FTC bans TurboTax from advertising 'free' services, calls deceptive advertising

I just saw an TurboTax Ad where a guy was like "I Like free stuff" and then it said he was "happy to read the disclaimer" on TurboTax and see that "Roughly 37% of taxpayers qualify" which he looks thoughtfully in the distance and says "Thats me!"

I thought it was a funny commercial because 37% doesn't seem like a lot and Turbotax is portraying it as the average person will identify themselves as part of that 37% even though that is not too far off form just 1/3 people so a minority of people.

It was one of the few times I saw a company blatantly lean into the negatives in their fine print and just outright tell you its good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iijnr4UR4QE

I agree on every level, but I'm compelled to remind you this is the America where wendy's (?) had to revert to a 1/4 pounder from a 1/3 pounder bc people thought they were getting less meat. And let's not forget the ever-present anti-education cohort that can't be convinced math is good even when you tell them it's how you calculate discounts or tips.

I had to look this up as I didn’t grow up in the States. It was A&W.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fr...

Crazy.

This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.

Anecdotally, it seems like working with fractions is where a lot of people fall off the math-train and never get back on.

… yes, that early.

Fractions and negative numbers.

And, to be fair, they're the first math concepts that aren't intuitive.

Which IMHO leads to some people not studying, then feeling lost, then rationalizing their lack of effort as "I'm bad at math" or "Math is hard."

Fractions are pretty intuitive. Is the pizza or cake analogy really that advanced?

One third times one fifth loses a lot of folks. As does addition and subtraction of fractions that don’t start with the same denominator, for that matter. They might figure out what to do to pass the test, but they may not get it.

Fractions are just division. When kids learn division, it's about splitting into equal groups.

Fractions are a bit different though - you're splitting a single thing into equal chunks. Hence, slices of pie.

Multiplying by 1/5 is really dividing by 5. Introduce that first. We already know how to do this. You split your 1/3 slice into 5 equal slices.

Do the same to the other 2/3 slices, count all the slices, and you have 15. Hence, 1/15.

As an aside, common core math is amazing. They gave my daughter a model for the distributive property that can be used to show how to do long multiplication.

IDK, I did fine with them and find thinking in them natural (I think of fractional division as division, in fact, though I certainly understand the multiplication analogy); I’ve just known enough people who lost track of math at fractions that I doubt it’s coincidence.

I’m not saying I don’t get it, I’m saying others have told me that they found the explanations and instructions they were given nonsensical.

Have you tried dumping all the sockets out of a socket set and putting them back in order? Do you find it's easier to order the metric ones than the imperial ones which have a lot of different denominators on adjacent sizes? I certainly do but I'm not American so maybe it's my background limiting me.

Just to save you some time: the numbers written on the sockets indicate the size of the socket. So you don't even need to read them, just put them in order of size and you'll have them in order of number automatically.

I was thinking of mine which has the same OD for many adjacent sockets. Guess it doesn't work if they're all different.

There's a difference in type of thinking in moving from operations on numbers (basic whole number math) to operations-on-operations-on-numbers (anything with fractions).

Suddenly, you need to begin to understand the rules around operators, sequencing, and what operations are legal and illegal.

Absent that understanding, even...

   1/4 x 2/5

... gets very complicated trying to reason with physical analogs.

So it's the point at which math becomes "pure" rather than strictly physically-mapped.

And if multiplying fractions is simple. Before that addition is done. Which is more complicated.

Actually I think we do very little addition of fractions later in math. But it is a concept that confuses the multiplication or division.

Can confirm - While I was decent at math up to a point, fractions and long division in 4th Grade sent me down a hole that took me years to get out of...until Algebra II as a junior in HS crushed me.

I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class. I actually did reasonably well in Algebra for the first quarter or so until it all fell apart.

I re-invented what turned out to be short division (no joke! I wouldn’t learn it had a name until I was in my late 20s) because I hated long division so much, same year we started doing long division in school (4th grade? 3rd? IDK).

Fits in about the same space as the original problem unless it’s printed so small that you have to rewrite it, and way less room for transcription errors. I also find it clearer but that may just be me (fwiw I’m “bad at math”—I find it incredibly boring and basically can’t follow proof- and equation/identity-based stuff, I have to turn it all into algorithmic thinking to have a prayer of understanding it; i.e. my opinion on the superiority of short division is that of a mathematical imbecile, so, grain of salt)

I blame this on my Chemistry teacher - a class which I was also taking at the time - who spoke little English and had never taught in the United States until the year I landed in her class.

It doesn’t help that in chemistry, 1 + 1 may be 1. Or 3. :-)

[edit] short division:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_division

Under the “example” section, the little superscripts are what you write in by hand on the problem as you work it, at least as I did it. 9/4 in the hundreds place is 2 with 1 remainder, so write 2 up above as part of the solution and a 1 superscript next to the 5 in the problem itself (tens place), now that’s 15, divide that, 3 goes in the tens place of the solution, write the remainder (3) next to the digit in the ones place as a superscript and do it again, if you need to keep going just add a decimal point and zeroes as required.

Way faster than working long division, takes up less space, and less error prone (imo). What’s actually going on is clearer (again, imo)

I’ve seen a later fall-off point at factoring. Feels pointless (the motivations are… distant at best), tedious as hell, lots of guessing involved. “So much for math making sense, fuck this, guess I’m out.”

I'm ok with fractions, but fractional and/or negative exponents always give me problems. I suspect it might be something to do with being taught that "multiplication is repeated addition, exponentiation is repeated multiplication". The model doesn't extend properly.

Forty years ago we learned fractions with chocolate bars. A trustworthy child would be chosen to walk from the primary school to the local store (about 5 minutes walk for an adult, probably about two minutes for a child who was just given money by a responsible adult to buy chocolate) and bring back some chocolate, and then kids who raise their hand and give the correct answer to fraction questions get the fraction in its physical form as chocolate. What's half of this third of the bar? A sixth, and now because I knew that I get to eat 1/6 of a bar of chocolate, whereas the kid who enthusiastically answered that it's a quarter does not because that's wrong.

It actually doesn't shock me that many people would be confused, especially if they didn't work with fractional quantities--e.g. for cooking--on a regular basis. Maybe it's a myth but it wouldn't surprise me if it weren't. And even if they've sort of internalized 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 without necessarily fully getting fractions--1/3 is something people encounter a lot less day to day.

It's not that they're rare, it's that it legitimately is an easy error to make even if you understand it to be an error. Even people who work with equations every day will occasionally make careless mistakes like this. That's why mathematicians joke about how it's important to make an even number of sign errors.

To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal... But it's enough of a cognitive barrier that it doesn't surprise me that it would impact the behavior even of people who would answer correctly on a test.

Where it does get easy is if you work with the same set of fractions every day. For example, if you work in construction in the US you can probably quickly order the fractions commonly used for measurement, e.g. 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 3/4 etc. But 1/3 isn't one of these. Now that I think about it, they probably should have just chosen a fraction that you can find on a tape measure, like 3/8.

For fractions like 1/3rd and 1/4th all it takes is common sense.

I speak, and thus think, in both English and Japanese.

English says "1/4", or "1 over 4", or "1 quarter".

Japanese says "4 bun no 1", or the practical equivalent of saying "4 under 1" in English.

I consequently routinely say the numbers in reverse, confounding both myself and anyone around me before I realize my brain engaged in furious tentacle sex with the numbers.

It seems like the obvious solution is to offer Americans what they want in terms of a burger named after a bigger denominator.

1/5th pound burger is going to sell better than the quarter pounder while using less beef.

I speak, and thus think, in both English and Japanese.

The vast majority of processing is happening outside language-related areas of the brain. There's certainly leaky interfaces between areas of the brain, but if you literally thought in a language, and that distinction persisted throughout the brain, that would seem to imply that speaking 3 languages would require 3x the number of connections in the brain.

The strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would presumably be true if we literally thought in a language, but the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited.

In other words, "thinking in a language" is an illusion.

I do not really like the term "common sense" as it is more like common experience. It is not hard to learn what fractions are but I do not think it is something that any one is born with and there is other notation to deal with fractions that work differently.

3/8ths is 0.375 while 1/3rd is 0.333~ so it's even bigger while still larger than 1/4th (0.250), without being that much bigger.

3/8ths is a pretty good marketing point since all the numbers are bigger and it should be intuitive, plus you can more easily see that it's also 50% bigger than 1/4th => 2/8ths. The harder sell is the 'double whatever' being equal to 3 patties of the competitor.

To not make this mistake, you have to be able to call to mind that the map x -> 1/x reverses the inequality sign. That's a fairly abstract thing to remember especially if you haven't taken math for years. Yes you could draw it or write down the equation, or convert to decimal...

You absolutely don't have to remember that x |-> 1/x is order reversing, and, for most people, shouldn't—you immediately give two or three other methods (I don't understand what "write down the equation" means) that are a much better way for the average person to check this.

Reportedly that’s the answer they got in focus groups when they tried to figure out why it failed.

4 > 3.

So why didn't they start selling 1/5 pounders?

Quarter and pounder rhymes so rolls off people's tongues.

Fifta-Pounder?

Fifth-Pounder?

Five-Pounder?

For all we know, marketing vetoed it cause they were lazy.

How 'bout a five-ouncer ?

Or would that suffer by seeming microscopic when listed close to "32 ounce" drinks ?

This story has to be apocryphal, as fractions aren't _that_ rare, especially in the U.S. with its imperial system and third of a cup measurements or quarter inches or half miles and so on.

I literally had an argument with a room full of US university professors about whether or not 30% and 1/3 were the same thing.

... and what was your answer?

... and what was your answer?

The correct one, that 30% is less than 1/3.

I did teacher's college in Canada and the teacher who taught math said his biggest surprise when he moved from Europe to Canada is how terrible people were with fraction. I think he asked a barista to fill his cup to 2/3 and they couldn't do it because they didn't know what 2/3 was.

I had the same shock but with reading. They're very much ahead in Europe in terms of reading levels.

Average Americans that frequent QSR’s don’t math so good.

Or perhaps all those people on here who defend US Standard measurements over metric and quote the fractions they know over decimals as an advantage are a minority?

Perhaps the average Joe would be better off with mm rather than 1/16" increments.

I thought so as well but A&W backs that version:

https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...

Wait, did Snopes say this was real because of a news article that contain hearsay?

Do people think the NY Times reports hearsay as fact?

Here, straight from the horse's mouth:

https://awrestaurants.com/blog/aw-third-pound-burger-fractio...

Based on a "focus group" discussion which are well known for selecting the brightest bunch of people who have nothing better to do than answer questions for 2 hours and get a coupon for free fries.

  VINCENT: And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald's. And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

  JULES: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

  VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f*** a Quarter Pounder is.

  JULES: Then what do they call it?

  VINCENT: They call it Royale with Cheese.

  JULES: Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?

  VINCENT: Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it Le Big Mac.

Aside: a lot of tax preparation services, or their services that let you upload your data - the privacy policy says they can all "use" your financial info.

Personally I prefer Big Kahuna Burger

It's also important to take any corporation's explanation for increasing their own margins with an extremely large grain of salt. I'm not doubting in the slightest that consumers had some confusion around the fractions, but all it would take for the company to revert their campaign is for the increase in sales to insufficiently offset the increase in their own costs. Blaming it on consumer stupidity afterwards washes their hands of any responsibility for backpedaling, and makes for a memorable and repeatable story that increases brand recognition while simultaneously painting them as heroically trying to offer more value for the same cost.

You say “this is America”, but my mother (who grew up in USSR/Russia and was in her mid 30s at the time) was seriously asking middle-schooled me on multiple occasions whether 0.7 liters of milk was less than 0.55 liters. I don’t remember the exact numbers, i just remember that the smaller volume one had 2 digits past the decimal, and the larger one just had 1 digit.

And no, she wasn’t testing my knowledge, she was seriously confused, as she would ask me that even later in life. Mind you, she has a masters degree. She is in her early 50s right now, and she is fully of sound mind to this day, not senile or anything like that.

Imo, this type of silliness is rather common across many different places, but Americans just tend to own it and not be afraid of coming off silly (if that’s how they genuinely end up behaving in a given situation).

TurboTax is marketing to the kind of people who think getting big refunds is a good thing. That's generally people with lower incomes, so this fits that target.

It is generally a good thing for folks who live paycheck to paycheck. Higher withholding forces more budgeting, and then they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever

People who live paycheck to paycheck are very good at budgeting because they have to do it to survive, they don't need any more pressure. If anything it's richer people that could use a little prodding, but either way we don't need the government to be withholding extra money from people it thinks might have bad habits.

they get a big paycheck once a year to pay off whatever

If you have something big to pay off, you usually need to do it right away. You probably can't afford to wait however many months until you get your refund.

This is the kind of feel-good nonsense that people tell themselves. But anyone who has actually dealt with poor people who live paycheck to paycheck knows they are not good at budgeting and planning. Many of them literally have the mentality of spending their entire paycheck. Whatever is left over after expenses is fun to be had as soon as possible.

And if tax withholding laws changed to err on the side of under-withholding for poor people, those people would disproportionately fail to be able to pay their taxes when the time comes.

Some of the "better at planning" poor people have built up crude math to make it all makes sense, but seems overly complicated for someone like me. The one I noticed: "oh, I got $85 for selling that pot I made, I'll use that for the fridge repair." - Which is totally different to "oh I got $85, I'll just put it in the pool of my bank balance because I already budgeted for that fridge repair which costs $60". I tried asking this person, but you also needed an extra $10 for that McDonald's lunch you wanted to buy but they insisted "nope, that's my fridge-repair money, can't spend that"

Not sure I'm explaining that properly, but it was the sort of math I encountered dealing with such individuals.

One I've encountered is putting any surplus money into tattoos because they can't be stolen, repossessed or otherwise lost, thus making them a savvy place to put money.

I believe whoever told you that may have been joking[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

They were completely earnest. The joke followed that they can't take money with them when they die, but they can take tattoos. Pharaohs still have their tattoos, they point out.

There is also a general pattern of spending "extra" money on things like parties, experiences, consumables, etc. Better to spend the money on a pizza party and gocart trip for their kids than to stash it away in a savings account. Better to spend the money on beer for a party than even to hide it under their mattress.

you made an account just to talk shit about the poor?

It isn't "talking shit", what he's saying is broadly true and you're not doing poor people any favors by pretending otherwise.

Picked an appropriate username tho

As far as I can be bothered to care, schemes involving having other people store your money such as tax withholdings and insurance policies exist primarily to save people from themselves and their lack of budgeting capabilities.

Most people can't budget, poor people especially so (it's among the biggest and most likely reasons why they are poor). They see money, they spend it all immediately. Saving? Investing? "roflmao" or "I can't.", they will say. The only way to address this so certain, specific, important payments are made absolutely is to literally take and keep the money out of the person's hands until the payment is made.

Whatever is left over after expenses is fun to be had as soon as possible.

When income is 80% of the minimal bills, which dollars are the fun ones?

But anyone who has actually dealt with poor people who live paycheck to paycheck knows they are not good at budgeting and planning.

You may not know that assertion is uneducated nonsense. The nonsensical part is the inference that better budgeting is all that stands between 80% of minimal bills and 105%.

Past that, an extended time in hunger-level poverty tends to lead to some hyper-focused money management. As in being intimately aware of each penny that hopefully will add up to this weeks bag of white rice.

If they were budgeting, they wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck. It makes the budgeting more challenging to give the government and interest free loan.

However, giving the government an automatic loan means that a land lord cannot charge that much more in rent, and the owner does get to spend it eventually, rather than throwing it into a rent pit

If they were budgeting, they wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck.

This is false. You simply aren't going to be able to budget your way into riches if you don't have enough money to go around. If you don't believe me, limit yourself to a minimum wage budget with no startup savings (and no borrowing off of others) and tell me how you are doing in a year... and then tell me how you'd survive the next few years on this. If minimum wage is too little, try setting the income at just over the mark you'd have for assistance.

Alternatively, if you have enough money to cover reasonable expenses, some fun, and have a little leftover, you don't really have to budget if you don't tend to spend lots. If I have enough money, I don't really have to budget.

It’s almost certainly a bad thing to get a big refund because small budgetary changes can result in being unable to make ends meet which is extremely expensive in terms of fines

In addition, I wouldn't be surprised to find that many of the people who are in the target demographic for this feature don't itemize - and never have a need for such practices.

A 1040 + W2 might the only equation these people need to solve for.

I think there's some segment of folks that get snatched up into the weird false pretense that a modern day turbotax filing is less than (at worst, once one factors personal time cost in) a decent tax person even at one of the, shall we say, 'established turn and burns'[0]

That said, TurboTax did hit a specific level of 'eww' when I started seeing the refund option of a debit card (of course for some stupid fee that, if nothing else, provides some transparency to their kickback from the issuer).

I'm going to be doing what might be my last filing with them this year; it's easier for the purposes of history/other events but after that, it's gonna be my Fiancee's CPA.

Originally, I got 'started' when it was a desktop app only, and the user limit was very graceful, my parents and all of my siblings could benefit from that one yearly purchase...

Come to think of it, we should probably capture that date in the historical timeline of Enshittification.

And, yaknow, I'll ask my dad this weekend how he's doing his taxes this year. I'm honestly curious if he's finally fed up with their antics too... (It's a high bar; in the past he learned the basics of virtual machines to use some of his old-school software/tools, it's a beautiful level of curmudgeonry. OTOH my siblings have good CPAs.)

[0] - Not to be confused with some of the weird 'chop shop' Tax places I have seen around me in the past, sort of 'pop-ups' with a statue of liberty wearing person or 'wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube-man' to help drive business in.

If you have simple taxes, FreeTaxUsa.com.

Not shady, neither is it free, but about as close as you can get AFAIK for online filing. For what it is (a web forms app, with careful explainers), it's pretty good!

I've used tax pros and honestly, my finances are not complex enough to get a good benefit off the extra cost. I used H&R block one year, and really didn't think they knew any more about tax filing than I did. They got confused at all the same line items I did.

I used H&R block one year, and really didn't think they knew any more about tax filing than I did. They got confused at all the same line items I did.

I mean... H&R Block is in some ways the Firestone of accounting. Sometimes there's a diamond in the rough of their 'regular' workers [0] but you never know what you're gonna get unless you happen to wind up in the right circumstances where you can build trust with one of their people that happens to stick [1]

[0] - Had a friend who could get one of H&R Block's folks to do the whole deed for 'non complicated'[2] starting with a pile of receipts/medical bills/etc and 90$ for people they liked, and yes they'd do their proper professional duty in the process. Frankly given the time investment that's a steal.

[1] - In my case, it was a guy at a local shop who had his WRX parked outside every time that was some level of manager. Always happy to give proper treatment, never afraid to say 'take it to the dealer' (i.e. more qualified people) if it was out of their comfort zone. Compare and contrast to a different shop, where after some 'changes' managed to mess up an oil change, and the 'fix' for the bad oil change... [3]

[2] - I want to be clear that non-complicated is not the trivial 'oh sure okay' here, they may or may not have had a hand in pointing out said friend's parent was doing some... 'minor some student loan fraud'. But if you had additional properties or other weird situations... If I remember they had their own sort of menu and everything. Very smartly done.

[3] - I had to re-replace a <6 month old timing belt in the process, but frankly the engine needs a rebuild now, it lost 2-5MPG from that one incident.

unrelated, I bet you really like David Foster Wallace

This is distressingly common in marketing. "0% APR financing for well qualified buyers." Where well qualified means 720 FICO score, lower debt to income, and lower payment to income ratios. These details are not even in the fine print of the ad. Then there's ads that show a picture of the high end version of a product with text "starting from <low price>!" (that corresponds to the base model).

Less than a 720 FICO score is “fair” with 720 being “good”. I’m sorry but “fair” doesn’t make you a well-qualified buyer IMO, so I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.

It's FICO & DTI & PTI. None of this is defined in the ad not even the fine print. I'm well aware that 700 is around the 50th percentile.

Are they leaning in to it or are they forced to fit in the disclaimer?

Seems like the strategy of the ad is to repeat the word "Free" so much people don't remember the rest and to make it seem like the disclaimer is meaningless. Even with it, it's still free.

Probably a bit of both. What the commenter is describing is a textbook social proof tactic. "Hey, I like free stuff and taxes make me feel like a bit of a doofus, just like that guy. And like that guy, I see myself as the clever sort of person that isn't fooled by fine print. That free Turbo Tax program sounds awfully useful and free for people like me!" And Intuit can also point to that commercial and say "how is this trying to disguise the proof?" and they'd be right. They're just also trying to make it feel free still by making it free for a relatable character.

Sounds hokey but that sort of shit has been the bread and butter of advertising since forever. A vanishingly small percentage of people are anywhere close to as rational as they think they are when buying things. Many of the most self-assuredly "skeptical, rational, well-researched consumer" types get totally snowed by the simplest marketing ideas because they're looking for sales bullshit they can empirically disprove, and most marketing is influencing people in a way that makes them think they came to the conclusion independently.

Yeah this ad has been running a lot.

I was pretty sure when first seeing it that they'd already gotten in trouble for their last ads that used the word "free" a lot, and this was a very direct response to that... I guess that's just the final decision that's being reported on here.

How this ad got green lit, distributed to various mediums (tv ads, yt channel, social media), and nobody saying “wait, this is terrible” is unfathomable to me.

That is… unsettling.

I saw the exact same ad today.

Finally, something is being done. Paying taxes should be free for most people. Especially if you only have to deal with the standard deductions.

If you're standard deduction and just have a few simple sources of income, filing is easily free. Should it be electronic and pre-filled? Yes. But this idea that you need an accountant or tax prep software if you have a W-2 and a 1099 just isn't true. The forms are free.

Half of the allure of turbo tax is figuring out if the standard deduction is more or less favorable than itemized.

Maybe the IRS should start by building a tool that points you in the right direction before it tries to build a TurboTax clone.

I assume that information exists. It's mostly just totaling up some numbers. I know these days, for me, standard deduction works unless I have some outlier charitable/investment thing going on which I'm going to talk to my accountant about anyway. I assume there are other alternate energy credits and the like but not sure how they work and again aren't in play for most people in a given year.

Mortgage interest is the big one.

Fair enough. I don't have any longer.

Mortgage interest and state income taxes can easily get you well over the standard deduction for single people.

Same here, mortgage interest puts me over the threshold (and single)

When I don't make as much in a year, I go through all of the same exact steps just to see the standard deduction is better :D . It's a nice walk down memory lane though.

Awesome, let's do better and have the IRS fill out your form in Feb or March, mail it to you, and if you disagree you can still file yourself. That way, 95% of cases are covered and don't have to even deal with taxes.

By all means. Though I think it's considerably less than 95%. A lot of people probably have something non-standard. I have no problem with pre-filled forms that explicitly only cover certain types of transactions.

mail it to you,

Corrected it for you: email it to you at your personal @gov.us email (I know it is not a thing yet).

But this idea that you need an accountant or tax prep software if you have a W-2 and a 1099 just isn't true.

I hire a CPA to do my dead simple returns that I can do myself.

Why?

Because I don't trust myself to have done it correctly. No, I can't sincerely swear everything written is true and correct to the best of my knowledge because I do not trust myself.

That's why I hire a CPA, because I need someone I can point to for legal liability purposes. Am I throwing away money, so to speak? Perhaps, and I don't care; I'm buying peace of mind.

I've always used one myself. When it was simple, it was also cheap because I basically got my taxes done as a sideline for the CPA doing my family's taxes.

But if that's your concern I'm not sure automated or fill in the blanks tax software, free or not, is necessarily a good substitute.

My issue is they advertise “free, free, free”, but only for federal. After you go through everything they hit you up for money to file with the state. To go elsewhere means doing everything again, so people just pay it.

It’s probably technically in the fine print, but it certainly felt like bait and switch the first time I ran into it over 20 years ago. I’m still bitter all these years later, and get reminded on a yearly basis, as it’s still standard practice. They can make federal “free”, because they can just lump all the costs in on the state taxes. Nothing is actually free.

It also makes no sense to me that it costs money to e-file, while sending in paperwork that a person needs to open and process is free. It seems so backward.

Our documents should not be sent automatically to the IRS if the IRS won't figure out our taxes.

Can they figure out our taxes without our returns? For simple stuff like paychecks maybe. What if you are self-employed? What if you are a contractor? What if you barter or pay cash?

of course it would not cover all cases... but I'm guessing that it would cover most people... why would I want them to have my files if all they are going to do is use them against me anyways?

but I'm guessing that it would cover most people...

Do you have any reason to believe that?

Are they your documents? Can you accrue taxes independently?

Do you have any reason to believe that?

just from my personal experiences... either way, the IRS has that info, if they assume people are honest... not sure why it isn't public.

Well, they might have all the info sometimes but we don't know how often or if they even do. How would the IRS know if they know everything? What evidence do they have of absence?

There are 36 countries that manage to do return-free taxes. They seem to have a base rate that covers most (~64% in the UK) people. The US tax code is way more complicated than one base rate for everyone. It's unclear to me how anything other than income tax is handled in these countries. Does the UK have a capital gains tax? Tax deductions?

In the UK, payroll and savings income is taxed at source and around 80-85% of people don't need to complete a tax return. You only need to complete one if you have other income, if you're self-employed with over £1000 revenue, had capital gains over £6000, or earn over £100,000. Almost everyone completes these online, and you can do it directly on the government site. For simple cases that only takes a few minutes. It took me about an hour this year because I've been bad at keeping track of side project income. The form itself is easy.

Thanks for the explanation, I only did a quick search. Is there a capital gains tax in the UK? Do you have tax deductions?

Edit: I looked it up.

Yes, the UK has capital gains taxes and they must be calculated by the taxpayer.

https://www.gov.uk/capital-gains-tax/reporting-and-paying-ca...

There are also deductions for savings and dividends. Those deductions look a lot like the US deductions. They also (sometimes?) have to be calculated by the taxpayer.

https://www.gov.uk/apply-tax-free-interest-on-savings

There used to be relatively generous yearly allowances for savings (£1,000) dividends (£2,000) and CGT (£12,300) which meant most people would be exempt and not have to fill in a tax return.

Saving interest is often paid gross but if you go over the savings allowance and don't fill in a tax return HMRC will just automatically take more tax from your payslip.

There is also a £20,000/year ISA allowance which shields investment from tax so any holdings within an ISA can be ignored for tax purposes.

However, the dividend and CGT allowances have been reduced recently as the government tries to find ways to raise more revenue without raising the headline tax rates, and the £20k ISA allowance hasn't been raised for years despite inflation.

So as it stands, in the future a lot more people will have to start filling in tax returns.

Speaking generally, but the IRS as an institution would love to be able to move to automated tax filing.

The thing that is blocking that happening is intense lobbying by intuit (and a few others) plus anti-tax groups. See https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax... for what was probably that best quick summary from about 10 years ago.

They will figure out your taxes (according to whatever information they have at the time) and retaliate if you file something that doesn't jibe.

They just won't do it before you do. That way, they might learn things they didn't yet know, from people who decide (as legally obligated) to divulge additional information. I assume that they assume that far fewer people would divulge additional information, if their "you talk first, I talk second" tactic went away.

A 1040EZ covers that case and filing it is the cost of the stamp and envelope.

And an understanding of tax law

I know the tax code has probably gotten more complicated, but when did people start to get the idea that even super-straightforward taxes (like just a W-2 or maybe a 1099) requires an accountant, tax software, or a degree in tax law? My taxes have been pretty complicated for a while but I don't get the perceived need for TurboTax for even the simplest of returns.

Now maybe you miss out on some deductions if you just transfer a few numbers to the forms. But the standard deduction is going to cover most people until you get into big mortgages or charitable writeoffs.

because if you mess up, and most people doing a 1040EZ could, easily mess up, there can be consequences

My understanding is that if a 1040EZ is appropriate for you, then TurboTax will also be free. It's only if you have a more complex filing situation that they charge. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though.

It’s only free for federal, then they change you for state. I’m sure if they charged for both the final cost would be the same. They jack up the price of the state tax filing to cover the “free” federal taxes.

This is how pretty much every “free” tax program works.

1040EZ hasn't been a thing since 2017. But if you have a simple tax situation, the regular 1040 isn't all that hard to fill out.

There is no 1040EZ as I understand it though there is the base-level 1040.

The federal government can do a 1040EZ for you.

Intuit has blocked government attempts to do that by offering free taxes for half of Americans (that was the deal).

Of course they decided to renegade and only do 37% per their advertising.

Hilarious since they had the "federal is free but you need to pay for state" scam going already.

I came here to say the above. But let me add the following… Intuit is a criminal lobbying organization.

What laws have they broken?

Well, apparently they've been putting out deceptive advertising.

Is there any non-deceptive advertising?

Yes. I bought a cheeseburger once and got a free coke, just like the sign said.

There’s certainly a line because some advertising is illegal and some isn’t.

The claim is that Intuit is a “criminal lobbying organization” so what lobbying laws were broken? Or was lobbying meant to be a verb instead of an adjective?

I guess they’re not doing a great job then? Because of the auto-filing/IRS-backed filing system being developed?

They've successfully managed to delay it for decades

They've always been no more then the cost of a stamp.

That's extremely disingenuous and ignores the amount of labor required to self-file in the US. Most of the information you send to the IRS they already know - they just can't tell you because Intuit wants to justify their existence.

If your taxes are complicated, certainly, you'll probably be prudent to use an accountant. (Which I do.) A basic filing like most people have is pretty straightforward (though there should still be a pre-filled out form whether you choose to use it or not). There's this perpetuated myth that filing taxes is really complicated even if you just have a W-2 as is the case for many. And it's simply not true.

Isn't a 1040-EZ free and takes 10 minutes? My tax situation is kind of complicated and costs me like $150 for all of the things TurboTax finds, figures out, calculates, submits, and all in a nice UI. Can someone please explain to me what is so horrible about paying a reasonable fee to figure out some complicated stuff that amounts to 80+ pages of filing docs? And free if it's EZ? And free if low income?

The tax code is deliberately complicated because, in part, of the lobbying by Intuit and H&R Block. They're creating an artificial market for their $150 services and convinced the populace this is reasonable.

Paying taxes should be free for everyone imo.

Intuit is an embarrassment of a tech company. Instead of innovating in software, they've invested infinitely more in lobbying to keep tax-filing complex and in creating new and innovative dark patterns to obscure their (federally mandated, btw) free product.

They are not a tech company. They are a regulatory capture company that uses tech to extract from the general public what should be free. The code and platform are the performance art to enable the rake.

Edit: Meant to scope this comment solely to TurboTax. Replies correcting me are well deserved.

I think most people would be shocked to learn how big intuit is in terms of market cap. Bigger than Verizon wellsfargo ibm nike

From comments in threads like this I think most people would be shocked that Intuit makes the largest segment of their income from business customers, not individual consumers.

Is this true for turbotax specifically, or merely for intuit as a whole (which includes things like quickbooks)?

The “business customer” is a slight misnomer because Intuits definition of this segment includes “Small Business and Self Employed”. Quickbooks accounts for thr largest share

For consumer segment TurboTax still drives 30% of their entire revenue.

For those unaware, Intuit owns...

TurboTax

Mint

QuickBooks

Credit Karma

MailChimp

and GitOps tool ArgoCD

They do own Mint, but they are killing it and trying to get customers to switch to Credit Karma. Intuit bought Mint but never really put much development effort into it beyond the bare minimum. Like too many financial tracking things which are "free", the user was the product on Mint that its advertisers wanted. I switched to Monarch which is paid and has some people from the original Mint team behind it.

No, they are a tech company, they produce software for their main product.

Like a lot of companies, tech and not, they use their power and resources to keep their position.

The difference is that their actual competitor is the government. But that's also a big part of why private healthcare is way too expensive in the US, for worse results than other places.

It's a game of semantics. The other commenter's meaning is that a "tech company" would produce valuable tech that wouldn't otherwise exist. Intuit uses tech to do the opposite. McDonalds uses tech too, but they aren't a tech company.

McDonald's main product is not a piece of software. Intuit's is.

That's what I'm saying though, they don't even produce a product. They produce legislative influence to create a money collecting trap. Turboxtax isn't a "product" per se. That's like calling the mafia security guards because they force you to pay protection money. Many countries don't even require filling out tax forms. You just sign and pay.

The difference is that their actual competitor is the government.

I think the government is more of an enabler, than a competitor. At least up until now.

they've invested infinitely more in lobbying to keep tax-filing complex

I always feel the need to point out that anger at this is misplaced. Intuit is a business lobbying on behalf of itself like countless other businesses do. If the result makes you upset, you should be upset at our political system and the politicians who are willing to sell out the country for whatever those lobbyists are pushing. It is those politicians who are supposed to prioritize the good of the country, not Intuit or their lobbyists.

We can be upset at politicians for "selling out" to the lobbyists.

We can be upset at lobbyists for pushing things that they know aren't in the best interests of consumers.

We can be upset at businesses for wanting to take advantage of consumers for their own gain.

All of these can be true at the same time.

Do you get upset at criminal defense lawyers who defend people who are obviously guilty (i.e. by getting clear and convincing evidence disqualified because of a procedural error?)

Or, would you say something like "The outcomes are not perfect but that's how the system works and stays as fair as possible for everyone"?

Do you get upset at criminal defense lawyers who defend people who are obviously guilty ...

This is an obvious Straw man[0] fallacy.

Intuit is a corporation engaged in lobbying efforts in order to retain and/or expand its market-share and not an individual needing representation in a criminal indictment.

Unless your position is that Intuit corporate officers should be criminally prosecuted, which, if that is the case, I apologize for my misunderstanding and can see your point.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

The system requires criminal defense attorneys to lobby for their client, even if this results in objectively bad outcomes in specific situations.

Similarly, the system requires that anyone (including shareholders or employees of companies) be able to communicate with their political representatives about political policy. Even if sometimes this results in bad outcomes in specific situations.

The suggestion that citizens have equal access to communicate with their political reps as corporations is also laughable.

A corporation can represent the interests of hundreds or thousands of people - investors, shareholders, employees, customers (who depend on the product), etc.

The larger corporations, even more so.

But still, the Congressional office buildings are open to the public. Anyone can walk in and present their case. Yes, of course a senator cannot make as much time to meet with the millions of individual citizens as they can with the 500 individual Fortune 500 companies. I don’t think this defeats my argument. An individual citizen is objectively less important than a company involving tens or hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The disconnect occurs when you realize that the issues businesses lobby for don't always benefit their own employees, nor are they only ever lobbying just to stay alive as a business.

In point of fact, Intuit's lobbying in this very instance also negatively impacts their own employees.

Edit: A generic example to further drive the point home would be oil companies lobbying against environmental protections. Such moves only benefit the business and directly harm everyone, including their own employees.

Edit 2: And then there are all of the instances where businesses have lobbied against changes to labor laws, wages, etc. that would objectively improve the lives of their own employees...

Corporations may touch a large number of people but those people are not a representative sample. Further, corporations are not lobbying for the interests of that large group of people, they are lobbying for the interests of the corporation, whose interests may incidentally and temporarily align with the groups you mentioned. The interests of the corporation only align with those of the people you mention insofar as those are in line with maximizing profits. However, this completely ignores the externalities of maximizing profits, such as those to the environment.

More broadly, a country whose politicians represent the interests of corporations is no longer a democracy. Democracy is for people. Corporations are not people. They are abstract legal entities wired to maximize profits. The fact that they are composed of people is immaterial, since they do many things contrary to the interests of those people all the time.

Most things are circumstantial and nuanced, not black and white. So, no, I usually do not get upset at that. Note how I said "can" rather than saying "must be" or something more absolute like that.

And the idea that things are "as fair as possible for everyone" in this particular (read: Intuit) scenario is laughable at best.

The difference between those three groups is that the politicians are the only ones not doing the job expected of them.

Lobbyists are supposed to lobby on behalf of whoever pays them.

Businesses are supposed to advocate for the interest of themselves, their shareholders, and their employees. It would be verging on incompetence for a business to ignore a political debate that would effectively destroy the business overnight. Intuit lobbying on its behalf is our system working as intended. If you have a problem with that (which you should), your problem should be with the system and not Intuit.

Politicians are supposed to work for the betterment of their constituents and they clearly aren't in the case of tax prep. They deserve a majority of the blame above any other group because they are the ones failing to do their job.

Businesses can lobby for their own self-interest without taking such a staunch anti-consumer stance. Technically, you're not wrong. But Intuit happens to own MailChimp, QuickBooks and Credit Karma beyond TurboTax.

There's no reason they shouldn't be able to find a way to remain a profitable business between most of what they own. To go above and beyond with such an anti-consumer perspective with regards to filing is absolutely egregious.

Put simply (or reductively, take your pick) - there's "advocating for the interest of their business" (nods head) and "advocating for the interest of their business" (shakes head).

I don’t think that’s a meaningful distinction. A lot of people would say lobbyists shouldn’t even exist as a profession. Whether they are “just doing their job” begs the question of whether the job should exist.

Free government-provided tax calculators and online filing are an existential threat to Intuit. I think that the business should not exist (or should be scaled down to a fraction of its size, as an accountant's tool), but can you blame them for trying to block the deathblow?

Sure. How much don't you blame the rat whose claws are embedded in your hand as you try to throw it in the river?

I am quite sure it could swim so I would think it was ungrateful for me being so kind to it.

As a New Yorker, I wouldn't dare try, but I see your point.

Intuit also produces Quickbooks -- which actually is SMB accounting software, and used internationally.

As most of their revenue is from businesses who wouldn't easily be able to free-file, I wouldn't be surprised if Intuit's lobbying to prevent a free tax filing offering from the government was causing them more harm than good.

And now QuickBooks is also a bank? Offering checking accounts? I suspect they’ve just partnered with a real bank to do so but the brand confusion is off the charts.

I imagine Quickbooks is adding more features as part of an upsell. The business loans by paying invoices upfront was a bit of a ZIRP policy though (now interest rates to SMB's likely would be prohibitively high, ~15%).

Any recommendations on how to really file taxes for free (federal and state)?

I've been using https://www.freetaxusa.com/ the last couple years and plan to continue this year. It is free for Federal (though I usually pay for an upgrade), and state is $15. The only option I know of for free state is to do the forms manually.

I second this suggestion. The free federal taxes and $15 state actually mean free federal and $15 for state! You can certainly add on the "pro service" or "audit protection" or whatever if you want, but it is simple to say NO to those and just do the forms. This year, I opted for the "audit protection" because of some new tax forms I had to fill out, but overall I only paid $45 with the sales tax.

I used to use Turbo Tax and paid about $100 per year on average, but it was simple to switch to using another provider, I just had to get the previous year's return out to fill some stuff that is filled automatically if you use the service each year.

Which reminds me... In previous years I had used TurboTax and paid for their "have a tax expert answer any questions you have" upgrade. I asked a question and all the dude they connected me with did was to read the the field from the form to me. "What does it mean?" "It says <reads the form field verbatim>." In retrospect, I should have contacted support and asked them to remove the upcharge.

I decided to use FreetaxUSA on the advice of another HN thread and I was very happy with the results. I had used TurboTax for the last 8 years and can say that FreetaxUSA was much easier to navigate. I was asked to upgrade to their top tier 2 times and it was very clear how to continue with the free federal option.

The most scam-sounding federal government website ever, Free File Fillable Forms https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...

At least it's under the irs.gov domain now. As recently as last year, I had to, or at least thought I had to, go to the even scammier-sounding https://www.freefilefillableforms.com.

Another program the IRS is rolling out is called "Direct File"[0]:

  In 2024, we're launching a new pilot tax filing service
  called Direct File. If you're eligible and choose to
  participate, file your 2023 federal tax return online,
  for free, directly with IRS.

It appears to be limited to a handful of states thus far.

0 - https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/direct-file

FWIW, TurboTax has a C# method ("IsProductActivationRequired()" or something like that) you can overwrite to 'return false' with tools like dnSpy.

There's a desktop version? Does it offer the same as the site?

The desktop version is the OG, though now it's like 5% of TurboTax users.

Does it offer the same as the site?

Typically more, in fact.

Still probably a rip-off compared to other places.

Semi-dumb follow-up question. If we don't use a website service, then other than using forms, is the only option to actually find the pdfs, print out the forms, fill them in with a pen, and stuff them in an envelope? Or are there easier ways?

I use a type-writer, but otherwise: yes. Does it get any easier?

Cash App Taxes. Free federal and state.

Hrm. How do they make money?

If your income is below $79,000 a year, this is the correct link: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers/

It has been remarkably absent in this thread.

If your income is low enough, all of the main tools

If not, then federal free through FreeTaxUSA. Depending on your state, the state taxes manually via PDF + paper may be extremely quick - like five or so lines, and a single table lookup.

In Sweden, for most citizen the tax authority does the tax declaration for you. If you don't want to do any changes (which most people doesn't have to), you simply write a text to them [1].

[1] https://skatteverket.se/servicelankar/otherlanguages/inengli...

To be fair, in Sweden the taxes are also insane. I’d rather have to pay some middleman a paltry sum every year than pay 30% more tax just for the privilege of the government automatically calculating them for me.

Not saying the US shouldn’t do this automatically, I’m merely pointing out it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison.

If you include healthcare, daycare, state pensions, disability insurance, employment insurance etc as a tax (which it is in most cases with more tax) the "insane" amount isn't that insane anymore.

If you make $250k/yr+ in the US all of those problems melt away due to the availability of disposable income.

In the EU you top out at €100-150k.

I say this from experience as a European who's lived on both continents.

But this also depends almost entirely on where you live. €100k in the almost any city in Netherlands, France, or Germany is a great income that can support a family with one earner. $250k might only put you in "solidly" middle class if you have to live in SF or NYC. The difference is that the $250k salaries are 99% of the time only widely available in these extreme HCOL cities.

Healthcare for a family of 4 in some parts of the US is absolutely fucking bananas compared to most of Europe. I've seen monthly premiums of $2k+ after the employers part, not to mention the deductible!

Efficiencies from health care competition are illusory when you properly scope it to include paperwork hassles, time hassles, and pressure on provides to skimp.

There basically is no healthcare competition in the US at all regardless of any qualifiers. You often don’t even know how much a procedure will cost you. That fact alone means there is no price competition. Even if in the past there were hospital competition (assuming you’re in the position where you have the time to shop around), hospitals are merging regionally to take care of that.

The US healthcare system is incredibly expensive and ineffective. Americans often like to come up explanations for this status quo but the fact is the system is trash when compared internationally.

This is patently false. 250k+ is readily available in cheaper cities. You just have to work at BigCoSoulStompers.

Not everyone makes that kind of money :(.

Absolutely true and a valid point, I’m just trying to add some nuance to the conversation. I’ve noticed the North American heavy online bubbles fetishizing Europe in that regard, and the reality is far more grim.

You added some nuance and completely lost most of other nuance.

It's completely evident that the salary differences in the EU/US are not from the convenience of the govt calculating taxes for you, and that's the point you tried to make in your origin post.

On the other hand, you'd make great advertisements for TurboTax.

The US spends more per capita in healthcare than Sweden and Finland combined [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

More or les insane that say, the cost of private health and private education in the US ?

What does the tax rate and prefilling tax forms have to do with each other? The system would work the same with 1% and 99% tax rates too.

How do private shareholders make a profit and thus increase the gdp from that?

by freeing people from wasting money on rentseekers and letting them spend money on more productive things?

To 1-up a bit, in the UK (and probably several other countries) you usually do nothing at all. The tax is deducted by your employer at time of pay and you just get annual statements that you usually do nothing with. If you are due a refund (e.g. salary went down so your projected yearly income was wrong), you usually get refunded automatically by giro or cheque (or possibly compensatory tax code changes for the next year. Not sure)

Finally! This is only 30 years too late. Also, let’s hope the IRS’ current beta of self filing app is successful.

Could you say more about the "self filing app"? A quick Google search didn't turn up anything (which probably says more about my current lack of sleep than anything :) )

https://www.irs.gov/about-irs/strategic-plan/direct-file

Not to be confused with IRS Free File

Hah, saw that you edited the url. These government naming schemes are designed to fail. Why do they pick these absolute terms like "free" when there will clearly be some new thing that will be better? I'm waiting for the next version of REAL id, a realer id.

As engineers I feel we should show a little bit of sympathy for difficulties involving naming ;)

In all seriousness though, Free File pretty much does what it says on the tin (allows low-income taxpayers to file for free); it has existed since 2003; and it has been pretty successful all things considered (Intuit and H&R Block's best efforts notwithstanding). I think it's a reasonable name.

For real. I did some reading to try to understand the rationale. I _think_ Free File is a general program which lots of "services" can participate in, including TurboTax. Direct File is akin to (but maybe not actually the same as) a IRS offering in the Free File program.

Typical government product launch website. As far as I can tell, they don’t provide a link to where the service will be available or date of availability despite it being tax season. I guess you are to check back if you’re potentially eligible or sign up for the newsletter.

Thank you for the link.

I found the Free File thing but it didn't quite sound like what you were talking about :)

This will get stayed during the appeal, so status quo will remain for this tax season. And next year there are many new variables, potentially a new government, SC's Chevron ruling which may limit what FTC can do, etc. I don't think this is going to stick.

Honestly it might not. It sounds like Intuit already has prepared advertising that fulfils the requirements from threads here.

What was happening 30 years ago? I would have guessed the online filing stuff and advertising based on "free" was much more recent?

If the IRS had the budget to run those ridiculous "free free free" ads from a couple years ago, TurboTax would cease to exist.

Increasing the IRS budget is an unequivocal good!

50% of the country believes tax is theft, and they also imagine if there were no taxes and the IRS abolished we'd somehow still continue to support an army, have a federal court system, a patent office, etc, etc, and that their state will continue to get federal subsidies.

That was the entire point of Obama's speech that republican news sources and libertarians eviscerated him for: "You didn't build that". He wasn't saying that you didn't build your business; he was stating you didn't build all the infrastructure that allowed you to build and run your business, and that is why taxes are not theft.

There is a legitimate argument over how much taxes and what is should be spent on, but those nuanced discussions are entirely replaced by BS.

Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again, their actual spending is fueled by debasement of the currency (IE. money printing). The only purpose of taxation in such a system is to reduce inflationary pressure caused by their own malfeasance, I can't imagine they actually need the revenue since there seems to be no relationship between revenue and spending anyways. This all makes our current system of taxation feel less like a civic duty and more like a scam.

50% of the country believes tax is theft, and they also imagine if there were no taxes and the IRS abolished we'd somehow still continue to support an army, have a federal court system, a patent office, etc, etc, and that their state will continue to get federal subsidies.

That is not at all what 50% of the country believes, its a hyperbolic strawman. Obviously taxation is necessary to fund public services, just because someone criticizes the litany of flaws in our specific system doesn't mean they don't believe in the concept of taxation. Funny that you go on to complain about lack of nuance.

One party has been defunding the IRS, even though spending $1 in IRS budget returns $6 in uncollected taxes. One party even has congressmen saying the IRS should be removed entirely.

Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again

This contradicts what you say later: taxes are returned in the form of public services.

Back in the 50s the max tax rate (for a very few, but very rich people) was 90%. Corporations collectively contributed about half of what individual taxes did; now it is about 10%. The 2017 (?) tax bill forgave more than $1T in corporate taxes that were owed and gave some people a couple thousand dollars tax break; but while those corporate tax cuts were permanent, that same law that dropped the rate for some individuals was written to increase individual tax rates every two years and in no time those people are paying more in taxes than before.

If the Bush and Trump tax cuts for corporations and rich people had not ever happened, the debt would be going down (ignoring the extraordinary circumstances of covid).

Rich people and rich corporations can afford to get the laws written in their favor.

corporate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX individual: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A074RC1Q027SBEA

chart showing the ratios over time: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/composition-of-fe...

One party has been defunding the IRS, even though spending $1 in IRS budget returns $6 in uncollected taxes. One party even has congressmen saying the IRS should be removed entirely.

Sure, funding the IRS increases revenue. But we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. The amount of revenue they collect is utterly massive and should be more than enough to pay for all the public services we need, but it's not because they are wildly irresponsible with it. I find it hard to swallow that the solution is to squeeze us for even more.

Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again

This contradicts what you say later: taxes are returned in the form of public services.

Taxes are returned in the form of public services in a healthy functional system, one which I would like to live in. My argument is that our system is not healthy and functional. Public services are provided but taxes have little relevance in how those services are paid for, at least on a federal level. If the government has the authority to simply print all the money it needs, and does so frequently with seemingly no limits, then what is the point of taxes? As I said, I think it's just to relieve inflationary pressure caused by fundamentally irresponsible monetary policy, whereas in an ideal functioning system there would be a direct relation between revenue -> spending on public services, as you say.

As for the rest of your post I basically agree, our tax code is quite obviously the product of corporate interest. But I don't think it's fair to conflate the opinions of "50% of the country" with that of the GOP party brass corpos. I think the predominant feeling on this topic among the GOP base is that of mistrust for the IRS (which is justified considering their previous political scandals) and more general sentiments of smaller government, which is not the same thing as 'taxation is theft'

This is nice. Free should mean free no matter how much large print text to clarify is needed.

Next I’d like them to go after windshield chip repair shops and pharmacies that advertise “free*” services. Where free == paid by your insurance. Assuming your insurance will pay for all of it.

Free doesn’t mean paid for someone you paid to handle it for you.

I asked one of those chip repair guys how it worked years ago. He said the insurance companies pay them to repair the chips, because those little fixes are much cheaper than paying to replace the whole windshield when it inevitably cracks. It seems like a win-win-win. The driver gets the windshield fixed with no out of pocket cost, the chip guy makes some cash, and the insurance company saves money.

Where’s the downside?

While that does sound good I think the previous comment was saying how it's not free without insurance so it's not technically free

I suppose. Where I’m at, and I think almost everywhere in the US, drivers are legally required to have car insurance. Assuming the chip repair places don’t require a premium level of insurance, it should be a non-issue, as the requirement is something everyone is already paying for.

It is still not free. We need to stop redefining things.

This decision is the result of a biased and broken system where the Commission serves as accuser, judge, jury, and then appellate judge all in the same case

Interesting argument, but also a distraction from "we lied in advertising."

It could also clearly disclose the percentage of customers that actually do qualify for the free service, somewhere close to the “free” claim advertised, the commission said.

They ran an ad during the 49ers game this weekend, centered around it being free for the character in the ad. I'm guessing that's how they'll work around this.

Their phrasing is specific to align themselves with the current supreme Court review of deference.

They'll likely delay until that decision has come down and they hope they can just claim the laws were unconstitutional in the first place.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-to-hear-maj...

Right idea, wrong case. The relevant case this term is SEC v. Jarkesy, which presents some of the "Federal agency adjudication is unconstitutional" arguments. The FTC brought this suit in-house before their own Administrative Law Judge, which is what TurboTax is protesting. The two cases related to Chevron deference also implicate agency power, but they implicate agency power in the actual courts.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/11/justices-to-consider-mult...

Honestly, not thsg interesting of an argument to me as a citizen. This is exactly the kind if thing I want the FTC to have the power to handle without getting tied up in court for 15 years like everything else seems to.

Far to easy for a corp to delay while it pays otherwise.

Bills game too. I noticed it because I thought they were already banned.

It was much more clear it wasn’t free for everyone than the old “free free free free” ads, but still heavily emphasized the free part.

I've only ever used the installable version of TurboTax, and I knew up front that I'd have to pay for CA filing.

How transparent is the web site version? Do you have to spend an hour entering all your tax info just to find out that you'll have to pay to file? Or are they pretty good about notifying you up front?

In the paid installable version, I can still print out my CA tax return and mail it in to avoid paying the e-filing fee, but I'm not sure how that works with the web version, either.

You knew you would have to pay for the ca version, but did you know how much you had to pay at the beginning. I buy the disk at Costco every year and feel the pricing is anything but transparent and they are very misleading. It includes the state free but only paper file and $10 credit for a mystery price state return

Ah good question! Of course I knew in future years, but I'm not sure I knew up front.

It's 2024. It's beyond time for the IRS to offer free tax filing online.

You've been able to file for free on paper since forever. But again, it's 2024. Paper is not a reasonable solution for either filers or the IRS in 2024. It's difficult to handle, error-prone, and all the software they use to validate paper forms could be repurposed to accept online forms.

And the online forms should be pre-filled with all the information the IRS already has about your income for the prior year.

It's not acceptable to have to pay companies like Intuit (and give them all your personal financial information) for software to file an individual tax return. I don't care if you're wealthy or poor, this should be free and provided by the IRS.

Contact your representatives. Demand that they get it done.

Uh, you know that it's a thing starting this year?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/politics/irs-free-tax-filing-...

TIL! Fortunately, my state (Washington) is on the list. Unclear when it will be ready for use. Anyone know? I just signed up for their newsletter.

Most countries governments are crap at software yet still manage to put together a free to use tax portal with automatic filing for all but the most complex cases.

See that's what you get when your government focuses on its citizens.

Instead, US has corporations. Corporations like Intuit, which it uses to decide what its policies should be.

Oh us? We merely live here.

OpenTaxSolver should be released for US 2023 in a few days! Can’t wait. Forms and math, be still my heart.

It is more crazy that this was allowed to continue for so long.