https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/30/politics/irs-direct-file-free/index.html
The Internal Revenue Service said Thursday that it will continue and expand its free tax filing program in 2025.
Article says some states may refuse to participate. Well since it's a program that helps people and provides a free option instead of using a corporate tax preparer, then I assume all GOP states will hate it and call it liberal socialism somehow. Betcha we hear the same argument we get with healthcare ... " The libs want to force you to use this and take away your ability to choose"
GOP rule #1: oppose anything and everything that's provided at no cost to the end-user if someone somewhere can charge too much money for the same product. and no, instatwitbooksnaptok isn't included because the end-user IS the product
Texas was one of the states that could participate in the trial. But it is Texas, so I'm not holding my breath that they will continue being cool with it. Fingers crossed though.
It will do federal taxes for everyone, and can also do state taxes for people in states that opt in. Only a handful of states were included in the beta testing version this year, but they’re opening it up to any state that agrees to participate next year.
A lot of GOP led states don't have state taxes anyways. Worst case scenario, people in said states only need taxes prepared for federal anyways.
I want to choose to fund lobbyists working against me to make every April a little bit harder and more expensive :(
I was pressed for time when filing this year, so I didn't want to experiment with the IRS' new program and just went with FreeTaxUSA since I knew it would be fast and have my data from last year saved. For those who tried the new program this year, how was it?
I itemized for the first time this year so I couldn't use it, but I did fill it out completely as a comparison point to make sure itemizing was worth it. It was pretty painless, not very different from free filing through various other companies.
Great. Other free filing is acceptable. And folks will be kinda used to it from the get go.
I got halfway through it and one of the forms I needed to use was not supported, so I basically wasted my time testing it out. I don’t remember the form, but I felt like it was a basic thing.
I went with FreeTaxUSA as I always do and it was good as always.
I think having to fill out tax forms instead of the government just telling you what you owe is pretty insane and this IRS program does nothing to resolve the actual issue.
That was my issue too. I think it was something with retirement like it didn't support either 401k or IRA contributions.
I jumped back to freetaxusa since I've been using them for years.
They require you to use a third party, ID.me, to even sign in to use it.
Fuck that.
Without that, I would love to use it.
So you're completing and filing your taxes by mail, I guess? Or using a different third party, like H&R Block?
The problem is that the actual government is the one requiring me to use a third party company, that is not part of the government, for me to give them information so that the government can verify who I am.
I use FreeTaxUSA, and never had to do ID.me.
It’s an arbitrary requirement, that is stupid in the sense that the GOVERNMENT knows everything about me so WHY should I need to use a COMPANY’S bullshit to verify that?
Tbh worked quite well for me only rough part is I messed up some math at the start so I had to start again
Why wait until then? There are plenty of non existent people affected by this that the GOP can help bring to court so the Supreme Justices Mullahs can strike it down.
Interestingly this is all part of a trump-administration effort to help consumers file taxes without having to pay $100 or whatever to tax filing software companies.
Ahhhhh almost had you with that huh? Almost? no? Yeah okay fair enough. It was a stretch.
Supreme Court rules that the IRS is not an expert enough in tax law to create a system to assist with filing your taxes until Congress passes a law stating that it is legal for the IRS to provide a product assist with your taxes.
More importantly they said to expand it to all states. They say only folks with simple tax returns but honestly I think if all your tax stuff is in forms that are mailed out then they should do it.
Well, now that Chevron is dead, this ain’t happening unless every 23-year-old Trump district judge in Alaska agrees.
After a successful pilot, we are making Direct File permanent and inviting all 50 states to offer this free filing option to their residents,
Taxes are federal - unless the state wants to pay for the cost of my choice of person to file them, why the fuck do they even get a voice in this?!
Because taxes AREN'T only federal. There's federal taxes, state taxes and local (AKA municipal) taxes.
unpopular opinion, but, as someone who can afford it, I like TurboTax as a product. hate Intuit as a company for all their bs lobbying, but I like having TurboTax as an option. I have like a dozen accounts across multiple banks and turbotax gets me done with my taxes in like 30 or less every year for cheaper than my old accountant did when I used one.
I’d say then that’s great! It’s just that the majority of people have one source of income and should be able to file for free.
yeah I agree. that's why I included that the perspective was as somebody who can afford it and that I still hate what Intuit does. But at the same time saying I like the product instead of the TurboTax sucks circlejerking that the Internet loves doing.
Don't see why the irs version would not do that. Its just a gathering of forms that all go to you and the irs so they already have them.
because they said they wouldn't. the direct file program said they're placing themselves as an option besides ones already on the market and will NOT replace any existing technology already on the market. so you still need to manually file with them. it's not the situation where they already have the documents so you don't have to do anything.
Edit:
The IRS tool is meant to be an additional option people have to file their tax returns and will not replace any existing options for filing, said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel on a call with reporters Wednesday.
im not saying it is automatically done but you should not need to input the data. if you do then its pants.
you will still need to manually input your information from the forms you receive. it just files your taxes for you. it doesn't do them for you.
Well this is no difference then as free fillable forms has always been an option they provided for free with no exclusions.
well the difference is that the government won't go oops you traded a stock, so you need to use premium for $120 and also shove sales and dark patterns in your face to trick you into buying premium. most others that were free usually charged to file state taxes or something or another too. definitely a win for the average joe, but it's not the process that people are imagining. the IRS has pretty directly said that they are providing another option to people and not making other services obsolete.
free fillable forms has always been free. its just online pdfs for the physical forms and the irs has been offering them for awhile. I have not used a physical in awhile. My point was if they can't pull the forms with the data its not really more useful than the current free fillable forms option.
Yeah, the feds need that money so they can spy on American citizens, oppress minorities, murder innocents halfway across the world and bomb their homes "help people"
Fun fact: the existence of atrocity factories like CIA and the US military doesn't mean that benevolent public agencies, institutions, and social programs don't exist.
Just like you being against murdering innocents abroad and also against paying your fair share to help protect them domestically, the US government contains both good and evil parts.
Unlike you, though, millions of people would not be able to survive without the good that government does.
Fun fact: the existence of atrocity factories like CIA and the US military doesn't mean that benevolent public agencies, institutions, and social programs don't exist.
Strong "Mussolini made the trains run on time" energy going on here
also against paying your fair share to help protect them domestically
Do you feel protected? I don't.
Oh, I'm most definitely am. I'm using my brain and my knowledge to help teach others to fight the system and defund the IRS and defund the government and burn it all to the ground.
Let the states handle it. If the states don't handle it well and have bad infrastructure, then you are free to leave. Before a state that has better infrastructure. I'd like to see a world where states compete to get new people to move there and have incentive programs for people who wish to leave other states.
you are free to leave
This isn’t true in the slightest. I’d love to leave Texas right now, but I in no way can afford to do so.
If you are able bodied, sell all your stuff, and buy a bus ticket.
one time, I sold all my stuff and bought a $100 camper trailer and $500 truck and moved to different state.
another time, I sold all my stuff except what I could fit in an astro van and moved to a different state.
I would support community fundraisers to help people get out of situations that are bad for them. So for example, LGBTQ people who live in LGBTQ friendly places could raise money to support others who are currently living in Texas and need to move away.
So the libertarian solution to eliminate taxes is essentially GoFundMe, where the burden of support for those in need falls only on those who possess both empathy and the financial means to engage in philanthropy?
There are places in the world with no government. Africa has lots of them; that's probably the best place to travel to if you want a much more immediate and easy and possible-in-the-first-place path to get there than the total non starter idea of destroying the US government. Central and South America have some too, in selected places, but it's less complete or widespread than it is in Africa. You could literally be living your dream in like a few weeks from now.
Actually I think there are also some crypto based attempts at doing something like that (like floating ships or islands or something), and they'd carry a lot of benefit in terms of the people speaking English and being supportive of your worldview and all, but they have worked even worse than the land-based places with no government, if you can believe it.
If you just meant you want the nice things about the US and its government, without either the destructive things that it does alongside or the obligations that have to happen in order for it to exist and do those nice things, me too! It'd be great. Maybe when you go to Africa you can get to work on making that system. Let me know when you get done and in the meantime I'll be here with my clean water and highways and taxes garbage collection and anti-bear-attraction regulations and military and all.
So I thought to myself, well that's a weird comment. It's nonsensical in a couple of different ways.
So I sort of wondered to myself: Why would someone be so aggressively negative in this specific way about something that almost any normal human being would look at and say "hey that's good," and for such weird and counterlogical reasons?
And so I looked three comments back in your history and said oooooohhhhhhhh okay I get it it all makes sense now.
Normally I would disagree with you, but yeah This Guy is actually probably a plant and a shill, but you guys throw that at so many people who don’t worship the ground Biden walks on that it is hard to trust you
The truth is, I have no idea and I don't think it's all that productive in most cases to try to sort it out or talk about it. I didn't actually say anything at all about what the person was; I simply highlighted flaws in their argument and linked to one of their other comments and let the reader draw their own conclusions. In this case I think they were so self explanatory that I didn't really need to indicate any of what my conclusions were.
But... to deal explicitly with my conclusions, I'll say that in almost every case where there's some kind of weird nonsense-logic, and then poking through the person's history instantly yields some "let's not vote for Biden" advocacy, I do personally tend to draw the conclusion that they're a political shill. If I saw a bunch of geopolitical stuff or extended arguments about Marxism then that would tilt the scales in favor of tankie (although like I say, this is only my private logic about it, not like anything I would present as conclusive, because it's basically impossible to tell.) Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn't strike me as real common tankie behavior.
Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn't strike me as real common tankie behavior.
Really? Hm. Maybe I’m using it wrong, it seems like that’s a big thing they do. Like we don’t support third parties because we’re terrible liberals who love war, and not because third parties have zero chance and almost always hurt the chance for progressive reforms. (Also ‘liberals love war’ is just Qanon level batshittery, I just can’t)
I classify most of those people as shills. The people who want to talk about communism or anarchism or pro-China/Russia-ism, and lack of any interest or hope for US electoral politics as kind of an outgrowth of that but US electoral politics is not the main thing they are interested in focusing on, I classify as probably authentic tankies.
Like I say, of course, I have no idea. That's just how I write it down in my head.
Fair enough. I just think of “shill” in a context of paid advertiser or, well, useful idiot. Yeah, ok I could see that.
I looked back in my history as an exercise in self criticism, and I found many many recent instances of me arguing with people I'm pretty sure are shills without bringing that accusation into it in any capacity, because usually, it's not relevant and I think just dealing with their arguments at face value is more productive. And then, I found a comment from a few days ago where I called the Biden administration "fuckin assholes" about their support for Israel.
I won't say that back further ago than that, you won't be able to find me accusing someone of being a shill, because you will. I will say something about it in cases like this where it's (a) hilariously obvious and (b) relevant to the conversation on a level that makes bringing it up productive, in addition to dealing factually with what they're saying. But I actually don't say it nearly as often as I think it. I won't speak for how anyone else likes to do their internet arguments, but just as far as my conduct is concerned I'm pretty sure you're just making up a convenient reality that doesn't exist. Both of your main accusations here have nothing to do with the actual reality that exists in the real world.
I'm not sure why you're committed to saying something "rebuttal-like" here, instead of just "yeah that guy's full of shit" without any "but" attached afterwards, athough I have a theory.
(Also, this conversational pattern -- where one person who is pretty clearly a shill expresses a statement, and someone does a rebuttal, and then the first person disappears completely and someone different instantly jumps in and starts conducting the conversation or attacking the rebutter -- happens often enough and is slightly-unusual enough that I think that pattern is worth pointing out, also.)
I didn't say it wasn't good, just highlighted the programs's limitation. U weaved this story around it lol
Let's see if the tax prep lobby will allow them to love beyond pure w2 wage slaves.
So you think it's a good thing, just doesn't go far enough / needs to be extended further in the same direction in the future?
My bigger concern is that it won't happen due to the strong lobby, yes
W is a W, and starting from the bottom makes sense.
But between income restrictions and complexity thresholds...
Why does it have 79k agi limit? What purpuse does this limit serve beyond sending people earning more to paid clowns....
If limit is w2 then just make it w2 jfc
Sure. My question is, why such a concerted effort to look for bad things about such a clear win?
Like would it work the other way? If the IRS was making life more difficult and expensive for everyone making W2 income under $79k, would you be out here saying well I guess an L is an L, but let’s remember it only applies to W2 earners and only some of them and anyway it’ll probably get overturned later on and I want to highlight the program’s important limitations and etc etc, instead of just saying “that’s a bad thing” like a normal person?
It seems your issue is my delivery which is all good but that's how I choose to deliver my message.
I don't provide factually incorrect info, if I do, please correct me.
I have no issue with learning!
I only have anecdotal info for based on some reading I did last year. As far as I recall, the program and software are new. So they’re slowly building up features for more complicated tax scenarios an in turn, slowly making it accessible to more of the population.
It’s just a matter of time before this is widely available. I read the post title as “we succeeded in this first year’s test and plan to continue the program”.
78% of Americans make what you call "destitute wages" and live paycheck to paycheck on W2 income.
78% of American taxpayers* only have a w2?
Kinda hard to believe but I guess half does live pay check to pay check.
Despite the downvotes, yes. The IRS should be obligated to put out software that can service everyone, in every tax scenario.