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This is exciting. I hope Intuit gets what it deserves. Their obstruction of simplifying the tax code has gone on long enough.

SoftTalker 3y ago
The tax code was complicated long before Intuit existed.
vineyardmike 3y ago
So I know intuit is an easy and guilty party in this whole situation, but let’s not pretend it’s all their fault. Plenty of politicians benefit from this mess. This isn’t meant to pick sides in politics, but if you’re a politician and you’re running a “lower taxes and less government bureaucracy” re-election campaign, it’s in your best interest to make paying your taxes as noticeable and painful as possible. It’s in politicians best interests to make the government as unfriendly and time consuming as possible. Filing a tax return manually should only be necessary for a small percentage of people with complex situations. Most people’s entire income is a single W2, and their payroll provider should be able to deduct the exact amount down to the penny. No-op for the individual. Everyone else can keep their existing process applying for deductions and breaking out their income streams. Anything else is theater to make you hate taxes.
- qpingo 3y ago
  Can you cite the responsible politicians?
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    Follow the money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Opposition_to_free_automatic_tax_return_filing_and_other_efforts_to_make_tax_filing_easier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Oppos...
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > Most people’s entire income is a single W2, and their payroll provider should be able to deduct the exact amount down to the penny. People also like to get steady paychecks. In any progressive tax system, anyone who leaves a job mid-year would either mean everyone would have to have paychecks that varied or job changers would have a discrepancy at the end. Having paychecks varying due to taxes would no doubt be spun by some as “theater to make you hate you taxes”. Homeowners with mortgages probably don’t want to share those details with their employer, out of some combination of “it’s none of their business” and “could they use that information against me somehow?” I get that filing taxes is annoying, but trying to set things up so my payroll department eliminates that seems the wrong path versus making the front door to the filing system easier to use.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > anyone who leaves a job mid-year would either mean everyone would have to have paychecks that varied or job changers would have a discrepancy at the end The UK "P45" system mostly avoids this? If you go from pay £X to pay £Y it's not impossible to calculate how much you will owe at the end of the year and distribute that over the remaining paycheques.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      (It looks like it does/could.) I'd much rather file taxes than give the details down to the penny of my prior pay from employer 1 to my new employer 2 (which is what I think the P45 system does). But that probably reflects more my own stance on personal and financial privacy than on anything fundamentally negative about the practical value of preserving that privacy.
      - nsteel 3y ago
        And in the case where you don't/can't provide a P45 they take an "emergency" high rate of tax instead. Which you can claim back once the information is provided, or at the end of the tax year. I don't know if you can legitimately decide to not provide a P45 for some personal reason, but it could be an expensive decision (in the medium term). I would say this definitely reflects your personal stance on privacy, I think most people would rather have the money they earned sooner rather than later.
dheera 3y ago
Serious question. I used Turbotax again this year. I want to get off of it next year. But does Direct File support literally everything? SEP-IRA->Traditional->Roth double rollovers with capital-gains in-between and partially pretax and partially posttax basis, cryptocurrency staking, straddles where you sold one leg before the other, incurred wash sales, sold RSUs but have both capital gains and income taxes associated with them, bought bonds at a market discount, paid estimated taxes, all of that fancy shit? I hate taxes in this country, why can't they just flat tax all the money I made in the year ...
- quartesixte 3y ago
  At a certain point you just use a CPA or roll your own with the Freefillableforms/literal paper files and I think you are the point where the time/complexity trade offs might warrant a good CPA. The direct file is just for W-2. I don’t think it can even handle 1099-INT or DIV
  - dheera 3y ago
    I guess, but the point of moving away from Turbotax is to avoid supporting this scammy industry. Using a CPA would be even worse.
    - quartesixte 3y ago
      At a certain level of complexity you want (need) a certified professional to make sure you are complying within the bounds of tax law and offload some of the audit risk to said professionals. Is the US Tax Code very complicated? Yes. Is it more so complicated than other nations? I would hazard a “no.” Is that a scam? That’s a question of political philosophy I don’t want to get into here.
- junon 3y ago
  If you're running into a healthy combination of those cases, might want to get a CPA.
  - 3y ago
Amezarak 3y ago
Intuit isn't the good guy here, but they get a ridiculous amount of hate proportional to their role in the system, and they did actually make things better. The status quo until consumer tax filing software like TurboTax was people paying accountants and accounting firms hundreds of dollars to prepare their very simple taxes after the rumor mill + accountant ads put the fear of God in them that the IRS would destroy their lives. Millions of people still do this to this day, and it's very hard to talk them out of it. Of course, if you have a complicated tax situation, hiring an accountant is worth it. But I'm talking about people with a W2 and maybe a few 1099s being convinced that even TurboTax is a bad idea because "my guy can get me so much more" or "the IRS is going to jail me if I make a mistake in the software."
- ghaff 3y ago
  At some point, the ubiquity of shopping mall accountants (e.g. H&R Block) convinced a lot of people that they were idiots to do their own taxes by hand. Personally I piggybacked off my parents' accountant and still use the same firm. At this point, it almost certainly makes sense for me to use an accountant but I could probably have just used tax software for less money at least for a time.

SoftTalker 3y ago

The tax code was complicated long before Intuit existed.

vineyardmike 3y ago

So I know intuit is an easy and guilty party in this whole situation, but let’s not pretend it’s all their fault. Plenty of politicians benefit from this mess. This isn’t meant to pick sides in politics, but if you’re a politician and you’re running a “lower taxes and less government bureaucracy” re-election campaign, it’s in your best interest to make paying your taxes as noticeable and painful as possible. It’s in politicians best interests to make the government as unfriendly and time consuming as possible. Filing a tax return manually should only be necessary for a small percentage of people with complex situations. Most people’s entire income is a single W2, and their payroll provider should be able to deduct the exact amount down to the penny. No-op for the individual. Everyone else can keep their existing process applying for deductions and breaking out their income streams. Anything else is theater to make you hate taxes.

qpingo 3y ago
Can you cite the responsible politicians?
- jdietrich 3y ago
  Follow the money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Opposition_to_free_automatic_tax_return_filing_and_other_efforts_to_make_tax_filing_easier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform#Oppos...
sokoloff 3y ago
> Most people’s entire income is a single W2, and their payroll provider should be able to deduct the exact amount down to the penny. People also like to get steady paychecks. In any progressive tax system, anyone who leaves a job mid-year would either mean everyone would have to have paychecks that varied or job changers would have a discrepancy at the end. Having paychecks varying due to taxes would no doubt be spun by some as “theater to make you hate you taxes”. Homeowners with mortgages probably don’t want to share those details with their employer, out of some combination of “it’s none of their business” and “could they use that information against me somehow?” I get that filing taxes is annoying, but trying to set things up so my payroll department eliminates that seems the wrong path versus making the front door to the filing system easier to use.
- pjc50 3y ago
  > anyone who leaves a job mid-year would either mean everyone would have to have paychecks that varied or job changers would have a discrepancy at the end The UK "P45" system mostly avoids this? If you go from pay £X to pay £Y it's not impossible to calculate how much you will owe at the end of the year and distribute that over the remaining paycheques.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    (It looks like it does/could.) I'd much rather file taxes than give the details down to the penny of my prior pay from employer 1 to my new employer 2 (which is what I think the P45 system does). But that probably reflects more my own stance on personal and financial privacy than on anything fundamentally negative about the practical value of preserving that privacy.
    - nsteel 3y ago
      And in the case where you don't/can't provide a P45 they take an "emergency" high rate of tax instead. Which you can claim back once the information is provided, or at the end of the tax year. I don't know if you can legitimately decide to not provide a P45 for some personal reason, but it could be an expensive decision (in the medium term). I would say this definitely reflects your personal stance on privacy, I think most people would rather have the money they earned sooner rather than later.

dheera 3y ago

Serious question. I used Turbotax again this year. I want to get off of it next year. But does Direct File support literally everything? SEP-IRA->Traditional->Roth double rollovers with capital-gains in-between and partially pretax and partially posttax basis, cryptocurrency staking, straddles where you sold one leg before the other, incurred wash sales, sold RSUs but have both capital gains and income taxes associated with them, bought bonds at a market discount, paid estimated taxes, all of that fancy shit? I hate taxes in this country, why can't they just flat tax all the money I made in the year ...

quartesixte 3y ago
At a certain point you just use a CPA or roll your own with the Freefillableforms/literal paper files and I think you are the point where the time/complexity trade offs might warrant a good CPA. The direct file is just for W-2. I don’t think it can even handle 1099-INT or DIV
- dheera 3y ago
  I guess, but the point of moving away from Turbotax is to avoid supporting this scammy industry. Using a CPA would be even worse.
  - quartesixte 3y ago
    At a certain level of complexity you want (need) a certified professional to make sure you are complying within the bounds of tax law and offload some of the audit risk to said professionals. Is the US Tax Code very complicated? Yes. Is it more so complicated than other nations? I would hazard a “no.” Is that a scam? That’s a question of political philosophy I don’t want to get into here.
junon 3y ago
If you're running into a healthy combination of those cases, might want to get a CPA.
- 3y ago

Amezarak 3y ago

Intuit isn't the good guy here, but they get a ridiculous amount of hate proportional to their role in the system, and they did actually make things better. The status quo until consumer tax filing software like TurboTax was people paying accountants and accounting firms hundreds of dollars to prepare their very simple taxes after the rumor mill + accountant ads put the fear of God in them that the IRS would destroy their lives. Millions of people still do this to this day, and it's very hard to talk them out of it. Of course, if you have a complicated tax situation, hiring an accountant is worth it. But I'm talking about people with a W2 and maybe a few 1099s being convinced that even TurboTax is a bad idea because "my guy can get me so much more" or "the IRS is going to jail me if I make a mistake in the software."

ghaff 3y ago
At some point, the ubiquity of shopping mall accountants (e.g. H&R Block) convinced a lot of people that they were idiots to do their own taxes by hand. Personally I piggybacked off my parents' accountant and still use the same firm. At this point, it almost certainly makes sense for me to use an accountant but I could probably have just used tax software for less money at least for a time.