The US is not a county optimized to provide quality services inexpensively. It is a business optimized to maximize profits.
IRS should just have a public free filing solution for everyone. If you have complicated taxes or want to do your own filing, you can still do that.
That's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is: "We did your tax return for you based on all the information reported to us. Please click 'OK' to complete your return for the year."
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
As for "having most of your tax information", they don't. They know your reported income. You see that on your W2s/1099s/etc. What they don't know is whether or not you had a kid this year, or whether you lost a kid this year, whether you got married or divorced, if your spouse is claiming the kids this year or not, the number or amount of your charitable contributions, whether you have deductible mileage expenses, or a million other things.
Would just relying on the information from your employers cover all possible edge-cases? No.
Would it dramatically simplify the process for (tens?) millions of people? Absolutely.
No? 2 more clicks and you are done.
Yes? 2 + nr of changes clicks and you are done. Took me an extra 5 seconds when my son left.
You can make your taxes as complcated as you want but for 95% of the population foling taxes takes a few minutes.
Another factor most people are ignoring is that state taxes are filed at the same time and each state has its own separate system. These third parties let you fill in and file both at the same time. It would be nice if the US gov did this too but it requires a total restructuring of the American system, and Intuit’s lobbying has nothing to do with why it hasn’t happened or for that matter why the tax codes looks like it does.
Not for most people. It’s a giant pain in the ass if you have bank accounts and want to file correctly.
If all you do is plug in your w-2 and pretend that’s your whole tax return and you don’t care about anything except the standard deduction, sure. That’s not correct for most people.
> state taxes are filed at the same time and each state has its own separate system
Can we stop pretending like this is a problem insurmountable for the federal government?
This idea that TurboTax can make this work but the government can’t is absurd.
Countries like the U.S., Canada, the U.K. cannot easily do that without huge data-sharing reforms.
Also, Americans have to file both fed and state taxes (with different rules)
I've had the misfortune of having to fill in a W8-BEN-E form [1] and the first time, I just gave up and refused to work with the client because it was too complicated. The 2nd time, I got an LLM to tell me how to fill it in. Just look at the dense jargon - nonparticipating FFI, deemed-compliant FFI, Restricted distributor, International organiztion (hint, that's the wrong answer), Excepted territory NFFE, Passive NFFE, Direct reporting NFFE. There are 32 of them! What the hell is all that? Well 99% of cases are just one of those buried among the rest but you wouldn't know which without some advice.
And even if you do have a lot of things to report, why not just report those things directly and let the IRS calculate your taxes, rather than you having to do it, fill out a complicated form, then the IRS does the calculation anyways to make sure you did it right?
The French tax system is pretty simple. Taxes are high, but simple. The website you use to file your taxes is also pretty simple, and every single field has a button that explains what it is about and in which cases you should write stuff inside.
The only annoying parts are if you have accounts outside of France, you have to declare them. And if you get dividends/capital gains in foreign currencies outside of the EU, you have to calculate yourself how much tax you owe using a bunch of tables per country and currency.
For every form I've ever had to file with the IRS, there's a corresponding set of instructions. Those instructions inevitably have a definitions section and/or define the terms in-line.
The instructions for form W8-BEN-E are at [0]. The definitions section starts at printed page 4 and continues through to printed page 7. Some terms you mentioned (like "Excepted territory NFFE") are not in the definitions section, but are described in their own sections.
I'm definitely not going to claim that it's foolish to consult with a tax lawyer (or similar such thing) when one is significantly uncertain about one's taxes. I'm definitely going to object to your implied claim that the IRS dumps a bunch of jargon on you and leaves you to rely on general-purpose search engines to figure out what the fuck they're talking about.
> The time needed to complete and file this form will vary depending on individual circumstances. The estimated average time is: Recordkeeping, 12 hr., 40 min.; Learning about the law or the form, 4 hr., 17 min.; Preparing and sending the form, 8 hr., 16 min.
I spoke in objection to one very specific claim:
> [The] implied claim that the IRS dumps a bunch of jargon on you and leaves you to rely on general-purpose search engines to figure out what the fuck they're talking about.
Feel free to imagine that I was addressing something else. It's a free country and all.
You also might want to look at the estimated average time for a non-business taxpayer to complete a 1040. If the 1040 estimate methodology is typical, then those estimates are pretty pessimistic.
Basic taxes are trivial in the US if you just work to live, it is essentially one page. However, there is an extremely long and fat tail where the government has no way of knowing the correct details to compute your taxes. There are myriad subsidies and offsets that have to be accounted for, many of which depend on what State you live in.
If you earn a lot of money, like the tech people that frequent this website, you are much more likely to find yourself in that fat tail. It can become esoteric quite quickly. The Federal tax code has to accommodate the completely independent tax codes of all 50 States in a reasonable way.
Deductions can get esoteric if you sold a bunch of stock. Even then, not that bad.
There is a reason Americans spend staggering amounts of time and money on tax preparation. It is simple until it isn’t.
And options are worse.
Where I've worked, they withhold the necessary number of shares from RSU's and it just gets taxed as W-2 income. Then, it shows up with the taxed cost basis in Fidelity so you don't get double taxed when selling shares. It doesn't appear like they have to factor in travel into that equation - that's only for your salary.
As far as options, it was similar where I was receiving them. The only issue I ever had exercising options was when the company whose stock I was trading changed names, and then the IRS suddenly believed all those options were 0 cost basis and wanted a bunch of money. That took two rounds of letters and a call to HR to get sorted out. Granted - laws have changed since then - that fiasco was 18 years ago.
Obviously the 2025 version will be out of date for the 2026 filing season, though public code means it can always be revived by anyone else.
(previous HN threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131901 )
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-makers-turbotax-gave-trum...
Except those corrupt politicians want lobbying to be profitable, so they can profit from it too. And if they ask for too much, they’ll just bribe the next guy or may even try to put their own in office. Can’t have that!
Kirsten Sinema got a job as a senior lobbiest after her short congressional stint.
This way, you’d have to really be into lobbying to suffer the tattoo pain and permanent branding.
If you donate to a large charity, there is a good chance some of that $ goes to lobbying, as it should. (Presumably you want the issues goy care about to be fixed!)
If you work at a large company, 100% chance it lobbies, for good reason. Large employers lobby for better mass transit (because parking garages are expensive), more housing (because it is cheaper to lobby than pay employees more so they can afford $$$$ houses), or friendlier business laws (no one likes paying more taxes).
Lobbying is everything from "help us use orphans as a source of cheap protein!" To "keep the national parks funded".
Not all lobbying is straight-up mustache twirling. But it definitely left a bad taste in our mouths.
Is this how you reason about corruption in government service? Unlike your argument about about lobbying, the problem is very conspicuous here - you're supposed to get those services without paying anything beyond the nominal service charges. They're your rights in an society where you already pay taxes to fund them. The government officials are already being paid with your tax money to do this job. What's even worse? If such loose and open-ended bargaining is permitted for basic essential services, then the only ones who will get those services will be the ones with money, not the ones who need it. Your housing permits and your kids' food assistance will become increasingly costlier and harder goals to achieve. That's why bribes are illegal.
If you look at this scenario carefully, it isn't much of an analogy. It's exactly the same situation, but with different players! When politicians debate public policy, the only criterion should be the public interests - because the public are the primary stakeholders in a democracy, and it's the utilization of their tax payments that these politicians are debating. Those politicians are supposed to be the people's 'representatives' who are elected and paid to listen to their constituents and lobby on their behalf. The public shouldn't have to 'lobby' with them too, especially for basic essentials like nutrition, national parks or tax filing!
What you call 'lobbying' in the US is known as 'political corruption' in most of the rest of the world. It's just a weasel word used to underplay the seriousness of such corruption. And as I pointed out earlier in my analogy, the rich ones outcompete the majority public here too. It's abundantly clear that even town councils favor big corpos even in the face of loud vocal opposition from the majority of their constituents. It's clear how much special treatment these professional grifters called 'lobbyists' get when they walk into the town hall just minutes before the discussion of a topic, while the town's people have to wait there for one and a half days without proper food, water or sleep in order to speak a few words in opposition. This is what happens when you legitimize corruption with cute terms like 'lobbying'.
We formalized it! It is called an application fee, and it is set high enough so they the government employee doesn't need to take bribes outside of their salary.
Other countries set application fees so low that government employees barely earn enough money to eat, so they take bribes.
NYC solves a huge part of their police corruption problem by just paying officers more.
> When politicians debate public policy, the only criterion should be the public interests
I agree much of lobbying is corrupt, but the concept is that lobbying is how politicians discover the public interest. It is also how they get input on the effects of proposed laws. I want my local small business lobbying group to let my city know if a proposed tax increase will bankrupt my favorite local stores!
The fact is, what the EFF and ACLU do to protect our rights is also a form of lobbying.
I touched this point in my previous reply. But let me reiterate it again. Those politicians are supposed to just talk to their constituents and represent their interests. That's their job description. If the voters who sent them to the legislatures have to lobby them afterwards, what is the purpose of these politicians anyway? Is their job to con the public into choosing them, so that they can leech the same public? Evidently so, and that's the fundamental problem with democracy in US these days.
> The fact is, what the EFF and ACLU do to protect our rights is also a form of lobbying.
While EFF and ACLU do a commendable job, their existence don't justify lobbying. It's the other way around. Lobbying make them a necessity to regain some semblance of balance and fairness. They wouldn't be needed if the politicians were doing their job in the first place.
Is 'goy' a typo? I only know of its meaning as 'non-Jewish person'.
Every time they speak there should be a visual reminder of who they've taken money from.
Corruption will never be solved. It could possibly be reduced if there was less ROI. I expect that would require shrinking the government so there is less centralized power. A limited federal government and more administrative power handed back to the states (within reason) would be interesting.
This part makes enough sense.
> They're like fucking Eagles fans.
Now you've gone and implied 95% of sports fans aren't that way?? I don't understand your argument any more.
Don't get me wrong, I did vote third party and I will continue to do so if the Dems put up candidates like Harris and Biden. But don't expect most people to be willing to weather the storm of vitriol they'll receive for holding a high bar for their politicians.
Society is well acquainted with the concept of a tie, and whatever tiebreaker procedure we define probably won't factor into voter strategy all that much (that is, it will be less of an effect than the people who don't understand they can vote for more than one candidate)
It would be cost effective VS paying for tax prep!
It will not work, part of compensation is being hired as lobbyist after you "retire" from public office. So either go fund me will do the same or it will fail.
This is a bit reductive. Not everyone member of Congress goes to work for TurboTax after they retire!
However I imagine Inuit is a reliable source of campaign contributions every year. The simple solution is to get enough funding that the campaign can promise 3 or 4 election cycles of support for any politicians that vote in favor of tax filing reform.
SuperPACs get around that, but there is a chance a large company like Inuit isn't agile enough to defend against a well organized political attack.
Ultimately career politicians care about being elected. Even corrupt ones need to stay in office and they'll happily sacrifice one small donor to keep the gravy train coming with all their other connections.
If an independently funded lobbying group walks into DC and tells a senator they just raised 30M dollars and 80k residents in their state donated as part of that, I bet people will start to listen.
Using tax preparation software is the cheap (or free!) alternative to what millions of Americans are doing. It was a change for the better for people who didn't do their own taxes. A regular person's taxes can always be done electronically for free, or if they really want, for $20-$100 through tax prep software.
What millions of Americans do is pay a local accountant hundreds of dollars. The accountant pays himself out of their refund. He is "their guy" who is going to find all the "loopholes" to get them the biggest possible refund. He is also a shield between them and the vengeful and anal IRS that will garnish their paychecks or possibly even imprison them for making mistakes. (This is how the accountants market things, not reality.)
The masses generally don't want to "fix" e-filing/tax prep because a) you can already do it for free if you want to, it just requires a third-party which may be dumb but isn't getting most people fired up or b) they don't care about tax prep software at all because they're using an accountant.
https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/return-preparer-office...
There are 800k people out there with Preparer Tax Identification Numbers(PTINs) being paid to file other people's taxes. Looking around for the estimates for the actual stats of the percentages of people supposed to use these preparers varies from 25-55%.
The fact that TurboTax is cheaper than a local CPA does not change the fact that Intuit actively lobbies to prevent free tax filing.
In a sane world the IRS should send a letter to every tax-paying household in February that says “we owe you X”, “you owe us X”, or “your taxes are complex, please work with a tax specialist”. Also in a sane world this would be free and the government would be incentivized to simplify the tax code so that as many people as possible were in one of the first buckets. In our world the government is aggressively lobbied for complex tax codes and prevention of free tax filing.
> A regular person's taxes can always be done electronically for free, or if they really want, for $20-$100 through tax prep software.
Define “regular”. Per TurboTax, only 37% of people qualify for free filing.
I have never tried to go through the TurboTax free file route but based on my experience with the paid service, I imagine they aggressively upsell free filers with the exact same scare tactics you associate with CPAs.
Which is free for nearly everyone, but is only marginally better than paper filing your own taxes.
They are missing the context that only a fraction of filers are eligible to use free filing and that TurboTax paid something like 140 million to settle claims that they are misleading filers. That suit is why they now admit only 37% of people are even eligible to file for free.
There are also other services that provide free efiling regardless of income, it’s not just TurboTax.
At the end of the day, you can always do the paperwork if you really don’t want anyone seeing your taxes and mail it. Could it be better? Oh sure, but it’s difficult for me to feel very passionate about it.
> In a sane world the IRS should send a letter to every tax-paying household in February that says “we owe you X”, “you owe us X”, or
As mentioned in sibling posts, the IRS does NOT have the information it needs to get even close on your taxes. They know your reported income. They do not know your marital status, how you’re going to file, if or how many kids you have and will be filing for, and many other things. These all have MAJOR tax impacts.
An additional factor is state taxes really need to be packaged together with the actual solution.
Just passionate enough to say that everyone unhappy with Intuit lobbying against free tax filing and simplified tax codes doesn’t understand?
> As mentioned in sibling posts, the IRS does NOT have the information it needs to get even close on your taxes. They know your reported income. They do not know your marital status, how you’re going to file, if or how many kids you have and will be filing for, and many other things. These all have MAJOR tax impacts.
This is misleading. The IRS does have this because for most people it does not change year to year. It would also be trivial for them to provide a way to input this data if/when it does change.
You also seem to be simultaneously claiming that the US tax system is too complex for the government to feasibly automate and that filing taxes is trivial.
Either you hold contradictory viewpoints here or you have some undisclosed interest in this area.
Your post paints accountants as con-men, swindling people and promising "loopholes". Maybe some are, but they do provide a valuable service, especially if your tax situation is non-trivial.
I would love for the tax code to be simplified enough that I don't feel compelled to hire someone who put in the work to understand it, but that's simply not the case right now.
As soon as the words “passthrough LLC” (or “farm” or “S-corp” or “itemize”) are on the table, it’s usually worth it to pay $1,000 for a professional, assuming your time is worth something.
That said, there is a huge swath of America that's being preyed on by strip-mall tax prep, who derive zero benefit from it. (And an industry whose profits ultimately trickle up to the tax prep software companies)
It takes me about 20-30 minutes to enter a W2, 1099-INT, 1099-B, 1099-B (futures) and a 1256 (straddles and index options) into FreeTaxUSA every spring.
This is a very rude and inappropriate way to deliver your misinformation. The program was hugely popular and successfull
You clearly just want to have a convenient source for your frustration and show no interest in actually solving the problem permanently.
> Which checks?
Congress. They pass laws. The administration is bound, by the constitution, to follow those laws and to administrate them with "due care."
> The supreme Court OKed stopping people because they were brown ("Kavanaugh stops") and Congress has lost the power of the purse
What does this have to do with tax law?
About that:
The decision that remorseless, logistical apparitions, that exist only to make money should have the same rights as US citizens was the single most destructive court decision in the last 50 years.
This is a better exploration of what needs to happen: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-corporate-power... ( I found this article via HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45317731 )
You guys need to raise your expectations.
Everybody seems to care about this issue so much, so this feels like an extremely high-impact thing to do.
But if you're a rich person with dozens of companies and complicated trusts? Yep, nobody is going to be looking.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12521#:~:text=The%20I...
"After mass firings, the IRS is poised to close audits of wealthy taxpayers, agents say" https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2025/03/after-mass-firings-...
And they _will_ find them. For example, one year I forgot to add a line from one of 1040 forms to my return. I got a notification from the IRS about a year later that I have under-reported taxes.
And with the defunding of the IRS, they'll severely limit the complex audits.
a) You're already trusting them with every piece of information in your tax return. It'd cost like five cents to use that information to discover your phone number... if they're malicious, you're already fucked.
b) When? At the end of the process where you're doing stuff like attesting that you're not lied on your tax return? I don't remember them demanding a phone number up front, and I also don't remember whether or not I refused to provide a phone number at the end.
(The efiling never worked for me, always complained about something esoteric.)
They’re just values as far as it’s concerned. And it is dumped every October. But phone # validation up front is too much, an overstep.
Like I said, I just used it for the calc ability so a spreadsheet works as well. Bit of work the first year, then tweak.
> But phone # validation up front is too much, an overstep.
They definitely didn't do this to me any of the years I've used them to file taxes. When did you file yours? Did you file them long after the 2024 taxes were due?
Very odd. I wonder (but not enough to investigate) what's so different between your situation and mine that I'd not be asked for a phone number during initial configuration.
"Email and phone verification
If you are not receiving the verification codes, from both sources, you will not be able to create an account:"
You have the option of entering your
phone number and email address in the
spaces provided. There will be no effect
on the processing of your return if you
choose not to enter this information.
Note that the IRS initiates most contacts
through regular mail delivered by the
United States Postal Service.Wouldn’t the 3% number come out yo millions of people?
Free file: government partners with private companies to offer free tax returns through their software for low income people. It's suspected a lot of people don't know about it, and just use the paid versions of filing software because you have to start the process on IRS.gov and dark patterns were employed by the snakes at Intuit et al. Hence "just 3%". Been around for decades.
Direct file: New program (since 2024) for eligible people to file directly for free with the IRS, no third party tax software middleman. Only half the states are eligible, income criteria, simple taxes only. 300,000 touted as a bigger number because it's a very new program.
Cash App offers free Fed and State filing and it's quite good (used it last year for the first time). Not many people know about it though.
So I had filed taxes with CreditKarma one year, and then the next year the CreditKarma tax service had no information about my previous filing. So I tried out the CashApp app, since I was going to have to fill out all the info anyway, and it actually did have my information from the previous year and I only had to change the new information, rather than re-enter all of my address and employer info, etc.
So I also recommend the CashApp app - it's free for basic taxes, it's not helping turbotax and their relentless lobbying, and it's really convenient if you already use CashApp. Of course, all of this is subject to change any specific year. Big companies gonna big company, after all.
Not just the basics. I found that it could do everything I needed including Schedules C, D and E.
IIRC, its limitations are if you're earning in multiple states, or are earning foreign income.
I live and work abroad and Turbotax requires a US billing address to pay the fee of using Turbotax. :facepalm
All the other self-service options do not work and I’m not sure if the risk is worth it to file it myself.
To my fellow Expats, what are you doing?
[1]: Although I find it incredibly frustrating the lengths they go to to avoid negative numbers on the forms.
I use it every year, and while I wouldn't exactly say I enjoy doing my taxes, I do enjoy being fully aware what I'm filing and not being forced to do it on paper just because others have obtuse opinions or are lazy.
Now, the various self-filing software products also feel a lot like guessing, but at least they walk you through which guesses are mostly likely to be correct and can catch the most egregious errors.
The instructions make it very clear when a field in the form should be used and what should go in it.
You can also call the IRS and be told for free what the rules are. People pay h&r block and Intuit when the irs is extremely responsive and will connect you with an actual American irs rep to answer your questions.
People pay for the software because they've been marketed to not because they need it. For the situations that are actually hard, then a software like TurboTax is useless.
Also if you get the numbers wrong the IRS just corrects it
It's pretty clear that daemonologist did not know that. Which is weird, given that all the tax law the average USian needs to know is "Read and follow the instructions for Form 1040.".
(RIP 1040-EZ. You were a good form.)
Also, I've had to file several forms in the past. It 'adds up', but it's all mechanically following instructions... not anything difficult.
In my experience, the form instructions tell you clearly when you should and should not file a form. They also clearly indicate which other forms are to be filed when you meet specific conditions (income limits, possession of specific other forms, etc.).
Granted, I don't run a business, nor do I have exceptionally complex finances, so there are a great many IRS form instructions that I have never seen. Because I've not see them all, I'd never say that every such form instruction is clear, but the ones I've encountered have been.
It involves reading a lot of instructions, with many references to other documents and other sections. It involves copying a lot of numbers from one place to another, and doing basic math on them to get a new one.
It could be improved a lot just by automatically calculating more fields, and adding more of the "worksheets" that are in the instructions into the forms so it can calculate those for you.
It already does this. The form validation checks that you have filled in the required fields and on most forms about half of the field values are not user-editable and instead auto-calculated from the other half.
It also looks for the required related forms you should have attached. The worksheets are another matter and aren't required to be attached, so they aren't part of the validation. It's assumed that you have read the instructions and done the worksheets elsewhere, although you certainly can attach them anyway.
For some things. But there are also several fields that could be calculated, but aren't.
> It's assumed that you have read the instructions and done the worksheets elsewhere
Yes, but it would be helpful if it had something to do the worksheets as part of the site instead of you having to do the worksheet elsewhere.
Guess I get screwed so some asshole at Intuit can make an extra twenty bucks.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they've tried everything else.
I'm American. If you don't buy into the insane status-symbol ego culture, it's daily insanity of excess consumption and selfishness.
The worst part is no one wants to hear this. There's a crazy culture of "Saying anything is mean". We shove our heads in the dirt all the time.
There, fixed that for you.
[1] Very related discussion six months ago posted by me.
Luckily for me, my state rolled out its equivalent of Direct File a couple years ago, and it's fantastic. Just like Direct File was.
I am pretty sure that state filing would have happened in the future if the Trump admin hadn't killed it; you have to start somewhere, federal is as good a place as any.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/03/...
https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-deliberately-hid...
Tax filing is a matter of risk balancing, which heuristics are great at optimizing, if they incorporate enough data. Neural networks are ideal for that, but it would take a lot of data gathering to develop the model, from data that isn't easily scraped from Web pages.
As the government it should be possible to reduce the negative impact of making mistakes.
>Plus tax law is about ten thousand times more complicated than you're assuming.
Then start simple. You don't have to cover all of tax law at the start.
That seems like a nightmare of a product as far as privacy is concerned.
https://theworknumber.com/solutions/products/income-employme...
Even if you do want to feed your personal data to an AI tax bot, this should be easily within the capabilities of a model that can run locally.
The instructions for each form published by the IRS every year are already written by professional technical writers to be unambiguous. Do you mean that someone ought to write a simplified english grammar transpiler? I think that would genuinely be interesting. What's missing are the guidelines the technical writers are using, but that can probably be derived.