Intuit is such an evil company. Now that I've moved to Germany, I know what it feels like not to have to file every year (I still have to for the US but it's trivial now due to FIEC).
There's nobody hounding you here, no stress regarding your taxes unless you're filing for a return or have extenuating circumstances, and even then there's a government-provided online portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt (finance department).
> "there's a government-provided online portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt (finance department)."
A government provided portal?! Surely this is a case of government over-reach: directly competing with hard working private-sector businesses (tax accountants, tax software makers), destroying jobs and stifling innovation? It would never be allowed in freedom-loving America!
Because you can go out and buy one of the programs that are on the market. There is a public interface/api that can be used by the companies to file your taxes. We even have startups doing your taxes with a questionaire on your phone.
But the government provides you with a free, basic version, the same they did with the standard forms. There is little help, a bit of explanation but nothing more.
And since you have to hand it in digitally now, they are also providing the means to do so. Paper, but digital.
> They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade to pledge in writing not to adopt California’s innovation or develop any other offerings that threatened their business model.
I think the IRS deserves much of the blame for yielding to Intuit's persuasion.
Every American should be upset with both Intuit and the IRS.
This isn’t the fault of the IRS. The IRS can only do what Congress allows them to do. It’s the fault of Congress. In fact the 2 key Congresswomen responsible are Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo. I currently live in Eshoo’s district but I can tell you she is completely unresponsive to you if you don’t live in Atherton or Palo Alto. I have never seen her campaign once. Her district is sprawling and includes 3 counties in the Bay Area and communities that have almost nothing in common. Her district includes Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, MountainView as well as South San Jose and Scott’s Valley. The district is designed to ensure she never has to face a re-election challenge. It’s almost impossible to enact change with the way this system is arranged.
Geez. She is still there? I remember writing her 16 years ago when I was at Stanford and had an issue. Of course neither she (nor her office) ever bothered to respond. Wow.
What your saying implies that the entire congress is responsible as everyone is accepting deals to look the other way… maybe you need to reevaluate what your writing?
> What your saying implies that the entire congress is responsible as everyone is accepting deals to look the other way… maybe you need to reevaluate what your writing?
There is a strong contingent in Congress that believes that it is only moral for it to be annoying and expensive to pay taxes, as they believe that taxes should be opposed by the masses. If taxes are too easy then people won't think about them, and will simply enjoy the services the government provides with them, which is tyranny.
This is also why the US keeps sales tax separate instead of rolling it into the price of the item like Europe.
Not all states preclude including sales tax in advertised prices. According to this website, https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sale..., and by a quick count, at least 20 states permit combined pricing without any more limitation than a posted sign. That count excludes states which only permit it for a limited set of products and services, or which require sales tax to be itemized on the receipt.
Perhaps you're confusing VAT vs sales tax, which is an entirely different issue, and while some politicians might prefer a sales tax on the presumption of its conspicuousness, the real debate regarding adopting VAT is far more complex. VAT does seem to be the darling of many economists, but those economists also tend to overlook the fact that Europe has significantly larger grey and black markets, as well as more tax evasion, than the U.S.; and some of that difference is arguably a consequence of the mechanics of VAT and the general preference for hiding the taxation system from individuals.
It's also worth noting that there are good reasons for itemizing sales tax separately. For example, for individuals state sales tax can be deducted from federal income, but not the cost of the item itself.
> This is also why the US keeps sales tax separate instead of rolling it into the price of the item like Europe.
Even in a relatively federalized (by European standards) country like Switzerland, the VAT is set nationally. This isn’t the case in the US, and several states even have different sales tax rates in each city. It would be a considerable logistical mess to coordinate integrated sales tax signposting, both from a business and consumer perspective. Amazon already handles this somewhat awkwardly by changing store prices if you set your location on Amazon.de to Switzerland, with the prices somewhat unpredictably changing if it decided to remember your location preferences, and no longer following common numbering conventions (e.g. x.99).
> If taxes are too easy then people won't think about them, and will simply enjoy the services the government provides with them, which is tyranny.
Nope. More like we don’t want the gov to have their hands directly into our pocketbooks. The left are the ones that want more taxes and this auto income tax feature. The right wants less taxes. Understand people want different things and quit trying to force people your way. A great many people do not want the gov in their personal business.
Intuit is lobbying in defense of their entire industry. Almost every company of their size would do the same thing in their situation. The people who deserve the blame here are the people who are susceptible to those lobbying efforts.
Why don’t we blame the intuit employees while we’re at it? If they had no employees then they wouldn’t be in business? So does this mean it’s actually the citizens fault?
This is entirely too cynical and pessimistic. In particular others have pointed out that other countries do not do this, and it’s not like they aren’t people.
Isn't the IRS just executing the policies that elected politicians decide? It seems the IRS wanted to do the right thing 20 years ago, but they were stopped by politicians who were corrupted by lobbyists.
Maybe US people should elect politicians that represent them instead of business. And stop buying the incredible amounts of double-speak that is always present in discussions like these.
Yes. I should restate... I'm not mad at low-level IRS employees. Rather the ones nominated and approved by Congress, who ultimately make these decisions.
There is a school of thought, and I tend to agree with it, that "a position of public trust" is exactly and specifically what is granted to a corporation by granting it its special, fictive-person, liability-shielding status. The veneration of "corporations as psychopaths" is more of a deification of the current state, not an aspirational one. It doesn't have to be that way, and so we absolutely can fault Intuit for acting against that public trust. Intuit has responsibilities to the society that grants it its charter, and that includes not peeing in the public pool.
(That school of thought, yeah, puts most companies in a real bad light. And? Well? Yes. They have earned it.)
> granted to a corporation by granting it its special, fictive-person, liability-shielding status.
There is no such thing. This is such a silly argument made by people who have no understanding of corporate liability laws.
Incorporating doesn't suddenly shield you from liability. If you were negligent or intended harm, you will be held personally liable. If you're a shareholder and knew what was going on, you will also be held liable. The issue is not incorporation, it's a government too timid to enforce the law.
I'm well aware of how corporate liability laws work, thank you. Intuit advocating to indirectly damage the body politic to increase their profits is not negligence. It is also wrong. The divide, and the hole in the modern theory of the corporation, is obvious when one is not hiding the cards.
It is a moral failure and a failure of social distinction, not a legal one. I understand why that shorts your circuit. It exists nevertheless.
I expect Intuit, and every other company where responsibility is sufficiently large that nobody feels personally responsible for the company's actions, to do heinous things to make a buck if the option presents itself.
Whereas the IRS, and every other government agency, is supposedly trying to help society or at least not hurt it.
HEY! Fellow US ex-pat here in Germany. I do use germantaxes.de which offers a hand-holding experience and all in English but the fact that there's a simple government provided solution is how it should be.
All this hate towards FB and others but we really should be reigning in the likes of Intuit because filing taxes should not cost anything for simple W-2's.
I recall reading that in Japan if you have just wage income it's more or less automatic. Imagine that!
Not just Japan, also true for the UK with our Pay As You Earn system - you get assigned a tax code, and the appropriate amount is automatically deducted from your payslip. No need to file anything, and refunds/demands get generated automatically each year if you've been changing jobs/not working/other odd circumstances meaning that the amount you paid doesn't match what you were expected to
And if you DO need to file a tax return (e.g. earning over 100k, certain types of income) you can (in most cases) do it for free on the HMRC website with a guided system.
The "Pay-As-You-Earn" system was introduced in Australia and the UK during WW2 lol. The US has the same system its just been implemented extremely poorly
It's not that it's implemented poorly. It's that 1) the federal government collects multiple kinds of taxes out out of your paycheck. Social security, medicare and regular income tax are different. Income tax rates are progressive while the payroll taxes are flat but capped at a certain amount. 2) Additionally forty-two states have income taxes as do dozens of local municipalities. Consider that they also don't treat residents and non residents alike.
Consider a couple who live in New York City, where one partner works in Connecticut and the other works in New Jersey. There are potentially 6 different entities collecting income tax there.
That being said - fully agree - tax filing software should be free for everyone.
Furthermore, a number of states are starting to require tax returns to be filed even for short durations of working in the state for business purposes.
wow now that's a killer feature that might be just enough to get me to move there than somewhere else. More governments should be looking into replicating this.
If your income does not change then it’s the appropriate amount. If your income increases or decreases you may end up paying too much or too little. Then there’s deductibles. It’s quite nice getting a cheque at the end of the tax year for a few thousand.
Singapore we pay tax for the previous year on a month to month basis. It’s good but I imagine if you end up with less pay than the previous year it could be a strain on life.
Being German it feels weird reading someone praise our tax system. The problem here is that you almost always pay too much tax and will be reimbursed when filing a return while at the same time the German Finanzamt already has the required information to do that on its own. But it won't. End of story is that tax returns are exclusive to people educated enough to take of it. And even if you take care of it in an informed way doesn't mean you will be reimbursed fully. For that you'd need to hire a tax attorney in many non-trivial cases.
And it makes sense because government might not have all the data even for basic tax filling. On the other hand employees data are already available from various other systems where you have to register them and report and pay social security, taxes, healthcare etc.. I co-own an accounting company in Czech Republic.
According to the World Bank, the self-employed in Germany account for 9.6% of the total employment. So nine out of ten Germans can still avoid filing taxes, which is pretty good.
Interestingly enough, the self-employed actually make up a smaller percentage of total employment in the US at 6.1%. So if the US were to adopt a similar system, it'd be closer to 15 out of 16 Americans.
You only don't have to file if you have a regular job and no other income. Add capital gains, rental income, I think even state parental leave support, and you need to file.
Right, most people are employees though. Germany has another problem though - getting a Steuerberater (tax advisor) to help you with the paperwork as a business owner is next to impossible.
> getting a Steuerberater (tax advisor) to help you with the paperwork as a business owner is next to impossible.
Is it really? Are you talking about an advisor for employees or for self-employed people/companies?
I was searching for a tax advisor two years ago and it took me exactly one attempt to get one. My parents got an appointment within a month as well. Also, unless there are very specific circumstances there is little to no reason for an employee to get an advisor. Most of my friends just use the ELSTER form provided by the Finanzamt or use tax software the purchased which makes it slightly less painful.
But I have no clue about how hard it is for companies
Living in Germany it's difficult to understand somebody saying nice things about their tax system :-). It almost caused a divorce for me, several times. But ok, if you don't file then it's understandable. But you should as you are almost always getting money back. For around 200 you can find somebody to do it for you and it will still be worth it.
Foreign Income Earned Credit. Basically since the US is one of two countries in the world to still collect taxes from people living abroad, you have to file taxes every year still but it usually amounts to a net of $0.00 as it's written off under double-tax agreements with Germany.
The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion essentially sets your tax rate to 0% for the first $108k of earned income. It has no effect on earned income in excess of this threshold, or on unearned income such as investment income.
The Foreign Tax Credit subtracts your foreign tax liability from your US tax liability. In other words, you only pay US taxes to the extent they exceed the foreign tax rate. You can use it on any type of income, but you only get a benefit if the foreign country actually taxes the income.
You may not double dip: So if you choose to take FEIE for some part of your income, you cannot take FTC on the same part of your income. However, you can take FTC to the extent you have income not eligible for FEIE.
"They persuaded the Internal Revenue Service for more than a decade..."
"The tax preparation industry guided Washington down a different path."
Be even more upset with the IRS and politicians. They are literally responsible for this. They make the laws. Don't let them shift blame. They should have told Intuit to pound sand. This is like a kid that gets caught doing something bad and blames their friends. They told me to do it! It's their fault.
Here would be the honest translation: I took their money and went against the best interests of my voters, and now I'm going to shift all blame while accepting no responsibility for my actions. Furthermore, I'm going to reframe this as though I was the good guy trying to save you.
Sure, but in this case these are adults and they know exactly what they are doing. Intuit didn't force them by gunpoint. The politicians have agency here and are ultimately responsible. They chose to put their donors over their voters. And now they are trying to frame this as though they are hapless victims who tried to save the nation? No.
Yeah I think we're agreeing, they're both to blame. I guess the reason it might feel like people are blaming Intuit more is that they literally shouldn't exist, they owe everything to this bullshit arrangement, so it's easier to make blanket statements. I don't want the IRS to disappear, I just want it to make better decisions about this particular issue. But I do want Intuit to disappear because it's a completely worthless parasite.
That doesn't mean the people running Intuit are worse than the politicians making decisions about the IRS, it's just easier to make a singular judgement about their organization.
Why be mad at either party? They are both making rational choices given their circumstances.
I don't expect politicians to act on principles more than anyone else. They are just trying to keep their jobs, and they functionally depend corporate financing to do this, so they will naturally go to bat for the same people.
Intuit is a profit-making machine with side-effects that include creating a tax-filing product. The people running it are acting rationally to keep their jobs too.
This situation is a predictable outcome given the way the system works, and is one example of the failings and inefficiencies of the system to serve the common good.
Going to paraphrase a quote from a podcast that stuck with me.
> What (the left) needs to do is clear out rents. Not just housing rents, but rent seekers. The economy is riddled through with people who do nothing, but get paid because structurally that’s who gets paid.
Intuit is one of those companies. They produce a few real products, QuickBooks for businesses and Mint, but overwhelmingly their money comes from the fact that they charge rent on filling your taxes. They’re a parasite on our society.
Fortunately the podcaster wasn’t talking about the US; their country was worse off than America in this area by far. But unfortunately it seems like we’re on the same glide slope if we don’t do something about it.
What passes for the left (the socially liberal corporate elites that run most of the democratic party) are pretty much just as invested in protecting the rentiers as the right wing.
Rentier money is structurally geared towards destroying any populist politicians who threaten their rents. It was a fluke that AOC won given her Democratic opponent (when she was unknown) outspent her something like 7:1. People like her arent supposed to slip through the early stage political filter.
If they do slip through there's also an enormously powerful and effective propaganda machine dedicated to character assassination.
This is so important and I think a lot of people miss it. The "left" that has power in the US (establishment dems) barely qualify as being left at all. They are very much invested in protecting power and wealth.
The only "left" that would push against the rentiers are people who will almost never see power. However, I wouldnt say AOC winning is a "fluke". Its definitely the exception, but progressives have been able to repeat it a few more times in democrat strongholds that have historically kept establishment candidates.
Right now the only "power" the real left has is withholding their votes from corporate dem bills like we're seeing with the BBB Act. This only even works because the rest of the party is interested in protecting power/wealth and is pretty inept at actually winning races.
Im mostly comparing it to the politics of the "left" in most other first world countries. In my opinion, candidates who arent willing to support guaranteed family leave, single payer healthcare, and more progressive taxes, arent very far left.
Of course you could definitely make an argument for that being no true scottsman, so I guess it just depends on opinion.
> The "left" that has power in the US (establishment dems) barely qualify as being left at all
You seem to interpret that statement as an opinion, but it is not a subjective statement. [1]
The U.S. isn't the only democracy in the world, and if we compare the Democratic party with other political parties around the world, they are indeed barely left-of-center.
I'm not sure an opinion piece in the nyt qualifies as evidence but that same analysis classified tons of other liberal parties as right wing (uk, switzerland etc) which seems more like they have a definitions problem due to a complete lack of clear criteria.
I’d argue quite strongly that liberalism is a moderate right to center position nowadays, so that sounds about right. So saying that the liberal parties are classified as right in such an analysis doesn’t seem like a contradiction or counter argument to me.
Frankly, I have no idea why people consider liberal to be left wing. How else would you describe an ideology that emphasizes private property, free trade, and market capitalism as anything other than at least moderate right? Sure, if you’re a monarchist that whole “equality before the law” sounds radical left, but for the rest of us… And that’s before we talk about neoliberalism and it’s emphasis on free markets and minimal government interference, which is hardly a leftist position.
The Manifesto Project has its downsides, but it's still one of the best datasets we've got [1], and the other survey-based datasets like the Global Party Survey [2] yield similar results [3]. (Note: You brought up the UK's Labor party which appears much more left here, as social & economic values are broken out into separate axes).
When viewed from a global perspective, the Republican party is firmly right-wing, but today's Democratic party is decidedly center-left on economic issues, and more closely reflects the values of the median American voter [4].
I think the "No True Scottsman" fallacy is confusing here. It's actually really sly.
The "No True Scottsman" statement must be used as the argument. It has to say that they're wrong BECAUSE they are not a true Scottsman.
What OP did was say there is The Left and there is "The Left".
The Left is against rentiers.
"The Left" supports rentiers.
He's dividing the two, but he's not saying one is wrong because they're not true leftists, he's saying one is wrong because they support rentiers.
But then he additionally says they're not true leftists, which is to say that a leftists shouldn't support them because they don't align, which is where the smell comes from.
The main argument is not a Scottsman fallacy. But there's definitely some implied Scottsmanism in the additional use of Left and "Left", which if read by the right person who is already weak to Scottsmanism will materialize as the Scottsman fallacy.
EDIT: I thought you were wrong, but under more analysis, I realized you were right, it was just complicated.
What do you call it when party A and party B were strongly in favor of the Iraq war and the opposition (C) comes solely from protestors who have no political representation?
A is "the left" to most people.
B is the right.
C is (apparently) a logical fallacy represented by 3 congresspeople and a senator.
AOC was right when she said in a parliamentary system she and joe Biden wouldn’t be in the same party. It’s only a fluke of voting systems that’s compressed a democratic socialist and a liberal into the same party as compared to a coalition government.
Liberalism is only left wing if it’s being compared against actual monarchists. Nowadays it’s soft right, since we’ve pretty much run out of monarchists (thank god).
Unfortunately in the US the rent seekers have an easy hack to make sure that never happens: lobbying.
The system will never change unless we vote out the current politicians, and then maybe it will change. We might have to clear out most, ideally all of the applicable congress every election cycle for a few years before we see any results. As long as we keep voting in the same people, nothing will change and it will most likely only get worse. The current political power structure is great at telling us what we want to hear, then conducting business as usual.
The only political power the citizenry has is our vote, everything else can be ignored. Emails go unanswered, polls go unnoticed, protests get suppressed.
Occupy Wall Street was 10 years ago. Thing are worse today than they were back then.
The federal system in regards to lobbying would change if we followed the constitution as written to allow House of Representatives to grow with census population count. And restore the not direct election of Senators. Then remove federal personal income tax. For icing on the cake, shut down the 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve'.
This would require a nationwide general strike to show the people are serious. Most people are not serious about anything beyond TV, social media, and more personal debt.
>The federal system in regards to lobbying would change if we followed the constitution as written to allow House of Representatives to grow with census population count.
Sounds good.
>And restore the not direct election of Senators. Then remove federal personal income tax. For icing on the cake, shut down the 3rd central bank known as 'Federal Reserve'.
I’m curious to know how any of these policies would be beneficial.
I'm not the GP, but I mostly agree. The principles that I suspect we both share are that concentration of power will always result in harms, and the only way to get ourselves out of the mud is diffusion of power.
1. Up until 1913 the Senators were elected by the Representatives. In 1910 the law changed for Representatives to be per 30,000 population, to be static count of Reps. There is now is now 750,000 people per Representative. Because a Representative can not possibly talk to all 750,000, they can not represent them. The supply of their time is limited and that pushes up the supply/demand curve. They lobby for donors and only talk to the richest of the set.
If there were 131 Representatives in CA and only they could vote in Senators, the Senators would be beholden to them, and would be required to act on the average behalf. As the distribution is currently to large, this does not happen, and the poorer of the population are ignored and harmed.
2. The only tax that is non-distortionary is a Land Value Tax. All other taxes create distortions and should be eliminted. A Land Value Tax, if implemented, would be sufficient to handle all government spending. The only other tax that should be able to be implemented are Pigovian taxes on negative externalities.
3. The core mandate that the Federal Reserve handles is the management of the money supply. Austrian economic principles state that this is a waste of time, and you can do the same job, perfectly, and with less economic cycles and harm caused, by simply mandating a static monetary velocity.
So you can see in both the Taxes and the Federal Reserve example you can work out the exact algorithmic rule that should always be applied, and remove the need for individuals within the government from mucking up the system with their corruptions.
1) federal Senators were usually appointed by State legislature and were regularly recalled by States and fired when they voted against the State's interests at the federal level.
2) a consumption tax, excluding uncooked food, might be reasonable. Higher tariffs and import duties can work, and tends to reduce offshoring for the purpose of polluting 'over there'.
3) surprisingly something better than gold and silver was invented in 2008 and appeared in 2009. Bitcoin fixes this.
Those 'odd policies' freed this country from the British. People signed their name on the declaration of independence and risked their lives. They succeeded and created a constitution. You may want to skim it sometime.
Really started going downhill in 1913 with creation of third central bank of the U.S. and addition of personal income tax.
> Those 'odd policies' freed this country from the British.
That’s really not true. Never mind the involvement of the French, the current constitution is the result of the miserable failure of the articles of confederation, which was arguably closer sentiments that drove the revolution. Whether or not the constitution as it exists today reflects the principles that kicked off the revolution was hotly debated by the men that actually fought that revolution.
Regardless of the historical claim, I’m fairly skeptical of the idea that what the founding fathers wanted is inherently the best. Yes, it was better than the British monarchy, but that’s a low bar. I’d hope that we can achieve something as a society that’s better than what a bunch of slave holders thought was a neat idea.
The senate is supposed to represent the state governments at the federal level, but they stopped doing that with direct elections. It was to prevent large states with a concentration of population (currently like CA, NY, TX, FL) to have too much power over smaller states.
Here's some background on the arguments for and against. It's got some partisan hyperbole so try to ignore all that.
Honestly, I don’t really care too much about representing the states per se. It’s the people of the nation that the federal government should respond to, not the divisions.
ok, but the media would stop any general strike using identity politics and or Dem vs GOP polarization already existing...divide et impera...divide and conquer...we are already quite divided...and therefore quite conquered...
as long as the media & its corporate advertisers can keep congress and the white house more or less evenly balanced between GOP and Dem over the long term, the people will never catch on that congress is bought and paid for...and 'throwing the bums out' has not worked yet...so it will not likely work in the future...
i don't see how any action by the people is going to effect any positive long term change...all we can do is wait for a collapse of the US dollar...as long as the dollar holds its value, the elites can still control everything and keep squeezing us dry...
it's gonna get worse before it gets better...maybe a lot worse..
USA probably has the least worst currency today, due to gold being centralized in USA during WW2, along with current military spending. Euro will tank before USD.
If China plays it right, they can be the financial leader within ten years. 2031.
I hate wasting at least a day if not more of my life every year filing. As time goes on and i have more assets the time to file goes up as well and gathering all the required documents with every bank having different timelines is a nightmare.
But what can I do about it? I would imagine if it went to a vote overwhelmingly people would say no I don’t want to file like this every year. But here we are and honestly I don’t have much energy left these days to be mad about anything as it’s wearing on my health.
If you have all these assets and your time is valuable I imagine you can cough up a few $ to pay a local tax accountant. I do this for my single member company, it costs $150 each year. Very worth it and a small price to pay. They even do a quick review of my books.
At this point I am familiar enough with all the forms that I could probably do it myself in less than an hour. But I don't mind supporting the accountant, it's fun to chat with him each year.
My tax person charges several times that amount and I still have to scramble to get all the documents to then. Remember, all the above mentioned issues still exist. If I forget a certain item, it is still my fault
I paid 600 usd last year fora tax accountant. He couldn't even do the most easiest part (1040 with stocks and dividend), and after struggling with him we didn't even proceed with the multistate reports I needed. It was complete waste of time and if I didn't check the result it would be also a waste of money and potential criminal action.
Sure, if a professional struggles with it it's by definition not easy. It was however easier then the complex part: I was moving between states separately from my spouse when we were both working full time. This could not be properly handled by any online service available (yes, I tried at least 4 different) and I ended up with filling forms manually by myself. It should not be this hard in first place. And yes, likely there are a lot of pros who can file it easily but finding anyone who is good in what he is doing is not easy.
You need to find a different accountant, my tax situation is as _least_ as complex as yours and has involved multiple states several times. I've never had an issue with sending him a large dump of files photos and notes and he's worked it out each time.
I've always done my own (US) taxes but have been mulling hiring an accountant this year. But "doing" the taxes is the easy part with software. It's collecting all the needed information that is painful. Will I just be paying an accountant to use their software? Or is there a real difference in using software like Intuit's and a real accountant for individual returns? (I have investments, retirement funds, etc.).
The one and only time I used a "professional" tax preparer, I sat in their office and answered the questions they read off their "TurboTax for professionals" software. It was the same damn questions when I did it myself, except I was charged a fee, and I had to do it twice because I had to go home and retrieve some info I didn't have with the first time
This is the first year I've ever hired anyone to do my taxes. Got married, sold an investment property, started earning some rental income, and had a few other issues I didn't want to try to figure out myself. It was closer to $1500 than $150, for what it's worth.
I still have to collect all the documents and give them to the person. The time to file once i gather everything is negligible and unless i have a very complex year i just do it myself.
Just paying someone to do stuff doesn’t solve everything unless you are some level of rich I don’t understand where someone has access to all your accounts and does it for you.
If you have to spend hours doing your taxes, no gov run filing system is gonna help you reduce that. All these "I don't have to do anything to pay my taxes" things are essentially for wage earners taking standard deductions, minimal interest, minimal dividends, no mortgage, etc. And if you were in that situation, filing your IRS taxes would take 10 minutes, if that.
If only there weren't large penalties involved in doing this.
And hey, if we want progressive taxation -- "is it really worth it for them to send somebody down to bring me the bill" is a great filter that everybody's taxes should be passed through.
Are you really arguing that corporatocracy is a progressive form of governance? Or do you just believe that companies leeching off society via regulatory capture is better for everyone?
>Are you really arguing that corporatocracy is a progressive form of governance?
He made a one sentence comment about CA's policies being ineffective. He made no endorsement of anything or comparison to alternatives. If you're going to build a straw-man be more subtle.
There are a lot of things to complain about with regards to California politics, but trying to help citizens and fight Intuit is pretty unassailable. So either the one-sentence comment was on topic and truly endorsed such corporate strangleholds, or it was in bad faith and simply trotting out their general axe-to-grind about California at the mere mention. I don’t think there’s much sympathy for either interpretation with regard to advancing discussion of the article.
This seems like an odd take given their progressive policy making an standard setting over the last 50 years ex automobile MPG. What policies are you referring to?
California's population shrank for the first time since it was founded last year. Statistics seem to indicate that the "draconian policies" are causing an exodus
Pretty sure California and New York are tired of paying billions of dollars to the Federal government that gets re-distributed to all of the failing Federal welfare states.
If they're so tired, I'm sure they'd be happy to give back the billions of dollars they receive any time now.
I think the picture is more complex than donor states and receiver states. As the article below argues, the Rockefeller study that the data comes from has flawed methodology.
New York for example benefits tremendously from its large financial industry that pays a lot in taxes. But arguably the industry is so concentrated in New York today because of federal laws that force the federal reserve to conduct its financial activities only in New York, among other hard coded advantages that the state has lobbied for. In addition, retirees who receive billions in benefits each year from the federal government commonly leave the state in favor of places like Florida, further distorting the picture. Unlike more fiscally prudent states, New York also has billions in tax exempt bonds outstanding that deprive the federal government of revenue but are not counted by the Rockefeller study.
I know what you mean but I think think this specific article makes a good case. For example the financial industry concentration in New York and retiree mass emigration really do distort things.
If you want to states to not get federal gov't funds, you're in agreement with the people who think the scope DC should be reduced and states to do more. So now that you're in agreement, get to enacting those changes.
On your other point, I'll just leave this here:
>“How come the white working class uses government programs while railing against handouts?” Because you are the government. They’ll take what they can, but they’ll be damned if they beg for it. “Why are all these hicks voting for authoritarianism?” Exercise some basic cognitive empathy, please. They’re not voting for authoritarianism. They’re voting for fuck you.
It's because of inequality. California and New York have a higher GINI coefficient than most countries. If high net worth people from those states moved to other states, the transfer payments you are talking about wouldn't happen.
The nation is dependent on the money that California and NY put in to the federal tax system. You're welcome.
"A 2017 study by the Rockefeller Institute of Government found that traditional blue states like Connecticut ($15,643), Massachusetts ($13,582), New Jersey ($13,137), New York ($12,820), and California ($10,510), contributed significantly more in federal taxes, per citizen, than traditional red states like Mississippi ($5,740), West Virginia ($6,349), Kentucky ($6,626), and South Carolina ($6,665).
Not only do some states contribute more to the federal budget than others, but some also receive less from the federal government in return. On average, each of our 50 states receives about $1.14 from the federal government for every tax dollar they send to Washington.
This is why our federal government runs a deficit every year. The traditional red states mentioned above, however, receive more — much more. For example, Mississippi received $2.13 for every tax dollar it sends to Washington by way of federal taxes, West Virginia $2.07, Kentucky $1.90, and South Carolina $1.71.
For some large traditional blue states, California receives only 96 cents, Massachusetts 83 cents, Connecticut 82 cents, New York 81 cents, and New Jersey 74 cents for every tax dollar they sent to Washington. The discrepancy is significant."
I'm also in favor of returning governance to the stats and we're probably in disagreement about a lot of things. Seems like an easy political win for Washington would be to return power to the states
> I mean red states are more rural which alone would account for more subsidies.
Yeah, duh, that's their point.
We are strong as a country because our wealthy, dense state economies support our poorer, rural state economies; and that's why it's laughable when red-state citizens and politians rant about seceding from the "evil communist blue states."
If states like CA and NY are getting such a raw deal why don't they want to change it?
This tired old trope needs to be taken out back and shot. The net in or out flow from any given state is not enough to substantially impact anything.
Pretty much every state gets back what it puts in plus or minus 10-20%. Considering that each state is putting in a number that is only a small fraction of its GDP the overall difference is negligible. I think most people in the states that are getting paid would consider the economic hit to be a cheap price to pay for removing federal oversight from the things those dollars pay for.
Furthermore, even the poor states are just fine by European standards.[1][2]
Maybe we should let each state run the way they see fit... you know kind of like how the Constitution assumed things should be done until the Commerce Clause was used by the Federal Government to hammer every state into submission.
Alabama has a higher GDP per capita than Germany, Belgium, Israel, France, Japan, the U.K. and...I could go on.
Alabama is doing well. We live in such an enormously wealthy country that it only looks bad by comparison. But not by comparison to basically anywhere else on Earth.
I can't find the number of Alabama, but considering that it's generally in one of the last places in the US, I can't imagine it being higher than the US average, so I wouldn't be shocked to see it somewhere around Croatia's level.
You realized you just dismissed GDP per capita, a quantitative metric, as too “flawed”, then instead relied on HDI which entirely a made up metric based on subjective measures?
You might not like the magic numbers in the formula or the things they choose to weigh, but GDP is much, much too coarse to evaluate anything about the greater well-being of a population, especially in developed countries.
In the very least you'd have to adjust for purchasing power parity and look at the median rather than the mean, to say anything useful about quality of life for normal people.
Yes, I agree. GDP is a very rough measure. I'd prefer PPP, but I couldn't find it for individual states after a cursory search. (I still think most readers will be surprised by Alabama's GDP, relative to wealthy European nations, so it's not totally useless.)
Agreed, PPP would be better, but my cursory search didn't turn up a convenient list like the one I linked for GDP. (This is a bit like the old joke about a guy searching for his keys 20 feet from where he dropped them, because that's where the streetlight is.)
In response to my claim that Alabama only looks bad by comparison to other U.S. states because of how rich the U.S. is, but that it's in fact a very wealthy place by comparison to everywhere else -- in response to this you offered...a ranking of U.S. states?
Since I’ve not seen it mentioned yet, https://www.freetaxusa.com/. Used it the last few years to do my taxes, which include investment and self employment income. No complaints. Intuit’s stuff would charge quite a bit for my “complex” taxes.
They charge a couple bucks to file state taxes, which gives me a bit of confidence they’re not making money by selling my info to someone.
I've been using them for more than a decade on their other domain https://www.taxhawk.com. I think their software is great and there's no dark patterns, you can even submit your federal taxes for free without paying to do your state taxes. I also really like that I can review my filled out 1040 before e-filing.
The price for state taxes is $15 where TurboTax would cost me over $100 (I have business income).
FTU is great, though startupees should be warned that it does not support ISO exercises in the AMT calculation, and you probably won't find that out until you get that far through your taxes.
The US is such a stressful country, tax filing, healthcare, none of these basic things just work. Add to that the lawyers culture and you get a good basis for emotion filled Netflix dramas, but not really for real life.
There are actually less lawsuits per capita in the US than in most OECD nations. The "lawyers culture" is a false idea created, it seems, by popular media (films, TV, etc.)
I’m really curious to dig into this and finding out what people in Europe are suing each other for.
It’s just so weird seeing the billboards here in the US encouraging people to sue for personal injury damages, featuring photos of happy people holding fans of cash like they just won the lottery. Maybe the celebration of lawsuits is the American thing, if not having greater total numbers.
Yeah, there's a mile or two in Albuquerque, NM where almost every visible piece of advertising (even the bus stops) are stereotypical lawyers promising to fight for you. It's comical, terrifying and pathetic, all at once.
Was curious about this, and from some quick Googling the US isn't much of a contender for lawsuits per capita, but a lot more of our GDP goes to law firms and litigation than any other country and we have one of the highest lawyers per capita.
> There are actually less lawsuits per capita in the US than in most OECD nations.
That's because our inefficient and costly to access and high-risk legal system is optimized for resolving conflict by legal intimidation rather than actual adjudication.
Tax filing takes me a few hours and ~ $100 each year and I have multiple properties and businesses. For most people it's not that big of a deal but it's easy to jump on the anti-IRS bandwagon
I don't understand what kind of mental gymnastics it takes for policymakers to impede paying taxes. How absurd is it that the government would rather make it difficult for its citizens to give it money!? ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
There is a self-aware viewpoint among the libertarian right that if the government makes it a pain to pay taxes, then people will hate doing taxes, which will in turn direct them to push for a smaller government. It's called "starve the beast."
For most Finns (bar the self-employed, business owners, and the very rich) filing taxes is like 15 minutes per year when you want to add some deductions the tax man wouldn't already know about.
It's literally 0 minutes, if you don't have deductions.
I like finding approaches that don't necessarily "solve" a problem, but rather don't have the problem in the first place so that there's nothing to solve.
In this case, I would suggest dropping income tax altogether, decommissioning the IRS, and using the state infrastructure already in place to collect an equal amount of revenue from sales tax.
No filing. Broader tax base, including criminals and illegal activity. Everyone's checking account effectively becomes a 401k.
Sales tax is regressive, yes. But proposals like the FairTax suggest the idea of an annual "prebate" or credit up front in the form of a check that effectively eliminates taxes on spending up to poverty level income.
I guess the argument against this is that some super-rich don't spent on th emainland or not even at all, just bank a tonne of cash.
In that case, the overall income from tax would be lower than it is now.
I don't necessarily agree but the idea is normally that "rich" people should pay a higher percentage of their income as tax because "they can afford it".
I personally like the idea of a fixed rate from 0 to infinity like Russia iirc, which gives everyone skin in the game and avoids some of the tax avoidance that we see to avoid the thresholds.
This would have consequences for wealth inequality. Households with lower incomes spend much larger percentage of their money on goods with sales tax than more wealthy households. This plan would increase tax for low income families and majorly decrease it for families with where a lot ad money flows into investments or savings.
>>Households with lower incomes spend much larger percentage of their money on goods with sales tax than more wealthy households>>
Right, I addressed this.
However, for the wealthy household, exactly what is the utility of all the money they have if they can't spend it? The minute any money is spent, the not-taxed argument comes apart because it is now taxed. How can you be wealthy if you do not have access to money?
California offers the typical international option: they'll send you your estimated annual taxes, and you just jave to correct them if there's a discrepancy. This was supposed to be the default option for Californian state taxes. Instead, Intuit's army of lobbyists managed to almost get rid of it. It is now an opt in for people that is not advertised or easy to find on the gov website.
Intuit's business model is making tax preparation easier. If tax preparation wasn't so deliberately complicated in the US, they would no longer have a viable business model.
A country is made of people AND legal entities. Legal entities in the US have a lot of impact in what the country does (for example it's legal for companies to pay politicians, which is illegal almost everywhere else).
Believe it or not, about half of the country believes these policies are great and it's what makes the usa so succesful.
I am not making a stand, just trying to explain here.
> Does the USA not have the back of their citizens?
In the US, at least one party requires its members to have the party's back, but not the other way. Which is why we have mass delusions about vaccines being bad, or COVID-19 not being a big deal. The party has decided its members need to provide blood sacrifices and the party members obliged. This is the same party that says that government can do no good, then asks for your vote.
For a less partisan example, for the past ~3 years, people with US phone numbers have been bombarded by spam phone calls, making the phone system nearly useless, and congressional action has been nonexistent.
When I see what is going on with national media and with federal inaction, I feel that the US is far past its peak years. We have chosen bad governance, and if we can't get a majority of people to even want to advocate for themselves, there's no way to get that back.
If IRS provides a portal to file taxes easily, who do you think will pay for the infrastructure, support and staff? Government? Absolutely but how does government get funds? From taxes. Bingo!
Now the options are :
1. everyone in the country to start paying more Tax so IRS can build and support such system or
2. only folks who have higher income pay a private company to file taxes easily and low income folks file for free
"We believe most Americans would go from the long form or the short form to no form.
Comparing the distance between the present system and our proposal is like comparing the distance between a Model T and the space shuttle. And I should know -- I've seen both."
Sadly the space shuttle suffered multiple disasters.
It's all good to blame the private companies like Intuit here, but what really needs to happen is that the politicians and bureaucrats who took their money need to be outed.
A market will always have rent seekers, and people will always look for shortcuts. It's the job of our elected officials to ensure that doesn't happen.
So you know in the Hunger Games when the guy was like “what if just once no one watched?” .. what if there were a truly massive protest (millions of people) who just said fuck it and didn’t pay their taxes and instead wrote in that they demand proper tax reform
Intuit is the worst kind of company, but anyone who has dealt with the tax authorities in California would probably tell you to take the state's stated intentions with a grain of salt, or 1000.
The California FTB would love to tell you how much money it thinks you owe them, have you not question them, and make your life hell if you think they messed up.
While it's fair to say that lower-income W2 taxpayers are probably easier to calculate for, don't assume that the California FTB would go out of its way to help taxpayers.
> The California FTB would love to tell you how much money it thinks you owe them, have you not question them, and make your life hell if you think they messed up.
Isn't this already the case? They know how much they think you owe. The only difference now is if you will out the form differently and they disagree they can also accuse you of intentional defrauding them.
It's nothing new for a frequent reader of HN. California ran a trial of automatic tax filings in 2005, Intuit persuaded the IRS to adopt no such system, the government mandated a free file system run by the commercial providers for eligible people, the providers used dark patterns to direct free file eligible users to paid options. Current democrats and former california republicans are quoted as being for actual automatic filing, some anecodotes from people who had been pushed by the software companies to paid options.
Basically, as a fellow Brit you will know that for most people your tax just happens automatically (typically through the PAYE system, so tax is taken before you get your paycheck, and we never have to even think about it).
Then in the UK if you have more complex tax affairs, then you have to fill in a self assessment on the government portal (where it already knows most of your tax information, and you are pretty much just making disclosures).
And it's VERY rare that people have to hire an accountant (only for people who own businesses, or individuals with the moxt complex tax affairs).
Well in the USA they don't have any of that, and everyone has to file their own taxes. The USA has the capability to do automated tax like in the UK, however the companies who sell the tax software petitioned the government to make sure that they didn't implement it so they can continue to get $$$ out of everyone else.
The argument that they advance is that if we allowed government supported automatic filing, then people would no longer be able to take advantage of the free filing program that Intuit offers to low income households.
What they don't mention is that this free filing offer is used by significantly less than 5% of the eligible taxpayers. Probably because Intuit advertises it very little and within the product very heavily hints that you should switch to a paid product instead.
My understanding is the two pro arguments for manual filing are:
If taxpayers aren't forced to confront the details of their tax payments every time they do a filing, they're less likely to complain about high taxes (this comes with the implication that high taxes are inherently bad, which depends on your political leaning)
Taxpayers may just accept the automatic deduction without realising they're being overcharged in the event of an error, for years at a time.
How much they actually care about such arguments vs the threat to their business model is subjective, but it seems the majority on this site (and myself) don't buy it.
Thanks for the input. I understand the concerns. As a Brit who checks his taxes, I've only been overcharged once when I changed jobs and the rebate was fixed the following month (I paid less tax that month). I do still have to file if I take a second contract weekend-work but it's not difficult.
This is why I always pirate TurboTax and deleted my Mint years ago.
Fuck intuit.
Oh and before someone asks me why I feel comfortable doing that security wise...I do it on an airgapped machine and print the return out and mail it in. Ezpz
I just do it by hand on paper. For folks with just some W-2s and maybe some light investing stuff (no, this isn't everyone, but it is a lot of people), it only takes an hour or two to do by hand and the instructions are actually pretty decent.
So we should continue to vote for the politicians who do the public such a service. I fail to see Intuit as the evil company. The politicians that the public votes for are not even responsible. It is the public that votes for them that is at fault. That is the real harsh truth. No one to blame but “ourselves”. I would always be baffled by friends who would decry outcomes but continue to vote for those who created the outcomes. So the politicians are rational as there is no cost to it at least in California and the Bay area.
The real problem here is structural. We need approval voting/range voting, and for more of the "executive branch but really still regulatory" positions to be elected rather than appointed.
Right now you say "vote for politicians who do good things" and then every politician is found to be doing some good things and some bad things with their opponent doing the opposite, and someone doing a higher proportion of good things can't get on the ballot because first past the post voting results in a two party system.
This feels like a bit of an oversimplification to me. Big lobbying money works, and it seems to me it tends to work no matter who you voted for the vast majority of the time. Finding politicians to vote for who can't be bought for any price are probably rare, and we have a lot of offices to fill across the country.
I agree that taking a hard, sober look at how we ourselves vote is a good thing, but I doubt it is the magic silver bullet to our problems.
Politicians are directly controlled by special interests. This is why we have John Deere using copyright laws to stop farmers from repairing their tractors, Intuit using tax law to protect it's expensive software, and patent trolls using abusive patent laws to extort entrepreneurs.
If you want to 'save the nation from tax filing', California should begin by simplifying its own tax forms.
I'm sorry... you can't say you're trying to save us from tax filing while simultaneously having a tax form that would put a blank excel spreadsheet to shame.
California and the federal government's willingness to write complex, byzantine tax rules, is ultimately what keeps intuit in business.
Since the 1950s overall IQ has increased more than the current variation between states, so I assume you also disregard anything thought up pre-1950 for the same reason?
Hmm, I would actually love (genuinely) to hear more. My impression is that standardized testing of Intelligence Quotient explains way way less than popular imagination & movies think.
Studies like these [1] [2] get a lot of newspaper time, but they're largely rebuked on methodological or overreach grouns, and honestly, there's sweeping generalizations and then there's saying "Anything from California is automatically bad due to low average IQ".
As well, the spread across ALL states is barely 10% [3]
edit: Though, by that logic, USA should start mimicking everything we canucks do! I look forward to you adopting our universal health care and bilingualism and Her Majesty The Queen! :-D [4]
I don't know about correlation between average IQ and a country/state performance (e.g. GPD performance capita) but there is plenty of research that show correlation between a person's IQ and expected income/wealth.
It's also intuitive. The whole path to college, at least for hard sciences, partially select for IQ. And college education correlates with higher income.
I for one am fine with taxes being a pain in the ass. That forces people to see what they're paying. If you think they're a pain in the ass, advocate for simpler taxes.
Not if simplifying taxes was as easy as paying Intuit the $89/yr toll to not deal with taxes.
Intuit just wants money, they really don't care about taxes or complexity of the tax system. The only reason they care about complex tax code is that they can make money from it. These large businesses of today don't have visions or value creation goals, they have markets, competitors, and revenue streams. Everything else they do is tangential.
If Intuit could continue to make their money or make more money by advocating for simpler taxes they would. We should pass the Intuit Tax Toll bill where everyone is required by law to just throw money at Intuit every year until they go away, except they'll only come back for more... because this is what Intuit and a mountain of existing businesses would foam at the mouth for, a world where they were just handed money.
> Not if simplifying taxes was as easy as paying Intuit the $89/yr toll to not deal with taxes.
That's not what "simplifying taxes" means. That's paying Intuit to deal with the complexity for you, which is the status quo. They need the complexity or there's nothing for you to pay them to do.
Compare this with, say, replacing federal income tax with VAT+UBI. You get a progressive tax system (because of the UBI) with zero individuals having to file income tax returns. Actual simplification. You also solve the problem of people not realizing how much tax they're paying because they see the VAT on the receipt every time they buy something.
Except that I suspect the average taxpayer doesn't see what they're paying but instead sees the size of the refund check they get at the end of the process, which has relatively little correlation to the amount they paid.
Intuit's business model is making tax preparation easier. If tax preparation wasn't so deliberately complicated in the US, they would no longer have a viable business model.
At the risk of being a non-popular opinion, I don't find tax filing to be particularly difficult. Maybe its because my job is to solve pretty hard problems all day. But the average person/family who doesn't itemize have a Sched C, it's quite easy.
The thing to understand about filing is that (particularly for W2 wage earners) you're not telling the Government how much you made and how much you owe. They know that already.
If you make a mistake in your filing, good or bad, they will send you a friendly letter correcting your mistake. The filing is just acknowledging the debt to them.
> I don't find tax filing to be particularly difficult.
That's nice.
You still might care that we collectively waste an enormous amount of time doing it, unnecessarily, for the benefit of Intuit (and some cranks who want people angry about taxes).
If you still don't care, I'll be taking a few hours of your labor per year for my around the house work. It isn't particularly difficult work, no big deal, right?
I won't argue that the whole system is stuck in the 20th century, but there is a little bit of "big companies and taxes are evil and I'm oppressed!" going on here.
I understand not everyone has an easy time with it. But today, 70% of Americans can file for free. Some version of optional auto-filing I have no problem with.
As far as a private company trying to protect it's revenue, there are far more egregious examples of that, out there right now.
The Free File program may as well not exist. The fact that it was mostly delegated to companies whose success depends on its failure, means that its lack of adoption should surprise no one.
Intuit is just really easy to understand as a cut-and-dry example of regulatory capture. They basically maintain the need for themselves entirely through laws that create the problem they solve.
> They know that already and calculate it in your account. You're acknowledging that debt to them.
But that’s part of the problem. What is the purpose of making people acknowledge that debt? Why not send a bill showing the calculation that the government already knows? Even if it’s just a few hours, accumulate that for every person that pays taxes for every year of their adult life and now you’re wasting millions of person hours just to let a couple of companies sell products/services that are not really needed.
Tax code reform aimed at simplification would just get rid of that, and incentivize the behavior of your example via e.g. DoE grants to manufacturers to allow lower prices on more energy efficient units. The problem is that everybody has their own pet deductions (and a good number of them have armies of lobbyists backing them up), so a real attempt to clean the slate would require a degree of political cohesion that congress can only dream of.
They don't know that. The trick is to send you a draft proposal based on what they do know, and allow you to amend it based on information that they do not. If you aren't eligible for any deductions nor have any other taxable source of income of which the IRS was not aware, you just accept their proposal. That's how it works in most developed countries.
It kind of works that way here. You get a W2 from your employer which has every bit of info you need. You put that into a form and submit to the government. The end.
They don't, but the important thing is that the vast majority of people don't itemize, especially with the high standard deduction there is now. Required filing is just pointless for them.
Of course the option to file will remain, no one is arguing against that.
> The thing to understand about filing is that (particularly for W2 wage earners) you're not telling the Government how much you made and how much you owe. They know that already.
But they don't necessarily know how much you owe. Even many W2 wage earners are eligible for various credits, including but not limited to out of pocket charitable donations, moving expenses, child and dependent care expenses, student loan interest and post-high-school courses you pay for that improve your work skills.
Yes. For people with super simple tax returns, e.g. a few W2/1099s/standard deductions/no cost basis issues/etc., I suppose it would be convenient to have taxes auto-filed but it really isn't a big deal and doesn't require software. Once you get into the complexities that make tax filing a big deal and may involve accountants or multiple evenings with tax software, auto-filing isn't going to work.
The system is very complex and it's very easy to make a mistake once you start having more complications like selling property, dealing with stocks, handling additional income, etc.
Correcting mistakes is expensive, you'd likely need tax attorneys to figure this all out and you will also pay penalty.
I had one non-“salary” event one year. I spent so long staring at the instructions during filing, failing to get any of the software to work for my case, and at the end of all of it I ended up overpaying a significant amount.
I later (2 years) found out about some tax exemption I qualified for and applied for it. They sent me a refund after I filed an amended return. I miswrote my zip code. The check got sent and returned. No phone call to me or attempt to contact me to my knowledge.
Only after 8 months of waiting did I reach out. Person was real nice and resolved it all real quickly (for which I’m grateful), but still a bit annoying that this was a thing.
Meanwhile in many other countries you have 1 (one) form to fill out if you have to. None of the billions of tax exemptions you have to file for correctly (mainly cuz you don’t have to give tax credits when your social programs are semi-universal) or other headaches.
The filing is annoying and can be error prone. The underlying system is something right out of Brazil (the movie). The sort of bureaucracy that Americans like to imagine infect every socialist nation is totally present in the tax system of the US
There's nobody hounding you here, no stress regarding your taxes unless you're filing for a return or have extenuating circumstances, and even then there's a government-provided online portal for direct communication with the Finanzamt (finance department).
Every American should be upset with Intuit.