Hacker News Reader

Comment by nilved | Hacker News Reader

Of course, you shouldn't need to pay anything. That is a false dichotomy.

The way tax returns are done is deliberately abusive to citizens. They'll chase you down if you owe them money, but not if they owe you. In that case you need to jump through flaming hoops every year to appease them. It's not a coincidence.

View on HN

Not entirely true. I have received money back on taxes that I filed with an error that resulted in my overpayment. So in a simple case, yes they will return money they owe you. But I would not expect them to file an optimized return on your behalf and you probably already know if you should be doing this yourself.

> But I would not expect them to file an optimized return on your behalf and you probably already know if you should be doing this yourself.

Playing devil's advocate, why not? They all claim to maximize your tax return, and TurboTax specifically claims no tax knowledge needed too.

TurboTax claims no knowledge of the tax law is needed.

Knowledge of your personal circumstances is required and TurboTax's interview process guides you through extracting that information.

Charitable donations (to take a straight "optimized return" angle). How much did you give? Did you receive anything of value in return?

Intuit (TurboTax) doesn't know that info. H&R Block doesn't. The IRS doesn't. CreditKarma doesn't. You do.

The beauty is you don't. If you go to HR's website they basically say "click here to file for free!", and "click here to make an appointment at your nearest office"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com