It would be great to have a free, IRS-provided alternative to the various for-profit softwares out there. One that’s not hidden behind dark patterns desperately funneling you towards the paid product.
But the proposed solutions always seem to be geared towards the simplest returns (admittedly fine for 90% of taxpayers). Please don’t leave taxpayers like me out in the cold! My federal return was over 15 pages this year, and gets more complex every year. We hate Intuit, too…trust me!
> It would be great to have a free, IRS-provided alternative to the various for-profit softwares out there.
See, you've fallen for the trap too. The IRS already prepares your return for you based on all the information they have, they just won't show it to you. Instead you have to use third party software to prepare basically the exact same document and then you can risk fines or jail if yours is different.
This is a myth that the IRS already knows what everyone owes. They usually have most of your income information because it gets reported by employers and banks. They have information on some deductible expenses but not all. They often don’t have the cost basis for capital gains, so unless you want a huge tax bill, it behooves you to provide it. I didn’t fill out 15 pages of information they already have.
Yes, for 90% of the population who have one W2 and take the standard deduction, the IRS could just mail you the bill. But that was the point of my comment: don’t leave the rest of us in Intuit’s clutches!
Have you heard of people paying fines for getting their taxes slightly wrong?
I know people who spend 5 minutes filling out the form with rough adjusted guesses based on the previous year, send it in, and thus trigger the IRS sending the corrected version.
They will charge you extra [edit: I meant "the amount you owe"] if you underestimate, but this is hardly a fine.
"Charge you extra" is in fact the definition of a fine. :)
If you are off by more than 10% or $5000 you have to pay 120% of the under payment plus interest from your filing date. If you overpay you just get a letter and a check with no interest.
We could simplify the tax code. That doesn't mean a flat tax because the marginal rates are the simplest part of our current tax code. Get rid of most (all?) deductions and tax income at the resulting appropriate level. There's no good reason capital gains should be taxed at a different level than other income. The tax changes under Trump mean that 90% of filers take the standard deduction. The remaining 10% can pay the same as everyone else and adjust their future behavior accordingly.
But the proposed solutions always seem to be geared towards the simplest returns (admittedly fine for 90% of taxpayers). Please don’t leave taxpayers like me out in the cold! My federal return was over 15 pages this year, and gets more complex every year. We hate Intuit, too…trust me!