I don't know much about investing, but i wonder if it would it be a good time to short those companies?

I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.

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?

are you not capable of taking a win? it's a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.

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.

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.

Kind of? Are you going to tell us that the US healthcare system is "sorta silly" next?

I think that some companies like turbotax are employing lobbyists to make impossible filing for taxes unless you go through a gatekeeper

Doubt there is one. The hard truth is that most Americans' taxes are pretty simple and straightforward. We can stop pretending that copying some boxes from a W2 and a 1099 is difficult.

I mean, personally I wish we'd stop pretending that the IRS isn't already fully aware of what you owe and could just do the filling for you, like in other countries, but until Grover Norquist fucks off forever we're stuck where we are.

Unless it's changed from the pilot, it's only useful if you file a 1040EZ or take some really basic deductions. Anything beyond the basics, like any kind of investments, means you need to use a different tool.

But freetaxusa is still free for all but the most complex cases.

I expect that you'll have to pay the money according to the statement

I hope more scrutiny is given to ID.me. I'll only be using Direct File if they remove it as a dependency.

Seems odd. They've been pushing login.gov like everywhere.

Interesting that third parties like TurboTax aren't required to obtain copies of your photo ID.

You’re not supposed to be wrecking our economy like that. Spend, baby, spend.

🤞