Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-good-for-business-is-good-for-everyone dept.

ProPublica reports:

Return-free filing might allow tens of millions of Americans to file their taxes for free and in minutes. Or that, under proposals authored by several federal lawmakers, it would be voluntary, using information the government already receives from banks and employers and that taxpayers could adjust. Or that the concept has been endorsed by Presidents Obama and Reagan and is already a reality in some parts of Europe.

Sounds great, except to Intuit, maker of Turbotax who last year spent more than $2.6 million on lobbying. Some of which was spent on four bills related to the issue, federal lobbying records show.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by snick on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:26PM

    by snick (1408) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:26PM (#32036)

    Intuit has successfully lobbied for years against the IRS providing its own online tax forms, or directly accepting e-filings.

    If they can't be the middle man, then they will make damn sure that it can't be done.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:38PM (#32043)

    It demonstrates what an abject failure your gov't is if it hasn't provided the ability to do all of your interaction with them via any standards-compliant web browser. [mrpogson.com]

    -- gewg_

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:47PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @10:47PM (#32046) Journal

    I'd like to know how much they paid in taxes vs. the 2.6 mill spent on lobbying... ...and when they do their taxes, do they use their own software? :)

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Lagg on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:05PM

    by Lagg (105) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:05PM (#32054) Homepage Journal

    Since they're trying so hard to drive you to use their crappy, bloated out and barely run-able software it only seems right that if you're going to you should get to for free. So the way I see it this here is implicit permission to go and pirate the everloving shit out of TurboTax. At least they'll have nice usage numbers to give to shareholders, and that's what matters. Right?

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:21PM (#32060)

      I remember a decade ago when Intuit's crap would write to your boot sector while installing its DRM.
      I just did a search [google.com] and was surprised to discover they abandoned that BS shortly after I became aware of it.
      (I would NEVER give money to that company or any other who conducts business as it does.)
      As such, I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 1) by NickM on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:01AM

        by NickM (2867) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:01AM (#32079) Journal
        I remember that, I was a teen when they started that shit in 1998... I was able to crack that software with Norton disk editor.... Crime prescription limit, without them I could not brag about all the sleeplees night I spent as a teen cracking software under the guidance of Fravia (RIP) lessons!
        --
        I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:46PM

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:46PM (#32072)

    TurboTax used to be the easiest way to file without a tax accountant present. While it was not 100% perfect, it was a hell of a lot more effective than tackling the forms alone. I used them from the early 90's to about 2005.

    however, e-forms and online guides do the same job without fee, and e-filing makes it easy to get them in. They built an empire on making the tax code easy to navigate, and now fear the loss of that empire by the tax code being made actually easy to navigate.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15 2014, @11:57PM (#32077)

    Spread the news wide, encourage use of alternative/competitors' products. Only thing corporations understand is what hits their pocketbook.

    I'll never use their products again.

    • (Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday April 16 2014, @02:09PM

      by TK (2760) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @02:09PM (#32309)

      Those alternatives being? I'm honestly asking, as I'm not familiar with alternatives. Turbotax seems to be the only one that advertises.

      As for me, I do it by hand because my taxes are not complicated...yet.

      --
      The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by forsythe on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:16AM

    by forsythe (831) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:16AM (#32086)

    So if you're a consumer who, from this news, has resolved to never use Intuit again, what should you use (assuming you don't want to file by hand)? And what if you run DragonflyBSD or Haiku or something similarly off the radar of most corporations?

    I've used FreeTaxUSA for the past few years, because they provide a simple web-based interface that works without Flash, Java applets, or excessive JS tomfoolery, and it seems to work with any operating system that sports a browser of reasonable heaviness. Despite the name, it's not free (or Free, from what I can tell), but it cost me something like $20 to file both state and federal. I haven't heard any stories about how their employees get together on the weekends and kill kittens.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 16 2014, @01:47PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @01:47PM (#32299)

      That's the one I stumbled on yesterday to do my last-minute e-filing, and it worked fine (Linux, Firefox). I tried a couple of others; one had some dumb limitation on one of the forms which would have cost me $100 more in taxes, another just plain didn't work, but FreeTaxUSA worked OK. It was even free, though I had to de-select the state filing to get that. For $20, I'll type up my own state tax form.

  • (Score: 1) by deego on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:52AM

    by deego (628) on Wednesday April 16 2014, @12:52AM (#32099)

    (as I posted on that other site,) This will happen time and again. If not Intuit, it will be another industry X buying government on another issue Y because it benefits them.

    You can blame Intuit all you want, but that's like blaming sand for flowing downhill. Legal lobbying for your best self-interest is what we all do.

    The real problem is not Intuit, but it's the Government. It should not be "buyable." Its purpose was to provide national security and law and order, that's all. The more functions and power it takes on, the more the lobbying goes up..

    Think it's not bad enough? Heck, a 30-mile circle outside DC is populated mainly by lobbyists.
     

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 16 2014, @03:20AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 16 2014, @03:20AM (#32161) Journal

    (need coffee) my first read of TFT(itle) was: "Inuit Lobbies Against etc..." and thought "WTF? Is it something similar with TeaPartiers only with an ethnic specific?"

    This gotta show that living in the today's world for a while may be an alienating experience - things violating the common sense but still possible are... well.. not unheard of.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford