interwebs

It’s called “the information superhighway”, thank you very much. 😄

Oh we can file our taxes online, we're just required to pay massive amounts of money to a corporate middleman to do it.

I still write 2 cheques a year because my water bill can only be paid via physical mail (or in person I guess), I’m pretty sure fax is still common in our medical industry.

my wife is disputing a Healthcare charge. Went to a specialist 13 times, they reimbursed us 9 times but not the other 4, at a cost of about $800.

we have to communicate with the appeals center by fax, and wait for their snail mail response.

I still write checks, mostly to pay contractors and tip my hairdresser. I wrote a tip for a contractor the other day and made it out to cash. He said that was too old-school and he was afraid the bank wouldn't accept it!

I thought I had gotten rid of cheques, but I had to get a book specifically to get my passport.

I'm in the USA and we've been able to file our federal taxes for free online for like a decade, I'm not sure what these people are talking about. What's new here is that this is the IRS's official tool.

Previously we had to use an outside service -- but it was -- and still is -- free for normal people/people with normal taxes (eg I have 3 kids and a mortgage and I use it every year). State taxes are another story -- that's usually about $20. And that probably hasn't changed; state taxes have nothing to do with our IRS.

Faxes... No, no we have not gotten rid of them. On the other hand, that means shenanigans are still available!

Couldn’t hear you over the sound of my freedom

…nevermind, that was somebody rolling coal

I guess canada is 21 years behind now....

That is what happens when you let corporations run your country

Yeah, bummer. I'll have to wait I guess.

Which is funny considering this is only for federal and not state taxes. Do they say why it’s limited to specific states?

so the most populous states, and somehow, 2 in the bottom 5.

Surprised Texas is in that list.

Yeah, what a bummer that free federal tax returns are only offered to a few states.

It would probably have better adoption if it didn't have such a scammy-sounding name.

A better idea is to go to irs.gov and use their free file wizard to see which service is free for you. I used 1040.com this year. Last year I used freetaxusa.com, but this year that would not have been free for me due to my change in income. Which service is free depends on your state, income, and income complexity.

For a couple of years CreditKarma was the best free solution. Then Intuit bought them.

that's who I use! $15 to file state, free federal; I mean that's pretty close to 'free' compared to Turbo/Inuit pushing you close to $100 after all the BS. And freetaxusa keeps my info for subsequent years, etc.

I've been using this for years and have been happy with the service. If I have to pay for something at least I'm not giving money to TurboTax.

Also, check with your state tax site, as sometimes they have free state filing options.

Why is it only available in such a limited number of states?

It takes at least that long for me to figure out if I was a Lloyds underwriter on the second Tuesday after the third waxing moon every year.

Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.

The other guy linked the answer, but I'm going to explain it anyway:

In the US, companies have the freedom to bribe lobby our congress members by giving them money that's totally unrelated to their vote you guys. The reasoning behind that being ok is that the congress official in question is still technically free to vote however they choose despite the money given to them. The reason lobbying works is the threat that the congress person might not get that money next time if they vote against that company's interests.

Just so you all know, because our congress members make a government salary of about 150k-250k/year, it's surprisingly cheap (from a rich company perspective) to lobby them, with lots of payments being in the low thousands. So for obscenely wealthy companies (like intuit), it's much cheaper to pay just enough guys off to kill a movement than for them to suffer the actual consequences of that movement.

In this case, intuit's entire business model depends on American taxes seeming like this mysterious and unapproachable thing that Americans have to pay a third party for in order to not get thrown in jail by the IRS. And given that intuit (and companies like H&R block) rake in billions each year, it's comparatively pennies to pay off congress officials to keep it that way.

-> 'Merica

Lobbyists - quite disgusting.

Legalized corruption 😎

Same reason why our Healthcare system is fucked, it being fucked helps the Insurance Companies make money.

Most nations don't require you to do anything other than check your payslips unless your situation is complex.

Hmmmm 🤔

It's the same as going to a bank and letting the teller look at your face. It's to prevent someone from stealing your identity using a picture of your ID.

How can they verify the ID is real without physically seeing it? They look up the info but still need to verify that you are the person on the ID.

Stupid fraud prevention ugh!

Listen folks, if you have a driver license, they already have your face, so settle down.

A video of your face, you say?

You'd think a social insurance number would be enough...

While... I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you're in the trash example used is... not great.

Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they're still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I'm not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I'm at now.

k if u single but looking to file jointly 👉👈

The things that the federal government is responsible for are laid out in the Constitution, everything the Constitution does not place into the responsibilities of the federal government is left to state or local authorities.

Tenth Amendment:

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

It's 50 states in a trench coat

make it make sense

We're a slightly tighter coupled EU with less history of separation. We're states that are united. Not one big ol unified country.

The idea of checks and balances on the exercise of government powers extends to even the state/federal relationship.

We're rolling the pilot out in phases, and it is not available to the public yet. It is expected to be more widely available in mid-March.

Check back mid-march ig

Tax Hawk is another software that offers free federal filing.

I know it's just a trial right now. The IRS still offers free tax prep through the free file program. The tires of income don't matter.

No Login dot gov

No support in most states

No ACA filers

No app payments

Lots of reason to be frustrated. BUT! This is an absolutely delicious blow to the Intuit lobbyists and if it can handle the simplest of the simple, think of the green light they’ll have towards eventual global parity!

Been so bad (and evil) for so long, I’m in the mood to celebrate more than nitpick. (No Login dot gov I will say is the funniest thing not to be considered MVP - understandable but funny.)

I mean I still login to the VA with DOD credentials or ID.me. They just recently created a VA account specific login. Login.gov is a great idea that won't get any traction because our government's departments are mostly siloed. They quite often just don't even know something is available.

https://www.nextgov.com/...

the fact it’s a limited pilot makes me optimistic

:-/

I've seen far too many good ideas go through a "limited pilot" program, outperform their intended targets, piss off someone in the DC corporate circuit, and get their budgets vaporized by the next Congress.

Today is the last day a company has to file and send w2's so most folks should actually have them by now or very very soon.

I can't use it because I live in the wrong state. Truly some fucking bullshit.

No matter what is planned right now, if this isn’t a PR disaster but the opposite and all the direct filers are gleeful about it, I think it’ll be good enough publicity for them to broaden it to most any use case.

CPAs with a million times more insight may need to correct me there though.

I'm sure it'll support everything the irs accepts eventually

You get as much back as you would if you knew what to claim.

If you have a simple return then it should be identical. There's only one way to fill out form 1040 correctly. Its unclear if this will walk you through itemizing or more obscure deductions like other places do.

It differs because more of it goes to the defense budget than any other country by a high order of magnitude.

it's a soft launch of only 13 states. they'll roll it out to everyone next year probably

1040EZ hasn't been a thing since 2018.

Then figure it out because people have been talking about it for a long time.

Oh yeah. See we've intentionally made it hard for our government to do normal things because Freedom^tm^. If we want to create a new web app like this we have to go about the worst way possible. By using the lowest bidder who will then cheat in every way possible to keep more of the money as profit.

Most of the computer systems in use in the US government were developed in the 1980's and 1990's by in house software developers. Even a lot of the "new" systems are literally just GUI interfaces slapped on the old system. This is because one of the first things George Bush did was gut a lot of the government's internal support structure and force the civil service to rely on contracting.

Then you have corporate lobbying, which is why filing taxes is so hard in the first place. They literally pay the politicians to create a business opportunity for them and misery for the everyone else. Combining the two and it's not hard for the lobbyists to get something like this cancelled, underfunded, or poisoned in some way.

So yeah welcome to America the land of proud dysfunction.

Yes. It can be a huge pain. Especially when compared to how easy Skatteetaten makes it.