As a non US citizen this is just a Robin Williams in Jumanji moment…
WHAT YEAR IS IT?!?!
Anyways, welcome to the year of the interwebs.
Have you got rid of your cheques and faxes yet? 😉
I still write 2 cheques a year because my water bill can only be paid via physical mail (or in person I guess), I’m pretty sure fax is still common in our medical industry.
interwebs
It’s called “the information superhighway”, thank you very much. 😄
The Great Series of Tubes
It’s not a big truck you just dump something on
Saw that on Netflix, addicting.
my wife is disputing a Healthcare charge. Went to a specialist 13 times, they reimbursed us 9 times but not the other 4, at a cost of about $800.
we have to communicate with the appeals center by fax, and wait for their snail mail response.
I’m 100% for a simple IRS tax return but what the heck is with this?
To use Direct File, you need an IRS account with ID.me.
To get an ID.me account, you need to:
Take a video of your face
If you can’t or don’t want to take a video of your face, you can have a video call with an ID.me agent who will confirm that your face matches your identification.
Is that really necessary???
You’d think a social insurance number would be enough…
Social Security number WAS NOT made to be an ID. It’s not a secure unique number, it’s just serial.
Oh I didn’t know that. It kinda works like that in my country
It’s the same as going to a bank and letting the teller look at your face. It’s to prevent someone from stealing your identity using a picture of your ID.
How can they verify the ID is real without physically seeing it? They look up the info but still need to verify that you are the person on the ID.
Ok but how come H&R Block doesn’t need to do this? I just give them my IRS PIN and the AGI from last year’s return. The picture shit feels like a poison pill
How have they been verifying mailed in tax forms with no pictures for decades?
Seems like it unnecessarily disenfranchises the poor and the elderly. You have to have access to equipment that can record you and the tech savvy to be able to use it.
How have they been verifying mailed in tax forms with no pictures for decades?
They haven’t. Of course, the IRS deals with upwards 1 million potentially fraudulent claims per year. So, at some level, they’re trying to avoid exacerbating the problem.
Stupid fraud prevention ugh!
Listen folks, if you have a driver license, they already have your face, so settle down.
countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. 1
And they do taxes just fine without a Harry Potter like gif of every tax payer.
Privacy reasons aside, TurboTax doesn’t require a video clip to file your taxes so this is only raising the technical barrier against the widespread adoption of a simple tax system.
This is great for citizens!
I’m not sure they get bragging rights about a smooth site launch for a tax preparation application when most people don’t even have their W2s yet…
We’ll see whether this is another healthcare.gov when people actually try to use it, but this is a huge win for people who qualify.
Damn only like 20 years behind the rest of the world.
Couldn’t hear you over the sound of my freedom
…nevermind, that was somebody rolling coal
Why did this take the IRS so long where other nations have been doing this for decades?
Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.
The other guy linked the answer, but I’m going to explain it anyway:
In the US, companies have the freedom to
bribelobby our congress members by giving them money that’s totally unrelated to their vote you guys. The reasoning behind that being ok is that the congress official in question is still technically free to vote however they choose despite the money given to them. The reason lobbying works is the threat that the congress person might not get that money next time if they vote against that company’s interests.Just so you all know, because our congress members make a government salary of about 150k-250k/year, it’s surprisingly cheap (from a rich company perspective) to lobby them, with lots of payments being in the low thousands. So for obscenely wealthy companies (like intuit), it’s much cheaper to pay just enough guys off to kill a movement than for them to suffer the actual consequences of that movement.
In this case, intuit’s entire business model depends on American taxes seeming like this mysterious and unapproachable thing that Americans have to pay a third party for in order to not get thrown in jail by the IRS. And given that intuit (and companies like H&R block) rake in billions each year, it’s comparatively pennies to pay off congress officials to keep it that way.
-> 'Merica
Most nations don’t require you to do anything other than check your payslips unless your situation is complex.
Ehh, in the Netherlands you need to report all bank accounts, home value, income from salary and contracts and a fuckton more.
It’s all done via a web app made by the Tax Authority.
And nearly all of that is usually prefilled correctly to the euro by the Belastingdienst.
Hmmmm 🤔
Just a heads up it’s only available for the following states:
Arizona California Florida Massachusetts Nevada New Hampshire New York South Dakota Tennessee Texas Washington state Wyoming
Yeah, bummer. I’ll have to wait I guess.
Which is funny considering this is only for federal and not state taxes. Do they say why it’s limited to specific states?
It’s a trial program, to work out the major kinks, issues, and problems before rolling it out further to other states.
It’s also federal-only, meaning you still have to do your state returns. Most of the states in the trial have no state income tax, which makes it an ideal solution for taxpayers in those states.
Expect it to expand to all 50 states in the coming years, presuming Republicans don’t somehow manage to legislate it into oblivion like usual.
If they have no state level income tax how do the states get money for things? Do they just tax businesses?
Good thing Intuit (TurboTax) is fighting so hard to keep the current format super slick and cheaper as a private service rather than a centralized government process. Right up there with disbanding garbage pickup in favor of individually contracted services because [checks notes] 7 overlapping truck routes will be cheaper than 1
While… I agree with you on companies like Intuit pulling this is bullshit, depending on the region you’re in the trash example used is… not great.
Speaking in the Kansas City region where City of Kansas City trash pickup is literally two bags allowed, no cans used, often late, the bags tear easily, and with this whole freeze thing they’re still behind two weeks out. I live outside in one of those 5 (I’m not kidding, one literally started up last year) overlapping truck routes and it is insanely better. That said, previous town I lived in the town did the trash pickup and they did a good job, got the cans that could be auto lifted and even regularly had large item pickup days for free so even better than where I’m at now.
Anecdotal evidence here, too. My experience is the opposite. Never had an issue with my city picking up the trash, putting the can back reasonably, and not randomly skipping my shit. Moved to a different NEIGHBORHOOD, one not directly serviced by the city, and half the time they don’t get it, and when they do the can ends up about 10 feet from where it should be, blocking my driveway.
To make matters worse, presumably my taxes paid for the previous pickup. Now they pay for the previous pickup, AND I have to pay for shit service!
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For a couple of years CreditKarma was the best free solution. Then Intuit bought them.
Intuit divested the tax product in that sale, which was bought by Block (FKA Square) and is part of their Cash App brand. So it’s still around and still not Intuit.
Last I checked you couldn’t use the cash app version without downloading their app.
The login process for it is absolutely terrible and requires so much jumping back and forth between the dumb app and my computer, which is where I want to actually do my taxes.
that’s who I use! $15 to file state, free federal; I mean that’s pretty close to ‘free’ compared to Turbo/Inuit pushing you close to $100 after all the BS. And freetaxusa keeps my info for subsequent years, etc.
that’s who I use! $15 to file state
I’d suggest using the IRS’s Free File Program wizard to find a tax program that’ll do your state taxes for free. You’d save a little money that way. Most tax programs will keep your info for multiple years after your first time using them, too.
thanks, but I make too much according to that, which is something else people seem to skip over whenever these “just do it for free!!!” posts come up. You have to make below $80k (AGI) even when married.
But, again, even if I didn’t, $15 seems pretty fair to me, to avoid having to hunt for the magical free method.
For anyone who has filed with it, how much does this return differ from using a company? Is your total return the same or can a tax professional get you back a significant amount more?
You get as much back as you would if you knew what to claim.
If you lived in a state not listed here, the District of Columbia, or a U.S. territory, Direct File won’t support your tax filing needs.
lol I guess not for me!
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I experienced true happiness for a moment. Only one moment.
Why is it only available in such a limited number of states?
This is the first launch of the program and they’re still in a pilot phase. It will presumably roll out to more states (maybe all?) Next year
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The IRS could not legally do this before. They had tried and were sued.
I don’t understand the praise here. 1040EZ is about as simple as it gets, and it’s free to file.
1040EZ hasn’t been a thing since 2018.
a basic tax return then. don’t be pedantic. it’s a simple as following some fucking directions. i haven’t filed a simple return in almost 20 years so EXCUSE my mistake. The IRS is cancer and shouldn’t be praised in any way shape of form.
Who are you to call anyone or anything a cancer when you’re so obviously ignorant of basic information, the attitude comes across like an old man yelling at clouds.
Even if they were a cancer it’s not like it changes without improvement. Your entire premise is destructive and useless.
Keep defending the hand that holds you down.
Then figure it out because people have been talking about it for a long time.
No they haven’t. Taxes are easy to do yourself if you’re not a dullard.
Thanks Brandon
Honestly I’ll hope reservations and congratulations till after we see how it goes, but the fact it’s a limited pilot makes me optimistic.
the fact it’s a limited pilot makes me optimistic
:-/
I’ve seen far too many good ideas go through a “limited pilot” program, outperform their intended targets, piss off someone in the DC corporate circuit, and get their budgets vaporized by the next Congress.
Yeah small programs are easy to pivot, double edged sword in a political environment
why is it the US is hellbent on making everything a state by state issue but at the same time saying federal law is above state law in such cases like Texas but states with legal cannabis or states with legal abortion are allowed to be above federal
is the US the United States or not
make it make sense
It’s 50 states in a trench coat
50 countries, but yeah
A state is just another term for a country. The two words never meant something different until our American Union got some people confused.
That’s a fair point. I was mostly sticking to the colloquial usage.