| ▲ | terminalshort a day ago |
| Which is basically how it works here too. If you just have W-2 income from an employer it takes less than 10 minutes to fill out the form. Sure, the system you mention is more convenient, but the difference is minimal. |
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| ▲ | wildzzz a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| The IRS already has most of my tax information and knows the tax code. Why must I deal with a third party (and potentially have to pay them) to electronically file my own taxes? |
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| ▲ | testing22321 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The same reason you pay exorbitant sums for healthcare, education, transport and much more. The US is not a county optimized to provide quality services inexpensively. It is a business optimized to maximize profits. | |
| ▲ | ghoul2 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When I lived in the US(5 yrs), early 2000s, from my second year onwards, I used to receive a pre-filled 1040NR-EZ with my W2 info already printed/filled-in on it. Typically, I would just add a deduction, and mailed it back. Does that program not exist? Or was it only for NR? | |
| ▲ | terminalshort a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You don't have to do that. There is no such requirement. You can fill out the forms for free. | | |
| ▲ | nielsbot 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | But that's a bad solution. (Otherwise why do TurboTax et al even exist in the first place?) IRS should just have a public free filing solution for everyone. If you have complicated taxes or want to do your own filing, you can still do that. | | |
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| ▲ | Amezarak a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don't have to pay. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form... As for "having most of your tax information", they don't. They know your reported income. You see that on your W2s/1099s/etc. What they don't know is whether or not you had a kid this year, or whether you lost a kid this year, whether you got married or divorced, if your spouse is claiming the kids this year or not, the number or amount of your charitable contributions, whether you have deductible mileage expenses, or a million other things. | | |
| ▲ | klausa a day ago | parent | next [-] | | This argument could be put in a museum as a perfect illustration of the "Perfect is the enemy of good" maxim. Would just relying on the information from your employers cover all possible edge-cases? No. Would it dramatically simplify the process for (tens?) millions of people? Absolutely. | | |
| ▲ | terminalshort a day ago | parent | next [-] | | The info that the IRS has from your employer is maybe 5 boxes on your return. Literally takes a few minutes to take the info from your w-2 and put it on a 1040. | |
| ▲ | Amezarak a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The number and type of people living in your household is not an edge case. It applies to almost everyone, has huge tax impacts, and the IRS doesn’t know. | | |
| ▲ | array_key_first 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | The argument is that you don't need a third party like Intuit to get this information. The IRS could get it themselves - they choose not to. | | |
| ▲ | ffffgov 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | They can’t. Because IRS IT has been starved, beaten and abused for 20 years. If they had the resources and leadership, all of this could be possible via MOUs and better data access/normalization from the mainframes. |
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| ▲ | BrandoElFollito 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In France the web site asks you if your household details changed. No? 2 more clicks and you are done. Yes? 2 + nr of changes clicks and you are done. Took me an extra 5 seconds when my son left. You can make your taxes as complcated as you want but for 95% of the population foling taxes takes a few minutes. | | |
| ▲ | Amezarak 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Filing a 1040 in the US is also very easy and takes a few minutes and can be done for free. Another factor most people are ignoring is that state taxes are filed at the same time and each state has its own separate system. These third parties let you fill in and file both at the same time. It would be nice if the US gov did this too but it requires a total restructuring of the American system, and Intuit’s lobbying has nothing to do with why it hasn’t happened or for that matter why the tax codes looks like it does. | | |
| ▲ | dpark 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Filing a 1040 in the US is also very easy Not for most people. It’s a giant pain in the ass if you have bank accounts and want to file correctly. If all you do is plug in your w-2 and pretend that’s your whole tax return and you don’t care about anything except the standard deduction, sure. That’s not correct for most people. > state taxes are filed at the same time and each state has its own separate system Can we stop pretending like this is a problem insurmountable for the federal government? This idea that TurboTax can make this work but the government can’t is absurd. |
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| ▲ | beej71 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I use free fillable forms. There are zero people on the planet who insist they are remotely as easy as Direct File. | |
| ▲ | isleyaardvark 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do these other countries described above know whether you had a kid or got divorced? | | |
| ▲ | deanmen 20 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, in many European countries dependents and marital status changes are registered in a national civil registry, which the tax authority can query directly. Countries like the U.S., Canada, the U.K. cannot easily do that without huge data-sharing reforms. | |
| ▲ | fragmede 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Even the US knows that you've had a qualifying event, they're just being stubborn. |
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| ▲ | rcbdev a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The system he mentioned is usually equally simple for self-employed. |
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| ▲ | terminalshort a day ago | parent [-] | | When I have had 1099s from consulting work it has also been very easy to file. Not quite as easy as Direct File could make it, but pretty damn easy. |
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| ▲ | insane_dreamer 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| In theory, yes. In practice, no. Also, Americans have to file both fed and state taxes (with different rules) |
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| ▲ | chneu a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Lol not really in practice. |
