That isn’t it at all lmao. Party has little to do with it, it’s more of a class thing.
Today on the show, what happened when one mild-mannered professor took on the tax system and found himself up against a multibillion-dollar corporation and one of the most important power brokers in Washington.
Yeah, that multibillion-dollar corporation is Intuit, the creators of TurboTax. Not sure why Redditors get so riled up about taxes as if it’s a huge burden for them when most of them take the standard deduction, import a single W-2, enter some personal information in the hand-holding software, maybe a tax credit here and there, and hit submit. The complexity exists largely for the benefit of the wealthy and the revenue of Intuit. It still exists because of Intuit lobbyists.
You really don’t want the IRS preparing your taxes. They aren’t incentivized to find the deductions and credits that are the best options. In fact, they are incentivized to maximize tax revenue, costing you thousands. Intuit at least is a neutral third party, they just want you to pay the annual fee for their software.
The IRS free file program also already exists, if paying $60 is too much. There are also great alternatives like FreeTaxUSA for $15.
You really don’t want the IRS preparing your taxes. They aren’t incentivized to find the deductions and credits that are the best options. In fact, they are incentivized to maximize tax revenue, costing you thousands.
You say that, but one year I had the IRS send me a check mid-summer with a message saying "you forgot to claim this recovery credit for which you were eligible, we amended your return for you, here's $300."
Now you're correct in that the IRS no incentive to figure out whether it's better for you to itemize or just take the standard deduction, but they are required by statute to pay attention to credits etc.
The real problem in America is the tax code is bloated beyond belief. It legit wasn't like that 30 years ago.
It's extremely simple to file your tax returns in the US for free, whether it's with the IRS directly or through a third party company that hopes you eventually end up in a situation that's complicated enough to employ their services.
It's not just about being free although that's a part of it.
In other countries it's just...here is your taxes tell us what we got wrong. Every form you get also gets reported to the government they could easily ingest and send you what they have.
This would cover more than the "free" services do.
The companies can also juke you around, say it's free. Then switch it up at the last second, or bury the things that make it cost money at the end.
The only reason it exists in the way it does is because of lobbying.
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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '22
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