Virginia's Department of Taxation used to have a pretty decent online tax website. It was shutdown because of lobbying such as this. There was a year when no free online filing so I took the extra effort to do a paper return that year. Even FreeFilableForms are run by the Free File Alliance which is part of the group that lobbies against the IRS and state taxation departments from doing their own filing websites for personal profit. So they make sure that their own free filing options are just good enough to be barely acceptable while making their paid (for filers with income over ~$58k) options seem much more attractive.
Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders making the IRS more efficient and hides true tax rates that corporations and higher income people... I dunno, it's one of the blacker marks against America in this aspect of policy.
But I've without doubt decide I'll try as hard as possible to never, ever pay a company like that to file tax returns.
> Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders
Can you give me an example of this "intentional complexity?"
The income tax is complex for two reasons: 1) it's inherently difficult to define "income" in a practical way; 2) it's a tool used to further all sorts of economic and political policies.
The best class I took in law school was Federal Income Tax (I'm not a tax lawyer). It really showed me that things which seem unnecessarily complex, like depreciation schedules or the treatment of capital assets, exist to solve theoretical problems that can be analyzed mathematically.
Finally, it's not like accounting, pursuant to GAAP, is simple. And it seems obvious, to me anyway, that tax law must be at least as complex as accounting.
One of the craziest things is, it save their tax department money for every single tax filing done online vs paper.
Paper takes an obscene amount of human hours to process in comparison. Online tax filings should at the very least be free, or even give you an extra tax deduction.
The Free File Alliance has certainly improved over the past year.
Previously, their system used Flash or Silverlight, and had horrible ui around tabbing between fields and copy/pasting. (Especially on the cap gains form).
This year, they're running jquery, bootstrap, and a whole host of other html5 javascripty goodness. The usability went up for me.
But surely the purpose of the tax system isn't just to collect taxes but also to create employment. Intentional complexity keeps programmers employed, I mean the sort who aren't "developers" but the sort who instead work in firms whose business model is their computer system such as banks and insurance companies.
How realistic would it be to produce an open source replacement? (Maybe a Kickstarter-funded one, to speed things up, given the fact it concerns every US household?)
I lived in the US last year and just finished my taxes. It was unbelievably complicated and confusing—even using Turbo Tax. Never seen the likes of it.
This is how I do my tax return in Sweden:
1. Receive equivalent of W2, but all returns are already pre-calculated since the Swedish IRS knows all it needs to know to be able to prepare my returns.
2. If I'm happy with my W2 and pre-calculated returns, I simply send a text message with a PIN code to submit my returns.
3. If I'm not happy with my pre-calculated returns, I make the necessary changes in a simple form and mail it back to the IRS. Most people never do this.
And if you ever leave Sweden, your tax obligations to Sweden end there. Not so with the USA. Actually they become more complicated than ever unless you also renounce US citizenship. Renouncing is itself a bit of a feat tax-wise.
While reading your first two sentences, I thought: "Oh come on, TurboTax at least makes it easier to get through, and anyone with a simple tax situation can get through it within an hour..."
After reading how it's done in Sweden: "Wow, our system is horrible."
I don't know what Sweden's tax code looks like, but at least here in the U.S., the IRS simply can't know a lot of the information necessary to calculate your taxes. How would it know how much you paid in daycare expenses, tuition and tuition interest, home mortgage interest, etc?
You can say that we just shouldn't have deductions for these sorts of things, but that's a very programmer way to look at things (we need to get rid of these features because they would be hard to program). It's also not theoretically sound. An income tax is supposed to be a tax on net accretion to wealth. Expenditures that are non-consumptive should be excluded from taxable income because they don't represent an increase in wealth.
In Norway, your pre-calculated returns will automatically be filed if you don't do anything before the deadline.
If you do need to file anything, everything is now done digitally. No papers to mail. Every single tax form is provided in a very well-organized form system that also validates everything and support subforms ("This field requires that you submit a 27b-6. Click to enter it now."). It was a godsend when I was working as a freelancer and was doing my own accounting, because you could actually do your own accounting without going crazy.
This is probably better left for "Idea Sunday", but I keep coming back to the fact that:
* We have languages for defining business processes & workflows (e.g. BPMN/BPML);
* We have open-source workflow engines (such as Activiti in Java and others all over the language spectrum) that utilize BPMN and terms;
* We have open-source ways of maintaining changes to these things over time.
I know it would be a monumental task, but why not start an open-source org to tackle Tax visibility at Federal and State levels?
With enough civic-minded hackers and accountants (both of which I believe exist), we could begin the process of transcribing the tax code into an interchange format. Then as we begin to see the updates each year, we can track the changes via source control.
Does anybody know if efforts like this have been undertaken anywhere else? Otherwise, I may have found my passion project.
Furthermore, does anyone know anything about the process by which Intuit makes this happen? They clearly have workflows and inputs into them; they had to get there somehow. I'd be interested in any/all knowledge that could be opened up on this.
Many foreigners are puzzled about why we Americans complain so much about our taxes, when they aren't particularly high by global standards. A major reason is that our taxes are particularly intrusive and annoying by global standards.
This also goes for consumption taxes - a 9% sales tax added at the register feels more intrusive than a 20% VAT included in the price tag, even though the VAT is much higher.
It's really too bad, their basic product - turbo tax free file uses the 1040 EZ form and can be confusing.
My gf who is a student was told by turbotax she owed over $300, after doing it on paper, the old fashioned way, the tax liability was 0. Why? The tuition deduction didn't apply on the EZ version of the form.
Ultimately turbo tax takes a conservative, strict and rigid approach to taxes, but as anyone knows this isn't the reality of doing taxes. For anyone with a moderately complex return, I think it's better to hire a tax professional, then at least you'll LEARN something for your money (which can be about the same amount!).
That seems unfair to TurboTax. I have found it to ask you about things that are beyond the form it is filling out (and then upsell you on upgrading to the other version) and I think it does a great job with educating you about how you can lower your taxes. If you want, you can avoid their fees by filling everything out through the program and remembering the relevant information when filling out the form manually.
TurboTax Free did a 1040A for me this year. It's not limited just to 1040EZ.
I think they may have adjusted things compared to last year; it imported my data from last year (a new feature), and I thought there used to be a "Basic" product between "Free" and "Deluxe".
I also file my taxes on paper and I do all the calculations manually (well, in a spreadsheet). Even though my tax situation is far from the most complex, it is more complex than TurboTax can handle. Also I like to keep tax preparation painful as a reminder of the burden that the ridiculous complexity of the tax code places on me.
That said, I do agree with Intuit here. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that the government is capable of making software to either provide a service similar to TurboTax or to correctly pre-calculate your taxes. They don't have the technical expertise so they'd have to contract it out. We saw how well that worked with healthcare.gov. They are not incented to "find every deduction" like a private tax preparer is, quite the opposite in fact. They also simply don't know enough in many cases. They don't know what my self employment income and expenses are, for example, until I tell them.
The only way that government can make taxes easier is to simplify the tax code itself.
This should not come as any surprise, really. This is what mature companies do once they achieve any level of monopoly that could be threatened with new legislation that benefits the public (and other businesses) but could hurt the monopoly. This is what the auto dealers are doing: after enjoying decades of control and a cozy relationship with legislators, they're threatened by upstarts like Tesla. But then at some point, if and when Tesla wins, it'll have to deploy its own army of lobbyists to keep the new status quo going.
It is what every web and mobile startup, it seems to me, deep down aims for: a monopoly, an unfair advantage. It is what, between the lines, you are taught at YC and what every VC expects of the "unicorn" portfolio companies that strike it rich. Fight to get to #1, wipe out the competition, reap the winnings, and, oh yeah, strike down any threats from, you know, up-and-coming competitors. So it goes.
It's business. It's ugly. If you don't like it, why are you doing a startup? If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?
> If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?
It seems weak to beg the government to protect your precious company. It also smacks of hubris to believe your business is somehow so special that it needs to always be raking in cash despite 'progress.'
> If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?
No, I think I'd be sipping cocktails on the beach. (This is probably why I'm an employee rather than a founder)
I don't mind paying taxes. But I was definitely cursing this last week as I spent hours filling out forms to calculate numbers that the IRS has already calculated on its own.
I want a letter in the mail saying, "If you don't fill out any paperwork, this is the amount we will return to you/ bill you for. If you get a different number, send in your paperwork by 4/15."
Doing taxes is a ridiculous waste of most people's time.
Disclaimer: I used to work for Intuit/TurboTax and am now building a product in the same space. On topic: They rightly get beat up for this, and get beat up for their lack of pricing transparency, but somehow manage to always receive a pass on the software itself. IMHO it's pretty atrocious... Sure, the math is almost always right but the math is a commodity. The experience itself is overly-verbose and littered with repeat questions, confusing questions, open-ended questions.
I don't know anyone who genuinely enjoys using TurboTax. I'm surprised there isn't more legitimate competition in this space.
I went from doing my taxes by hand to using TurboTax. The comparison is like night and day; I get a more complicated return done way faster using TurboTax than when I did things by hand.
The verbosity of TurboTax seems like a feature to me, not a bug, in that it pre-answers many obvious questions.
I don't enjoy using TurboTax because I don't enjoy doing my taxes no matter how good the software. But I certainly don't blame TurboTax for that.
The experience of actually using TurboTax is horrible, saved only by the frightening alternative that would be the experience of filling things out manually.
I'd expect that the reason why Intuit refuses to change things (clarifying and streamlining questions, better navigation between forms, etc. etc.) is a fear of risking that which "already works." Unless something significant changes in the market, I don't see Intuit re-envisioning TurboTax anytime soon.
I don't particularly enjoy using TurboTax, but hey, who enjoys doing their taxes. However, after using it for 10 years, I'm pretty used to it. When I have a question about how to do something, I can just look a a previous year's return and find a similar situation. While it isn't the most straightforward, at least it's relatively consistent.
I've been told by friends that there are less expensive programs out there, but the ~$80 that it cost me to do my taxes on TurboTax (Deluxe + State eFile fee) doesn't seem horrible (ie it isn't worth it to switch to something else to save an insignificant amount of money).
It does seem a bit backwards to have to pay to eFile in CA - I used to mail in my returns to get around this. But, at the end of the day, it's easier to just pay to eFile, and it only costs me maybe $20 more (plus I save a trip to the post office).
Overall, I've optimized to just using TurboTax, and I'm sure there is some laziness involved in that decision, but overall, unless something else is much much better, there isn't too much impetus to switch.
I've been using H&R Block's "At Home" software (the product previously known as "TaxCut") for over a decade without major complaints. ~$50 (the "Deluxe" edition + State + State filing fee) and about two hours of my time for a moderately complex joint return seems fair to me.
Every year they try to force me to pay to file online for state taxes... but it's free online in my state. It's just painfully obvious they're trying to rip me off on the state return.
So pathetic to have to even have to debate the benefit of IRS providing a website to file taxes. The free filing for income lower than $58K is a scam. If you have a 1099 for $1000 or capital gains of $500 you are out of luck, it is impossible to know what they will charge until after you enter the data. That's what this assholes call innovation. The only explanation is that Intuit is influencing members of congress with money, that's a crime. There is no possible argument to justify forcing 100 million people to waste time on something that should be trivial for most people.
Recently sitting down and manually preparing my taxes for the 9th year in a row now... I am not surprised.
This type of tax-code-manipulation must certainly have been happening since the dawn of time. That, or it was written to confuse the public on purpose.
Finding, reading, learning and understanding the tax code is no mean feat for a layman that was told nothing of it in school (none of us Canadians were taught taxes in public school). And this is coming from a relatively smart person who willingly reads cryptography papers and learns new programming languages for fun.
How much more difficult does TurboTax propose that the IRS make filing? Should we get individually filed returns notarized by our deceased relatives as well?
It usually takes me about 12-24 straight hours of work, and this is for a simple sole-proprietorship that just tallies up income and deducts expenses.
I manage to get it done properly and on time every year, but realizing so many schortcuts along the way that "they" could be making for us yet fail to year after year... it's really quite infuriating.
That, and the fact that I have to do the work to figure out how much I owe them. :/
I am proud to have completed my taxes myself and will strongly urge everybody I know not to vote for TurboTax with their wallets and why.
The crazy complexity of the US tax system is worse than it appears. There is a non-linear increase in complexity as one goes up the income scale. Have a few investments? More complexity. Real estate investments? More complexity. Starting a company? Even more complexity. Reasonably diversified individuals that have perhaps sold a company or two can expect a rough time.
One reason the complex system is tolerated is that the people it really hurts are very few. A friend of mine has never been audited and does nothing shady but spends roughly $30,000 on tax accountants every year preparing his returns because they are so complex. Fortunately for the rest of us, we just have to waste an inordinate amount of time with Turbo Tax.
It's not just the complexity. In Australia, we have a ridiculously complicated tax system but the free application that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) provides walks you through it pretty easily. Usually it only takes me about an hour to file it online, and then you have a return deposited to your bank account (or you get an invoice if you're unlucky) in eight to fifteen days.
The UI is pretty crap but on the whole the app works pretty well. It can 'pre-fill' quite a lot - stuff like salary that has been pre-taxed (called the PAYG system here), share dividends and franking information, bank interest details.
I wish company tax returns were similarly simple, but those have to go in either on paper or electronically through an accountant.
The current software is also just bad. I used to use TurboTax, but now I'm using TaxCut. TaxCut has the following issues, which are really just stupid at this point:
- Even though it could import last years return, it needs me to tell it how much of my 2012 tax refund from the state should be counted as 2013 income. I have to recalculate my last year's tax liability based on a lower deduction (because AMT may or may not erase the deduction anyway).
- It tells you that you have a slightly increased audit risk for one of about 5 different reasons, that are mutually exclusive and only one of them applies to my return.
This is the stuff that a computer can do very well, but is tedious and error-prone for me.
Moreover, the last time I used TurboTax and I'm sure this is true with TaxCut still, it wants me to decide if I want to file jointly or separately. Why in the world should I have to make that decision or do the returns twice. The software should be intelligent enough to do the calculations both ways, and present the better answer, with the option to overrule it.
If the government was making this software you could see it being this bad, but these companies are supposedly competing to do it; but it is still awful. Arguably, this is because the tax system is awful, but most of this is just coasting.
I also would expect that the state software wouldn't be very good (at least for unpopulous states), but most of my issues are with the federal return.
I'm sure that their lobbying helps a little but that's not really what keeps our taxes complicated.
Lots of conservative/anti-tax/right-wing/libertarian types see the difficulty of doing taxes as a feature, not a bug because it makes people hate taxes in general and more likely to vote for Republicans/fiscally conservative politicians.
According to Intuit's 2013 Annual Report page 41 [1] , they had $1.5B in Consumer Tax product revenue, which is primarily derived from TurboTax Online. That is 35% of their $4.2B total revenue in 2013.
They're creating a lot of ill-will for 35% of their business.
* Not trying to piss off PG. I honestly don't know the rules about gathering supporters on HN, but this is in the spirit of the community I hope *
If anybody would like to use their skills to fix this issue with me (ex Intuit TurboTax engineer) please hop over to this Ask HN and send me a message (email on thread). Also check the website for a bit more context: http://taxcompactor.com
It's a pretty big project, but it's very doable by a small team from this community. Tax preparation is fundamentally a software engineering problem, which is convenient.
Need everything from testing to project management with myself floating between roles. Remote is welcome - I'm in California. We'll use Basecamp, Github, Jira, Skype? to work - productivity suggestions welcome of course. True collaboration and fair equity.
[+] [-] bpeebles|12 years ago|reply
Between this and intentional complexity of the tax system that hinders making the IRS more efficient and hides true tax rates that corporations and higher income people... I dunno, it's one of the blacker marks against America in this aspect of policy.
But I've without doubt decide I'll try as hard as possible to never, ever pay a company like that to file tax returns.
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
Can you give me an example of this "intentional complexity?"
The income tax is complex for two reasons: 1) it's inherently difficult to define "income" in a practical way; 2) it's a tool used to further all sorts of economic and political policies.
The best class I took in law school was Federal Income Tax (I'm not a tax lawyer). It really showed me that things which seem unnecessarily complex, like depreciation schedules or the treatment of capital assets, exist to solve theoretical problems that can be analyzed mathematically.
Finally, it's not like accounting, pursuant to GAAP, is simple. And it seems obvious, to me anyway, that tax law must be at least as complex as accounting.
[+] [-] Twirrim|12 years ago|reply
Paper takes an obscene amount of human hours to process in comparison. Online tax filings should at the very least be free, or even give you an extra tax deduction.
[+] [-] wiredfool|12 years ago|reply
Previously, their system used Flash or Silverlight, and had horrible ui around tabbing between fields and copy/pasting. (Especially on the cap gains form).
This year, they're running jquery, bootstrap, and a whole host of other html5 javascripty goodness. The usability went up for me.
[+] [-] vorg|12 years ago|reply
But surely the purpose of the tax system isn't just to collect taxes but also to create employment. Intentional complexity keeps programmers employed, I mean the sort who aren't "developers" but the sort who instead work in firms whose business model is their computer system such as banks and insurance companies.
[+] [-] eli|12 years ago|reply
Might as well at least mention this year's revelation, which is that they fund fake Grassroots campaigns against tax reform: http://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-linked-to-g...
[+] [-] dan_bk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nixy|12 years ago|reply
This is how I do my tax return in Sweden:
1. Receive equivalent of W2, but all returns are already pre-calculated since the Swedish IRS knows all it needs to know to be able to prepare my returns.
2. If I'm happy with my W2 and pre-calculated returns, I simply send a text message with a PIN code to submit my returns.
3. If I'm not happy with my pre-calculated returns, I make the necessary changes in a simple form and mail it back to the IRS. Most people never do this.
[+] [-] haakon|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arbuge|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gk1|12 years ago|reply
After reading how it's done in Sweden: "Wow, our system is horrible."
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
You can say that we just shouldn't have deductions for these sorts of things, but that's a very programmer way to look at things (we need to get rid of these features because they would be hard to program). It's also not theoretically sound. An income tax is supposed to be a tax on net accretion to wealth. Expenditures that are non-consumptive should be excluded from taxable income because they don't represent an increase in wealth.
[+] [-] lobster_johnson|12 years ago|reply
If you do need to file anything, everything is now done digitally. No papers to mail. Every single tax form is provided in a very well-organized form system that also validates everything and support subforms ("This field requires that you submit a 27b-6. Click to enter it now."). It was a godsend when I was working as a freelancer and was doing my own accounting, because you could actually do your own accounting without going crazy.
[+] [-] SeanKilleen|12 years ago|reply
* We have languages for defining business processes & workflows (e.g. BPMN/BPML);
* We have open-source workflow engines (such as Activiti in Java and others all over the language spectrum) that utilize BPMN and terms;
* We have open-source ways of maintaining changes to these things over time.
I know it would be a monumental task, but why not start an open-source org to tackle Tax visibility at Federal and State levels?
With enough civic-minded hackers and accountants (both of which I believe exist), we could begin the process of transcribing the tax code into an interchange format. Then as we begin to see the updates each year, we can track the changes via source control.
Does anybody know if efforts like this have been undertaken anywhere else? Otherwise, I may have found my passion project.
Furthermore, does anyone know anything about the process by which Intuit makes this happen? They clearly have workflows and inputs into them; they had to get there somehow. I'd be interested in any/all knowledge that could be opened up on this.
[+] [-] bbanyc|12 years ago|reply
This also goes for consumption taxes - a 9% sales tax added at the register feels more intrusive than a 20% VAT included in the price tag, even though the VAT is much higher.
[+] [-] ryanobjc|12 years ago|reply
My gf who is a student was told by turbotax she owed over $300, after doing it on paper, the old fashioned way, the tax liability was 0. Why? The tuition deduction didn't apply on the EZ version of the form.
Ultimately turbo tax takes a conservative, strict and rigid approach to taxes, but as anyone knows this isn't the reality of doing taxes. For anyone with a moderately complex return, I think it's better to hire a tax professional, then at least you'll LEARN something for your money (which can be about the same amount!).
[+] [-] jaredsohn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nandhp|12 years ago|reply
I think they may have adjusted things compared to last year; it imported my data from last year (a new feature), and I thought there used to be a "Basic" product between "Free" and "Deluxe".
[+] [-] rmrfrmrf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
That said, I do agree with Intuit here. I don't think there's any evidence whatsoever that the government is capable of making software to either provide a service similar to TurboTax or to correctly pre-calculate your taxes. They don't have the technical expertise so they'd have to contract it out. We saw how well that worked with healthcare.gov. They are not incented to "find every deduction" like a private tax preparer is, quite the opposite in fact. They also simply don't know enough in many cases. They don't know what my self employment income and expenses are, for example, until I tell them.
The only way that government can make taxes easier is to simplify the tax code itself.
[+] [-] brianstorms|12 years ago|reply
It is what every web and mobile startup, it seems to me, deep down aims for: a monopoly, an unfair advantage. It is what, between the lines, you are taught at YC and what every VC expects of the "unicorn" portfolio companies that strike it rich. Fight to get to #1, wipe out the competition, reap the winnings, and, oh yeah, strike down any threats from, you know, up-and-coming competitors. So it goes.
It's business. It's ugly. If you don't like it, why are you doing a startup? If your startup is wildly successful and IPO's and turns into a giant, you don't think you will have to pay a lot of lobbyists to control the legislators?
[+] [-] mattgreenrocks|12 years ago|reply
It seems weak to beg the government to protect your precious company. It also smacks of hubris to believe your business is somehow so special that it needs to always be raking in cash despite 'progress.'
Disclaimer: I don't understand business.
[+] [-] lmm|12 years ago|reply
No, I think I'd be sipping cocktails on the beach. (This is probably why I'm an employee rather than a founder)
[+] [-] japhyr|12 years ago|reply
I want a letter in the mail saying, "If you don't fill out any paperwork, this is the amount we will return to you/ bill you for. If you get a different number, send in your paperwork by 4/15."
Doing taxes is a ridiculous waste of most people's time.
[+] [-] Figs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clogston|12 years ago|reply
I don't know anyone who genuinely enjoys using TurboTax. I'm surprised there isn't more legitimate competition in this space.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|12 years ago|reply
The verbosity of TurboTax seems like a feature to me, not a bug, in that it pre-answers many obvious questions.
I don't enjoy using TurboTax because I don't enjoy doing my taxes no matter how good the software. But I certainly don't blame TurboTax for that.
[+] [-] Bluestrike2|12 years ago|reply
I'd expect that the reason why Intuit refuses to change things (clarifying and streamlining questions, better navigation between forms, etc. etc.) is a fear of risking that which "already works." Unless something significant changes in the market, I don't see Intuit re-envisioning TurboTax anytime soon.
[+] [-] dlevine|12 years ago|reply
I've been told by friends that there are less expensive programs out there, but the ~$80 that it cost me to do my taxes on TurboTax (Deluxe + State eFile fee) doesn't seem horrible (ie it isn't worth it to switch to something else to save an insignificant amount of money).
It does seem a bit backwards to have to pay to eFile in CA - I used to mail in my returns to get around this. But, at the end of the day, it's easier to just pay to eFile, and it only costs me maybe $20 more (plus I save a trip to the post office).
Overall, I've optimized to just using TurboTax, and I'm sure there is some laziness involved in that decision, but overall, unless something else is much much better, there isn't too much impetus to switch.
[+] [-] yuhong|12 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-li...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/turbotax-maker-li...
[+] [-] twoodfin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iopq|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onislandtime|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Oculus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdfologist|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirdogealot|12 years ago|reply
This type of tax-code-manipulation must certainly have been happening since the dawn of time. That, or it was written to confuse the public on purpose.
Finding, reading, learning and understanding the tax code is no mean feat for a layman that was told nothing of it in school (none of us Canadians were taught taxes in public school). And this is coming from a relatively smart person who willingly reads cryptography papers and learns new programming languages for fun.
How much more difficult does TurboTax propose that the IRS make filing? Should we get individually filed returns notarized by our deceased relatives as well?
It usually takes me about 12-24 straight hours of work, and this is for a simple sole-proprietorship that just tallies up income and deducts expenses.
I manage to get it done properly and on time every year, but realizing so many schortcuts along the way that "they" could be making for us yet fail to year after year... it's really quite infuriating.
That, and the fact that I have to do the work to figure out how much I owe them. :/
I am proud to have completed my taxes myself and will strongly urge everybody I know not to vote for TurboTax with their wallets and why.
[+] [-] todd8|12 years ago|reply
One reason the complex system is tolerated is that the people it really hurts are very few. A friend of mine has never been audited and does nothing shady but spends roughly $30,000 on tax accountants every year preparing his returns because they are so complex. Fortunately for the rest of us, we just have to waste an inordinate amount of time with Turbo Tax.
[+] [-] stephen_g|12 years ago|reply
The UI is pretty crap but on the whole the app works pretty well. It can 'pre-fill' quite a lot - stuff like salary that has been pre-taxed (called the PAYG system here), share dividends and franking information, bank interest details.
I wish company tax returns were similarly simple, but those have to go in either on paper or electronically through an accountant.
[+] [-] cpwright|12 years ago|reply
This is the stuff that a computer can do very well, but is tedious and error-prone for me.
Moreover, the last time I used TurboTax and I'm sure this is true with TaxCut still, it wants me to decide if I want to file jointly or separately. Why in the world should I have to make that decision or do the returns twice. The software should be intelligent enough to do the calculations both ways, and present the better answer, with the option to overrule it.
If the government was making this software you could see it being this bad, but these companies are supposedly competing to do it; but it is still awful. Arguably, this is because the tax system is awful, but most of this is just coasting.
I also would expect that the state software wouldn't be very good (at least for unpopulous states), but most of my issues are with the federal return.
[+] [-] CoachRufus87|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
$10MM seems like a pittance. That's like what...2 minutes of superbowl ads? Can you really buy legislation for this cheap?
[+] [-] harryh|12 years ago|reply
Lots of conservative/anti-tax/right-wing/libertarian types see the difficulty of doing taxes as a feature, not a bug because it makes people hate taxes in general and more likely to vote for Republicans/fiscally conservative politicians.
[+] [-] RealGeek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mleonhard|12 years ago|reply
They're creating a lot of ill-will for 35% of their business.
[1] http://investors.intuit.com/files/Intuit%20FY13%20Form%2010-...
[+] [-] ecolner|12 years ago|reply
If anybody would like to use their skills to fix this issue with me (ex Intuit TurboTax engineer) please hop over to this Ask HN and send me a message (email on thread). Also check the website for a bit more context: http://taxcompactor.com
It's a pretty big project, but it's very doable by a small team from this community. Tax preparation is fundamentally a software engineering problem, which is convenient.
Need everything from testing to project management with myself floating between roles. Remote is welcome - I'm in California. We'll use Basecamp, Github, Jira, Skype? to work - productivity suggestions welcome of course. True collaboration and fair equity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599443
There are a few really great folks that have already reached out. Email me for details and we'll go from there. I'd love to hear from you.
[+] [-] arebop|12 years ago|reply