Biden did that, among many other great things for the average american citizen
Welcome to 2005, America!
The catch is that it requires ID.me, and there is no way in hell I’m giving some third party a picture of my fucking drivers license.
…to print my ID in the first place?
(But yes clearly worse to allow personal data to be stored in an additional system.)
Right, my government also gave me a number at my birth. They know where I live, they know how much I make and where I work. The third party, ID.me, definitely does NOT need any of my information, since the entity that is taxing me, already does.
Depressing thought: there’s a remote possibility the government is inept enough trying to roll around verification system that a third party has a safer solution.
Positive thinking: maybe the government is just using a third party until they’ve had time to make their own service entirely bombproof. Let’s go with that for our sake.
And then ID.me becomes the new TurboTax and starts lobbying the government to not compete with them.
Noooooooooooo
Seems odd. They’ve been pushing login.gov like everywhere.
It will eventually be supported, and in the interim they have stated that they won’t keep biometric data obtained through ID.me once a verification is completed, or you can opt for an online interview where no biometrics are collected in the first place.
Who knows if ID.me will actually delete the data on their end though, or if the online interview is recorded by the provider.
Government biometric requirements really aren’t a joke. They perform pretty regular audits and the liability of not deleting ID could be company ending.
They might not delete your biometrics, but I’d be shocked if they didn’t. It’s far more likely that they not only delete it but have an audit trail proving deletion.
USA is finally catching up with the rest of the world?
No, we have 50 states to get through as well. And then all the municipalities.
why isn’t this constitutionally protected.
Can we pass an amendment for this shit? It’s actually kind of fucked up.
I think that some companies like turbotax are employing lobbyists to make impossible filing for taxes unless you go through a gatekeeper
Kind of? Are you going to tell us that the US healthcare system is “sorta silly” next?
Free if you have no other exemptions to file.
1099? Nope Depreciation? Nope Tax credits? Nope
Makes for a great headline though.
Im sure those of us that do have exemptions other than the standard will see our tax prep fees skyrocket
Maybe not. You will have the same number of tax preparers chasing less work. Through the magic of the Free Market™️, shouldn’t that mean pressure to reduce prices? We can only hope.
I already saw it reflected this year. My tax prep went up $150
Why is the USA the only country to have those problems, AND complain about getting free stuff?
Yeah, very limited, but it’s very good for more than half of the population that don’t have enough deductions to exceed the standard and don’t own property (if you properly count houseless “households” that earn income as not owning property and not just renters like most statistics). It’s dumb that they have to file a return anyway just to acres money that never should have been collected. Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place. Mostly because they follow the directions and/or are afraid of paying a fine plus interest.
Anyway, it’s a step in the right direction. And if we can unbury all of the staff out of the pile of paper returns, we can devote some to go after the rich and their frivolous, often fraudulent deductions and have them pay the tax they owe.
Most just don’t know how to properly file their W-4 to not have taxes withheld in the first place.
How do you do this? How do you calculate what to personally withhold and pay? Is it simply calculating through the income tax?
There’s a worksheet that usually comes with it where you answer questions about your living situation - single/married, homeowner/renter, how many kids, etc. - and it gives you a number to put in. It’s pretty accurate. I’ve done it at every job and aside from years with tax credits I’ve never gotten back more than a few hundred bucks.
are you not capable of taking a win? it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
Its a regular sized step, as its targeted primarily at simple filers. But the cutoff is incredibly low. You can’t use it if you’ve got retirement savings through an IRA, if you’ve got deductions for college expenses, or if you’re claiming the child care deduction. I’d wager that’s at least half the people who bother to file returns.
Definitely good news for folks that H&R Block likes to fleece - anyone collecting EITC or Child Tax Credits and not much else. But hardly universal.
do you think it won’t eventually add that stuff? pretty naive to just “meh” and basically call it a failure. nothing happens overnight.
Some progress is better then no progress, and TurboTax et. al. losing in any way is a victory for the rest of us.
Eat shit, lobbying to make simple tax returns something you have to pay Turbo Tax, H&R Block, etc for.
I don’t know much about investing, but i wonder if it would it be a good time to short those companies?
If you don’t know much about investing then you shouldn’t short anything ever. People who know about investing will tell you that even when your logic is 100 percent sound, the market isn’t that predictable and in general the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Isn’t shorting theoretically able to put you in infinite debt?
Theoretically, yes. A short is sorta a negative stock. When you hold a normal stock, the price can never go below zero. But when you hold a negative stock, there’s no maximum value that stock could rise to.
Plus, the news of this would already be priced into the stock, so if anything the price is already low and these companies would need to pivot their business (which would increase the value again) or die (which would lower the price marginally, to zero). Either way, shorting is a bad strategy in this case.
Eat shit [insert private company here]
I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.
Eh, cancer is no joke. It doesn’t discriminate on who it hits. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even though I would snicker if these CEOs get hit by lightning lol
Ah fuck it, was going to be cryptic but ill just tell the story.
I worked for Duke university and one of the people in our department had stomach cancer. The head of the department, provost, CEO and president sent out emails asking if anyone would donate their leave for the person in their hospital being treated for cancer. If the person didn’t get the days then they were going to drop them from the company insurance It was bad so the person had to stay in the hospital.
I hope they all get the most the worse form of cancer and slowly die with no family around. If there is a hell, they deserve it.
Oh man freaking brootal. Dropping them from the insurance when they needed it the most? This is we need “socialized” medical insurance.
Universal healthcare should be a right.
Amen to that!
Also, the worst hemmeroids ever and a special CEO diet consisting of nothing but exlax and habanero peppers.
Even the founder of Costco (only stepped down as CEO a few years ago), a company famous both for how well it treats its customers, and its workforce?
It might have treated them well compared to the competition, but they didn’t get as large as they are without making massive profits off the work of their employees. There’s a difference between treating the well and treating them fairly.
making massive profits off the work of their employees.
Labor is a cost, not a source of profit, what kind of moronic statement is this? If employees were a source of profit, the notion of downsizing would never exist–why would a company ever lay anyone off, if workers create more value than their wage?
Labor is the source of all profit. How would the company make money if no one did anything? Companies use their control of the means of production to leverage workers into doing labor. They then sell what the labor creates to make money.
They didn’t create anything themselves. They had ownership of the means and that gives them ownership of the output that they profit off of. Money doesn’t just appear. Something has to be produced, which is done through labor.
Sure, sometimes an employee costs more money than they return. First, that doesn’t mean they created no value, just less value than they cost to employ. Second, sometimes this does decrease profit, but is done as a short term reduction of overhead while things change, or it’s just dumb business which isn’t uncommon.
Labor is the source of all profit. How would the company make money if no one did anything?
Charge the customer more for the finished product than what it cost to produce it. Obviously.
The simple fact is that if employees were a source of profit, businesses would all try to hire as many people as they possibly could, because not doing so would literally be leaving money on the table for no reason. But obviously that is not what goes on. When a business is in trouble financially, what’s more common, a hiring freeze, or a hiring spree?
Wait really? What’s the catch?
Doubt there is one. The hard truth is that most Americans’ taxes are pretty simple and straightforward. We can stop pretending that copying some boxes from a W2 and a 1099 is difficult.
I mean, personally I wish we’d stop pretending that the IRS isn’t already fully aware of what you owe and could just do the filling for you, like in other countries, but until Grover Norquist fucks off forever we’re stuck where we are.
Right. Filing taxes should only be necessary if you have itemized writeoffs or wish to contest the IRS’s statement of your tax liability. They already know what you earned their your employer, what’s been paid in taxes, what basic credits your qualify for, etc. They know what you owe so long as you didn’t have expenses to apply for that they couldn’t assume or know about. The only reason they don’t already do that or, at least until now, have a free public system for filing, it’s because tax companies have lobbied for decades to be able to milk the public for cash to help them file and navigate their tax liability.
The argument has been since free filing means only the wealthy will hire accountants, free filing would discriminate against the poor given a few mistakes will be made here and there.
I may not need to mention that disingenuous argument is made by the pirates at Intuit and their lobbyists.
free filing would discriminate against the poor
As opposed to the current system where the richest among us can hire a whole team of accountants to find every deduction possible?
Shhhh!!!
It should also be noted that if the vast majority of people do nothing special on their taxes and just accept the government’s assessment, then that leaves a much smaller group of people to be audited. And a much larger portion of those people will be those who are trying to weasel their way out of paying their share. Right now, with the IRS being criminally underfunded, they only focus on low hanging fruit, the small fries. With those people being boiler plater auto-accepting tax payers, that would mean the IRS has no reason to audit them and can focus on the big boys where the real cheats are. That’s another big reason we do not have that sort of system and why the IRS is currently so underfunded (despite every dollar spent on the IRS generating between 5 and 9 dollars in revenue from tax fraud/evasion). Those kinds of people pay to make sure it doesn’t happen.
most Americans’ taxes are pretty simple and straightforward
Once the reporting for income over $600 from shit like eBay sales, Venmo, etc kicks in, the 1099 they issue would make free filing ineligible
