Microblog Memes

The tax system is so complicated, most people can’t handle navigating it on their own. Most people have jobs where taxes are automatically removed from pay checks and sent to both state and federal tax agencies. However, that amount is just an estimate and once a year (or quarter) you need to file paperwork to confirm whether you over or underpaid and then you either get a rebate (without interest), or you’ll need to send in a payment to make up the difference. That paperwork has been lobbied to remain as complicated as possible so that companies like Intuit can provide services that tax payers find useful and continue to pay for. This is more complicated for business owners, both big and small.

No. You can file your taxes for free. And, if you ever pay to file your taxes, you're not paying the government, you're paying for tax preparation software or for a tax professional to do your taxes for you.

But! Even if your tax situation is very simple, filing your taxes on your own is difficult. In Europe, the government sends you a form with what they think you owe based on all the information they have on you. If you agree with the calculation, you just send the form back and either pay or receive a refund.

In the US your employer gives you some sheets of paper with some values on it. Your bank gives you some different forms. And so-on. When it's tax time, you gather up all that paper, hope you have it all, try to remember what forms you need and if you have them, and then painstakingly try to copy the right values from the W-2, 1099-INT, and so on into the right boxes on form 1040, 1040 Schedule 1, 1040 Schedule 2, 1040 Schedule H, 1095-A, and so on. Then, you try to do the calculations where it says to multiply the value from 1040 row 43 by the correct value in table A9. A9 has different values depending on how many dependants you have, and if you're filing jointly or alone.

Basically, it's doable on your own, especially if you have a fairly standard / simple tax situation. But, it's easy to make a mistake along the way. If you ever need an explanation about what you're supposed to do, that information exists, but it's in accountanteze, and it often refers to about 5 other IRS publications that just complicate things further. And, when you're dealing with thousands of dollars, a mistake could be really costly. So, most people buy a copy of TurboTax every year for $30, which somehow turns into $60 by the time you're actually ready to file because the $30 version only covers people in situation X, and since you have Y you need to upgrade.

TurboTax then takes $1 out of the $60 you paid them, and goes to Washington with that to lobby politicians to keep the tax code complicated so that people need to buy a new TurboTax every year. (Oh yeah, and things change just enough that every year you need to buy the latest software to file your taxes.)

I mean, yes, because if they catch you evading taxes then they get a free slave for the term of your incarceration. To them it's a win-win.

Oh good I'm not the only one who doesn't understand.

Home of the slave.

for some perspective:

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/digital-services-individuals/netfile-overview/certified-software-netfile-program.html

canada's federal tax website lists all of the free services that you can utilize, and they even include NetFile so you don't have to upload or submit any of your docuements.

i hear we're looking for new provinces..

Remember all those (exactly) 1 million dollar "donations" all those CEOs were giving to Trump's inaugural campaign? Those weren't donations, they were bribes and kissing of the ring. Pledge loyalty (and pay a small fee) and the government will work for you.

Politicians are cheap, I remember once seeing a list of how much a lobbyist buys support from politicians for and the list was like $5k $2k $3k $6k. It’s ridiculous

This is from 1889. Literally nothing has changed. Go back 1000 years and it's the same fucking shit. Even 3000 years ago in Egypt. It's always rich vs everybody else just in different outfits.

If I had to guess, this is a holdover from the 90s where people didn't trust a quick calculation, and probably doubted the application was properly choosing the standard or itemized deductions.

This isn’t capitalism anymore this is something else entirely.

That's the thing, it is capitalism. It's always been about those who have more exploiting those who have less.

The problem is this generation of workers has been duped into believing that corporate profits are a good thing, rather than an indication of workers getting taken advantage of.

It's all bass-ackwards by design. I stopped trying to find rhyme or reason and just settled on "most people are dumb as shit."

Capitalism demands that line must always go up.

Some of this is about accepting bribes. A lot more is simply ideology.

Trump's people do not believe the IRS should exist and they are trying to dismantle it. DirectFile is just low hanging fruit, intended to make people more frustrated with tax filing and more easy to radicalized in an attempt dismantle and replace with tariffs.

Like, this is a real decades long project that goes way beyond Trump. Abolishing the income tax was Goldwater's wet dream.

They might call it something like a convenience fee.

I mean I feel like it depends on their role in the company. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing the work they do. I know at least a few people who work in billing for a healthcare company that don't want to do that work and understand it's bad but don't really have another choice as they couldn't get any other jobs. I'm not gonna blame someone for working at a bad company unless they're like an executive or other high up person who could take their skills to a different industry.

Historically senators and representatives side with companies who've only given them thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in contributions. It's very cheap to buy a vote.

Though often there's also the understanding that a career spent supporting them will be rewarded with a cushy, high-paying lobbying job once they leave politics. Or paid speaking gigs if you're the President.

US tax code is (deliberately) complicated and unlike other countries, you need to manually fill out the forms with your financial data even though the government already knows it and what you owe (minus exemptions that the vast majority of citizens won't claim). This is because there is a major industry around tax preparation, and the big names (such as Intuit) have aggressively lobbied for decades to keep the process as complicated and inconvenient as possible so that people are forced to pay them to fill out their tax forms. This lobbying has also resulted in the legally mandated free filing options being buried and hard to find, with many people not even knowing they exist.

Tax prep is a huge scam with many billions of dollars behind it. Weather providers are probably going to be next in the news, since they've been trying to kill the free government-run forecasts and force people onto their paid platforms for just as long.