TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat
propublica.org
propublica.org
They have since made their pages discoverable by search engines and have denied that it was intentional obfuscation. But the news in TFA is that apparently someone at (or formerly at) H&R leaked internal documents with explicit guidance:
> “Do not send clients to this Web Site unless they are specifically calling about the Free File program,” the guidance states, referring to the site with the company’s free option. “We want to send users to our paid products before the free product, if at all possible.”
(there's also interviews with former employees recalling meetings)
This is all "news" because Congress is considering a bipartisan tax reform bill that includes a law that would block the IRS from creating its own official Free File program. Senator Ron Wyden, the bill's co-sponsor, is now having second thoughts [0] and yesterday, NY Gov. Cuomo ordered a state investigation into the tax prep companies [1].
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taxpayer-first-act-free-file_...
[1] https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-calls-depart...
edit: changed "permanently block" to "block"
The concern is that putting the Free File program into law would somehow make it less likely that the IRS would create its own program.
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/9/18301943/last-minute-tax-prepar...
> (UPDATE: After this post was published, Senate finance ranking member Ron Wyden’s office pushed back on Elliott’s report, saying they’d received confirmation from the IRS chief tax counsel that the bill as written does not bar the IRS from designing their own direct filing product, if they give 12 months’ notice. It’s likely the tax prep industry would challenge the IRS if it tried to do that.)
According to Bloomberg, rewriting the law might require sending it back to the House for a new vote:
https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/senate-may-no...
There are very influential anti-tax and small government think tanks that vehemently argue against it, from the perspective that it reduces oversight.
Their position is that people just won't pay much attention to how much taxes they're paying if they don't have to fill in tax paperwork themselves each year. Their position is that if you make it invisible to end users, governments will just keep creeping up that tax percentage on end users and people will just accept it.
They're not wrong as regards to visibility, in the UK where tax is PAYE (Pay As You Earn), I don't think I ever paid more than a moments glance at the P60 (but I'd often check month to month that things were in the ballpark I'd expect. I'm a little more unusual in that regard probably). In the US I've had to pay close attention.
How is the amount on a check or bill, if made clearly visible, somehow “not visible”?
To make this more explicit, presumably the chain of reasoning is as follows:
1. Make tax filing more painful.
2. As a general rule, people will set out to do that which reduces their pain.
3. Therefore, people will set out to do that which makes tax filing less painful.
4. People determine that lobbying for lower taxes will make tax filing less painful.
5. Therefore, people will set out to lobby for lower taxes.
Step 4 doesn't make sense to me because reducing total tax rate and reducing tax code complexity are orthogonal issues, and advocating for lower taxes will not in and of itself lead to a simpler tax code.
It's just an in-your-face reminder of how much you're paying in taxes, supposedly sending a stronger message to you than if the IRS were to send you a pre-filled return.
So the idea is, if you're more obviously reminded of how/why your tax money is leaving your wallet, you'll hate taxes more and lobby for lower taxes. You understand that doing so won't make filing taxes any less complicated (and in fact it might be more complicated if taxes are lowered through new deductions and credits that you need to prove eligibility for), but you'll expect to be paying less.
It's still stupid, but at least the chain of logic could potentially hold if you squint close enough and agree with the premises.
But that’s just going back to my comment 4 levels up this thread. If it’s an issue of tax amount visibility and not tax filing pain, the latter is not needed for the former.
Anyone who uses TurboTax etc. doesn't actually "do their taxes". They're basically just doing a data entry job, mechanically typing values into boxes from forms as TurboTax prompts them. In many cases people don't even do that, instead opting to direct TurboTax to automatically fetch their data from a payroll provider, bank, brokerage, etc. and do it for them. So for many people it's just 1) enter in financial institution usernames and passwords; 2) click "file my return".
And given that the IRS wouldn't just "send you a bill", but instead send a pre-filled return, people would have every opportunity to read through it and decide if they agree with what the IRS filled in.
There is materially nothing different. The tax prep lobby has just done a fantastic job of convincing people that it "feels better" to fill out your own taxes rather than getting a pre-filled return from the IRS. Which is bonkers, especially since that supposed "feel good" crap wastes billions of dollars every year.
(The US is also pay-as-you-earn, btw. If your employer doesn't withhold enough taxes from your paycheck and you don't make up for it by paying quarterly estimated taxes, you have to pay extra penalties come tax day.)
Not that it really matters though, it all comes out in the wash.
Eg. my tax code is 1185L - essentially meaning I have a tax free allowance of £11,850 PA and have no additional income.
For instance, all interest is charged as income for tax purposes, but 1099-INT is only issued for $10 and above. Similar restrictions exist for 1099-MISC but at a higher threshold, if you are a freelancer who receives a lot of small 1099 income from multiple sources, the IRS has no way of knowing that.
Conversely, if you’re eligible to itemize deductions, the IRS has no way of knowing what you gave to charities over the year. That’s entirely self reported and they only even ask for the receipts if you get audited. Charities don’t send records of their donors to the IRS.
In fact, charities are prohibited from valuing donations of property for the donor. The donor must do that, and justify the valuation if audited.
The majority of taxpayers are not in that situation. They would benefit greatly from an IRS-provided pre-filled tax return.
For people that are in this situation, the IRS will send them a pre-filled tax return with incorrect data. Then they have the choice to either start with the pre-filled form and make corrections, or start from scratch with their own data. They are no worse off (and possibly much better off, if the corrections are minor) than they are under the current regime.
Regarding itemized deductions, with the 2018 tax year changes, the standard deduction is so much higher (and SALT deductions so much limited), that even fewer people than before will itemize. And the percentage of people who itemize already wasn't that high. But again: people who do itemize could merely correct the pre-filled form the IRS sends, or start from scratch if they really want to.
I suspect we will eventually see an IRS prefilled form, anti-tax activists and the tax filing industry can only hold it off so long. Some amount of people will end up overpaying their taxes because they choose to use the prefill rather than itemizing, and some people will feel more entitled to cheat on their taxes (e.g. waiters not reporting cash tips) but then we already see that happen today anyway.
There are also multiple ways of doing things, and picking one path may be strategic to you (if you expect more or less income in the following years). Giving up on this flexibility and its ramifications will affect your outcome negatively.
For simple filings, yes, it should be possible for them to give you a bill that is close to what you'd compute yourself.
This is my experience for the US system.
You would then review the return and could update/file a return if you have additional deductions or business income that would not otherwise be reported to the IRS.
I believe the UK and some other European countries already have this system.
The government favours them as subsidies at point of purchase, rather than something you do at the end of the year. That actually works out a lot nicer as a tax payer, as you don't need to have the full amount of money up-front, and also means you're way less likely to miss out on some of them.
If you do have some uncomplicated deductions (eg. you are a higher rate tax payer and have made large donations to charity, or have business expenses which were not paid by your employer) you can phone the tax office or ammend them online.
Only those in more complicated situtations need to file anything, which most people do through the tax office's website.
Which would be fine by me, in all honesty. Let the IRS compute a "basic" return for you. If you want one that digs deep and actively minimizes your tax bill, then you can get your taxes done in one of the more traditional ways.
After filing, I got a letter that said (in more formal language) "oh, you missed this, we're direct depositing it."
In any case, even for stuff the IRS might legitimately not know about, it would still be a tremendous simplification to reduce it down to, "Hey, here's a list of things that have deductions or credits. If you think something's missing, enter the info."
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/epis...
Transcript: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
It also requires all the states' revenue departments to coordinate with the IRS, because if everyone needs to file a correction based on state taxes anyway the system doesn't make much sense.
We can stop wasting billions of dollars a year on the tax prep industry and instead send a tiny fraction of that amount to the IRS so they can beef up their operations.
The one issue I see is that a lot of people expect to be able to file their taxes (and get their refund) by early February. People who have brokerage accounts (and other things) generally can't do this, as brokerage tax forms aren't due until mid-March. Since the IRS wouldn't know who does and does not wait on brokerage forms, they'd have to wait on everyone, and delay sending out pre-filled forms until late March. A lot of people would be pissed about not getting their refund in early February like they're used to. (Personally I think this is a dumb thing to get pissed about, but at the end of the day you have to convince voters it's ok, and the backlash against this would be huge.)
Requiring that brokerages and other entities with a later deadline move their deadline up to late January just might be a non-starter for some. Then again, if I look at my 1099-DIV and 1099-B forms, it's not clear why it takes so long to prepare them. All it takes is a DB query against my transaction history for the year that could be done on January 1st; no need to wait 2.5 months.
Certainly some forms couldn't be prepared until businesses close their prior-year books, but I think that'd affect a small minority of taxpayers.
There are many unknowns, perhaps not for you, but for other people. Also you need to file in order to have this 'discussion'/exchange. Perhaps the state erroneously thinks you made 500k and is taxing you accordingly when in reality you made 100k. You then prove the state wrong (whichever way) and you save yourself the tax$ and the pain.
Maybe it's different elsewhere but here tax it's simple, all electronic and a free service provided by the tax office for the majority of Australians.
That's still less painful than doing the whole thing from scratch, and the majority of people don't have this situation, so they have very little work to do.
Let's remember that just because there are edge cases, that doesn't mean you should abandon hope for making the common case easy. The best user interfaces make the common case easy and the uncommon case possible.
In the UK, income tax is handled between employers and the government, so the vast majority of people don't need to file one.
[1] Unless you made below a certain threshold (which is quite low), but you are still encouraged to file anyway.
I wonder what was the growth of the paid products. Gut feeling tells me that it was far more than 8.3%.
I have said before (and it didn't do good to my karma but this is more important). I feel that USA Democracy (not the political party) has been corrupted and injured by Lobbying. "Corporate America" rules and the people are there just to get their blood sucked. Healthcare is ran by insurance companies with insane pricing. Talking to the state should be free. Submitting your taxes should be free. I am using (in the UK) a software, but it is my choice to use it. I could be using Excel files and have my accountant submitting printed papers. My choice. It is called freedom. Those companies are playing the people for fools. They will keep pushing so that the vast majority of the people will need to pay to pay taxes. It doesn't make sense :)
It is free. Hiring a lobbyist is much like hiring an advertising firm. You could do the work yourself, but you pay for expertise and connections.
Where lobbyists have the advantage is they know who to call to get the meetings, and they have information from other clients they can leverage. The problem isn't that money changes hands, it's that votes change hands, and oftentimes, lobbyists are the ones best positioned to trade in this currency.
If the public would rather have simple tax filing then that is what any reasonable government (that wants to get elected and wants to actually collect tax revenue) should do, regardless of some private corporations quarterly numbers/stock price.
And the fact that it works... is even more amazing.
It's like 1984.
I mean, it's not even a bad fact. There's no reason to hide the fact that they push people to the paid product. That is what is expected of businesses. I mean, why lie about it? For me it's more insulting to get lied to like this. It's so weird.
But then I see what happens all around me and I remember it works for the majority, or it wouldn't happen.
This isn't directed at political parties, it is about how power is handled by those who wield it, and how those who receive its influence act. You'll see the same dynamics in any large powerful entity and it's admirers: political parties, companies, religious institutions, even NGOs... talk to their fervent supporters and the conversation becomes super polarized where obvious facts are denied, obscured, minimized, or in general disregarded in favor of a vision. Even things that come up on mainstream news outlets will be dubbed 'conspiracy'.
Even saying something completely true and factual which someone won't disagree with, if it casts a negative light on powerful institutions they admire, a major percentage of the population will attack you verbally and put out every answer as if it was a personal attack. I guess most people lack self identity outside of their affiliations? I don't know that part.
But I believe the reaction of the admirers pushes companies and other powerful entities to act in a way that disregards facts. They are speaking to the admirers. They are engaging in persuasion.
The real site for Government-mandated free credit reports:
https://www.annualcreditreport.com
(See "https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-get-a-copy...)
The highly publicized deceptive site designed to get you to sign up for a service you don't need:
The real blame is Congress for making such a complex tax system will all their attempts to keep their offices secure. The tax system used to have meaning but generations of politicians found they could reward and punish with it and they did so with abandon.
The system should never had become so complex as to need a program. If your middle class or higher the chances you need more than 1040A/1040EZ put you into the category it just isn't worth the risk to do them without guidance and that is where Congress should be taken to task.
Now one good effect of that "Republican" tax change was the standard deduction got pushed so high most people will never need to itemize again. It also increased the progressiveness of the tax system by that and other changes. I guess if we cannot rid ourselves of all those tax laws that make itemization the punish/reward system it is then just raising the standard deduction is best.
I am. When companies behave like scumbags, I have no problem with calling them scumbags.
I agree with you that Congress gets a heaping helping of blame as well, though.
Actually there were bills in congress that would have made it so a program wasn't needed because the government would file on your behalf (https://slate.com/business/2019/04/turbotax-bipartisan-tax-f...). In most cases the government knows enough about you to calculate your taxes for you. Turbotax lobbied the government to kill these bills because it would have destroyed their business model.
So the reason you have to use a complicated form or program to file, is entirely Turbotax's fault because they have lobbied the government from making it simpler for users.
Of course a bigger root cause is that lobbying is undermining our democracy.
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
In way, US is run by corporations so I think this was by design.
This is a country for corporations, run by corporations.
What’s written on US passports is a lie.
The average return for those applicable is ~$2,500, which is a huge amount for people who qualify, lost so Intuit and H&R block can better market their product.
https://www.eitc.irs.gov/partner-toolkit/basic-marketing-com...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/04/30/research...
I homebrew beer and use a tool called Bru'n Water to calculate what adjustments I need to make to my source water to match the characteristics of the style of beer. Once again it's just a massive excel file. Water and style information goes in, water additions (calcium sulfate, lactic acid, etc) comes out.
I helped my brother in law file for an extension through the IRS web site. The IRS directed us to private companies including TurboTax to file the extension. We clicked on the free TurboTax link which nowhere had an ability to file for an extension!
I finally told my brother in law to print the extension form and mail it to the IRS.
The IRS should not include a link to something that doesn't exist.
Yikes!
What was wrong with this to begin with?
I guess I'm mainly shocked that mail wasn't seen as the preferred (or at least the most obvious) way of doing this. Mail, unlike online 'solutions', is documentable (copies + certified + delivery confirmation) and proven adequate for use in a courtroom. Also, pretty much all government communication can take place through it.
I switched to FreeTaxUSA and did everything for free (well for me because I live in TEXAS)...
I definitely think the US should have it's own system that individual states can extend however. The so-called "free" ones find any reason they can to swindle you.
I used TaxActOnline exclusively for all my taxes for the past 15 years and never paid more than $12 for any given year - so I will never be using them again.
It seems like this is something an indie developer could create, but maybe its too complicated and too risky?
There storefronts always looked a bit skeevy to me, but they've never charged me a dime for this product and I've used it for 3 years.
The software worked well for me and my simple return, and expect it could work well for medium complexity problems as well.
I have no doubt that they will try to monitize in the future, but until they do, this seems like a good deal for consumers
Just a little bit of surveillance capitalism to help you save money.
You give them a lot of data about you that they then use to sell you insurance and loans and so on, but I actually find their services useful so I consider that a fair trade.
The amount of liability you would take on is insane.
For the most part, I don't understand the difficulty. You can pick up a copy of the 1040 and the instructions from most public libraries. Then, you just follow the instructions. It's like reading a program. You literally just follow the instructions.
I haven't tried it, and some people tell of getting the runaround when trying to actually use it, but there it is.
That page is literally 1 click from the main irs.gov site. Granted, it's "below the fold", most people will have to scroll down just a little bit. But there it is: IRS Free File.
Go ahead, naysayers, downvote me all you want, but I'll say this: if you can't find that page and investigate if it applies to you, then you deserve to pay to file.
It's a totally different discussion if the links from the IRS site lead to dark patterns and tricks. That's a legitimate topic of discussion.
But not the existence of IRS Free File itself. That's just fine. About the only way it could be easier to find that page would be if it were "above the fold".
I didn't type that directly either. I just typed irs.gov and magically wound up in the right place. :)
But you're right, most people don't grok the WWW enough to go directly to a site. Which, as an engineer, drives me crazy. I don't want magic, I want to understand what's happening. I need to understand what's happening.
I have had this discussion many many times with many people.
But people, including advocates and reporters, discovered the directives in robots.txt and <meta> tags, which have been out-in-plain-sight for at least a decade [0], and that has apparently led former employees to speak out and/or leak internal documents that will very likely lead to an investigation. Tax prep companies have spent millions per year in lobbying, and now a major, easy legislative victory may be spoiled because of robots.txt. It's pretty rare that we see grass-roots complaints actually stymie a popular bipartisan bill supported by industry lobbyists, nevermind because of a webdev technical issue.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20080512004753/http://turbotax.in...
Besides, fuck Intuit, never been a fan of them for the exact reasons mentioned in the article.
I can't imagine anyone having the will and resources to write their own tax prep system and then providing ongoing support for it though. Gonna take deep pockets and someone who really hates the professional tax prep market. It isn't a weekend project. This is a long, thankless grind.
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senato... (Senator Warren Leads Colleagues in Reintroducing Legislation to Simplify and Decrease the Costs of Tax Preparation and Filing)
These are the people you help get the bill passed:
> United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) along with Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today reintroduced the Tax Filing Simplification Act to ease the tax filing process for millions of American taxpayers and reduce their costs. Last tax season, American taxpayers spent an average of 11 hours and around $200 preparing their tax returns -- a cost equal to almost 10 percent of the average federal tax refund. Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) is reintroducing a House companion along with Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Don Beyer (D-Va.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Katie Hill (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).
Please call your representative and ask them to support this legislation. That is their job; to support the legislation you want enacted. It will take you at most ~15 minutes, and every call is tallied by congressional assistants.
Gotta love the "HN Weekender" moxie, though!
Do you have pointers on how you do this? I cannot find any self e-file on the IRS website. I thought it was either use eFile enabled software, or print and mail.
If you want to write e-file-enabled software for others I think you need to become an Authorized e-file Provider (https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/become-an-authorized-e-...)
The tax code is very complex, and nobody could replicate these systems in a weekend. And even if you did, it would be out of date in a year.
Sorry if the tone of that sounds rude, I don’t know how to better word it, but from a US perspective, our taxes are way too broken for a 48-hour sprint to solve
You're not doing this in a weekend, year, or decade, by yourself.
I'm still trying to figure out how to unwind the mess with California. I've just been hit with this warning (after trying to log in, being forced to change my password, and attempting to find the landing page):
You are about to leave the EDD's Employer Services Online website and will be taken to the EDD's Employer Services Online web page. The Employer Services Online web page will open in a new tab.
To be fair, though, I think my situation was the single worst possible pairing for multi-state tax situations.
For absolute starters, think about what happens when someone gets audited after using your software. ( For the purposes of this exercise it doesn't matter at all "who's right".) Look in to laws related to offering tax advice, and then call a lawyer. Actually, call several...
Seriously? I know there are "10x" developers out there (I actually have worked alongside one extensively) but the PDF export of all the forms and IRS eFile integration alone seems like it would take a little longer than a weekend, even for an extremely prolific developer.
It's the wisdom and experience to keep yourself from going down the wrong track. Not progressing down the same track faster or better.
For example, the humility, if nothing else, that would prevent you from taking seriously an instinct that you could replicate a huge business so casually. That's more valuable than any technical skill.
Seriously, working alongside a true "10x" developer is simultaneously humbling and astounding. The sheer quantity of quality output is beyond anything I ever thought possible (speaking as a senior developer myself).
Heh you are off by an order of magnitude there. The linked pdf is only pub 17. There are numerous other publications you'd need to include to actually implement fully correct software for this.
For one relatively trivial example, if we see page 255 of pub 17, it describes the tax computation work sheet. But wait, there's more! If you have dividends or capital gains, you need a different worksheet, which is in a different publication, Mario.
I think you are underestimating by a long shot. Let's say that you forgo any UI and just make a command line tool that only developers use. And let's assume that you don't have tests, don't have any bugs, no any significant things that trip you up. To get something useful, you would need to:
1) Get a basic tool that handles the federal tax calculations for standard W2 income for single people and people filing as married couples
2) Handle common deductions and credits that are applicable without itemizing, such as child tax credits, Healthcare Savings account contributions, IRA contributions, self-employment deductions, alimony payments, educational costs for certain people, business expenses. Keep in mind that each of these has its own rules.
3) Handle multiple forms of income beyond W2, such as capital gains from investments (which are treated differently for people with different incomes and for short vs long term gains), income from dividends, bank accounts, gambling, etc.
4) OK, that's the easy stuff. Now, implement rules for handling state taxes. 50 different states + DC with 50+1 different sets of rules [0].
5) OK, so now, maybe you have something basic working, but if you want to be even a somewhat complete solution, you need to handle cases where people itemize instead of taking the standard deduction. And everything that can be itemized has it's own set of rules.
6) To be useful for anyone except yourself, you'll need documentation, because a lot of these things need some explanation unless you are a tax expert.
Oh, and here's the big thing. The rules can change every year. And they can change in every state and you need to keep it up-to-date. Having out-of-date tax software is worse than having no software at all.
So this is definitely more than a weekend project, even if you only want to handle a portion of the above. This is why so many people use Turbotax [1].
[0] And because you can deduct a portion of your state taxes from your federal if you itemize, you really can't offer JUST federal and call yourself a complete product.
[1] And even Turbotax doesn't do a great job if you are itemizing or have complicated business expenses. For example, say you work for yourself at a home office. Can you deduct your office? What if you have someone clean your house weekly and they also do your office? Your cellphone bill? What percentage of their work can you deduct? What if you didn't keep close track of some expenses or paid them in cash? What if you made a donation to your local church and got your business listed in their calendar... can that be deducted as a marketing expense? A lot of these things are very hard to automate and a good accountant will help you make a judgement call. Even if you are completely honest, there are some things that aren't black and white. Like how do you value items that you donated to a local thrift shop? Even if your goods were worth X, an accountant may not want to put the full amount down if it increases your risk of being audited.
* Written in C * Hosted on SourceForge (why?) * Doesn't inspire confidence
If you're looking for a hackable version that I wrote a few years ago in python:
https://github.com/adsharma/tax
It's not that hard to come up with a basic version that handles the single w-2 with no deductions case.
https://sourceforge.net/p/opentaxsolver/SrcCodeRepo/HEAD/tre...
Yes, please do this. I look forward to your Show HN post on Monday!
(I can't even get my taxes calculated right the first time in a weekend...)
The only thing working in your favor is that you're building against a fixed spec. Unfortunately the specification is deliberately confusing and you'll probably never be able to scrape or parse those rulesets programmatically.
I get it, filing taxes could be easier but it isn't - on the scale of things to worry about, is it really that important? What about on the scale of things that government is inefficient at - does this rank in the top 1000?
Again, I'm not saying we can't improve it, and I agree with calls for the IRS (and CRA) to send pre-filled forms. What I'm calling into question is the outsize coverage that this particular issue got over the last few weeks as certain Democratic nominees (Elizabeth Warren) decided this was the path to their relevance.
I'm not aufait with the US tax system, so please correct me if I've got that wrong.
Yes, it's this exactly.
Also, in my opinion, this is a great example of how a lot of the corruption of government by corporations is done, and is easy for pretty much anybody to understand.
Why would it be a 'big issue'? There is no human right to super easy tax filing. Interest groups, whether they be corps, or unions or activists, will lobby to get laws they like passed. Par for course whether you're in United States or Britain.
Let me flip that around - why wouldn't it be? Surely corporations shouldn't have the power to change laws to let them squeeze citizens for every cent? Surely laws should be there for the benefit of the populace?
> lobby to get laws they like passed. Par for course whether you're in United States or Britain
Lobbying is indeed a thing in the UK, but not remotely to the degree it is in the US. And on this specific issue, there isn't even a remote possibility that the UK would legislate against free tax filing, regardless of ludicrous lobbying (and I say this as someone with a very low opinion of UK politics).
Because it isn't a big deal.
>Surely corporations shouldn't have the power to change laws to let them squeeze citizens for every cent?
They don't have the power to change laws. Congress makes laws. Corporations certainly have a right to lobby government, just like unions, just like citizens, just like activists, just like non-profits.
>Lobbying is indeed a thing in the UK, but not remotely to the degree it is in the US
I'm not sure what standard you use to make this assertion.
>And on this specific issue, there isn't even a remote possibility that the UK would legislate against free tax filing
What are you talking about? You can file for free in United States. That's not at issue. People are complaining that IRS doesn't send a simpler pre-filled tax form. They are also complaining that TurboTax and H&R block does not advertise free filing options [1].
[1] https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...
No, I don't think you really get it. This isn't about taxes.
The problem is that a private corporation has corrupted the federal government to such an absurd extreme, that it has abdicated it's responsibility to it's own citizens. That's why this is such a big deal.
The fact that it happens to be manifesting through tax filing is a relevant detail, but not really the point specifically.
> What about on the scale of things that government is inefficient at
Again, you don't get it. The government is not inefficient. In fact, the government is so hyper-efficient at solving this problem, that private companies had to draft legislation outlawing the government from solving this problem, just to protect their inefficient lazy duopoly.
I think you're being a little hysterical on this point. It isn't that big of a deal. No human rights have been infringed on.
>The government is not inefficient.In fact, the government is so hyper-efficient at solving this problem, that private companies had to draft legislation outlawing the government from solving this problem, just to protect their inefficient lazy duopoly.
The government is SO efficient that they are able to be corrupted by a tax company. And not just any government, a superpower with a $20 trillion economy!!
Here's the thing - to you this is an outlier, to me this is a intrinsic property of every government. That is, the fact that governments will draft policies that aren't the most efficient, or may not be in the best interest of the largest number of people is normal (and not necessarily a bad thing)!! That is what makes government inefficient - because being a gatekeeper, they are very susceptible to attempts of corruption - so all kinds of interest groups, from corps, to unions, to activists, will attempt to skew it towards their positions.