Robots Will Soon Do Your Taxes. Bye-Bye, Accounting Jobs | Hacker News Reader

Robots Will Soon Do Your Taxes. Bye-Bye, Accounting Jobs

wired.com

8 pointsdevy5 comments

The government should do my taxes. No, seriously. They already know enough to figure out if I made mistakes in my tax return, so there's no real utility here, beyond giving every tax payer the ammunition to land themselves in hot water.

There's no real reason why every year everyone needs to go through this pain behind the eyes. And letting accountants do it doesn't really lower the stress level - I still need to hand off all the "state" and paperwork necessary, and I'm still on the hook if the accountant gets it wrong (I've had this happen to me, too, and it's not fun). Doing taxes is not productive.

You're completely correct, but missing the real 'reason' why they dont 'do your taxes' or at least send you a completed return to sign: immense lobbying power by the tax preparation industry.

H&R Block and literally thousands of smaller accounting firms would basically be put out of business. Or at least become small shells of what they once were.

I personally think that's a pretty terrible reason for the current situation.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/intuit-turbotax-...

"This is not some pie-in-the-sky that's never been done before," said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. "It's doable, feasible, implementable, and at a relatively low cost."

So why hasn't it become a reality?

Well, for one thing, it doesn't help that it's been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software—Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.

Intuit has spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past five years—more than Apple or Amazon. Although the lobbying spans a range of issues, Intuit's disclosures pointedly note that the company "opposes IRS government tax preparation."

The disclosures show that Intuit as recently as 2011 lobbied on two bills, both of which died, that would have allowed many taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free. The company also lobbied on bills in 2007 and 2011 that would have barred the Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, from initiating return-free filing.

Elizabeth Warren sponsors legislation to fix the problem: https://www.warren.senate.gov/taxday/

TL;DR F--- Intuit.

"You will receive a tax return from the Norwegian Tax Administration in March/April if you work in Norway or on the Norwegian continental shelf. The tax return gives an overview of your income, deductions, assets and debts for the last income year.

You must check that the information in the tax return is correct and complete. You do not need to submit it if there are no changes to be made. "

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/the-ultimate-quest...

If you take no deductions then I agree your taxes are pretty straightforward - you owe a percentage of what you earned and must reconcile that with whatever you have already paid. If your tax situation is more complicated, it's much harder to automatically assume a government created tax return would be accurate. Ex: I bought a house with my partner, how should we divide the write offs entailed to minimize our tax liability? Will the government also be keeping track of every purchase so that it knows how to verify/account for things I buy for work which I also can deduct?

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