News

This is awesome! Now the IRS just needs to send me my already completed taxes that I just verify, sign, and return, like they do in Sweden.

Intuit seems to be worried. Shortly after this story was published, Rick Heineman, the company’s communications VP, emailed The Verge with an aggressive statement calling the IRS’s pilot “redundant” and “half-baked.”

“The Direct File scheme is a solution in search of a problem,” he wrote, adding that it could end up “costing billions of dollars in taxpayer money.”

"Yeah you morons! Don't use the free tools that the govt provides you! Pay us to do it!"

An article from The Verge that reports on the following:

• IRS pilot program: The Internal Revenue Service is testing a new service that allows taxpayers to file their federal taxes directly on the IRS website, without using commercial software like TurboTax or H&R Block. The pilot program is for the 2024 filing season and is limited to people with simple tax situations.
• Free File Alliance controversy: The pilot program comes after the IRS updated its agreement with the Free File Alliance, a partnership between the IRS and tax preparation companies that offered a free alternative to paying for tax preparation. However, the companies were accused of hiding the free option from consumers and misleading them into paying for their services. The FTC sued Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, for false advertising and Intuit agreed to pay $141 million to settle the case. Both Intuit and H&R Block left the Free File Alliance after the IRS changed the terms of the agreement.
• Participating states: The pilot program involves 13 states, four of which will also integrate their state taxes into the pilot. The states are:

- Arizona
- California
- Massachusetts
- New York
- Alaska
- Florida
- New Hampshire
- Nevada
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Washington
- Wyoming

Very good news. Tired of giving money to the tax prep vampires. But initial roll out is for simple tax situations (W-2 and deducting student loan interest).

Why can’t this program also apply to selling of stocks/options as well? This information is already furnished to the IRS

In some European countries, paying income tax means that the government sends you a form that is already completely filled out except for your deductions, and you simply verify that it looks good, then you add in whatever deductions you have, and file it.

Because 99% of the work in filing our taxes in America is completely worthless. The government already receives information directly from the same companies who send you all those tax forms. The IRS already knows all the information. Making you input it again is just a way to ensure the maximum number of mistakes.

So the IRS is taking a good first step, but we still have a long way to go to catch up to what people in other countries already have. Instead of making me fill out the forms, and the IRS checks for errors, have the IRS automatically fill out the forms, and I'll check for errors. In a civilized country, this is something that we should already have.

Intuit must be pissed.

There was a massive bipartisan (well POTUS and Dems in Congress) push for this in the second half of the Bush Administration. It lost GOP support after the Republican House Caucus turned on Bush for his path to citizenship immigration reform policy. Intuit and its peers have so much money in this and in lobbying.

"According to the IRS, these are the states joining the pilot:

States with state income tax: Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and New York
States without state income tax: Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming"

Nice! I just moved out of NY State (NYC) and down to Florida, free filing and no state income tax for me!