But is it compatible with the tax filing dating sim?
Welcome to 2005, America!
Huh, I went to check - we did it in 2003 (for vat and income tax iirc, ofc they expended it since, nowdays only courtroom stuff doesn’t have online admin systems).
Prior to that you just got the (already filled out) income tax form in the mail - if everything was ok that was usually it. In case you still owed, it included the bill, it they owed you they wired the money to your bank.
If the tax forms were incomplete for some reason (or just not optimised between the members of the same family) you could fill in what they missed (like literally with a pen) & send it back (for them to verify & return it to youb revised).
(This system still works so folk who prefer to do it via paper can do that.)
Hold my beer…American pulling out checkbook
Even without access to Direct File since I wasn’t in a pilot state, I’ve been using the IRS’ “Free Fillable Forms” for the last few years and they’ve worked great! They don’t hold your hand as much as the paid software but for my returns they’ve been more than adequate and free!
Does anyone know how “Direct File” differs from the “Free Fillable Forms”? Does it hold your hand a little more and help you find credits/deductions? Free Fillable Forms worked well, but only so long as I knew what I needed to file. New circumstances, like adding a dependent, lead to a lot of research.
Yes, direct file is guided with a checklist. However there are only certain situations where a taxpayer would qualify for direct file - there’s income limitations and only certain income types qualify (u would not be able to use it if u are self-employed or own rental properties for example). The IRS is planning to expand this but for now it’s limited tho the vast majority of taxpayers would qualify.
Anyone can use the free fillable forms but u either have to know what you’re doing or be comfortable reading irs form instructions if you have a more complex tax situation.
The ATO’s myTax system is pretty great, I hope with this you guys finally get something as nice.
They don’t know what you are talking about my fellow Aussie. Any A in an acronym means “American” to the USAns. That other countries exist that start with A is unfathomable.
They have all the info, so this shouldn’t even be necessary. They should be able to just send me a tax bill/refund with the break down automatically. If I want to dispute it, then I’d have to pay the big bucks to get fancy accountants to dispute. Otherwise it should just be one less thing vast majority of the people would ever have to worry about.
Fuck TurboTax, fuck H$R Block
how much longer til they just do it for me and leave me the fuck alone?
🤞
He gets it
Dude’s face alone has accounting credentials: https://www.congress.gov/member/brad-sherman/S000344
I’ll take that over celebrities as politicians any day
The catch is that it requires ID.me, and there is no way in hell I’m giving some third party a picture of my fucking drivers license.
Why, do they sell data?
It would not surprise me in the least, but more importantly, if they get breached and they have sloppy mechanisms in place, my license could be fully out there in the wild. May be whatever to some, but I think it’s too risky to trust some company with it that also has contracts with the government itself.
Wouldn’t they need to already have your data to check your driver’s license against it?
…to print my ID in the first place?
(But yes clearly worse to allow personal data to be stored in an additional system.)
Right, my government also gave me a number at my birth. They know where I live, they know how much I make and where I work. The third party, ID.me, definitely does NOT need any of my information, since the entity that is taxing me, already does.
Depressing thought: there’s a remote possibility the government is inept enough trying to roll around verification system that a third party has a safer solution.
Positive thinking: maybe the government is just using a third party until they’ve had time to make their own service entirely bombproof. Let’s go with that for our sake.
And then ID.me becomes the new TurboTax and starts lobbying the government to not compete with them.
Noooooooooooo
The problem is that given all of the data breaches, anyone can use your social security number, address, etc. and file a return on your behalf.
In theory, that’s what ID.me is preventing.
But if your wallet gets stolen, good luck.
Seems odd. They’ve been pushing login.gov like everywhere.
It will eventually be supported, and in the interim they have stated that they won’t keep biometric data obtained through ID.me once a verification is completed, or you can opt for an online interview where no biometrics are collected in the first place.
Who knows if ID.me will actually delete the data on their end though, or if the online interview is recorded by the provider.
Government biometric requirements really aren’t a joke. They perform pretty regular audits and the liability of not deleting ID could be company ending.
They might not delete your biometrics, but I’d be shocked if they didn’t. It’s far more likely that they not only delete it but have an audit trail proving deletion.
I even had to make a login.gov account to apply to some federal jobs (ironically enough one was with the IRS even!)
On a related note, it appears based on their job listings that the IRS will not hire anyone who owes them money
Interesting that third parties like TurboTax aren’t required to obtain copies of your photo ID.
I looked it up, and there is an article from the end of last year that says they are about to be required or are already required.
I can’t recall ever putting my license on one of these tax preppers, but I am also older and more privacy concerned in my older age, so I would definitely not do it now.
At that point, might be better to hand-file your return. In many of these programs they offer you the ability to print and mail your return.
Your refund takes longer of course.
Eh, I’ve only gotten like $20 back max the last three years. They can take as long as they want, I will not be giving any third parties anything that they truly do not need.
I hope more scrutiny is given to ID.me. I’ll only be using Direct File if they remove it as a dependency.
Huh, I already signed up for it because they started requiring it a while back to access historical tax return documents through the IRS website.
Free if you have no other exemptions to file.
1099? Nope Depreciation? Nope Tax credits? Nope
Makes for a great headline though.
Im sure those of us that do have exemptions other than the standard will see our tax prep fees skyrocket
Yeah, very limited, but it’s very good for more than half of the population that don’t have enough deductions to exceed the standard and don’t own property (if you properly count houseless “households” that earn income as not owning property and not just renters like most statistics). It’s dumb that they have to file a return anyway just to acres money that never should have been collected. Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place. Mostly because they follow the directions and/or are afraid of paying a fine plus interest.
Anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. And if we can unbury all of the staff out of the pile of paper returns, we can devote some to go after the rich and their frivolous, often fraudulent deductions and have them pay the tax they owe.
Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place.
How do you do this? How do you calculate what to personally withhold and pay? Is it simply calculating through the income tax?
There’s a worksheet that usually comes with it where you answer questions about your living situation - single/married, homeowner/renter, how many kids, etc. - and it gives you a number to put in. It’s pretty accurate. I’ve done it at every job and aside from years with tax credits I’ve never gotten back more than a few hundred bucks.
I’ve had 1099s and tax credits and I’ve never sent in a paper return. I keep the records in case of an audit but it’s not like e-file hasn’t existed forever.
I read
1099? Nope depreciation. Nope tax credits? Nope
are you not capable of taking a win? it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
Its a regular sized step, as its targeted primarily at simple filers. But the cutoff is incredibly low. You can’t use it if you’ve got retirement savings through an IRA, if you’ve got deductions for college expenses, or if you’re claiming the child care deduction. I’d wager that’s at least half the people who bother to file returns.
Definitely good news for folks that H&R Block likes to fleece - anyone collecting EITC or Child Tax Credits and not much else. But hardly universal.
do you think it won’t eventually add that stuff? pretty naive to just “meh” and basically call it a failure. nothing happens overnight.
It’s not a “failure” but I wouldn’t call it a huge win either. It’s a small victory with a tiny horn to toot.
IIRC there was a free version of Turbo Tax that did the same thing years ago… so we’re catching up to the old free version now.
*An old free version that was purposefully hidden and buried by reverse SEO tactics, but yeah
Some progress is better then no progress, and TurboTax et. al. losing in any way is a victory for the rest of us.
Why is the USA the only country to have those problems, AND complain about getting free stuff?
Some people in the USA want a solution that immediately fixes every possible problem, and don’t quite get the concept of starting small and fixing other stuff over time.
It’s the same with gun control. Some states want to tighten gun laws, and some people are like “that won’t solve all the problems! We need nationwide laws!”. Sure, but why not accept the win that more and more states are starting to do something, rather than complaining that some problems still exist?
Competition does NOT make prices go up, lol.
Well, the point was that it isn’t competition in his scenario. I hope the exclusion of 1099 is temporary, because I had a 1099 for like a few dollars because I had a savings account that technically accrued interest, so as it stands that makes me ineligible. So his concern would be that because the tax prep services are competing against ‘free’ for that tier, that they’ll ramp up prices for the rest to compensate for loss of income.
Hypothetical question: If you omitted the couple bucks of income from the 1099 on that one savings account and you later got audited- how much money would you be on the hook for? what would the consequences be in worst case and likely case scenarios?
I honestly think the government has next to no resources now to go after tax cheats that aren’t hiding tens to hundreds of thousands of owed taxes… but would love to hear what others have to say. I suspect missing out on less than a dollar of taxes from omitting a single figure 1099 would not be big enough to chase and if found probably less costly than hiring a preparer every year when averaged out over your lifetime of tax returns.
Perhaps practically speaking you probably would get an automated form from IRS demanding a few dollars. But it’d be nice if qualification for ‘direct file’ option didn’t rely on “mild tax evasion” for people with savings accounts.
You don’t need to include the income if it’s under 10 dollars.
Given that savings accounts are at 1% interest or so, that’s only a thousand dollars in a savings account.
I would suggest you get hired by the IRS and start rewriting all their ancient code to build in and allow every deduction rule and that it’s applied correctly every time so everyone can use it.
The tax laws are so large and so complex and the code running all this stuff is so old and now locked in because they didn’t keep up with updating their software as they went along. I’m amazed they got this far. Oh, and like you, I can’t use it either. But that’s why I have an accountant.
Maybe not. You will have the same number of tax preparers chasing less work. Through the magic of the Free Market™️, shouldn’t that mean pressure to reduce prices? We can only hope.
I already saw it reflected this year. My tax prep went up $150
I’m no statistics major, but that’s like 100% of the sample!!!
Freetaxusa does them for like 20 bucks
I use them. I love telling friends I use that because it sounds like such a scam site
Yeah idk why anyone thought that name was a good idea for their marketing
“just put your social here…”
Wow congrats USA for doing something that makes sense before Canada.
I still wish we got a bill at the end of the year like some European countries. Maybe a deadline to send in special forums in case of some edge cases but they know what’s up .
It’s literally the Biden admin. They’ve made it a huge priority and followed through.
People knock Biden, but he’s been consistently doing this stuff across the government. It’s refreshing.
I keep bringing up how awesome the new SAVE federal student loan repayment program is. Income based repayments that go as low as $0 with the federal government covering any interest that you payment would have gone towards, plus after 10 years of payments balances of $12k and less are forgiven (11 years for $13k, 12 years for $14k, etc.)
So if you got a low paying degree from a community college, like say an early childhood education degree, you get pretty close to free education since you can make your $0 payments every month and get your entire student debt forgiven after a decade. Or if you have a career that doesn’t pay much at first but ratchets up you only make payments when you have the income to make them, and still get forgiven after 10 years, and there’s no real penalty to paying the $0 payments earlier since the balance hasn’t grown and is still forgiven on the same date. Or like many people who attend community college, if you end up dropping out and getting no degree, you’re not penalized like earlier plans would have penalized you.
Good. Now make it work for everyone’s tax situation.
Looks like state filing is excluded.
Why would the IRS make software for the states, it doesn’t make sense.
As a tax accountant, I sincerely hope this gets to a point where a vast majority of the population has no need for my services.
I used to play in the big leagues where none of my clients would ever qualify for this and their returns routinely took upwards of a hundred hours to complete. Those guys need to keep paying.
Now I play down in the minors a couple steps above the Block, and I hate seeing the owner sell these three or four hundred dollar returns that might take me an hour to complete in the first year and maybe thirty minutes in subsequent years.
That’s a very interesting transition. Was the catalyst neutral or happy one, or perhaps a sad one?
Mutual disdain was the catalyst. I did it for eight years and probably lost fifteen years of life expectancy from it. Ungodly toxic environment. Fuck big firm accounting. Fuck them all in the most demeaning, painful way imaginable.
I make roughly one third the money today, and I’m much happier for it. I still make a comfortable living where I don’t particularly worry about money, so what would the additional two thirds do for me outside paying medical bills it causes?
No matter how much I try to remove my name from searches, I still get recruited by ambitious young people on a regular basis. I generally make them stop with a response that goes something like this:
I would rather have my eyes gouged out by the white hot barbed penis of Satan himself while he spits in my mouth than return to public accounting for any amount of money.
Mine was too complicated to file for free because I have retirement investments? Seems like a silly reason to force someone to use a paid service.
Sounds like having any 1099 is ‘too complicated’. So anyone with any sort of savings account that managed to get $10 of interest over a year… So if you have like a thousand dollars in a boring old savings account you are ‘too complicated’.
Same. It sucks having to pay H&R Block $300/year to file my taxes, but their online records save my ass every time I buy a house. I sincerely hope we see a more robust free file system in my lifetime.
$300? Just use Free Tax USA. It’s free for federal and $15 for each state. No, you don’t need extra stuff, unless you think you’ll be audited.
If you spend a little time figuring out your tax situation, you don’t need to pay someone else to do it. Here’s a secret: the people they have doing your taxes don’t necessarily have a master’s degree in tax. Those people are helping corporations or wealthy people with trusts.
You missed the point of my reply. I pointed out that the benefit of H&R block is that they keep the records easily accessible, so when I buy a home I just link the H&R block account to the lender and they pull all of my tax and income history. Saves countless hours of gathering info and filling out paperwork. That’s worth $300/year to me.
You wanna pay and extra ~$280 a year because you save a little bit of time when you buy a house? You know FreeTaxUSA has all your documents too, right?
You’ve never bought a house if you think it’s saving “a little bit” of time. We’re talking easily 40 hours of gathering and filing paperwork here. That’s $2,200 of my time. If I buy a house once every 7 years it works out.
Do you buy houses all the time? Do you want your income info to be sold to anyone who will pay? You are paying extra for them to have access to your info.
Yeah. Mine was “too complicated” because I had an HSA. Are you fucking kidding me?
You’re not supposed to be wrecking our economy like that. Spend, baby, spend.
😂😂
Pass, it’s not open source.
The one benefit of open source of having more eyes on the code to find any bugs would likely be its weakness, given that systems like these aren’t updated frequently, any bugs found and made public could open the door to exploiting,
