Yes! The government should be required to have an electronic way to file your taxes for free. If people want to pay a tax preparing service, that’s fine, but a free option should be required by law. You shouldn’t have to pay your taxes and pay someone to submit them. Private companies clearly can’t be trusted with the free side, because they degrade it to try to upsell.
I’ll do you one better: we should have return free filing: the government sends you a bill saying what they think you owe. If you agree, you send them a check. If you don’t agree, you send in your paperwork.
@ToadOfHypnosis@CosmicTurtle0 Want something more bullshit? You get 3 years to find mistakes in your past returns, the IRS gets 7 years to find mistakes, and if’n you owe money, you owe interest since the underpayment.
@ToadOfHypnosis Not sure, I know that the rules really benefit the IRS, I should’ve owed $1800, but after that, interest (starts on the day it was due), penalties, and fees, I owed $4200. Nice racket they got there.
Real problem is that the rules change every year so the software has to be constantly updated and that sometimes requires insider information about what changes are coming. Often the IRS publications aren’t available until the last minute or later, definitely not in enough time for proper quality processes. So, while simple returns can sometimes be done with software like this, a lot of people rely on the software or agencies to know all the new rules.
That being said, I would like it a lot if there was a way to file very single form, but fill it out manually in the software, without calculations being done by the software. At least then you could file electronically regardless of what complex forms you need to file with complex worksheets and sub-forms, if the software didn’t need to know about those things, just the forms you actually file. As it is, the only way to file these is with expensive software or on paper which can take many months for the IRS to process and you could be on the hook for interest if you file something wrong and the IRS doesn’t reject in time for you to correct it and resubmit before interest charges accrue.
Also, a lot of IRS processes require the software to be certified (or at least did the last time I looked at it) because their software isn’t sophisticated enough to validate the complex forms, so getting that certification might be difficult for FOSS software. I’ll be interested to see how that plays out.
Excited to see forks for this. Wonder if each state could tailor it but not sure how complex it would be unfortunately.
TurboTax is a parasite to simple filing
Yes! The government should be required to have an electronic way to file your taxes for free. If people want to pay a tax preparing service, that’s fine, but a free option should be required by law. You shouldn’t have to pay your taxes and pay someone to submit them. Private companies clearly can’t be trusted with the free side, because they degrade it to try to upsell.
I’ll do you one better: we should have return free filing: the government sends you a bill saying what they think you owe. If you agree, you send them a check. If you don’t agree, you send in your paperwork.
Most countries have figured this out.
Yeah, us figuring out how much we owe then getting penalized if we miscalculate is a bull shit system.
@ToadOfHypnosis @CosmicTurtle0 Want something more bullshit? You get 3 years to find mistakes in your past returns, the IRS gets 7 years to find mistakes, and if’n you owe money, you owe interest since the underpayment.
I feel it’s designed to push you towards a tax preparer. More business protectionism that benefits the rich and drains regular people.
@ToadOfHypnosis Not sure, I know that the rules really benefit the IRS, I should’ve owed $1800, but after that, interest (starts on the day it was due), penalties, and fees, I owed $4200. Nice racket they got there.
Real problem is that the rules change every year so the software has to be constantly updated and that sometimes requires insider information about what changes are coming. Often the IRS publications aren’t available until the last minute or later, definitely not in enough time for proper quality processes. So, while simple returns can sometimes be done with software like this, a lot of people rely on the software or agencies to know all the new rules.
That being said, I would like it a lot if there was a way to file very single form, but fill it out manually in the software, without calculations being done by the software. At least then you could file electronically regardless of what complex forms you need to file with complex worksheets and sub-forms, if the software didn’t need to know about those things, just the forms you actually file. As it is, the only way to file these is with expensive software or on paper which can take many months for the IRS to process and you could be on the hook for interest if you file something wrong and the IRS doesn’t reject in time for you to correct it and resubmit before interest charges accrue.
Also, a lot of IRS processes require the software to be certified (or at least did the last time I looked at it) because their software isn’t sophisticated enough to validate the complex forms, so getting that certification might be difficult for FOSS software. I’ll be interested to see how that plays out.