[otikik]

I agree that all those are bad, but the main problem I have with it is that it should be a state-provided (or federal government-provided, I don't care) service. If a country wants taxes the minimum it should do is tell its citizens how much each of them owns. Relying on a private company to provide that "for free" (as long as you jump through the hoops) is ... shameful.

[xyzzy21]

In general, ANYTHING mandated by the government should be available primarily in minimally sufficient form from the government. That goes for insurance, fees, services, etc.

[Spivak]

And honestly it should just be TurboTax but paid for by the government like every other public-private partnership in other industries. Boom now the incentives are aligned.

[guiambros]

This.

Coming from a country where the government offers a decent and free tax software, I really hate being hostage to TurboTax and their dark patterns.

But honestly, the situation could be a lot worse if it were provided by the government, given the current tax code. To start with, we'd likely have the federal government + every state having different opinions on how to implement their version of the tax code, and spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars with consultants and developers (vide health.gov [1]) to implement their own flavors.

On the taxpayer side, you'd have to deal with at least two systems when doing your taxes, but potentially more if you lived in multiple states. In the best case scenario, some data would be portable between them (but likely not all, given the complexity and number of edge cases). In the worst, you'd have to enter the data manually in multiple systems, making it a nightmare to keep systems in sync. In this alternate universe, TurboTax doesn't look that bad anymore.

The only way to solve this cleanly would be through a full reform of the tax code, including a drastic standardization and simplification across federal + states. But it's unlikely to happen anytime soon, and, not surprisingly, Intuit will be always lobbying heavily against it.

Now, if government were to embrace a public-private partnership like you suggested, we can make meaningful progress faster. Create a white-label version that is offered for free to 140M taxpayers, align incentives on simplifying the tax code, and get the 3P ecosystem to develop advanced versions for more sophisticated users, businesses, etc to create extra incentives to continue improving the sw.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/obamaca...

[treeman79]

Isn’t the tax system still running on cobol?

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/wheres-my-check-cob...

[KerrAvon]

There have been COBOL compilers for microcomputers since the early eighties.

[thfuran]

TurboTax but open source and paid for by the government, I can get behind.

[closeparen]

Mortgages, student loans, ACH and wire transfers… all substantially government provided and funded services for which the taxpayer frontend is private companies.

[pyuser583]

Are you saying the federal government should have introduced a health insurance mandate without provide free health insurance?

[CincinnatiMan]

Have you manually filed taxes before? For the average person it’s quite easy to fill out the required forms.

[burntwater]

They shouldn't have to fill out the forms at all. For the average person it should be a literal "yes, that looks correct" online check box. That's exactly what TurboTax doesn't want.

[kortex]

Yes, and it's awful. I have ADHD and even with turbotax handholding me and importing last years' data and grabbing some fields automatically, it's still quite stressful.

I know several folks that have their partner do it cause they just hate it.

So the "quite easy" is far from universal.

[pyuser583]

Maybe in some circumstances. I’ve been dealing with some horrific tax issues. My wife and I have taken off work to fill out forms.

[sidewndr46]

I think you meant to say "owes", but yes I agree with this idea fully. When I pay sales tax, it isn't like I have to perform some long-form calculation to figure out what I owe. I get a bill and I pay it. When I pay property tax, same thing. I get a bill and I pay it. I register a vehicle as an on-road vehicle, I get the tax amount and I pay it.

Only the Federal government could come up with a scheme where you have to prove you made X, then prove you owe Y and pay that.

[anamax]

To be fair, the FedGov doesn't know all of the transactions that you do that affect your income. At best, it knows what a legal employer paid you.

FedGov doesn't know the basis of your stock (or crypto) transactions so even if it knows the proceeds, it doesn't know how much tax you owe.

[ilammy]

> FedGov doesn't know the basis of your stock (or crypto) transactions

Aren't brokerages required to file forms for every customer they serve? Let the regulated businesses deal with bureaucracy and accounting, they are expected to hire people for that job anyway.

[nybble41]

> Aren't brokerages required to file forms for every customer they serve?

They are, but there are corner cases where they might not have all the necessary information. For example, if you trade the same stocks or mutual funds through more than one broker then neither one will have enough information to determine the cost basis for each sale. It's also possible to move shares directly from one broker to another.

For crypto, in the US, none of the exchanges are currently required to track any of this to begin with (they aren't considered brokers) so it's up to the customer to keep track of the cost basis. Even if they did act as brokers the other issues still apply, plus the cost basis of your positions will be affected if you trade on your own without involving an exchange. For example, spending crypto on goods or services from an unhosted wallet can affect the cost basis of subsequent sell orders. The tax filings are probably simpler under the current system, since if exchanges were filing 1099-Bs you would need to submit adjustments to their cost basis reporting along with everything else.

[anamax]

How does Binance know the basis of bitcoin that I transfer in?

Heck - how does Schwab know the basis of Disney stock that I bring in?

How does either one know when I acquired said assets?

[ilammy]

If you have stock to bring in, you bought it somewhere, right? That "somewhere" should have filed forms reporting on your purchase, kept records and stuff.

With bitcoin, a part of !!fun!! from holding non-security assets is all the accounting you have to do. Enjoy it, that's a part of a bargain. That said, other countries like Japan mandate regulated exchanged to keep track of their customers assets, assist with cost-basis computations, etc.

My point being, regulated institutions can make filing taxes easy for most of the people, with unsophisticated circumstances. Usually being an employee of a single business is considered "unsophisticated" enough to not deal with any forms, letting your employer do these things for you. There is no reason why other common life situations cannot be made as easy, like having deductions for mortgage, purchasing securities via regulated brokerages, etc.

If your situation is "sophisticated", then surely you gotta enjoy accounting and reporting then. But that should be necessary only for a fringe percentage of people.

[maxerickson]

It'd be fine to just ask for information in the cases where they don't have it, a system doesn't have to be perfect to be better.

[anamax]

Note that we're assuming the existence of a brokerage.

When I sell you BTC, how do you report my gain?

When I buy pizza with BTC, how does the pizza place report my gain?

[sidewndr46]

The federal government knows exactly how much I made. There is no financial information beyond the view of the federal government. The only way I could hide income would be to get paid in cash (or cash equivalent, like gold) then hide that money in a safety deposit box. That doesn't exactly scale very long. It's notoriously difficult to buy a car (or bread) with gold bricks. Also, if someone does do this they aren't going to just tell the government "yeah I have $700,000 in gold sitting in my safety deposit box".

Even if the government had absolutely no records of my income (which is false), there should be an option for me to just submit all my income records to them tabulated. I can attach a bank account number and routing number and have them deduct whatever money I owe in taxes from the account. End of story. Unless the IRS is claiming you owe a massive amount of money relative to your income, it is never worth contesting it. You're going to spend more money & time than you will ever recover.

[anamax]

How does FedGov know why I gave you a $600 check?

[Taniwha]

So that's how it works here in New Zealand - most people can go on line and fill out a 2-page web form, the IRD already has our equivalents to W2s, 1099s etc, you can look them over, make sure you think they're correct and effectively press a button - taxes done! And if you don't? then the IRD will do it for you anyway and send you a refund (with interest) or a bill.

Of course it's much easier for us because we have a much simpler tax system - virtually no exemptions - chances are if you have one job all year your employer got your tax right to the dollar.

I have to file in both countries, American taxes is like pulling teeth (the paper work side, I don't mind the actual paying of taxes, it's a civic duty after all)

[fennecfoxy]

I was on PAYE all my life in NZ, now I'm PAYE in the UK. So easy. Even a brief spurt of contracting here taxes were super easy (altho an accountant is still useful).

[jokethrowaway]

Civic duty? If I were you I'd renounce my American citizenship. I don't see why you should support a warmongering country with your money, especially if you're not living within its borders.

Even if I were living in the US, getting money from someone under the threat of fines and incarceration is called extortion.

[dwohnitmok]

There's a large group of political organizations apart from just tax filing services and companies that believe that it is intrinsically bad for the government to just tell citizens how much they owe. They are very loud and influential.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30848324

[pyuser583]

The long term plan of conservatives is to make taxes as frustrating as possible, then change tax day to November 3rd.

[hanniabu]

I mean, we even rely on a private company to login to the IRS now. ID.me is the gatekeeper even though they said they'd remove it.

[eyelidlessness]

If they actually wanted the taxes they’d be sending bill collectors. They don’t most of the time because it’s highly probable you already did pay, more than you owe, and they owe you. Their incentive to collect is to let private companies generate more revenue with their services, which in turn generates more taxes automatically collected.