cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25117460
Summary
Elon Musk claimed on X that he eliminated the IRS team responsible for the “Direct File” program, which allows Americans to file taxes online for free.
His statement came in response to a right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
However, the Treasury Department confirms that the Direct File system remains active, offering free tax filing with customer support.
The program, available in English and Spanish, is optional, allowing taxpayers to choose between using it or filing their taxes manually.
A right-wing MAGA influencer called the “direct file” tax program a "far left /…/
Here in Estonia, the castle of “far left” in Europe (shh, don’t spoil the joke, comrades, we want them to think we’re dark red here ;) )…
…for something like 15 years already, you file your taxes like this:
- some day in February, your internet bank reminds you to send a report to the tax office
- you click “send”
- some day in February, you read in a newspaper that “you can file your taxes now”
- you open up emta.ee, log in with your ID card, and see a pre-filled declaration
- if you’re lucky (99% are), it’s been filled correctly and you click “confirm”, otherwise you click “edit”
- you get to see if you have returns or need to pay extra
- if you have returns, you can choose if you want the money (typically if it’s big, you do) or want to donate the small change to a non-profit
It typically takes about 15 minutes.
If it’s a bad year and the automatically filled declaration was incorrect, things will differ of course - then you wait until next winter for a court to resolve the dispute. If you can write a complaint in legalese, it costs about 20 €, but if you need a lawyer, you shell out real money. I’ve had a bad year once. Most people never have one.
American here, I didn’t work this year (stay at home parent) and we only need to file my wife’s taxes. If it goes smoothly it’ll take an hour, minimum, and we’re usually unsure if we filed it all out correctly…
And even if they accept your return and pay you then you still can’t be sure
In Hungary, the country of the far left Orbán quasi-dictatorship, the tax filing process is if you are an employee, in May you go to the website and click okay if you’re happy with it. If you forget, it’s just an implied acceptance of what you’ve seen, so most people never do anything and some don’t even know how to.
If Orban is far left I’d hate to see what you call right. Literal Satan establishing hell on earth?
Nah, they’re being facetious.
Doing it this way would cost the IRS less than the way our current system runs.
Does everyone have to file taxes? In the UK, unless you’re renting a property or otherwise have some income on the side like that, you don’t file taxes at all, it’s just all done automatically.
Most everyone in the US files. Even if the gov withheld taxes from your payroll you still file. The gov knows how much you made, now you have to arrive at the same number or you can get fined if you claim more and they catch you in an audit.
What’s funny is, on the tax form there’s a field asking if you got money from illegal activity like selling drugs…they expect you to declare it and pay the percentage… The ultimate gov will look the other way as long as they get their cut.
It’s basically the same thing in Sweden, but in the rare chance that the tax agency makes a mistake, it’s usually resolved before summertime without any court issues.
In Denmark We’ve had easy tax filing on the Internet for more than a decade, and before that it was also extremely easy, as we got a form with all the usual data filled out, and we only had to send in if we had changes. I haven’t done my taxes for 30 years!!!
Except when we bought a house we’ve had a few tax deductions on energy saving changes, which took 2 minutes to enter.Every piece of standard information is collected automatically, like wages, bank info, stock profits, real estate taxes, and the rest if you have anything additional is super easy to fill out. The old paper tax return form is AFAIK completely abandoned since more than a decade ago.
USA under Trump with Elron Musk making it even worse is what we would call working like monkeys in a cage. If they really end this program, it makes it more difficult to do your taxes, AND cost tax payers MORE!!
Even this easy file was ineligible for anyone who did any IRA which americans have to do to have retirment funds and is super common. Of course the idea was the thing was supposed to be expanded not sunk.
Sorry as a non American IDK what IRA is in this context, usually it’s Irish Republican Army, but that doesn’t fit the context. Obviously pension funds are automatic too here, I just forgot to mention those.
sorry I thought mentioning it had to do with retirement would be enough. if you put money into a special account you can’t touch till you retire then they will not tax it right away but only when you withdraw it once your retired. Alternatively you can pay the tax and put it into an account where they will not tax any investment growth of it or tax what you withdraw. Yeah I even feel stupid typing it out. I hope this helps anyone in a country with politicians trying to sell privatizing shit.
sorry I thought mentioning it had to do with retirement would be enough.
I prefer to know what an acronym stands for, before claiming I know what is meant, and looking up 3 letter acronyms for another country is not as easy as I suspect most Americans think it is.
But from your explanation I now figure the RA is retirement account, so now I only lack the meaning of the I? Which with my new knowledge I could look up, and find out means Individual.
So now I know in this context, IRA is Individual Retirement Account.
ah. I see. I thought you want meaning and did not realize it was more just the name thing.
Thanks, it was good enough to figure it out. 😀
Individual Retirement Account
👍
They’re still developing it. This was a test rollout to see if they could do it. IRS software was still running on cobol mainframes. Upgrading from these things take time and a lot of development. And they’re doing it from scratch.
I mean its sorta funny though because if someone does not put in their taxes the irs will send them a filled out one and ask for a signature to go forward. They also have this great form 1040x that would be perfect to send a prefilled tax return out and leave room for modifications.
This real only works for W2 workers, and a few 1099ers.
They know when you leave some things (banks, brokerages, employers) that also report to them off. They don’t know everything.
So yes, they could prefill it a majority, but the filing companies didn’t want that to happen
Thanks, we know the rest of the modern world has it better in literally every way literally everywhere else. Can someone just like invade and save us please?
Sorry, you’ve spent 75 years arming your own government to the point of making this impossible. In the name of “security”. Do you feel secure yet?
Imagine calling it a “Defense” budget and going to invade the Middle East, on the near opposite side of the world, twice in 3 years.
Unfortunately USA is extremely good at violence, probably the best in the world, so I guess you’ll just have to fight it out amongst yourselves. But I wish all the best to all the reasonable Americans, that still believe in decency and democracy.
This is most accurate and depressing assessment of the United States I have ever read.
Being a child of the 60’s in Europe, the first President I remember is Jimmy Carter. It is really disappointing that we have seen no other president of USA come even close to caliber of Jimmy Carter.
Nobody since can even “Nå ham til sokkerholderne.” Sorry but I can’t find a fitting translation, the literal translation is “reach his sock holders” the closest AFAIK is “head and shoulders above”, but it doesn’t really illustrate the huge distance between Jimmy Carter and every US president since.
Back then we dreamed of peace, tolerance and progress of society. Since then it’s been all about money, and at the most scraping a few benefits for the worst off.
So when you say it’s depressing, you are goddam right it’s depressing. USA threw away their future, mostly to just benefit big oil and the 1%. But more than that, almost all of the developed world is following in the footsteps of USA!? So although it’s not nearly as bad, we are going the wrong way too. 😥
Once they have control of all the people and property used to commit that violence… I mean, it’s not going to stay within US borders, is it?
No probably not, I hope MAGA will be thrown out when the stupid people rooting for them realize what it really is.
But as things are going, it doesn’t look good.
I love turbo tax and intuit. They’re my favorite companies. I hope I can give more money to the IRS via intuit and hrblock. Thank you, Elongated Muskrat, you’ve truly saved America.
Wow! Holy shit!
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Bluesky will delete X, but give him time.
Then they’ll become X eventually.
Deport this asshole back to South Africa
Unfortunately, he’s now an American citizen. Fortunately, we have treason charges for this kind of thing :).
But I thought Trump already got rid of birthright citizenship?
He doesn’t have citizenship through birthright. That would be if his mom gave birth to him in the US while she lacked citizenship of her own, no? He just went through the standard naturalization process (allegedly)
He’s not a citizen. He never filed a 601a when he started with Paypal.
Everything he filed after not doing that should have been thrown out due to docket controls.
Including the charters for his other businesses? Meaning the $400B are ill-gotten gains?
I would hazard that $400B qualify as ill-gotten gains regardless of legality.
He came here illegally under false pretenses meaning his citizenship can legally be nullified and expunged. To say nothing of the administration he supports trying to find ways to nullify citizenship of immigrants and natural born citizens who are and always have been here legally.
I say we ignore that and just charge him with treason.
The sooner average Americans realize that these people are America’s enemies, the sooner we can do something about it.
The IRS?
So you are saying we better not wait standing up?
I love it when Nazi African fascists take control of the American monetary system.
How does he do this stuff? It’s not like he’s personally logging into the server and shutting down the website.
Presumably he just directs other people to do things.
If I was in the IT department I would already be looking for a new job, and I would just tell him that I’d done it, it’s not like he’s going to check. Although in this case it seems more a situation where he’s just running his mouth.
If I was in the IT department I would be scrambling to get backups out the door to responsible parties
Lots of DR drills gonna be strained to their limits I’m betting
There’s a term for this: entrapment.
That’s fine. I wasn’t planning to pay taxes to a fascist government anyway.
Uh, if you live in the US and aren’t super rich, then good luck with that.
Change my withholding to $0 and go on about my life.
Hope you like huge fines, liens, and potential prison.
Arrest his ass and lock him away for life!
We can buy rope at Home Depot.
I already got rope
https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions
Read the instructions, download what you need, print it out, fill it out, and mail it in.
If you don’t have capital gains taxes or deferred tax deductions, doing your taxes is really easy.
That said, this is a way to stop providing free services that private companies want to get paid to do. HR Block makes billions from people who are either too lazy or too bad at math to do simple stuff. Real accountants earn their living on complicated taxes, but millions of Americans can do a 1040 EZ, which takes about 5 minutes to fill out.
The statistics show that even though 70% of Americans are eligible to file for free with the IRS tools, only 3% actually use that tool to file for free. So I’m not sure how much business is even being lost here.
I have capital gains, capital losses carryover, foreign investment taxes withheld, bank interest, and the $50 I made on twitch I probably need to file as well.
So that means I need to do the capital gains worksheet to figure out the exact tax
Yet I still file free every year
I have all of that, too, but I just do paper taxes because I’m old and too lazy to figure out how to do anything else.
Even better, use the free fillable forms. You can fill them out and submit them all within your browser, no mail or paper required. Even has a
do the mathbutton that will add stuff up for you.Have been using it for the past two tax cycles and once you understand it it’s quite easy, only 2 pages needed if you’re doing the standard deduction with a w2.
And get fined because I’m overseas and the mail takes so long to get there the IRS fines me for a late filing
Last time the IRS sent me mail here it took almost half a year for me to receive it
File for an extension now?
Reminder Elon cannot code
I’m not sure he can do anything well.
Except Nazi salutes. That arm thrust was chock full of intent and came straight from the heart!
It was the most awkward and embarrassing Nazi salute in the history of Nazi salutes. He didn’t even do that well.
The irony of course being that actual Nazis wouldn’t have liked him because he was South African. Him being white would probably be the minor mitigating factor but had they won their war he wouldn’t have had a nice time.
came straight from the heart
Bullshit. You’re telling me he has a heart?
Well not anymore, of course, as it went out to all his fellow Nazis
That’s often the case with
CEOsdespots. They’re more showmen/cheerleaders that people want to undress with their stonks. Otherwise, just talentless hacks that get paid too much money.
You’d think that if DOGE was really DOGE that this is the exact kind of thing they’d double down on and make really good, saving everyone shit load of money.
Oh, you see, you fucked up like… three words into your comment
You mean instead of “deleting” it right?
Ya, don’t delete, make it even better and save even more money for everyone
Ok. For a second I wanted to down vote because I thought you meant they should double down on what they did.
Thanks for asking for clarification first!
You’d think that’s the case, if you thought saving money or helping average Americans was actually their goal. The American government is being carved up as fast as they can get away with it. Gotta free up cash to give billionaires more tax cuts!
Don’t forget… Eliminating any government oversight that might affect their business interests…
And eliminating any funding they can for media that will speak against them.
Edit: these people are directly tanking the platform Mr. Rogers had. The magic school bus, sesame Street, Arthur, Clifford, Barney, Reading Rainbow… They come from PBS, which is under attack by Elon Musk and Donald Trump
I get advertisements trying to give free pamphlets to kids about what Trump has done for our country and how he is saving it. He’s looking for the fucking Hitler Youth. Period
They also learned from the wall. Can’t pay to deport 10-20 million for free. Gotta enact tariffs and just stop paying for anything they can get away with.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
How? If things get too hot here, they’ll just move to another country. Oh… I see now. But then that’s just passing our problems onto someone else like those South Africa bastards did.
There shouldn’t be any place on earth where it is safe to be absurdly rich.
I’d pay more taxes to fund a team of rich hunters.
I actually disagree with this. I believe its their fear that is driving them. Fear of losing money, wealth, and power. Fear of death and being ‘controlled’ by the status quo.
Nothing will meaningful improve until the rich put down their fears and begin thinking rationally and with compassion for humanity.
I’m sure they’ll come around if we let them know.
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Whats your plan to make that happen?
Waow never heard that one b4
About what I expected from you.
They already do, thats why they’re doing this to government, which they fear. They need to fear public reprisal
