As a non US citizen this is just a Robin Williams in Jumanji moment…
WHAT YEAR IS IT?!?!
Anyways, welcome to the year of the interwebs.
Have you got rid of your cheques and faxes yet? 😉
Oh we can file our taxes online, we’re just required to pay massive amounts of money to a corporate middleman to do it.
Oh we can ___, we’re just required to pay massive amounts of money to a corporate middleman to do it.
Basically America.
I still write 2 cheques a year because my water bill can only be paid via physical mail (or in person I guess), I’m pretty sure fax is still common in our medical industry.
somewhat common but dropping.
What is it with water departments being such Luddites?! Having lived in a few different cities in a few different states, they always seem to be the one utility that’s the biggest pain in the ass to work with. Gotta go down to their city office to start service - make sure to bring a voided check if you want to set up an auto draft to pay the bill because they don’t take cards. Online account management? Nah, the closest they have to an online presence is their About page on the city website.
WHY?!
Do you want to pay more just to get all that up and running though?
Utility prices keep going up, regardless. I’d rather they use the money for something useful.
my wife is disputing a Healthcare charge. Went to a specialist 13 times, they reimbursed us 9 times but not the other 4, at a cost of about $800.
we have to communicate with the appeals center by fax, and wait for their snail mail response.
At some point she should just stop jumping through their hoops and file in small claims court.
I still write checks, mostly to pay contractors and tip my hairdresser. I wrote a tip for a contractor the other day and made it out to cash. He said that was too old-school and he was afraid the bank wouldn’t accept it!
Faxes… No, no we have not gotten rid of them. On the other hand, that means shenanigans are still available!
Nottrue - faxes are widely in use in Healthcare due to hipaa rulesOkay, I said we’ve not gotten rid of them? But the good news is you can do shenanigans like fax Dad Jokes to random fax numbers…
Oh, I misread your comment, my bad.
Just a heads up it’s only available for the following states:
Arizona California Florida Massachusetts Nevada New Hampshire New York South Dakota Tennessee Texas Washington state Wyoming
Which is funny considering this is only for federal and not state taxes. Do they say why it’s limited to specific states?
Most of the listed states do not have state level income taxes. The only exceptions are Arizona and California. The rest of the states have no state level income tax. Alaska is the only state without a state level income tax that isn’t included in this IRS scheme.
I imagine there is a reason all but two of the chosen states lack a state level income tax.
Massachusetts does. Per the IRS site, the tool won’t help file it, but will lead you to another tool that does.
State taxes are probably an additional complication in the calculations that hasn’t been implemented yet for all states. And for those without a state income tax not covered, probably some other state-tax-adjacent thing
It’s a trial program, to work out the major kinks, issues, and problems before rolling it out further to other states.
It’s also federal-only, meaning you still have to do your state returns. Most of the states in the trial have no state income tax, which makes it an ideal solution for taxpayers in those states.
Expect it to expand to all 50 states in the coming years, presuming Republicans don’t somehow manage to legislate it into oblivion like usual.
If they have no state level income tax how do the states get money for things? Do they just tax businesses?
Sales tax, property tax, lottery also
Yeah, bummer. I’ll have to wait I guess.
Yeah, what a bummer that free federal tax returns are only offered to a few states.
If you aren’t able to use this new system, a good second option is freetaxusa.com. Free for most filings and dirt cheap for more complex stuff. Also, they are easier to use than TurboTax.
It would probably have better adoption if it didn’t have such a scammy-sounding name.
A better idea is to go to irs.gov and use their free file wizard to see which service is free for you. I used 1040.com this year. Last year I used freetaxusa.com, but this year that would not have been free for me due to my change in income. Which service is free depends on your state, income, and income complexity.
My problem with IRS.gov is they have a history of sending users to sites owned by Intuit. These sites would claim to be free, but would then trick the user into a paid pathway and guide them to an expensive paid checkout. I haven’t been back to IRS.gov since experiencing that.
I learned later that Intuit (who owns Turbotax) had spent millions lobbying to get that to happen. Since the IRS can be lobbied by corporations to trick users like that, I just don’t trust IRS.gov to be honest.
Intuit recently got slapped by a different government agency. I doubt that they will get that privelage again for a while.
Nice, here’s that link.
Check out Tax Hawk, it might be a good option for you this year
For a couple of years CreditKarma was the best free solution. Then Intuit bought them.
that’s who I use! $15 to file state, free federal; I mean that’s pretty close to ‘free’ compared to Turbo/Inuit pushing you close to $100 after all the BS. And freetaxusa keeps my info for subsequent years, etc.
I used it, but then one year it was telling me I owed money. When I double checked on TurboTax, it was the opposite. I went with Turbo Tax. I’ve been wary of FreeTaxUSA since…
Be careful. If software miscalculates in your favor and the IRS figures it out, you’re gonna have a bad time.
I experienced true happiness for a moment. Only one moment.
Why is it only available in such a limited number of states?
This is the first launch of the program and they’re still in a pilot phase. It will presumably roll out to more states (maybe all?) Next year
Well I don’t reward laziness and this should have been running in the late 90s.
I guess I’ll just file my taxes when the lazy IRS gets off their asses.
Likely because of state government and state income tax.
The IRS doesn’t have anything to do with state taxes though unless they’re also handling your state filing free for you?
These states are building online filing systems as well. I think that is why they are included.
Good thing Intuit (TurboTax) is fighting so hard to keep the current format super slick and cheaper as a private service rather than a centralized government process. Right up there with disbanding garbage pickup in favor of individually contracted services because [checks notes] 7 overlapping truck routes will be cheaper than 1
I’m 100% for a simple IRS tax return but what the heck is with this?
To use Direct File, you need an IRS account with ID.me.
To get an ID.me account, you need to:
Take a video of your face
If you can’t or don’t want to take a video of your face, you can have a video call with an ID.me agent who will confirm that your face matches your identification.
Is that really necessary???
It’s the same as going to a bank and letting the teller look at your face. It’s to prevent someone from stealing your identity using a picture of your ID.
How can they verify the ID is real without physically seeing it? They look up the info but still need to verify that you are the person on the ID.
Ok but how come H&R Block doesn’t need to do this? I just give them my IRS PIN and the AGI from last year’s return. The picture shit feels like a poison pill
They can do that with a drivers license like they have for the last few decades.
And they’re using a face recognition service from a for profit corporation ID.ME. Not ok. I’ll continue to use their freefillable forms option, but if they discontinued that I’ll just go back to paper mailing. This is not a step forward.
https://cyberscoop.com/irs-facial-recognition-identity-privacy/
Stupid fraud prevention ugh!
Listen folks, if you have a driver license, they already have your face, so settle down.
countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. 1
And they do taxes just fine without a Harry Potter like gif of every tax payer.
Privacy reasons aside, TurboTax doesn’t require a video clip to file your taxes so this is only raising the technical barrier against the widespread adoption of a simple tax system.
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IDs are super common in America, it would be unusual for someone to not have one.
You’d think a social insurance number would be enough…
Social Security number WAS NOT made to be an ID. It’s not a secure unique number, it’s just serial.
Oh I didn’t know that. It kinda works like that in my country
In a country with proper citizen identification it might be (but even then, doubtful).
18F looking for tax filling help
k if u single but looking to file jointly 👉👈
Somebody think of the poor corporations!
why is it the US is hellbent on making everything a state by state issue but at the same time saying federal law is above state law in such cases like Texas but states with legal cannabis or states with legal abortion are allowed to be above federal
is the US the United States or not
make it make sense
It’s 50 states in a trench coat
50 countries, but yeah
A state is just another term for a country. The two words never meant something different until our American Union got some people confused.
That’s a fair point. I was mostly sticking to the colloquial usage.
make it make sense
We’re a slightly tighter coupled EU with less history of separation. We’re states that are united. Not one big ol unified country.
IDK why people are downvoting you, that’s essentially how it works. Everything is super interconnected now, but it wasn’t always that way and the constitution hasn’t been updated to reflect it.
Not one big ol unified country.
What’d the frats chant when we killed Bin Laden? ;)
Frats are probably not the best go to for people educated on the country lol
“more poon now!”
The idea of checks and balances on the exercise of government powers extends to even the state/federal relationship.
How could they launch this and not support login.gov for the auth…
No Login dot gov
No support in most states
No ACA filers
No app payments
Lots of reason to be frustrated. BUT! This is an absolutely delicious blow to the Intuit lobbyists and if it can handle the simplest of the simple, think of the green light they’ll have towards eventual global parity!
Been so bad (and evil) for so long, I’m in the mood to celebrate more than nitpick. (No Login dot gov I will say is the funniest thing not to be considered MVP - understandable but funny.)
It’s in beta. I’ll take it
Good stuff. Keep in mind that Intuit fought this for a very long time. But since they finally got stomped, the IRS can do it’s thing now.
Thanks Brandon
Honestly I’ll hope reservations and congratulations till after we see how it goes, but the fact it’s a limited pilot makes me optimistic.
the fact it’s a limited pilot makes me optimistic
:-/
I’ve seen far too many good ideas go through a “limited pilot” program, outperform their intended targets, piss off someone in the DC corporate circuit, and get their budgets vaporized by the next Congress.
Yeah small programs are easy to pivot, double edged sword in a political environment
can’t use it if i got my health insurance through obamacare? -_- fucking bullshit
For anyone who has filed with it, how much does this return differ from using a company? Is your total return the same or can a tax professional get you back a significant amount more?
If you have a simple return then it should be identical. There’s only one way to fill out form 1040 correctly. Its unclear if this will walk you through itemizing or more obscure deductions like other places do.
