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wait you guys have to pay to file taxes???
do they actually want you to evade taxes??
The tax system is so complicated, most people can’t handle navigating it on their own. Most people have jobs where taxes are automatically removed from pay checks and sent to both state and federal tax agencies. However, that amount is just an estimate and once a year (or quarter) you need to file paperwork to confirm whether you over or underpaid and then you either get a rebate (without interest), or you’ll need to send in a payment to make up the difference. That paperwork has been lobbied to remain as complicated as possible so that companies like Intuit can provide services that tax payers find useful and continue to pay for. This is more complicated for business owners, both big and small.
Well, in my opinion this will be a good platform for American progressives to run on: make taxes less complicated by getting rid of middle men.
This will absolutely 10000% never happen as long as lobbying exists in my opinion.
There needs to be more citizen lobbying. What really needs to happen is citizens organizing, pooling their money, and hiring lobbyists, just like big corporations do.
A look at the Forbes Fortune500 should point out why that’s basically impossible.
Just looking at the top one, Walmart, not even considering anyone else on this list, their raw profit in 2024 after all expenses and payrolls and everything was
$15,511,000,000.00
Amazon in the #2 spot made almost double that. Remember this isn’t revenue, this is profit, this is extra money after all normal expenses are paid.
If I pulled together every single person I’ve ever met in my life, regardless of their opinion of me, and we all donated all the money we had ever made in our lives, we might approach a tenth of Walmart’s 2024 profits.
The wealth inequality gap in America is large enough that it is actually difficult to wrap your head around. The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars - to be exact, you’ll need 999 million more dollars to reach it after you have your first million in the bank. Fighting corporate money with citizens’ money is not only wasteful but impossible.
Now much of that money do they spend on lobbyists?
You and I will never know, but it could be up to that amount without even impacting daily activities.
Working within a corrupt system often serves to more deeply entrench that system.
There is nothing wrong with lobbying…. There are lobbies for woman’s rights, black rights, all sorts of good causes have lobbies.
The politicians just bend over for corporate lobbies. Very important distinction. I think what would fit your argument better is will never happen as long as citizens United exists.
Any paid lobbying is bribery. Legislators should raise people’s opinion who voted them in and act as representative, not say what others pay them to say.
I can’t believe it is legal in so many countries. Apparently though it seems more problematic in the US but European countries aren’t immune either.
When we were legalizing cannabis in Maine the local growers had to form a lobby to fight against the out of state corporate growers who also had a powerful lobby. Banning lobbying doesn’t help it just takes away peoples voices. Lobbying is just a group of people pooling resources to enact common legislation or political goals. It’s an important part of the political process people neglect. and it’s been diluted by money. Don’t need to dilute it further with misinformation.
and it’s been diluted by money
That’s why they said “any paid lobbying is bribery”. While anyone can sign a petition to your representative and that’s technically also lobbying, what we’re talking about here is not that. In a democracy, every person gets their voice heard. With lobbying, only the dollar speaks.
I mean someone has to pay the lobbiests. The National Organization for women pays lawyers to write laws for them to present to congress, through lobbiests who are also paid. You want feminist groups who are allowed to write feminist laws and present them to congress right? You want someone to advocate for laws you want right? That’s lobbying?
Citizens united is what you guys are thinking of. The one where corporations can donate infinite money to politicians? So when a corporate lobby brings anti-feminist legislation, they then contribute lots of money to the politician they are lobbying. And magically the politican ignores their voters and sides with the anti-feminist pro corporate law. That’s citizens united. It’s not a problem with lobbying. You have a problem with corporate lobbys not womans rights lobbys right? You have a problem with your representatives favoring corporate lobbys because they get infinite money throught… DRUM ROLL… Citizens united.
I really hope this helps.
I mean, yes, because if they catch you evading taxes then they get a free slave for the term of your incarceration. To them it’s a win-win.
oh shit yeah, theres that too.
beacon of democracy.
Oh good I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand.
Yeah I figured the Canadian system we have was as bad as the US’s but apparently not. Having to pay to file is wild
No they just want us to do our part by both paying taxes to the government and paying corporations that pay the government. All makes sense in a tidy corporofascisit system.
No. You can file your taxes for free. And, if you ever pay to file your taxes, you’re not paying the government, you’re paying for tax preparation software or for a tax professional to do your taxes for you.
But! Even if your tax situation is very simple, filing your taxes on your own is difficult. In Europe, the government sends you a form with what they think you owe based on all the information they have on you. If you agree with the calculation, you just send the form back and either pay or receive a refund.
In the US your employer gives you some sheets of paper with some values on it. Your bank gives you some different forms. And so-on. When it’s tax time, you gather up all that paper, hope you have it all, try to remember what forms you need and if you have them, and then painstakingly try to copy the right values from the W-2, 1099-INT, and so on into the right boxes on form 1040, 1040 Schedule 1, 1040 Schedule 2, 1040 Schedule H, 1095-A, and so on. Then, you try to do the calculations where it says to multiply the value from 1040 row 43 by the correct value in table A9. A9 has different values depending on how many dependants you have, and if you’re filing jointly or alone.
Basically, it’s doable on your own, especially if you have a fairly standard / simple tax situation. But, it’s easy to make a mistake along the way. If you ever need an explanation about what you’re supposed to do, that information exists, but it’s in accountanteze, and it often refers to about 5 other IRS publications that just complicate things further. And, when you’re dealing with thousands of dollars, a mistake could be really costly. So, most people buy a copy of TurboTax every year for $30, which somehow turns into $60 by the time you’re actually ready to file because the $30 version only covers people in situation X, and since you have Y you need to upgrade.
TurboTax then takes $1 out of the $60 you paid them, and goes to Washington with that to lobby politicians to keep the tax code complicated so that people need to buy a new TurboTax every year. (Oh yeah, and things change just enough that every year you need to buy the latest software to file your taxes.)
In Europe, the government sends you a form with what they think you owe based on all the information they have on you. If you agree with the calculation, you just send the form back and either pay or receive a refund.
That’s not true everywhere in Europe
No? Where don’t they do that? Is what they have similar to the terrible US system?
Imagine having to pay to give the government money. I had to open this to confirm what I was reading.
No, and no. It is typically more convenient to pay to file taxes though. These companies hand hold you through the process and often have some protection for you if you get audited.
That said, this still means the government needs to make things easier for everyone. You shouldn’t feel like you need help to just file a standard tax return if all you do is have a regular job, no investments, and no deductions. Which is something like half of the US.
Pay to file and get charged if we don’t pay the amount that the IRS knows that we owe.
They literally know how much we owe but make us pay a private company to calculate that number and then charge us if that private company didn’t help us get the right number.
So the private company offers more “protection” and “tax experts” they charge us more for and make their “calculator” a little less helpful every year so you feel like you need the “tax expert” AI chat to help you avoid a charge.
Capitalism is the most efficient system. CAPITALISM IS THE MOST EFFICIENT SYSTEM.
It’s technically free to file federal and the tax prep companies must offer this by law. But there are tons of loopholes to this to the point that many people pay to file even when they don’t have to.
State taxes are always charged if they need to be filed. It’s free in some states but not a lot and there is no requirement on most states for how much the tax prep software charges for that.
Real talk: why do we have to ‘file taxes’ at all in 2025?
Don’t we have computers that should be automating taxes?
Because companies lobby Congress to prohibit major IRS restructuring and spending. If the IRS had auto filing and a bigger budget, it would make more money than ever before.
The IRS could go after and audit rich people while the common person just gets a check in the mall from their returns. Maybe even no check, as the returns are only from miscalculations by the federal system, which is due to a bad system in place.
We need a federal tax system in the US. No one likes paying taxes but we do. The IRS is the center of that for the Feds. And the Republicans gut it because it’s easy to say “I’ll lower your taxes” but not solve where the money comes from.
returns are only from miscalculations by the federal system,
Well, not really. More like incomplete calculations, erring on the side of overpayment because people are generally extra upset if they have to pay in at the end of the year, even if they technically made more money as a result. People are used to and kind of ignore the tax portion of the paycheck they never get, but they feel the taxation of actually making an active payment. So people get happy about the zero interest loan they give to the government because in the moment it feels like “free money”
My employer has to do withholding without knowledge of other potential household income, credits, or deductions, though that last is pretty much given for everyone given how high the standard deduction is now.
thats always my first thought when this subject comes up.
Fuck Intuit!
A million dollars is all it takes to buy whatever laws you want? That’s a really good deal for Intuit.
Remember all those (exactly) 1 million dollar “donations” all those CEOs were giving to Trump’s inaugural campaign? Those weren’t donations, they were bribes and kissing of the ring. Pledge loyalty (and pay a small fee) and the government will work for you.
Except if you’re Google or Facebook. Trump will accept your money and still fuck you over. Why anyone trusts him is beyond me.
They don’t trust him, but they don’t want to get on his bad side. They’re basically hoping that he’ll ignore them or forget about them, and focus his attention on his other enemies.
Politicians are cheap, I remember once seeing a list of how much a lobbyist buys support from politicians for and the list was like $5k $2k $3k $6k. It’s ridiculous
That’s affordable. Maybe I’ll buy one
Now you need to save it for your tax filing fees
It’s much more complicated than that though. The lobbying firms hire people who are former politicians or former senior staffers who have all kinds of contacts all over Washington. Getting those guys on the payroll is extremely expensive.
Then, those lobbyists generally don’t just go off and bribe someone. They build and strengthen relationships. They know all the pain points that the politicians have, and they just make things easier. If a politician’s staffer is having trouble finding a good place to live in DC, the lobbyist knows a guy who knows a guy who can get them a great apartment.
Eventually, the lobbyist isn’t this guy who tries to get the politician to change some laws. He’s basically part of the team. So, when new legislation comes up, the whole team works on it together, including the lobbyist.
The end result is that the $5k or whatever is only the direct contribution to the politician’s re-election campaign or something. Most of the spending is hiring the lobbyist and paying all his/her various expenses that make them indispensable for the politician, so that they can step in at the right time.
They’re cheap because they fully believe in ideologies that screw everybody else. They’re not doing it for the cash but for their god.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Trump could have held the Saudis up for $50 billion on Inauguration Day 2016. Five minutes with the ambassador and he could have walked away with plenty of loot.
Yosemite Sam could have figured it out.
Some of this is about accepting bribes. A lot more is simply ideology.
Trump’s people do not believe the IRS should exist and they are trying to dismantle it. DirectFile is just low hanging fruit, intended to make people more frustrated with tax filing and more easy to radicalized in an attempt dismantle and replace with tariffs.
Like, this is a real decades long project that goes way beyond Trump. Abolishing the income tax was Goldwater’s wet dream.
I agree with you that the Project 2025 folks are important, but I’m talking about Trump in particular.
The shoes, the NFTs, and the crypto schemes are all about fleecing his own people.
There was a lottery where the top prize was dinner at the white House with POTUS. They ran it for months and there was never a single winner.
I think he really likes stealing from poor people. Either that or he’s too chicken to go toe to toe with someone who might hit back.
Add to that that Grover Norquist runs an organization called Americans for Tax Reform. GOP politicians all have to sign a pledge with them that they will never vote for a tax increase or for anything to make filing taxes easier.
Supposedly, this is because if taxes are easy to file, Americans won’t hate them enough and it makes it easier for the government to raise taxes. But, it’s awfully convenient that this is exactly what Intuit, H&R Block, etc. all want too.
Arab governments have been paying tributes for decades and hosting US troops all in exchange for the uncertain guarantee of not being turned into another Iraq or Libya. Any more extraction and the US risks them aligning with Russia or China instead. The mobs know that they shouldn’t bankrupt those who pay them protection money.
True, but $50 billion wouldn’t break the bank for the Saudis. Moreover, Trump’s recent actions show that he doesn’t really care about anything more than 15 minutes in the future.
The Saudis maintain a welfare state that’s the source for their legitimacy. They can’t tighten the belt on their citizens. It will break more than just the bank.
How many private airplanes and yachts do the princes have?
They could cut down to seventeen harems each and still have enough to pay off Trump.
It wouldn’t have to be a lump sum either.
Stock market manipulation or a similar scam would put the same amount in his pocket.
Aligning with China is looking cheaper by the day. It isn’t like Trump will be president for life, and even if, it isn’t like his dynasty will dominate US politics forever, and even if, it isn’t like the US will be mighty forever.
People keep talking about the American Empire falling.
Be careful what you wish for.
When the USSR fell there was a decade of genocide in Europe, followed by kleptocracy that makes the old KGB look sedate.
The US Navy has about a dozen nuclear aircraft carriers and three times as many nuclear subs.
The US used nukes and committed genocide even when it was rising, so doing so on the way out is characteristic. And no it doesn’t scare me, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
It’s a little late now, but don’t forget that FreeTaxUSA is free for federal and cheap for state. Also much less annoying to use than Intuit TurboTax. They don’t do those fake loading animations like “checking the best deal!” As if a computer can’t do like a billion of those a second.
If I had to guess, this is a holdover from the 90s where people didn’t trust a quick calculation, and probably doubted the application was properly choosing the standard or itemized deductions.
Usually it’s to fool people into thinking something is happening when nothing is happening.
It’s also to make them think that something is more complicated than it actually is.
MyFreeTaxes.org has been what I’ve used. Sponsored by United Way and EzPz. Only catch is that it only works up to a certain income level, but free state and federal filing as long as you’re under the threshold.
They don’t do those fake loading animations like “checking the best deal!”
This shit should be fucking illegal, especially with something like tax filing software.
FYI if you live in Canada don’t use TurboTax, use Wealthsimple(a Canadian company) to file your taxes.
EDIT: There are other companies as well that are Canadian that support CRA NETFILE. Can find all supported listed here. The list doesn’t list which are fully Canadian so you’ll need to do some digging to confirm. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/digital-services-individuals/netfile-overview/certified-software-netfile-program.html
And if you’re in France, don’t use TurboTax, use the official government website that calculates everything for you reliably every year :o
With the nice simulator mode so you can run the numbers and see how much you need to budget for well beforehand.
Nice! Wish our CRA would do that. Just review, approve, and submit all using their systems and no third party nonsense.
Million dollar is practically nothing for this kind of company, they will net billions from this.
Even their corruption is incompetent.
Historically senators and representatives side with companies who’ve only given them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in contributions. It’s very cheap to buy a vote.
Though often there’s also the understanding that a career spent supporting them will be rewarded with a cushy, high-paying lobbying job once they leave politics. Or paid speaking gigs if you’re the President.
It’s not incompetent to give someone a penny and have them give you back $100. That’s a great investment. So I would have to say their corruption is very confident if they can give a million dollar bribe and get back a billion dollars of revenue.
I meant that the administration (i.e. Trump) is incompetent for selling the country for pennies.
Art of the deal baby
I think they mean the government corruption. How cheap it is to buy votes. You can buy a Supreme Court justice with an RV.
Intuit has been doing this for a long time, just in case anyone was wondering why $1 million seems like a low bribe. And it goes beyond preventing you from filing your taxes for free, with one of their goals being to make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible, so you are too frustrated to do it yourself.
This if from a 2019 Pro Publica article:
But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington. Indeed, employees ruefully joke that the company’s motto should actually be “compromise without integrity.”
Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states.
I’ll stick to FreeTaxUsa even if they charge me. Fuck Intuit.
Wait sorry what? Non-USian here, bear with me.
What does “program” mean here? Why is this program necessary to file your taxes for free? Do you guys have PAY to file your taxes if you don’t use/apply/qualify for that program?? Am I misunderstanding what it means to “file” taxes? It’s been a while since I was this confused by a US thing.
US tax code is (deliberately) complicated and unlike other countries, you need to manually fill out the forms with your financial data even though the government already knows it and what you owe (minus exemptions that the vast majority of citizens won’t claim). This is because there is a major industry around tax preparation, and the big names (such as Intuit) have aggressively lobbied for decades to keep the process as complicated and inconvenient as possible so that people are forced to pay them to fill out their tax forms. This lobbying has also resulted in the legally mandated free filing options being buried and hard to find, with many people not even knowing they exist.
Tax prep is a huge scam with many billions of dollars behind it. Weather providers are probably going to be next in the news, since they’ve been trying to kill the free government-run forecasts and force people onto their paid platforms for just as long.
Free Tax USA is easy to use and free for federal, $15 for state. I used it last time. This time I filed for an extension because the IRS might be so gutted by October I won’t even have to pay. And I owe a lot because I was a contractor for most of 2024.
Normally I have no problem paying taxes but this time it’s different.
Okay so the “paying” is for when you use third parties to “help” you file, yes? You don’t pay the government for the privilege of being able to file, yes? So what does/did this Free File thing do?
Taxes aren’t easy in Germany either, I’m glad I have a husband who is level-headed enough to do them for us both because I’d always have a near mental breakdown when I tried. But it’s always been obvious to me where and how to file without involving anyone I’d have to pay. Fuck.
Personal filing is always free, the “free” in “free filing” refers to the prep part. It just means you fill out and submit your taxes yourself rather than paying a tax firm’s accountants to do it for you. Calling it that makes it seem like the firms are part of the process rather than bloated parasites feeding off taxpayers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the name was also a result of their influence.
Their accountants can claim exemptions and rebates buried in the tax code that laymen wouldn’t know exist - ones that they lobbied for to make their services more attractive. It makes them worthwhile for some households, but only because they’re solving a problem they birthed and grew in the first place.
IRS Direct File was just a free government-run alternative to the tax filing programs like TurboTax.
You can still do your taxes by hand without the help of any software for free, but they’ve killed the website that fills out the forms automatically and the manual process is significantly more complicated.
Free file is software that people use to file. As far as I’m aware, it’s always been free to print out the forms and mail it all in.
The existing paid weather and mapping services are not excited. Right now they just repackage days that’s provided by the government for free, so while their customer base isn’t as big as it would be without NOAA, NWS, and USGS data available to anyone, their expenses are super low.
They’d need 1000x at many customers to cover the expense of gathering their own data.
Instead, what they’ll all end up doing is paying huge money to third party services (e.g.SpaceX), who have existing infrastructure that can be used to launch weather monitoring services and will end up being the only ones to benefit from this.
Why don’t Americans vote for politicians who want to get rid of the “tax preparation industry?”
Why don’t more politicians mention it at all?
Why has the working class been conditioned to squabble over bullshit while the ruling class robs them blind, again?
I’m starting to think consumerism breeds stupidity.
Turns out that when you do make that vote, the fucking Cheeto looking stupid fucker who takes bribes still wins. And I voted as hard as I could!
Culture needs to change.
Definition: A system of services, opportunities, or projects, usually designed to meet a social need.
In this case, a digital service provided directly by the IRS, hence the name “Direct File.” In contrast, filing by paper is still supported. Tax preparation businesses have been actively preventing the US filing process from being simplified, naturally because that’s the reason they make money.
So this Direct File thing is simply for filing your taxes online? Because we have a thing like that too (doesn’t every “civilised” country?). And that’s what they want to abolish? US lobbyists are something else, man.
They want to be the middleman, so requirements for them to provide a free filing service are hidden and direct competition is in this case buried.
Land of the fee™
Home of the slave.
for some perspective:
canada’s federal tax website lists all of the free services that you can utilize, and they even include NetFile so you don’t have to upload or submit any of your docuements.
i hear we’re looking for new provinces…
I’d vote to join a Canadian union if it ever shows up on my state’s ballot. It never will but I would. The South is a disgusting backwater of “divine” hatred.
i don’t want to sound like an old fuddy, but you sound just like some of your great-great-granparents :P
My great great grandparents didn’t live in America. There’s also the difference that I’d want to leave to escape a culture of greed, fascism and hatred while the Southern states wanted to secede to continue owning other human beings as livestock.
Funniest part is how they’re bribing the government with the money they took from customers. Now they can take more money from customers, which is more money for bribes.
It also means they didn’t need to charge customers the prices they charged, since they have enough money to operate their business and bribe politicians.
It’s like, you’re paying them to work against you.
So backwards, but that’s by design. Don’t be a useful idiot.
Turbo tax made 1.6 BILLION in income. And that’s not enough. They need to lobby and change the landscape of the countries tax system to generate even more profit on top of the profit they already made.
This isn’t capitalism anymore this is something else entirely. It’s a metal disorder. A disease.
This isn’t capitalism anymore this is something else entirely.
That’s the thing, it is capitalism. It’s always been about those who have more exploiting those who have less.
The problem is this generation of workers has been duped into believing that corporate profits are a good thing, rather than an indication of workers getting taken advantage of.
It’s all bass-ackwards by design. I stopped trying to find rhyme or reason and just settled on “most people are dumb as shit.”
Capitalism demands that line must always go up.
Line goes up means businesses are taking advantage of customers.
Line goes down means customers are taking advantage of businesses.
Why are customers cheering when line goes up and angry when line goes down? Oh yeah, they’re useful idiots.
Put every manager of TurboTax in prison as a traitor.
Or just put a cap on donations and block corporate donations?
I think people have to understand that we’ve entered a different era. The rich have gotten richer and become insanely powerful and “the game” has gone on for so long all the rules have been slightly bend to allow them to become more rich and powerful. If you continue to “be sensible” and ask if you may nibble around the edges, all you get is fascism. It’s inevitable. So first you have to destroy them and their power, then you can reform the system. Reforming the system now, even if you could, won’t do anything.
that would have been reasonable 20 years ago.
Crowdfund the airfare to El Salvador?
deleted by creator
Note: this plan may result in IRS mandated prison time from unpaid taxes
Decreasing the exemptions increases the amount of taxes withheld… For most people your advice as written just means letting the govt keep your tax refund every year.
Unless you’re wealthy enough to afford a bevy of attorneys, they will still go after you.
Shit, they’ll probably start using AI to determine who the easiest targets are (spoiler: it’s always the working class).
