IRS makes free tax return program permanent and is asking all states to join in 2025
apnews.com
The IRS will make permanent the free electronic tax return filing system that it experimented with this year.
    • Fredselfish@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      2 months ago

      Wait asking the states to allow this? Great means all the red states like the one I am stuck in will opt out fucking us over.

      • GiveMemes@jlai.luEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        Usually they ask politely at first then ‘ask’ by threatening to pull interstate funding. (MADD or Common Core, for example)

      • root@precious.netEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        The states probably need to opt in for state income tax filing or data. Red states typically don’t have income taxes and wouldn’t need this to begin with.

      • paf0@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        2 months ago

        Yes, both sides bad, but Biden less bad. Making government easy to work with should be the bare minimum. We don’t have to throw them a parade every time they do something sane, they work for us.

      • Shyfer@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        1114·
        2 months ago

        I would say helping perpetrate a genocide slightly outweighs making filing taxes a little easier. It’s a very, “He makes the trains run on time” sentiment.

        Although I do like it. We’ve been due this for a long time. I wonder if Turbo Tax is freaking out.

  • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
    26·
    2 months ago

    Wild to read how the US tax system works when you’re used to the EU.

    Maybe one day you’ll also get automatic tax filling without lifting a finger.

        • herrvogel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          34·
          2 months ago

          I think what they meant was forcing people to do it all by hand invites mistakes, which are then fined.

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            Happened to my dad once in Canada.

            He missed a savings/checking account which earned some interest. CRA knows about these as the bank sends it to them.

            They made a big deal about hiding it and fined him with interest.

            It’s totally stupid.

  • Tronn4@lemmy.worldEnglish
    362·
    2 months ago

    Any takers on what party of small government will try to dismantle this?

    • barsquid@lemmy.worldEnglish
      242·
      2 months ago

      You want a Biden TAX PANEL to decide if your grandmother has to pay or not? We will defend your right to choose the tax prep service of your choice!

  • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    2 months ago

    Dearest American friends,

    I’m happy for you. Given your tax system this seems like a really positive step forward.

    I hope it makes your lives better.

  • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    I’ll be the contrarian - this could be good for Intuit.

    They were already forced to support free filing for simple returns. This IRS Direct File has similar eligibility, so Intuit already wasn’t making money off them, but now Intuit also doesn’t need the cost of scaling up for them

    Intuit gets to take a bunch of freeloaders off their support costs, and can focus where their real profits are: people with more complex returns or higher income, that also don’t need an accountant

    Intuit also gets to act less scammy. The only way they were making anything off those freeloaders was selling them things they don’t need

    • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      8·
      2 months ago

      They made money off upselling people who thought it would be free. Or another way was to wait to tell them about the charges until you’ve spent a couple hours on the application. …or the way they would sell you last years tax information back to you to save you a few hours filling out forms.

      United states of monetization.

  • EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    91·
    2 months ago

    why are they leaving something like this up to the states?

    Return free filing is really hard to find, every time I need to pay my taxes again, it gets harder and harder to find.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.worldEnglish
    181·
    2 months ago

    My last attempt at efiling went real well right up to the efile step at which point the online service used demanded 17.00 for the priviledge. Ended up downloading, printing, and mailing it in.

  • Furbag@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    I signed up to do the free IRS filing but got rejected unfortunately because I had entered into a domestic partnership which made me ineligible. Not really sure why since I was filing single anyway but oh well, this is good news and I can’t wait to try it next year.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
      15·
      2 months ago

      The test was limited to make sure the core fundamentals worked. Your situation is an “edge case,” i.e an unlikely situation that makes things much harder to code.

      It sounds like they cut you out to make sure the product worked, and will now be on working “edge cases,” by far the hardest part of any computer engineering.

  • johny_joe_1975@discuss.onlineEnglish
    23·
    1 month ago

    As a person who not live in US, I wonder why people need private tax filing like TurboTax ? As where I live, my employer (the company I work for) do tax filing for me. I just need to sign, agree that they will do my tax filling.

    • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      1 month ago

      Funny thing is, in a way our employers already do our taxes, they send everything to the IRS. We just have to manually input the same data into forms to send to the IRS. If you get it wrong they’ll know and can fine you. That being said, individuals filing their own taxes does have its place, people have multiple jobs, children, houses, debt, bank intrest earned etc. An employeer should’t have to keep track of all that. The individual should just be able to collect all the approiate forms and send them in, not have to transfer info from form w4 to form 1090.

      Private tax filing companies like Turbo Tax have heavily lobbied with campaign contributions bribes.

      Any attempt to fix the system was blocked. The silver linning (if you can call it that) was they had to make a free version availbe to low income individuals.

      However that “free” version is completely burried and not advertised anywhere. They’d rather you use the free version of TurboTax which only free for the basic person with a job, house and maybe a kid. Anything more will cost (my info is a bit outdated and skewed, I’m not really looking at the exact service).

      Then it’s filled the dark patterns and scare tatics to get you to pay up every step of the way.

      Welcome to land of freedom and the illusion of taxation with representation.

  • cccrontab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1952·
    2 months ago

    Fuck all corpo scum! Intuit, TurboTax and H&R Block can all fuck right off! Corporate lobbying motherfuckers can burn in hell.

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          2 months ago

          And your financial information need never leave the IRS and be put in the hands of a private company.

        • ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          2 months ago

          No no, some of us enjoy struggling through page after page of attempts to push premium products and services, and never mind that these “free file” options generally don’t cover both state and federal. But hey, yay for H&R, they really need the business, right?

        • pete_the_cat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          2 months ago

          I had to mail in my state taxes for NY due to NYC regulations, which I didn’t know about since I’ve been using TurboTax for 7 years. I was only informed of this after I had filed my taxes federally using the IRS system. There is no way to just file your state taxes online, you have to do both and if you submit them a second time it just gets rejected.

          It’s good that they’re doing this, but it caused a lot of headaches for me that I was unaware of.

      • cccrontab@lemmy.worldEnglish
        472·
        2 months ago

        Yeah but now H&R has all your financial information. It’s “free” but that doesn’t mean there is no cost.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
        351·
        2 months ago

        after h&r block wrecked my taxes and cost me months of back and forth with the IRS, i take every possible opportunity to steer people away from them

        i sat there and had to repeatedly correct the ancient walking corpse they hired part time to do tax filing as she kept entering wrong numbers on the computer. who knows wtf they did after i left

        fuck h&r block. after that bullshit experience, i signed on with an actual business accountant and never had a single fuckup in 10+ years