USA is finally catching up with the rest of the world?
No, we have 50 states to get through as well. And then all the municipalities.
Sorry, but still very far behind on this and many other things.
Darn I was hoping it’d also be available now since I still haven’t filed my taxes this year.
Eat shit [insert private company here]
I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.
Eh, cancer is no joke. It doesn’t discriminate on who it hits. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even though I would snicker if these CEOs get hit by lightning lol
Ah fuck it, was going to be cryptic but ill just tell the story.
I worked for Duke university and one of the people in our department had stomach cancer. The head of the department, provost, CEO and president sent out emails asking if anyone would donate their leave for the person in their hospital being treated for cancer. If the person didn’t get the days then they were going to drop them from the company insurance It was bad so the person had to stay in the hospital.
I hope they all get the most the worse form of cancer and slowly die with no family around. If there is a hell, they deserve it.
Oh man freaking brootal. Dropping them from the insurance when they needed it the most? This is we need “socialized” medical insurance.
Universal healthcare should be a right.
Amen to that!
😂
My chaotic soul appreciates the garbage bin trash level of discourse
Wait really? What’s the catch?
You have to register an account with the 3rd party service ID.me that uses biometrics like facial recognition. Their privacy policy is horrendous.
The only reason I haven’t used it this year.
I expect that you’ll have to pay the money according to the statement
Only catch is Republicans probably launching some type of legal action to try and stop it.
No lawsuit launched yet to my knowledge, just sternly worded letters saying please stop helping taxpayers instead of letting predatory companies like Intuit fleece money off of them.
I would expect them to try something soon though with this announced.
I was in a pilot state (Arizona), and I looked into it. It’s only for federal taxes. You need to file state taxes separately.
There are already several online tax solutions that offer free federal and charge for state.
Unless it’s changed from the pilot, it’s only useful if you file a 1040EZ or take some really basic deductions. Anything beyond the basics, like any kind of investments, means you need to use a different tool.
But freetaxusa is still free for all but the most complex cases.
From the article:
The pilot program targeted people with simple tax returns based on W-2 forms. In her remarks today Yellen said that over the next few years they will expand Direct File to support more situations.
I’d say it’s still a win, and I’m hoping they expand upon it.
But even that would cover a large percentage of the American workforce, and I imagine over a few years, it will grow to cover all users that don’t need personal accountants. Progress is progress.
Personally, I hope this transitions into a system where they email you a proposed return and you do nothing to accept it (only needing to take action if there’s an issue).
Won’t SOMEBODY think of the poor, poor monopolists who so far made their money exploiting the alternativeless victims at their mercy? Why would their prey give them way too much money now, eh? Socialism! Terrorism! All the bad words, what’s in right now? Woke? DEI?
Even without access to Direct File since I wasn’t in a pilot state, I’ve been using the IRS’ “Free Fillable Forms” for the last few years and they’ve worked great! They don’t hold your hand as much as the paid software but for my returns they’ve been more than adequate and free!
Does anyone know how “Direct File” differs from the “Free Fillable Forms”? Does it hold your hand a little more and help you find credits/deductions? Free Fillable Forms worked well, but only so long as I knew what I needed to file. New circumstances, like adding a dependent, lead to a lot of research.
Yes, direct file is guided with a checklist. However there are only certain situations where a taxpayer would qualify for direct file - there’s income limitations and only certain income types qualify (u would not be able to use it if u are self-employed or own rental properties for example). The IRS is planning to expand this but for now it’s limited tho the vast majority of taxpayers would qualify.
Anyone can use the free fillable forms but u either have to know what you’re doing or be comfortable reading irs form instructions if you have a more complex tax situation.
But is it compatible with the tax filing dating sim?
I guess the donations weren’t big enough this year.
how much longer til they just do it for me and leave me the fuck alone?
🤞
He gets it
Dude’s face alone has accounting credentials: https://www.congress.gov/member/brad-sherman/S000344
I’ll take that over celebrities as politicians any day
Mine was too complicated to file for free because I have retirement investments? Seems like a silly reason to force someone to use a paid service.
You’re not supposed to be wrecking our economy like that. Spend, baby, spend.
😂😂
Same. It sucks having to pay H&R Block $300/year to file my taxes, but their online records save my ass every time I buy a house. I sincerely hope we see a more robust free file system in my lifetime.
$300? Just use Free Tax USA. It’s free for federal and $15 for each state. No, you don’t need extra stuff, unless you think you’ll be audited.
If you spend a little time figuring out your tax situation, you don’t need to pay someone else to do it. Here’s a secret: the people they have doing your taxes don’t necessarily have a master’s degree in tax. Those people are helping corporations or wealthy people with trusts.
You missed the point of my reply. I pointed out that the benefit of H&R block is that they keep the records easily accessible, so when I buy a home I just link the H&R block account to the lender and they pull all of my tax and income history. Saves countless hours of gathering info and filling out paperwork. That’s worth $300/year to me.
You wanna pay and extra ~$280 a year because you save a little bit of time when you buy a house? You know FreeTaxUSA has all your documents too, right?
You’ve never bought a house if you think it’s saving “a little bit” of time. We’re talking easily 40 hours of gathering and filing paperwork here. That’s $2,200 of my time. If I buy a house once every 7 years it works out.
Do you buy houses all the time? Do you want your income info to be sold to anyone who will pay? You are paying extra for them to have access to your info.
Sounds like having any 1099 is ‘too complicated’. So anyone with any sort of savings account that managed to get $10 of interest over a year… So if you have like a thousand dollars in a boring old savings account you are ‘too complicated’.
You need to enable JavaScript to use Direct File.
On the plus side, UBO only had to block one script (on the login page at least).
Pass, it’s not open source.
The one benefit of open source of having more eyes on the code to find any bugs would likely be its weakness, given that systems like these aren’t updated frequently, any bugs found and made public could open the door to exploiting,
Free if you have no other exemptions to file.
1099? Nope Depreciation? Nope Tax credits? Nope
Makes for a great headline though.
Im sure those of us that do have exemptions other than the standard will see our tax prep fees skyrocket
I would suggest you get hired by the IRS and start rewriting all their ancient code to build in and allow every deduction rule and that it’s applied correctly every time so everyone can use it.
The tax laws are so large and so complex and the code running all this stuff is so old and now locked in because they didn’t keep up with updating their software as they went along. I’m amazed they got this far. Oh, and like you, I can’t use it either. But that’s why I have an accountant.
Some progress is better then no progress, and TurboTax et. al. losing in any way is a victory for the rest of us.
Maybe not. You will have the same number of tax preparers chasing less work. Through the magic of the Free Market™️, shouldn’t that mean pressure to reduce prices? We can only hope.
I already saw it reflected this year. My tax prep went up $150
Freetaxusa does them for like 20 bucks
I use them. I love telling friends I use that because it sounds like such a scam site
Yeah idk why anyone thought that name was a good idea for their marketing
“just put your social here…”
I’m no statistics major, but that’s like 100% of the sample!!!
Competition does NOT make prices go up, lol.
Well, the point was that it isn’t competition in his scenario. I hope the exclusion of 1099 is temporary, because I had a 1099 for like a few dollars because I had a savings account that technically accrued interest, so as it stands that makes me ineligible. So his concern would be that because the tax prep services are competing against ‘free’ for that tier, that they’ll ramp up prices for the rest to compensate for loss of income.
Hypothetical question: If you omitted the couple bucks of income from the 1099 on that one savings account and you later got audited- how much money would you be on the hook for? what would the consequences be in worst case and likely case scenarios?
I honestly think the government has next to no resources now to go after tax cheats that aren’t hiding tens to hundreds of thousands of owed taxes… but would love to hear what others have to say. I suspect missing out on less than a dollar of taxes from omitting a single figure 1099 would not be big enough to chase and if found probably less costly than hiring a preparer every year when averaged out over your lifetime of tax returns.
Perhaps practically speaking you probably would get an automated form from IRS demanding a few dollars. But it’d be nice if qualification for ‘direct file’ option didn’t rely on “mild tax evasion” for people with savings accounts.
You don’t need to include the income if it’s under 10 dollars.
Given that savings accounts are at 1% interest or so, that’s only a thousand dollars in a savings account.
Yeah, very limited, but it’s very good for more than half of the population that don’t have enough deductions to exceed the standard and don’t own property (if you properly count houseless “households” that earn income as not owning property and not just renters like most statistics). It’s dumb that they have to file a return anyway just to acres money that never should have been collected. Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place. Mostly because they follow the directions and/or are afraid of paying a fine plus interest.
Anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. And if we can unbury all of the staff out of the pile of paper returns, we can devote some to go after the rich and their frivolous, often fraudulent deductions and have them pay the tax they owe.
Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place.
How do you do this? How do you calculate what to personally withhold and pay? Is it simply calculating through the income tax?
There’s a worksheet that usually comes with it where you answer questions about your living situation - single/married, homeowner/renter, how many kids, etc. - and it gives you a number to put in. It’s pretty accurate. I’ve done it at every job and aside from years with tax credits I’ve never gotten back more than a few hundred bucks.
I’ve had 1099s and tax credits and I’ve never sent in a paper return. I keep the records in case of an audit but it’s not like e-file hasn’t existed forever.
I read
1099? Nope depreciation. Nope tax credits? Nope
Why is the USA the only country to have those problems, AND complain about getting free stuff?
Some people in the USA want a solution that immediately fixes every possible problem, and don’t quite get the concept of starting small and fixing other stuff over time.
It’s the same with gun control. Some states want to tighten gun laws, and some people are like “that won’t solve all the problems! We need nationwide laws!”. Sure, but why not accept the win that more and more states are starting to do something, rather than complaining that some problems still exist?
The ATO’s myTax system is pretty great, I hope with this you guys finally get something as nice.
They don’t know what you are talking about my fellow Aussie. Any A in an acronym means “American” to the USAns. That other countries exist that start with A is unfathomable.
Biden did that, among many other great things for the average american citizen
