IRS will pilot free, direct tax filing in 2024::Direct File is a shot across the bows of Turbotax, H&R Block, and others who have resisted free and simple tax filing for decades.
The rest of the developed world has had this for decades.
So I fully expect this initiative to be lobbied out of existence by Intuit and the rest of the tax filing industry.
Pretty sure most people outside the US never even have to file a tax return? Income tax is deducted at source by employers. Solicitors collect it if you buy/sell a house. Etc etc. You only need to do a tax return if you’re self-employed or quite wealthy (in the UK, at least).
I am self-employed. It takes about an hour to do my taxes online.
In France everyone has to fill a tax return. It will be prefilled with your salaries, but you still need to add deductions (for example house renovations or child care) or special revenues like real estate.
But yeah, if you only have salaries and no deductions you just validate your prefilled return and be done with it.
Western Europe here. I’m old enough that I’ve had to file many paper tax forms. There have always been free services to help with that.
Now you can do it all online, and the known information is pre-filled. The last few years you don’t even have to click “accept” anymore, accepting is automatic if you don’t do anything.
That said, there still are paid services, but their main aim is to find all the ways to reduce what you pay (and they are likely used mainly by the well off).
Australian here. The ATO (australian tax office) has a website you go to. It is pre-filled with various dada, your salary, your bank interest, uni loans, etc.
You add any additional salary, eg gig economy or crypto earnings (lol) and put in your deductions. I deduct heaps because I make money on the side renting out my camper van, and all its expenses are deductable from its earnings, but if you just have one job and thats it, then you can be done with your tax return in 10 mins, for free, online.
You can even preview your expected tax return before you commit. Once you commit, the return lands in your bank acvount usually within a week or so. You even get a receipt showimg what they spent your money on.
Update: An Intuit spokesperson contacted TechCrunch to call Direct File “wholly redundant,” and potentially a “financial nightmare” that will cost billions. But we won’t know until we try.
Yeah, even my third world country does this. But this only works if you only have a 9 to 5 job. Some people have more complicated tax.
This guy explains it a bit more:
Luckily, most people are 9 to 5ers. The vast majority of people have simple taxes that a trained monkey could handle if it weren’t for the Intuit cabal.
Let not perfect be the enemy of good. This is a good step and from here, we can improve the system by steps until the only people who can’t use it are tax cheats. Over optimistic? Yes, but I’m taking my wins to go.
What? The government will actually collect taxes itself like every other sane country, instead of privatizing it out to middlemen grifters? Oh my, where is mah fainting couch?
That guy is obviously exaggerating for effect and you are technically correct, but he’s not wrong.
Companies like Inuit and H&R Block have been lobbying for ages to keep the free file forms ridiculously overcomplicated, difficult to navigate/complete, and dangerously generalized to the point where if you mis-interpret a line on one of your several non-intuitively named financial forms you will be committing tax fraud
It is objectively easier, safer, and more convenient to file taxes through one of these private companies and the is by design.
Thank you – the point I was trying to make is that technically USians can file their own taxes, but that it’s overly complicated, and many believe intentionally obfuscated, in order to push citizens to use private corps to do it for them (at a healthy profit for said corps).
Whereas, in Canada (and as I understand it, most other nations) the tax system is not so baroque as to discourage people from doing it themselves.
In Canada, unless you have some weird stuff, the tax filing form is smaller than the census. They just need to confirm things that links your accounts. They already have your pay and taxes amounts from your employer, your bank tax statements from your banks, etc. So unless you’re doing something only like 1% of the population does, it’s a two pager online, 20 minutes in and out, that’s it.
That’s not far from the same for simple filings here in the USA. Both my adult kids do their own in about 10-15 min. Maybe less after the first year. This is through TurboTax online.
Also, it’s free as long as you don’t make much or have things like HSA or 401k.
Why can’t they pre fill in the form and ask us if it’s correct. The cast majority of us have pretty straight forward filling is.
Because Intuit and H&R Block have given more money to have it stay the same than anybody has for simplifying it.
Can’t like… a few million of us put a dollar in to make a big enough bribe to counter these assholes’ bribes?
a subset of lucky taxpayers in as many as 13 states
This makes it sound like some dystopian survival lottery.
.” In software terms, we’d probably call this an alpha.
No, we’d call this a closed beta test.
