Man, I hope I live to see the day that these greedy bastards lose a huge chunk of their business to free filing via the IRS. They’ve been fighting to keep tax paying citizens from getting what they want from their government for years. It’s gross.
I want to see this free filing happen both for the good it’ll do and because I want to see Intuit’s stock plummet. Fuck Intuit.
“It’S gOiNg tO HuRt bLaCk pEoPle” fuck off you dirty liars.
They pulled the black card. You can’t argue against that.
Why do u hate black people, bigot?
Either you might want to add an /s or realize my post has a /s.
i feel like adding /s loses the /s effect
considering you were doing /s with out putting /s… i feel attacked.
This all started when Trump got elected. The stupid people got emboldened and are openly speaking and now you can’t tell when someone is being sarcastic because we now know there are honestly people out there who would say the same thing, but seriously.
That or sarcasm often requires vocal manipulation to be expressed and text can’t convey that very well.
If your comment really was /s yours failed because you went against the joke and not with it.
no no, black people. people in the net positive, red people, people in debt. that’s what they meant, surely, absolutely, undoubtedly. 🙄😏
Intuit actually makes some really good products. I’d like to see pre-prepared returns from the irs also, with the option to update/amend at the taxpayer’s discretion if necessary. That way Intuit could focus on their higher level products for bigger more sophisticated taxpayers that truly do need excellent software.
One can make really good products and still be such unmitigated cunts that they should lose that business altogether.
They’ve spent insane amounts of money lobbying the government to keep poor AF people easily able to be tricked into paying for their tax return all while advertising a hard to find free service. Paying people we pay for with our tax dollars so that more of our hard earned cash can flow into their pockets. And if they spent insane amounts to keep it that way you know full well they’re making that amount back and then some. Off of us.
They’re evil. No offense to you, but fuck their really good products.
Switch, and never look back.
Get the link directly from the IRS: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
I’ve had less than ideal experiences with the IRS linked companies. Freetaxusa.com has definitely been the best one by far for me. And my taxes are pretty complicated.
Freetaxusa is one of the options available in that link.
I never gave them a chance because their name screamed: scammy site designed to lure old people into file taxes there.
But last year someone on here or reddit kicked off a thread and tons of people were singing it’s praises.
So I checked it out after TurboTax was trying to charge me like $230 to do my taxes.
It was easier than TurboTax and I got the same numbers at the end, so I decided to go with them. I ended up spending $10 or something for the ability to refile amendments later or something. Honestly, I wanted to give them some money because I want them to stick around.
It was a great experience. I’ll be using them moving forward.
You’re right about their name. They really should have picked something less suspicious.
It essentially sounds like “FreeGiftCards.com”
Or OLT.com. The Web app takes you step by step, just like turbotax.
I second that, been using olt for years now and it’s super affordable and reliable. Not the cleanest interface though
Do they store records year over year so you don’t have to type everything in again?
Yup, been using them for years.
To add to this, you can also export your last year tax returns (from TurboTax or any other tax service) and import them into freetaxusa so you don’t need to manually enter all of that info! Made it super easy to switch to them last year, just wish I had found out about them sooner tbh
I’ve been using this for several years now and got a few other people to use it.
Simplify the tax code and all this nonsense goes away. TurboTax goes away, the IRS can shirk dramatically. People don’t have to fuck around with these tax filing services or pay someone to do it for them. Audits become a thing of the past. Congress can spend time on stuff that matters instead of with lobbyists looking for more tax loopholes. It will save billions of dollars per year.
That’s all pie in the sky fantasy at this point. As long as we live in a $20+trillion/year economy with fifty states, hundreds of millions of people, interstate commerce, international business, complex transactions, and so on, tax will always be complicated as fuck. Best we could do is pre-prepare tax returns from the information returns provided to the irs (W-2, 1099 etc) and allow the taxpayer to update/amend at their discretion. Which I totally support. But tax and accounting is never not going to be complicated as fuck, it just doesn’t work that way.
There will always be some complexities in tax codes, but I think there is broad consensus that our current tax system is unnecessarily complicated. Taxes could be simplified pretty dramatically to the point where individual tax filings are close to automatic and don’t require third party companies. Taxes will always be a complex issue, but that definitely doesn’t mean we should accept that paying large for-profit tax preparation companies should be the norm for your average citizen. It certainly isn’t that way in some other highly developed countries.
Or, and hear me out here… the IRS can start going after the whales that aren’t paying taxes currently. Don’t shrink the government agency that literally has the highest ROI of any agency
Simplifying the tax code means eliminating loopholes. Eliminating loopholes means they have fewer ways to avoid paying taxes. Fewer ways to avoid paying taxes means it will be easier for the IRS to go after people who outright breaking the law instead of having to figure out what is and isn’t legal based on 70,000+ pages of text filled with gray areas to play in.
The IRS is trying to cases these companies/people through a maze. It would be a hell of a lot easier to chase them down a hallway.
I agree simplify the code, and let the existing IRS do more, don’t downsize it, just cause it’s easier
Oh fuck all the way off.
They just say whatever they don’t like hurts black people these days, like apparently free tax filing and student loan forgiveness. Ya know what actually hurts black people? The police.
Police departments hate the IRS, too. I’m starting to get suspicious of these weird coincidences…
Id probably hate the IRS too if I had to justify spending tax dollars on military hand me downs like I’m at war with the populations I’m supposed to protect and serve.
There’s probably a grain of truth to “hurts Black people”.
Seeking to capitalize on recent research that found racial disparities in IRS audits
Racism -> blacks have less money -> wildly underfunded IRS mostly audits poor people who can’t hire lawyers and fight back. That’s the most profitable way for the IRS to gather money. Sickening, but here we are.
Also, racism regarding names is a thing. My first name and surname are total white bread, my middle name is almost exclusively “black”. I’m betting black names get pulled out of the pile more often. I can tell stories. OTOH, I have no idea how audit randomization is handled, if at all.
So what does this all have to do with free filing being a bane to POC? LOL, jack and shit. If anything, giving people of modest or no means a way to file through the government only levels the playing field. How could it possibly hurt?!
Kinda off topic, but this article gave me a major part of the solution to lobbying. We can’t make it illegal, that’s unconstitutional, plain and simple.
First Amendment rights:
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
OK. If a corporation is a person, and it literally says so in the first section of the US Code (1 U.S. Code § 1 - Words denoting number, gender, and so forth_…
the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;
Hold up…
In Washington, D.C., the company has deployed 63 lobbyists this year, according to OpenSecrets, to stalk the halls of government.
Then how the hell does Inuit get 62 additional voices to counter mine? 1 corporation = 1 voice. Yes, corporations deserve a voice in our government. They comprise people like you and I, and those people should be heard. But 63?!
Honestly we are overdue for a second paperwork reduction act when it comes to taxes
Burn INTUIT TO the fucking ground.
FreeTaxUSA allows free federal returns with something like 10$ for state returns. Been using them for the past few years, fuck TurboTax H&R Block, and all the rest of 'em
Whenever people say stuff like that, I question their motive. Sometimes things do have a hidden racial component but it’s such a tired cliche at this point to bring race into literally everything. You shouldn’t be able to manipulate people this easily just by “sounding” progressive
The article doesn’t make it super clear what the basis for this claim is. I’ll try to summarize as best I can, and welcome anyone to correct me.
They’re saying that an IRS program to prefill tax information for the taxpayer (like what is done in so many other countries) would cause many people to miss tax credits. The tax credit they’re referring to is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is “aimed at low-income, working class parents,” who usually earn less than $20K/yr. Since Black people in America have disproportionately lower incomes, this is how simplifiying taxes across the board for everyone would “hurt Black people.” And that Black people are audited at a rate three to five times the average taxpayer.
But wait. That increase in auditing is because of the EITC. “For decades, the IRS has disproportionately audited EITC claimants because of pressure from Republicans in Congress as well as laws that require a special focus on “improper payments.””
In fact, free assisted filing would ensure that more people appropriately get the EITC, and fewer people would be likely to claim it when they shouldn’t. Which (in concert with “stop over-auditing people just because they claimed EITC,” which is already happening) will reduce the auditing problem.
I worry that this is part of some two-pronged initiative that also involves
bribinggenerously donating to a couple of the more crooked members of the CBC - Clyburn, Waters, Booker - to make this argument for them in Congress.Sorry but if you’re still paying to file your taxes you deserve to get fleeced.
Most garbage take of the day award goes to:
Everyone else uses the race card, why shouldn’t Intuit?! This is what you get in a society that is so easily race-baited that even billion dollar corporations are exploiting that stupid loophole to get support.
Everyone else uses the race card
Yea, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you probably don’t believe in legitimate concerns about systemic racism against minorities, or even believe it’s real…let’s blame black people for fighting for equal rights, THEY’RE the real problem here
