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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

I had an awful experience with TurboTax just a few days ago, and will probably never use it again. In the very beginning, it asked me to click on some some things to get a "life picture" and seemed the Free version was fine. Then I get halfway into it, and it says it can't continue unless I use Premium. When I was almost done it asked to charge extra for "audit protection" and I had a wave of anxiety sweep over me, and almost purchased that too.

It has been brought up a few times here: companies like H&R Block have lobbied to keep things complicated.

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

Unless I have some special deductions to take care of, the government should just send me something like "we have received forms x,y,z from a,b,c. This is your AGI, what we/you owe. does this look correct?"

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The ridiculous tax code isnt the fault of TT, even though they lobby to keep it that way. It's the fault of the cowards we keep sending to DC. Take it up with them.

Post-citizens United, it’s the corporations.

Corporations don’t file a 1040.

Corporations like Intuit TurboTax spend millions of dollars of the money you give them to loby the government and keep the system so convoluted that you need them to do your taxes.

This is more a meme than a reality. I'm sure that they do spend money to protect their business but it's a bit silly to think that they have a measurable effect on the tax code complexity compared to the money that comes from other special interests. People with simple tax situations could very easily full out the forms from the IRS. The 1040ez lives up to it's name -- doing it with software is in most cases just more convenient. And people with complicated tax situations have a tax accountant.

There's a middle ground with upper middle incomes and small businesses which have somewhat reasonably nontrivial tax code that applies. In the absence of software they would probably be pushed the accountant route. Generally people want this complexity because they pay less compared to proposed simpler systems.

It's not about the tax code complexity. It's about the government having a system in place to use the information it already has to automatically complete your taxes if you have a simpler tax return. This happens in a lot of other countries and, having lived in one where this happens, is much better.

Intuit lobbys to stop this happening because they know a lot of people don't have complex returns and if the government automatically calculates basic returns it would wipe out a large portion of their customer base.

https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

And yet whenever we try to eliminate “loopholes”, there’s some group complaining vigorously to keep that complexity. The new tax law simplified taxes for most filers by increasing the standard deduction (by eliminating exemptions).

How do you know the new tax law simplifies filing since it didn't apply to 2017?

It's pretty much guaranteed that fewer people will itemize this year.

Whoever told you that is a moron. The new tax changes go into effect for 2018. Fewer itemizers for 2017 taxes has nothing to do with the changes to the tax code.

I guess my statement as made is ambiguous, but I wouldn't have said "this year" if I meant 2017 taxes.

Ok. Granted fewer people will itemize in 2018. And so what? I don't think TT has a stranglehold on the industry because people worry about their itemizations. In other words, I don't expect TT to have fewer users and less revenue for 2018 returns. No one is going to say "the standard deduction makes sense for me...I no longer need turbo tax"

Well they should. If you don't even need to itemize you should just fill out the forms from the IRS. If you can do some simple addition and subtraction it's not difficult. Probably just as fast if not faster than being interviewed by your tax program.

If you use TurboTax every year it carries over a lot of information each time.

But why? I mean we're in a forum if tech nerds and people are seriously advocating filling out a form and doing calculations manually?

You're missing the feature where your information is carried over year to year and all the forms you get can be automatically parsed. "Doing your taxes" with current software can be as simple as uploading a few PDFs and clicking next a bunch of times.

You generally need to do the itemized calculations to see which one saves you more money. Thus, the result is kind of meaningless as you do the same work either way.

The only way to simplify taxes is to actually remove deductions.

There are really only a few things most people deduct - state taxes, property taxes, charity and mortgage interest. You have to enter your state taxes anyway. It's not that hard to enter the other three and see if you are below the standard deduction.

I (and probably the vast majority of people) don't have to do any calculations to know I'll have less than $24,000 in deductions because $24,000 is ridiculously high amount.

You can deduct state taxes which adds up. Really 24,000$ is easier to hit than you might think.

You can only deduct 10k of state taxes starting next year

Which I think is BS for numerous reasons. A few being, the income tax is not how the federal government was supposed nor should be funded. We need appropriated funds and taxes, not a slush bucket that ebbs and flows. Also, states that want to use income taxes to take care of their citizens ought to have priority and not penalize them. Encouraging subunits to be responsible for their needs is a good thing. Decentralizing services is beneficial by design, even if not as efficient. The US is huge and the needs of the states are so diverse we should leave it to the states to address their own needs.

No it's really not, over 90% of Americans will claim the standard deduction this year: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanellis/2017/11/22/nine-in-te...

My deductions were usually only around ~$17,000 with pretty decent charitable contributions, I don't even have to think about if I'm going to itemized this year. I suspect I'm a pretty "average" itemizer.

The simplest tax code isn't necessarily the fairest.

I understand I must not be in the "most filers" camp. I still have to go through all the work to figure out if I should itemize or just take the standard deduction. The effort it takes me to do my taxes hasn't changed. I wonder how many people actually have a reduced effort vs how many save taxes?

A complicated tax code isn't the problem. The tax code can be as complicated as can be, so long as it is computed automatically by the state from the data it already receives, which is the part that Intuit is blocking.

Here in my country the "practical manual" for this tax year is 1163 pages long, but the web app of the ministry has most of your information already stored. For the vast majority of people filing taxes it's just a matter of clicking "OK" a few times.

> even though they lobby to keep it that way.

It’s continuing existence is their fault, then. If not their sole fault.

TurboTax is the worst and they'll squeeze you any way they can.

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