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IRS stops firms like TurboTax from hiding free tax-filing products in searches:
The Internal Revenue Service on Monday announced a new tax filing agreement that prevents companies from hiding free products from internet searches. The move is designed to make it easier for taxpayers to find and use free online tax-filing software.
Taxpayers making less than $69,000 a year can file their taxes for free, but ProPublica reported in April that Intuit, which makes TurboTax, makes it difficult for people to find the free option. Instead, searches for terms like "irs free file taxes" directed potential tax filers to paid versions of Intuit's service, according to the publication.
The IRS previously agreed not to make online tax filing free as long as tax-preparation companies, which make up an industry group called the Free File Alliance, offer free services to taxpayers making less than $69,000. But finding those free services was often a challenge.
Now an addendum to the Memorandum of Understanding between the IRS and the Free File Alliance prevents companies from "engaging in any practice" that would hide Free File options from "an organic internet search." In addition, the IRS is no longer prohibited from creating its own online filing system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @05:48PM (6 children)
"IRS asks industry nicely to no longer do this very specific thing while leaving the door wide open for the same thing to be done in a different way"
If they really cared about this, they'd tackle the bigger thing of regulating dark patterns.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by epitaxial on Friday January 03 2020, @06:39PM (5 children)
Why aren't federal taxes taken automatically? The USA is just about the only country where you have to file your taxes manually. That and a refund. Thank you for overcharging me and using my money as an interest free loan. How generous of you to return it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday January 03 2020, @06:51PM
I hate it!
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @07:12PM
Because lying (intentional or not) on your taxes gets you prison time, and prison time is profitable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)
They do take automatically. If you work, your employer is forced to pay the IRS directly when you get paid. Other payments can be made to you directly, and you will then have to pay taxes manually four times a year. All of this generates a carbon copy to the IRS, including for money generated by minor sales on ebay.
As another AC alluded to, all that paperwork makes it easy for the Man to put you away at his option. After all, they caught Capone for income tax violations. That, and the lobbying by the commercial tax preparers to keep the process difficult to make their business better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday January 03 2020, @10:11PM
You still have to file if you owe taxes. Of course, if they owe you ... different rules and conditions apply.
I remember one tax year the government claimed I wasn't a citizen, nor a landed immigrant, nor a refugee, an aboriginal or status native, nor any one of about a dozen other groups, so they denied me my money. This despite having my social insurance number (like the US Social Security Number) on file and on the return itself.
My response was typical me - "Fine, I'm in the country illegally. Please deport me to either France or Germany. The weather is nicer in France and I can speak the language, and in Germany there's free university tuition for all ages, you can do your whole education in English, and I'm pretty sure I'd pick the language up in while anyway."
Really cheesed me off, because we've been in this country before it was a country, and my social insurance number begins with a "2". People who aren't full citizens get a number that starts with "9". You'd think that would be part of their basic training.
Your tax dollars at work ... but not for you.
Unfortunately, they didn't deport me. I was looking forward to a few weeks vacation oversees and claiming stateless status under UN treaties, just to draw attention to the utter stupidity that bureaucracies engage in that makes people's lives harder.
"Man's inhumanity to man? You want to start a real argument, try talking about man's inhumanity to women."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @10:16PM
We price shits 99.99 plus tax. And tips. Weasels give us dirty looks.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @05:50PM (1 child)
Relevant Heinlein quote:
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday January 04 2020, @11:11PM
While I agree wholeheartedly with the quote, you can bet Heinlein would have been singing a different tune if someone suggested voiding all his copyrights.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Friday January 03 2020, @07:20PM (8 children)
It's really too bad that nobody is demanding that the IRS do the paperwork and send it out to be signed. It says "Internal Revenue Service". It's time we get some service
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 03 2020, @08:19PM (4 children)
You may be naive enough to think that you're the customer of the IRS, but in fact it is the government.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 03 2020, @08:32PM (3 children)
Yeah, well, the government is under our control. If we demand the service, we will have it.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Saturday January 04 2020, @04:25AM (2 children)
Only in theory. In practice, the government is under the control of their corporate owners.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 04 2020, @05:58AM
That's bullshit. The control is handed over by 95% of the people who vote.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Funny) by dry on Saturday January 04 2020, @06:50PM
It's a free market, anyone can buy a politician if they can afford it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Friday January 03 2020, @10:25PM (1 child)
But you are getting "serviced." For some meaning of "service" that involves a bucket of Crisco.
And you have a typo - it's the "Infernal Revenue Service." Truth in advertising laws and all that, you know :-)
Seems to me that if a handicap prevents you from filling in the form, that they should be required to provide the necessary assistance, to avoid discrimination against the handicapped.
One tax office was in a non-wheelchair-accessible building. The guy was called to a meeting to discuss his tax returns. How, exactly, is he supposed to do that? Crawl up the front stairs? Then use a rope to pull his wheelchair up after him?
I can submit electronically - except that for years I couldn't use a computer, and besides, their site doesn't support firefox under linux, and certainly doesn't support links. So can't file electronically.
Want the big print version? I'm supposed to download it and print it out. I'm not going to spend $300 to replace the image unit on my colour laser. Why not give me something I can fill in and mail/email back? You know, a plain text file? Ancient technology that works a lot better than me trying to scribble in the tiny boxes provided, and then them paying someone to transcribe it into a computer ...
No wonder even people getting money back hate the tax man.
"Man's inhumanity to man? You want to start a real argument, try talking about man's inhumanity to women."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday January 03 2020, @11:52PM
If he's physically capable of doing so, he should. In front of a live T.V. news crew.
Even if he's not, the same strategy would work. A person of limited mobility struggling to comply with a mandatory government appointment at a building that physically bars them from doing so....priceless.
The video would be guaranteed viral. The disgust of the people mostly universal (always an asshole somewhere). The embarrassment to the establishment would be sweet nectar.
I'd bet the construction of proper handicapped accessibility would begin within the week, and costs be damned.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday January 04 2020, @04:28PM
I've done nothing in terms of paperwork in the last 10 years here in Estonia - literally nothing. My taxes are all paid at source by my company (wage or dividend, it doesn't matter - there's only one rate of tax and that's for "distribution", and both wages and dividends are distribution. No loopholes means no cheats too.), and refund payments just magically appear when they're due to me. Land tax - they send me an invoice with due dats 3 months and 9 months in the future (I just pay both immediately, can't be arsed setting up a delayed payment).
What a socialist hellhole this is.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 03 2020, @11:01PM (1 child)
"prevents companies from "engaging in any practice" that would hide Free File options from "an organic internet search."
Why not just make them put up a link on the front page? No.....let them hide it EXCEPT for those who know how to do an "organic internet search".
What exactly IS an organic internet search? OH! AH!!! There's the hide!!!
So... nothing will change.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday January 04 2020, @12:02AM
I think the term 'organic internet search' refers to something like:
Free tax preparation and filing
Because now, it returns only paid results from Intuit and others.
Correction: it seems this may of had the intended effect. I just ran the search and got the free file options plus the IRS's own Free file (which doesn't open until sometime in January, no posted date). TuboTax even has the free option FIRST on the landing page with the basic second. You used to have to dig in their website to find it.
Is it actually possible the government has done something good?
We may truly be in the end times if so......
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by webnut77 on Saturday January 04 2020, @01:44AM
The unwanted side effect of filing with a 3rd party (Intuit, H&R Block, et. al.) is that they have your financial data.
Nowadays with the data breaches...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 04 2020, @03:35AM (3 children)
The FTC should have been all over these assholes, in addition to the IRS. They all advertise "free" tax returns, but make the free software hard to find. That's a lot like bait and switch, isn't it? "Come get your taxes done for free!" When you walk in the door, they have their hands out for money, money, money. Bait and switch. Since all those ads go out over the internet, that's also wire fraud.
Someone needs to be all over their asses - TaxSlayer, TurboTax, all of them.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Saturday January 04 2020, @07:46AM (1 child)
They pay lobbyists so that doesn't happen.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday January 04 2020, @04:32PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV0dpCG-8go
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGVK4ibMI-Y
It's still the holiday season - treat yourself to a binge watch!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday January 04 2020, @11:16PM
Especially as decent free software is quite capable of walking a novice through even fairly complicated tax returns, let alone the easy ones. It always astounded me when I heard people mention paying a company for doing a 1040EZ return.