income. That’s on top of $140 to file Federal plus 1 state. I’ve been using TT for 20 years. Never again.

mynameisash 4y ago
I'm not confident in my ability to get my taxes right (mostly due to my wife and I having owned small businesses plus my day job's stock awards and ESPP), so I've paid a local CPA to do our taxes for years now. He always did an incredible job, was happy to answer my questions for me (tax-related or not), helped us refi our house at an amazing price, and so on. His fees were something on the order of $400 or maybe even as high as $600 some years. But [a] I knew he always had our back, [b] his services partially or entirely paid for themselves in savings I probably wouldn't have caught, and [c] I was paying an individual who earned his keep as compared to a company like Intuit.
- throwawayboise 4y ago
  It's not like an honest mistake is the end of the world. I've made tax mistakes. You get a letter from the IRS, with the amount you owe or are due back, and you settle up. There are no draconian penalties or full audits unless they suspect intentional fraud.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The IRS will even send you "you screwed up and paid us too much, you forgot X" letters at times. What they can't do for you is know about deductions sometimes.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    I was once on an IRS payment plan, and a) the interest rate was remarkably low and b) the folks I talked to when I needed to adjust it were the nicest customer service reps I think I've ever encountered.
  - kstrauser 4y ago

flerchin 4y ago

Freetaxusa is so great.

CogitoCogito 4y ago
Do you know if Freetaxusa supports declaring international income/taxes? Edit: I looks like they don't :( Items Not Supported Foreign employment income (Form 2555) https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp https://www.freetaxusa.com/supported_forms.jsp
rhexs 4y ago
Love the product as well. Great pricing, handles my complicated return fine. I do miss Turbotax auto importing everything, but doing it manually helps me understand what I'm doing better.

ed_elliott_asc 4y ago

Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money? Do them yourself. The IRS has guidance and resources for those who are interested [1]. [1] https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  You can absolutely do your own taxes, either on paper and mail the forms or (possibly) via the Free File Fillable forms mentioned on the page you linked (as long as you don't hit a corner case). The Free File Fillable forms page [0] says "Make sure we fully support the forms you need" and links to another page with a lengthy list of limitations [1]. So yeah, we're in a place where the IRS says taxpayers "should file electronically with direct deposit if at all possible" [2] but also informs taxpayers that not everyone can use the IRS's forms to file electronically. 0: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... 1: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-forms-program-limitations-and-available-forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... 2: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-begins-2022-tax-season-urges-extra-caution-for-taxpayers-to-file-accurate-tax-returns-electronically-to-speed-refunds-avoid-delays https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-begins-2022-tax-season-urge...
  - CaptainNegative 4y ago
    Among unsupported forms, the validation step in Free Fillable Forms also has a number or bugs that prevents filing due to phantom arithmetic errors. It's beyond frustrating filling out everything on FFF, then needing to copy everything onto a third party service just to pay for the privilege of having my data harvested by a shady company and electronically filed exactly as it would have otherwise. The current situation is unworkable.

foxyv 4y ago

Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This has gone on too long.

bluGill 4y ago
Let me know if you find anyone that is better. I'm sick of TaxAct premium for the same reason. I'm ready to go back to doing my taxes by hand and mailing them in. (I'm old enough to remember doing that - it is faster than doing it on the computer except for the one year I forgot to copy line 13 of form 1234A to line 56b of form 9876B) So many dark patters where the software is pretending to take time doing a complex calculation that takes a computer a couple nanoseconds, not to mention all the time to skip over things that don't apply to me.
- rajup 4y ago
  FreeTaxUsa is great for most usecases, including stock sales. It is free for federal filing, state is a bit extra ($10)
  - davchana 4y ago
    Plus until now they always have 10% off with code FTUSA10
  - 1991g 4y ago
    I also would vote for FreeTaxUSA, they have served me well. I do however note the irony of them being named FreeTaxUSA and in the same breath, mentioning that it costs to file. Especially given the context of the thread in general.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    FreeTaxUsa forced me to manually enter my stock last year, I had to provide a supplemental PDF form outlining each transaction. Obnoxiously, this year TurboTax's integration with Binance is broken. I haven't checked in a few weeks but it won't accept Binance CSV's either. This needs to be fixed soon.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

> "In some TurboTax ads, "almost every word spoken is the word 'free.'" Really? There are some TurboTax ads where every word spoken is the word 'free.' ;)

MBCook 4y ago
Wait, it’s NOT free free free free?
throwawaygh 4y ago
Almost. I thought that was hyperbole too, but... holy shit, they aren't kidding: 1. https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV https://www.tvcommercialad.com/watch/XosLKPV 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qDZA7j4rXU 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZV7l3AD5Nc

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

belval 4y ago

I know that ship has sailed, but I really wish politicians would go back to making promises that have an impact on everyone like abolishing tax fillings. It might be different in the US, but in Canada I file my taxes using the CRA's data directly. TurboTax even fetches it directly from their website. What's the point? They have my T4, my T2202 (studies) and everything else. Just send me a letter telling me how much money I owe/I am owed and that's it.

crooked-v 4y ago
In the US, the Republican Party has a history of intentionally pushing for cumbersome tax filing as part of encouraging people to hate the idea of taxes in general.
- belval 4y ago
  I don't think it's a Republican thing, the Liberal party and the NPD in Canada are both left-leaning and they have a majority yet they aren't pushing for this. Pretty sure it's just run-of-the-mill lobbying and corruption unfortunately. A typical "think of the jobs!" type of thing.
  - stainforth 4y ago
    Your counter to is that the politicians in a different country with an entirely different governmental evolution didn't arrive at the same thing?
  - monetus 4y ago
    I wouldn't say its not a republican thing, just also a many other people/groups thing. You're right, just wanted to emphasize that.
  - dwohnitmok 4y ago
    What parent is referring to is not just lack of pushing for it, but active campaigning against automatic filing. Not a "think of the jobs" but "automatic filing is intrinsically bad." See e.g. http://reason.org/files/ba148cd5babdda39f9ebb43b336b01d4.pdf http://reason.org/files/ba148cd5babdda39f9ebb43b336b01d4.pdf

tareqak 4y ago

FTC's own press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/ftc-sues-intuit-its-deceptive-turbotax-free-filing-campaign https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...

pianoben 4y ago

Fucking finally! Someday our descendants will have sane and automatic filing like the rest of the developed world; I can only hope to live long enough to see the death of this stupid industry.

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

Not just TurboTax, H&R Block does this shit as well. "File your taxes free! Oh, you have to file an HSA contribution? Sorry, you'll have to buy H&R Block DELUXE ($79.99) to do that!" Kinda feels like blackmail, really. If I don't file my HSA contribution I'm technically committing fraud, right?

zaphod12 4y ago
Not sure why you're including the word 'technically,' in there - you are clearly and definitely committing tax fraud if you knowingly fail to include all of your financial information.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You could do it the hard way by doing the taxes in the app, printing it out, and then modifying the forms as necessary. But the companies know exactly how much to charge you so you avoid the hassle; though I won't shell out for state e-filing when I can print and mail.
  - throwaway48375 4y ago
    >though I won't shell out for state e-filing when I can print and mail. This is pretty much the only reason I own stamps.
mywittyname 4y ago
> If I don't file my HSA contribution I'm technically committing fraud, right? The IRS will send you a corrected tax return, you sign it and mail them a check and you'll hear nothing from them again. Maybe you didn't get the form, or didn't understand the software, etc, etc. There are lots of honest ways to screw up your taxes. The IRS isn't going to assume fraud unless you refuse to pay them when they point it out. I've screwed up my taxes a lot of times. Not maliciously, but not having all of my forms, I've had clients report paying me a different amount than they told the IRS, forgot stock trades I made, etc. Every time, they've sent a letter asking to pay a balance, plus maybe a small fee, and all is good.

decebalus1 4y ago

I hate TurboTax with a passion. At this point, the only benefit I see from it is the fact that because my taxes are boring, I just update the information from the last return. Which is something the IRS could do EASILY. Because of all the 'tax freedom' which has been lobbied in America, I now have to pay a private corporation, navigate countless dark patterns to make sure I don't accidentally sign up for Super AuDiTProTec™ at every step of the way (God forbid I sell stock or do something soo complicated), to do something the federal government is more than competent to do on their own. Every piece of news in which Intuit gets slapped is good news to me. I just hope legislators start doing their jobs at some point and spare the taxpayer of this bullshit.

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30840861

alephnan 4y ago

I'm curious how independent the FTC is from political pressure and lobbyists? In the way there is a revolving door with the SEC, is there a revolving door at the FTC?

usednet 4y ago
Yes. The FTC, BigLaw, and tech are highly interconnected. > Public Citizen found that just over 75 percent of top FTC officials (31 out of 41) over the past two decades have either left the agency to serve corporate interests confronting FTC issues, joined the agency after serving corporate interests on these issues, or both. https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-problem-report/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=97f1bc62-2cbd-447d-8cc8-fbd40e030dbb https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-...
- alephnan 4y ago
  Right, so when an agency like the FTC flexes their muscle, I’m a little bit cynical. Are they reminding BigTech that hey, they have political power and some palms needs to be greased.

kn0where 4y ago

Good, but the situation is so much worse than just this. Most Americans could just use the IRS Free File system, which the article mentions, instead of ever giving money to Intuit or H&R Block ever again. But we don’t heavily advertise that system, because that would encourage people to use it, and if you’re going that far, you might as well let the IRS build its own tax software with all your information prefilled like they do in civilized countries. As long as the job of Congress is to kiss the ass of every powerful industry lobby, we won’t have good things.

lelandfe 4y ago
TurboTax and H&R Block aren't part of Free File as of 2021, so the supported software under the program are now things most Americans wouldn't recognize, either. The problem truly is advertising, like you said. The government just cannot out-advertise companies that are doing $9 billion in revenue.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Of course the government could out-advertise them. It'd be like Google advertising its own products on its search engine -- the government controls all end-user tax related communications. They just don't want to because someone bribed them to not do so.
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    Everyone uses Google. How many more people see TurboTax's ads vs. government "tax related communications?"
    - notwedtm 4y ago
      Every single tax payer when they get paid, or when they pay their tax bill each year.
      - lelandfe 4y ago

notch656a 4y ago

The fact that our government doesn't have the collective intelligence to just mail the tax bill using the information it already knows, with the option for the recipient to submit corrections/deductions, is a testament to the utter failure of governance in the US. Fortunately having an ineffective government can often be a feature instead of a bug.

bombcar 4y ago
The IRS wants to do it, they already have all the software internally to do it, they're legally barred from doing it. It's nuts. Intuit isn't worth that much.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  My understanding is that most Western European get what amounts to a "final bill" for the previous year sometime early on each year. It shows what you owe. If you don't want to contest it, you just pay it and you're done. The fact that our government has made such a process for fulfilling a legal obligation speaks volumes about the mafia-like nature of our federal government. I pay lots of property tax where I live. But its just a bill. I can and sometimes do dispute the amount owed. But imagine if each year instead of that process I had to hire an independent team to determine what I owe, make a case for that, then submit that to my local tax authority. That's basically what the IRS does with individuals.
bushbaba 4y ago
Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here. They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood of winning)
- cmelbye 4y ago
  If you are audited by the IRS and they find that you overpaid, they will issue a refund. It's not a one-way street.

ChrisArchitect 4y ago

[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884

Melatonic 4y ago

Credit Karma had a free tax filing application as of last year but as they were purchased by Intuit who knows what is happening with that....

tengkahwee 4y ago
It's now Cash App Tax here https://cash.app/taxes https://cash.app/taxes as part of the acquisition agreement.

sofixa 4y ago

As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30842175

techsupporter 4y ago
> The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent The argument I've heard is that so righteous indignation over the "staggeringly high" taxes "stolen from the hardworking American people" or whatever. This is one of the same arguments as to why sales taxes shouldn't be included in the shelf price of an item or service. Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file. (Paying taxes is straightforward; the vast majority of us have it done for us from our paychecks every interval.) And where I live, public votes to raise the sales tax for various projects, often public transit, rarely if ever fail. It seems to me just to be an excuse to not actually deal with our busted as hell tax collection system because that system benefits people who themselves have an excuse to rile people up about taxes.
- nickff 4y ago
  I think there is room for a reasonable agreement which could result in a simplified filing system, without making it opaque. My modest proposal would be that each voter’s registration card (or equivalent voting voucher) be attached to a statement showing all the taxes they’ve paid since the last election, and where they went, along with some information on how many taxpayers there are, and the amount and percentage of income and payroll taxes paid by income decile. I think this would provide the transparency that conservatives want, along with the simplicity that liberals want. My only concern is that the data would be fudged, like the social security “statements” are.
- 4y ago

mywittyname 4y ago

I found out from a friend that she paid $600 to have her taxes done because (presumably) she falls for the dark patterns that TurboTax uses. She's a low paid service worker whose tax return can probably be done for free. And it is a sizable portion of her income because of things like Earned income tax credits, child tax credits, etc. Fuck these companies.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Realistically, how would you do your tax return for free? Keep in mind that every service worker is terrified of an audit. The cost is much higher when you don’t have resources. EDIT: I think I didn't phrase this very well. My point was that the average service worker is trained to be terrified of the IRS. These people are already usually paying hefty fines because they missed their returns in prior years. That's why they take the path of least resistance, and just pay someone else as a shield against this. So it's not particularly surprising that TurboTax has swindled this person out of $600 with their upsells. Nor should she be condemned as a fool. If you were in her shoes, you might do the same thing.
- tonguez 4y ago
  I would get rid of the tax return process as the only purpose for its existence is to waste the time of poor people and thus keep the government boot on their face.
- rurp 4y ago
  There are many free filing options for anyone with an average salary from a straightforward W2 source. I went years without paying to file, until I got into freelancing and a higher tax bracket. Being audited isn't much of a concern if your only source of income is a typical W2 job. The average service worker isn't throwing money around in stocks, crypto, blackjack, and corporate entities.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Even if you toss in a 1099 or two taxes are still mostly straightforward. I’ve always had mine done but it’s mostly only in the last ten years or so that they’ve gotten genuinely complicated.

josephd79 4y ago

Government: You must provide a free way for those that qualify. Intuit: OK. Intuits exec to its employees: Make this free system, but hide it from the public. Provide links that are broken, make sure it doesn't show up on search indexes. Scott Cook and all those involved should have all of their assets seized. About as slimy as you can get as a person. Made billions off of scamming United States citizens.

anonresearcher 4y ago
I'm curious what the original deal was, because Intuit doesn't even have the free system anymore. This year, they "elected not to renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program." [1] [1] https://freefile.intuit.com/ https://freefile.intuit.com/
- josephd79 4y ago
  Allegedly the government had plans to make a completely free, simple way for you file your taxes electronically. Tax software companies knew if that took place their cash machines would die. They made an agreement with the government that they would provide a completely free simple way for individuals to file taxes electronically if the government wouldn't build their own. They technically did, they just made it pretty much impossible to find it. Broken links, hid it from search indexes etc.

a1371 4y ago

Intuit is one of the few companies that I don't hear any good things about them. They always do something shady, last one I recall was sharing employee salary info with Equifax. That's why despite my bookkeepers protests, we moved to another accounting service and when they bought MailChimp I pulled my whole company out of that too. I understand workplace is not always a place for activism, but I could switch with reasonable effort and it made me feel good not to fund this sort of behavior.

aidangrimshaw 4y ago

I'm working with other contributors on https://ustaxes.org https://ustaxes.org, an open source tax filing webapp https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes. Currently, many Federal tax forms are supported, as well as tax filing for the state of Illinois. Filing for Oregon and California is under development!

freedomben 4y ago
That's really neat and I'm glad you're doing it. That said I worked on tax software once and the amount of changes each year are huge and often require expert analysis. Sometimes they get dropped on you with very little notice. How does the project plan to keep up with that? Will it require volunteers?
- aidangrimshaw 4y ago
  Absolutely, yeah the project has a loose group of contributor volunteers but longer term we would probably have to have a larger, more formal structure. Right now, we're focusing on tooling to make onboarding new tax forms simpler and require a lower threshold of project understanding to allow a larger, less technical group of people to contribute
  - formerkrogeremp 4y ago
    Huh, as an aspiring tax professional how do I get in on this?
    - IggleSniggle 4y ago
      Go to the GitHub link above, read the README, and pay special attention to the “CONTRIBUTING” section. If you have questions and the README and CONTRIBUTING documents do not specify a way to communicate, then open Issues on GitHub with your questions. Try to avoid asking questions unless you’ve read everything and cannot figure out how to proceed: remember that everyone working on the project is volunteering their limited time, just like you, and try to be respectful of their time and energy. I am unaffiliated with this project, this is just the general procedure for contributing to open source projects.

perardi 4y ago

I know, I know, there’s so many dark patterns in TurboTax that it’s cliche to point them out… …but man, this was a particularly egregious example I came across this year. https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW https://imgur.com/ojpLvRW You can pay for TurboTax using your refund…with an additional $39 processing fee. That is just wild.

jackson1442 4y ago
I think that's actually somewhat standard- even FreeTaxUSA (my personal choice) does this because they're essentially letting you use their product on credit.
- lozenge 4y ago
  It's not a good way to present the option. Should be a radio button "Pay with refund (fee: $39)"
- deathanatos 4y ago
  I think the objection is not that they're charging a fee, it's that the fee is $39. TurboTax (just the basic federal edition) is what, $30? And yes, this is essentially credit, extended for what, a month? So ($39/$30 * 12) is yearly rate of like 1,560% for that credit, aka., highway robbery — that, I think, is the parent's point. (I might be a bit off on the price, but not enough to change the result. TurboTax's loss if the debtor here "defaults" somehow is … what, even?)
  - perardi 4y ago
    Yes, the highway robbery of it, that’s my point. That is a huge percentage of the base price of TurboTax, and it is in no way less convenient than paying with a credit card, and they hide that fee down in the blah blah text.
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    Plus they themselves have calculated that you're due a refund that will cover that cost already at this point, and they're going to directly pull their fees out of it... while not 100%, it's got to be pretty near the bottom in terms of risk. Especially if they still wait to pay you the balance until the refund is actually paid by the Treasury.

aclindsa 4y ago

I recently started an open-source tax solver, partly because I'm not a huge fan of Intuit: https://github.com/habutax/habutax https://github.com/habutax/habutax It isn't perfect since its a young project, but I've attempted to simplify and modularize the process of creating/maintaining forms to allow for that part to be crowd-sourced as much as possible (and I'd love your help!).

bschwindHN 4y ago
Seems like you should combine forces with ustaxes.org? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848936
- csb6 4y ago
  Here is another similar project that has been around a while for anyone interested http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net http://opentaxsolver.sourceforge.net
  - aclindsa 4y ago
    Perhaps so. Though I found structural things with each of those projects that I did not like. For example, opentaxsolver's logic is a bunch of 'monolithic' C code, and I haven't been able to find any tests. UStaxes is better in that respect, but there I couldn't get past typescript, honestly, and they have code like https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes/blob/master/src/forms/Y2021/irsForms/F1040.ts#L619 https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes/blob/master/src/forms/Y20... where they're relying on position of an item in the array to indicate which field it is. Not trying to disparage anyone, but I did not see evidence of an attention to detail I felt I could trust (and maybe that's just me and NIH syndrome). What I would really like is to somehow extract out a representation of the tax logic into something separate from the business of collecting the data from the user, or even calculating the results. I'm not entirely sure what that would look like, maybe it would have to be some domain-specific language (eww) in order to be able to fully express the relationships and dependencies between different fields/forms. But I think that tax logic portion is the difficult-to-maintain part, and also the portion different projects would benefit the most from sharing.

dang 4y ago

Related: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.393685/gov.uscourts.cand.393685.6.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.39... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/turbotax-maker-sued-by-ftc-over-deceptive-ads-that-promise-free-tax-filing/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/turbotax-maker-s... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30846884, but we've merged the threads)

anm89 4y ago

I wouldn't say I usually get excited about something a federal regulator does but I'll make an exception for this one.

jawshoeadan 4y ago

https://turbotaxsucksass.org/ https://turbotaxsucksass.org/

jawshoeadan 4y ago
Oh shit didn’t even realize this “ ntuit has elected not to renew its participation in the IRS Free File Program and will no longer be offering IRS Free File Program delivered by TurboTax” Go to hell intuit. https://freefile.intuit.com/ https://freefile.intuit.com/

iosono88 4y ago

jxi 4y ago

Any way to donate to the cause?

Arubis 4y ago

Good. Fuck them and their predatory business model. I know this is where we’re supposed to decry the system of which this is symptomatic, and talk about campaign finance and such. And all that stuff is true, sure. But Intuit has been such a consistently abusive actor that they’re normalizing regulatory capture, with enormous financial, time, stress, and legal repercussions for the entire population. Seriously, fuck them.

MobileVet 4y ago

Not at all affiliated but Free Tax USA appears to be a great alternative. They have been around for quite a while, but I have only used them this year as it was the first I heard of them. Biggest downside is no import from brokerage, so if you trade a lot it could be annoying to create your schedule D. https://www.freetaxusa.com/ https://www.freetaxusa.com/

zw123456 4y ago

A few years back I got audited, and it was called an "electronic audit" by the IRS. Which basically meant that they had their computer systems scour a bunch of the bank records and discovered that I had forgotten to claim a 1099 for some contract work I had. OK, so they sent me a computer print out and they had cross checked everything on my return electronically, my property tax deductions, my stock dividends so on and so on. Ok, so if they can do all that automatically for an "electronic audit" why am I filing a return, just run that thing and send it to me and I can file an exception if there is something on it I disagree with. I think the answer has already been identified in several other comments here, a heavy lobby effort on the part of Intuit, H&R and whoever else to keep it tricky and complex so you have to buy their B.S> software or services.

downrightmike 4y ago
That's exactly it.
JSavageOne 4y ago
Blaming "lobbyists" absolves the politicians of their responsibility. The fault lies with the politicians for creating and perpetuating this broken system.
refurb 4y ago
It's impossible to automate the tax filing process unless you simplify the tax code. And I've filed taxes in countries with simple tax codes where the government pre-fills out the forms. Guess what? You still need to go and double check everything because the information comes from your employer. I've found mistakes before. So I pretty much "do my taxes" myself to make sure what the govt sends isn't wrong.
- Spivak 4y ago
  This is a misunderstanding of the actual ask from the federal government and "automating" is a bit of a misnomer. The reason the IRS could theoretically fill out your taxes on your behalf is because someone else already submitted their part of the forms. Your employer reports your income, your broker reports your capital gains and assets, your bank reports interest, etc.. The ask is less about automation more not having to do those parts twice. The IRS could send you everything they've gotten about you and you just fill in the rest and/or dispute -- for normal single income wage earners there would be nothing else to add so it's effectively automated. The gain is that we can make "doing your taxes" a non-issue for most Americans. Sure some people will still need accountants for complicated situations but in one swoop we can eliminate hundreds of millions of hours of useless work every year for basically no downside -- it's pure gravy.

Arubis 4y ago

Many users of this site aren’t especially price-sensitive; if you’re one of them and in the habit of using tax filing software, I urge you to consider hiring an accountant for your taxes. You’ll pay a couple hundred bucks, which may be offset by the CPA finding deductions or credits that your software didn’t highlight, and that money goes to someone you’ve picked out and hired rather than a corp that’ll use your money to lobby against your best interests. And you’ll save a bunch of time, which may be enough to make this worthwhile in and of itself for you!

quadrifoliate 4y ago
What are some concrete examples of these deductions that people keep talking about? I'd actually like to know, so I can perhaps convince myself to get a CPA next year. The only deductions I have seen as a salaried person with some minor stock trades are things for home heating credits and such which I am always ineligible for on the basis of income.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Just mail your taxes in with a letter and a stamp, come on!

dang 4y ago

The saga continues: Ask HN: How does TurboTax get away with dark patterns? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30409523 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30185484 - Feb 2022 (18 comments) Killing TurboTax - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330584 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443203 - March 2013 (330 comments)

beej71 4y ago

Here's what's worked for me in terms of not paying Intuit any money (as a W-2 and 1099 earner): If there's something you can't figure out, is risky, or a one-off, hire someone to do your taxes. Then use that as a template for subsequent years to do it yourself. Also, use the federal free fillable forms to e-file. They might be available for your state, as well.

daniel-cussen 4y ago
Just do it by mail.
- beej71 4y ago
  It costs the taxpayers less money to file electronically. And it's less error-prone. But as long as Intuit isn't making any money, I'm fine with whatever.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Turbotax is a tax on paying tax. I like paying taxes to the State because that money goes to military and entitlements, and keeping the lights on. I do not agree with every military action, or every entitlement, but it's not my place to decide what direction the country goes in, it is my place to push. I wonder how many orphanages Intuit runs, how much welfare they pay, where the bases they operate are, how many men they've put on the moon, to have the gall to demand taxes. That is an literally an act of sedition, literally a racket.

macinjosh 4y ago

Pro tip: when I was doing my taxes TurboTax asked me for a survey. I complained bitterly about their lobbying. I was suddenly able to file fed and state free.

nimish 4y ago

eFile could be free too but it's an enormous pain in the ass to even get registered as an IRS developer. IRS provides docs: https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2021-modernized-e-file-schemas-and-business-rules-for-individual-tax-returns-and-extensions https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/tax-year-2021-modernize... but hides them from the public.

jprd 4y ago

I think we can all agree that discovery is going to be fun and lead us places we can only dream of.

neycoda 4y ago

Yay!

mikeInAlaska 4y ago

My last CPA had a dart board on his wall. The outside was NOT DEDUCTIBLE. The inner, smaller ring was DEDUCTIBLE. The bullseye was DEDUCTIBLE UNTIL AUDIT.

gpm 4y ago

Docket for the case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63193711/federal-trade-commission-v-intuit-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63193711/federal-trade-... Dang - it might be nice to include this in the "Related" comment pinned to the top, it's just the "level up in the filesystem" above the courtlistener link you already have in it.

korginator 4y ago

This is band-aid for a fracture. Suing Intuit does not address the underlying problem. It's not hard to collect income data automatically. Here in Singapore (as in many other countries) I get a message reminding me to check my tax data before the filing date. I just login and click "Submit". If I forget to do this, I may miss some deductions, but it goes through anyway. Tax filing can be made simple enough that a layperson can do it without employing an accountant.

bigjoedeez 4y ago

What's the problem? I file for free each year.

systematical 4y ago

I stopped using TurboTax after it told me I owed $20,000 to the District of Columbia. I went to an accountant and DC ended up owing me money. Clearly I entered something wrong in TurboTax, but the experience was enough for me to decide paying someone is worth the money and frankly saves me much time as it only takes me minutes to send my information by email and another few minutes to review the results and digitally sign. Most of my income is from W2 and some 1099 here and there. As others mentioned, America is backwards and the politicians and 1% keep fleecing it towards Romes fate. I love seeing those on the top get fleeced for a change, unfortunately this will just be a slap on the wrist.

assuringllama 4y ago

In my country, we rarely use software or professional services for filing personal income tax. Not for most people unless you have special circumstances which are usually reserved for super high networth individuals. What my local IRS did is sensible default. Employment income are submitted electronically to my IRS from most employers. Deductions and reliefs are automatically factored in if it relates to other government services (e.g. reliefs for child). What I love most is for information that they don't have information on, such as deductible expenses for rental income, they suggest a default of 15% expenses where we don't have to provide any proof or documentation. It is a 15% deduction over the rental income that's just given to you. Of course, we can challenge it if we feel we should have higher deductions, providing them with the necessary documents.

syastrov 4y ago

I wrote an article [1] a few years ago to vent about how messed up and backward the experience has been for especially foreign filers. The “free” options provided by commercial companies are as TFA states unusable by large portions of the population. Besides those, the IRS provides “free fillable forms online”, which looks like a scam website and also has many limitations (one of which, in my case, was that you must provide a US phone number). It’s all beautifully messed up. So there wouldn’t be this problem with Intuit if the government got their shit together. Why not spend efforts to improve the system rather than litigation? The answer? Lobbying. This is all in stark contrast to the system which exists in Denmark, where I live, where taxes are all filed online and the government automatically fetches most information so that you mostly only need to review it and add deductions. [1] https://medium.com/@syastrov/us-tax-system-a-fractal-of-bad-design-316e30cb7e9a https://medium.com/@syastrov/us-tax-system-a-fractal-of-bad-...

physicsguy 4y ago

From an outsider perspective, the US tax system is nuts. Here in the UK, the tax year runs from April to April. Your employer reports exactly your taxable earnings to the government every month. You can log in online and see exactly what you're taxed on. You do not need to fill out a self-assessment at all - it's all done automatically, except for under certain circumstances which don't affect most of the population, but roughly: * You have earnings over £1000 a year from outside of your normal employment (e.g. from interest on savings, selling things on eBay, whatever). * You are earning above £50,000 per year but want to continue claiming child benefit (which phases out between £50,000 and £60,000, so some needs to be repaid). * You earn over £100,000.

jeffrallen 4y ago

About. Damn. Time.

mike503 4y ago

Amusing. They lobby to keep the government and IRS complex, get sued back, but ultimately it’ll always be a net gain.

isolli 4y ago

In Europe (in most countries as far as I can tell), electronic filing is administered by the government, and it's easy to use (often prefilled for simple situations). As mentioned in the article, in the US, electronic filing is offered for free only to taxpayers below a certain income threshold, and the service is offered by private companies. They often pay themselves back with tax advances at usury rates. I can't help but think that it is another example of how the US tax system is beholden to private interests.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mwexler 4y ago

ProPublica has been hammering on this since 2019. Their series of investigations at https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap https://www.propublica.org/series/the-turbotax-trap is very eyeopening, and teeth-gritting.

guenthert 4y ago

Yeah, it's 'free' unless you are unemployed. I believe those tax fellows just think differently.