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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

If you're standard deduction and just have a few simple sources of income, filing is easily free. Should it be electronic and pre-filled? Yes. But this idea that you need an accountant or tax prep software if you have a W-2 and a 1099 just isn't true. The forms are free.

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My issue is they advertise “free, free, free”, but only for federal. After you go through everything they hit you up for money to file with the state. To go elsewhere means doing everything again, so people just pay it.

It’s probably technically in the fine print, but it certainly felt like bait and switch the first time I ran into it over 20 years ago. I’m still bitter all these years later, and get reminded on a yearly basis, as it’s still standard practice. They can make federal “free”, because they can just lump all the costs in on the state taxes. Nothing is actually free.

It also makes no sense to me that it costs money to e-file, while sending in paperwork that a person needs to open and process is free. It seems so backward.

Half of the allure of turbo tax is figuring out if the standard deduction is more or less favorable than itemized.

Maybe the IRS should start by building a tool that points you in the right direction before it tries to build a TurboTax clone.

I assume that information exists. It's mostly just totaling up some numbers. I know these days, for me, standard deduction works unless I have some outlier charitable/investment thing going on which I'm going to talk to my accountant about anyway. I assume there are other alternate energy credits and the like but not sure how they work and again aren't in play for most people in a given year.

Mortgage interest and state income taxes can easily get you well over the standard deduction for single people.

Same here, mortgage interest puts me over the threshold (and single)

When I don't make as much in a year, I go through all of the same exact steps just to see the standard deduction is better :D . It's a nice walk down memory lane though.

Mortgage interest is the big one.

Fair enough. I don't have any longer.

Awesome, let's do better and have the IRS fill out your form in Feb or March, mail it to you, and if you disagree you can still file yourself. That way, 95% of cases are covered and don't have to even deal with taxes.

By all means. Though I think it's considerably less than 95%. A lot of people probably have something non-standard. I have no problem with pre-filled forms that explicitly only cover certain types of transactions.

> mail it to you,

Corrected it for you: email it to you at your personal @gov.us email (I know it is not a thing yet).

>But this idea that you need an accountant or tax prep software if you have a W-2 and a 1099 just isn't true.

I hire a CPA to do my dead simple returns that I can do myself.

Why?

Because I don't trust myself to have done it correctly. No, I can't sincerely swear everything written is true and correct to the best of my knowledge because I do not trust myself.

That's why I hire a CPA, because I need someone I can point to for legal liability purposes. Am I throwing away money, so to speak? Perhaps, and I don't care; I'm buying peace of mind.

I've always used one myself. When it was simple, it was also cheap because I basically got my taxes done as a sideline for the CPA doing my family's taxes.

But if that's your concern I'm not sure automated or fill in the blanks tax software, free or not, is necessarily a good substitute.

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