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by schwabacher 3724 days ago
"All this will accomplish is making sure that tax preparation is back where it was two decades ago -- where the Actually Wealthy hire a person to do their taxes and get the right deductions, and everyone else gets stuck with an opaque bill which they can't afford to assess for accuracy. This is a far more regressive system than what we have now."

This is where it is now - plus the non wealthy end up paying TurboTax $200. This bill would save them the $200.
4 comments
bpodgursky 3724 days ago
A lot of fairly high income people pay for TurboTax. Billionaires of course have tax preparers -- but TurboTax moves the bar a LOT higher.

> This bill would save them the $200.

First, most people pay turbotax $50-100. $200 would be deluxe + 3 states, which is highly uncommon.

And it's highly likely it would cost them MORE than $200 in credits they are not automatically given by the IRS. The IRS does not know what you donated to charity, properties you own which get credits for, educational tax credits etc.

It will spit out a number with a refund, sure. But this change will take more from the lower-income and middle-income proportionately than from the wealthy.

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toomuchtodo 3724 days ago
> The IRS does not know what you donated to charity, properties you own which get credits for, educational tax credits etc.

But it could if provided with the data.

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Natsu 3724 days ago
I thought the charities reported donations over $X to the IRS. Am I mistaken?
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MBCook 3724 days ago
It would also provide a additional small incentive to the IRS to lobby harder to get the code simplified. Now they have to update another set of systems for each crazy change.
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bcheung 3723 days ago
They are only handling the simple cases for the free filing system. Basically only if you qualify for 1040EZ.
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Alupis 3724 days ago
I think the average $200 figure is for folks paying a tax preparation service, not using HR Block software or TurboTax (both cost around $49 and give free fed e-files and usually 4 "free" state-files.)
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0xffff2 3723 days ago
If you're paying TurboTax $200 a year to do your taxes, you're doing something seriously wrong.
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