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.
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.