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-   -   What website do you guys use for your taxes? (https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/what-website-do-you-guys-use-your-taxes-36381.html)

Xist 04-17-2018 05:49 AM

What website do you guys use for your taxes?
 
I have always used TurboTax, but when I tried to free file, it would not accept my 1099-Misc, nor could I find any option to upgrade. I found instructions, but all of them were invalid.

H & R Block free isn't. H & R Block Basic is basic and free, but lack options that I have always taken for granted, like upgrading.

It is weird. Maybe I would have gone with H & R Block or TurboTax, but I was not willing to call.

I tried all of the sites on a "Free file" list. Tax Act has a free version, but the list said that you did not pay until you filed, and linked to the pay version.

Stubby79 04-17-2018 06:27 AM

Not the kind of info I would be willing to post through a website... (I download software, so it locally and submit it securely. Or, if I feel paranoid, print it and submit it manually)

Ecky 04-17-2018 07:13 AM

I used Taxact for a few years, but I dunno if it's free with a 1099. This year I filed with CreditKarma's online service, because their math worked out a bit more favorably. The interface is also a little more user friendly, though arguably not "better".

redpoint5 04-17-2018 11:08 AM

Freetaxusa

It's probably Russian servers, but so far my identity hasn't been stolen. Been using it for years now. Federal is free, but they might charge to file State taxes.

Fat Charlie 04-17-2018 12:06 PM

We pay something for Turbo Tax each year.

Xist 04-17-2018 12:22 PM

I asked on Facebook and a friend linked IRS.gov and said it was free.

I am sure people do fill out the forms themselves, but why?

I stuck with TurboTax last year when I needed to upgrade to the most expensive package and still owed more than $3,000. Perhaps I should have tried one or two other sites, but I did not think about it. When I accepted my last job I calculated how much I thought I would make the rest of the year, how much I would pay in taxes, and estimated that I would about break even, not needing to pay taxes when I filed. Unfortunately, somehow I was horribly wrong. I sure wish I could figure out how!

I am not sure how to search for free file providers that include the 1099-Misc, but FreeTaxUSA does. They charge $13 for state. However, I did not feel that it was as complete as TaxAct or TaxSlayer. Only TaxAct told me that $2,500 is the maximum deduction for student loans (I paid over $3,500). 1040now.net did not skip anything, so that was tedious. DIY Tax (freetax.com) seemed to have all of the features that I expected except retirement and health insurance deductions on my W-2. I talked to someone named Xiaojun who seemed to try to tell me to not worry about it, they took care of it. When it checked for errors it found four and six warnings. TurboTax always reviewed sections in question. DIY Tax told me where they were, but not in a useful way. I was not able to resolve all of them.

Credit Karma says they have a free tax service and maybe it is, but you cannot file your taxes through them without signing up for credit monitoring, and when it tried to scan my return from last year, it messed up all of my personal information, and I needed to go back and redo it, but I felt the credits and deductions were more straightforward than other sites. However, everything is on one screen, and you need to scroll past everything you completed to move on.

H & R Block Basic, DIY Tax, and Credit Karma said that I owed about twice as much as TaxAct and TaxSlayer. FreeTaxUSA and 1040now.net are closer to the low end than the higher end. TaxAct kept having "pro-tips," which I wish I could have turned off, having done my taxes before.

I wanted to print (to PDF) each return to try to figure out the differences, but I needed to pay first. I did not feel that it made sense to hire the team that told me what I wanted to hear and then get audited.

redpoint5 04-17-2018 12:30 PM

Your wall of text triggers my hatred for the corrupt tax code and unnecessary waste of human life. We need to replace federal income tax with a federal sales tax. There are ways to make it progressive, such as first $500/mo housing expenses exempt, or certain staple foods are exempt.

Xist 04-17-2018 12:37 PM

Esmarttax.com, eztaxreturn.com, 1040.com, and fileyourtaxes.com also do not include the 1099-misc. I only tried services listed at https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/index.jsp, so hopefully they are legitimate.

Wall of text? I reviewed six different providers in thirty-one lines.

jjackstone 04-17-2018 01:26 PM

Get all my information and forms from IRS. I've always done my own taxes and still send in paper versions. That way no information is on any website anywhere unless the IRS itself gets hacked or they sell my info. Am I paranoid. Not really. Do I trust any of the tax preparation companies not to divulge some amount of my info. Not a bit. JJ

redpoint5 04-17-2018 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xist (Post 567085)
Wall of text? I reviewed six different providers in thirty-one lines.

Not an indictment of your helpful reviews, rather an indictment that the reviews and conversation is an unnecessary waste caused by stupid tax laws that should get public and political attention.

Instead our political discourse revolves around proving Trump had unsavory interactions with unsavory people when we already knew that about his character, and somehow didn't care enough to elect someone else.

As always, I'm attempting to discuss the "why" of the topic rather than just the "how", and it seemed you had already covered the "how" of the thread.

Fat Charlie 04-17-2018 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redpoint5 (Post 567103)
As always, I'm attempting to discuss the "why" of the topic rather than just the "how", and it seemed you had already covered the "how" of the thread.

Sales tax- every cashier in the country is a tax collector all year long, and you need to either deal with deductions at the grocery store every week until you max them out or just do it once a year when you file. Every store also needs to account for all these individual collections and forward them to Washington.

Income tax- Every company has someone who handles payroll already. This person handles deductions relatively seamlessly, and you can work on deductions once a year when you file.

Hopefully, most of us will have fewer jobs in the course of a year than we will have interactions with cashiers. That alone makes taxing income more efficient. Aside from the efficiency benefits of collecting tax payments in bulk once a week/month/what have you instead of every time someone in the country buys gum, income taxes have the advantage on not having to be so regressive.

The why is easy: government's got to get paid for some way.
The how is easy, too. Except everyone's got one deduction they like, and tax deductions are used to encourage or discourage certain things, so deductions aren't going away.

Pointing to current political discourse is simply a way of distracting from what you don't want to say out loud: people who are able to save a high portion of their income will see their tax rate reduced by a shift to sales tax at the expense of people who are not able to save a high portion of their income.

Warren Buffett points out that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, and also points out that that's a bad thing. Switching from income to sales tax would probably result in him paying an actual lower dollar amount in taxes than his secretary. That's even worse.

jamesqf 04-17-2018 03:42 PM

I use the IRS Free Fillable Forms site. No problems with not using the tax software's operating system of choice, no wanting me to "upgrade" to commercial versions if I make too much money or have to fill out an uncommon form...

redpoint5 04-17-2018 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie (Post 567113)
Sales tax- every cashier in the country is a tax collector all year long, and you need to either deal with deductions at the grocery store every week until you max them out or just do it once a year when you file. Every store also needs to account for all these individual collections and forward them to Washington.

Income tax- Every company has someone who handles payroll already. This person handles deductions relatively seamlessly, and you can work on deductions once a year when you file.

Hopefully, most of us will have fewer jobs in the course of a year than we will have interactions with cashiers. That alone makes taxing income more efficient. Aside from the efficiency benefits of collecting tax payments in bulk once a week/month/what have you instead of every time someone in the country buys gum, income taxes have the advantage on not having to be so regressive...

Warren Buffett points out that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, and also points out that that's a bad thing. Switching from income to sales tax would probably result in him paying an actual lower dollar amount in taxes than his secretary.

Good point that generally speaking, needing to submit taxes continuously is less efficient than once annually. However, most people already pay a local sales tax, so collecting Federal tax in these areas would be a trivial matter. As an example, gas stations already collect sales tax, both local and federal, and these rates are subject to change independent of each other. The process for collecting sales tax has become (is becoming) trivial. Not only that, but cash sales are nearly gone, and collection of taxes becomes easy when transactions are done electronically. This process can be mostly automated.

As I pointed out, making a sales tax progressive is a simple matter, and finding tax loopholes for the wealthy becomes impossible. The wealthy would pay more in taxes both as a percentage of income, and in real terms. There would be no tax loopholes to exploit. Since wealthy people spend more money than poorer people, they would pay more tax.

As an example of a tax loophole, a friend of mine pays his children to do chores. That money is not taxed because it is a business expenditure (all perfectly legal, too). Since he is the custodian of his children's wealth, it is his discretion on where it ultimately goes.

If Buffett pays a lower effective tax rate (which I highly doubt), it's only due to his exploitation of legal means of avoiding and deferring tax payments to the government. Had his secretary been as prudent as he, they would be paying a lower effective tax due to their lower income.

Counting how many useful eyes or appendages we have and applying a deduction is absurd. Maybe everyone who grew up in a single parent family should get a deduction, since that's one of the biggest predictors of financial (and life) success.

The point is, those that spend more money will be taxed more, it will be fair, and it nearly eliminates corruption, special interests, and lobbying. Considering the vast majority of people get a tax refund, freeing up those overpayments by not charging them in the first place gives them more purchasing power throughout the year.

Xist 04-17-2018 05:41 PM

Have a higher tax rate for Bentleys than for motorized lunch boxes?

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey fired 134 of the state's 332 audit and collections employees and the state lost $83 Million in taxes. That is especially bad because he reduced the work force by 40%, but audit collections dropped 47%. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...es/1067745001/

As of 2015, the IRS had ‎79,890 employees and an annual budget of ‎$11.4 Billion.

People buy toys like devices and cars whether or not they are fiscally responsible. Let's say you have one rate for devices that cost a thousand dollars or less and personal vehicles that cost thirty thousand or less, but a $60,000 vehicle has four times the taxes of a $30,000 one, and so forth. Houses are expensive, too, but while I am sure you can still find a nice place somewhere for $100,000, while the cheapest patch of dirty I found in San Francisco was $200,000 for 1473 square feet of a steep hill without street access.

I liked the idea of simplifying taxes before I started paying them. Perhaps those 80,000 tax wo\men enjoy their jobs, but how much of that $11 - 12 Billion could go towards... what is in vogue nowadays? Crosseyed kittens?

redpoint5 04-17-2018 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xist (Post 567128)
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey fired 134 of the state's 332 audit and collections employees and the state lost $83 Million in taxes...

As of 2015, the IRS had ‎79,890 employees and an annual budget of ‎$11.4 Billion.

Let's say you have one rate for devices that cost a thousand dollars or less and personal vehicles that cost thirty thousand or less, but a $60,000 vehicle has four times the taxes of a $30,000 one, and so forth. Houses are expensive, too, but while I am sure you can still find a nice place somewhere for $100,000, while the cheapest patch of dirty I found in San Francisco was $200,000 for 1473 square feet of a steep hill without street access.

I liked the idea of simplifying taxes before I started paying them. Perhaps those 80,000 tax wo\men enjoy their jobs, but how much of that $11 - 12 Billion could go towards...

Auditors are hardly necessary when tax loopholes are closed. The problem with deductions is twofold; not only do they artificially manipulate the market to benefit special interests at the detriment of everyone else, but those loopholes are difficult to regulate. Who is going to audit if you have 1 eyeball or 3, for instance? The tax code almost entirely relies upon the goodwill of citizens to be honest, and exploits those who aren't sophisticated enough to claim deductions which they are entitled. Can you imagine if businesses were run this way? You're expected to calculate your own bill using thousands of pages of law as a "guide", and if you make a mistake and are caught, must pay a penalty and possibly face criminal charges.

You're already inventing ways to make something that should be simple very complex, while introducing unfairness by penalizing expensive things.

...and poor people shouldn't expect to live independently in high rent places. I'm far from poor and have no delusions about affording a mortgage in SF. Fortunately the world offers other opportunities, including splitting a dwelling among several people (common in Portland).

redpoint5 04-17-2018 06:12 PM

You know, if tax day were every day, I could probably build a house inside of a couple months. All the house projects are getting done today, and I haven't submitted taxes yet. It's like polishing a turd to me; pointless.

EDIT: It's 11:57pm, and I have finally submitted my tax return. I think by procrastinating, I'm holding out hope I might die before having to actually do it. T-minus 364 days until the next planned torture event.

Fat Charlie 04-18-2018 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redpoint5 (Post 567121)
If Buffett pays a lower effective tax rate (which I highly doubt), it's only due to his exploitation of legal means of avoiding and deferring tax payments to the government. Had his secretary been as prudent as he, they would be paying a lower effective tax due to their lower income.

Investment income has long been taxed at a lower rate than actual work. The way tax policy is supposed to work, it means our lawmakers are trying to punish those of us who have to work for a living, encouraging us to live off of investment income instead. Or you could say that the rich have bought Congress.

Social Security and Medicare, reagrdless of how you dress them up, are taxes. Taxes not on income as such, but on payroll income. And they're capped so someone making $1m a year may pay more in SS than I do, but it's a much lower percentage of their income. If they're reasonably smart, they've got things structured so that most of their money isn't in regular payroll anyway.

We can't all be classified as owners and get our pay labeled as investment profits: most of your regular secretary's income will be payroll, taxed at a higher rate than Buffett's money as well as being subject to SS & Medicare deductions.

jamesqf 04-18-2018 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie (Post 567148)
The way tax policy is supposed to work, it means our lawmakers are trying to punish those of us who have to work for a living, encouraging us to live off of investment income instead. Or you could say that the rich have bought Congress.

Most of the people who live off investment income aren't rich - or at least not in the rich enough to buy Congress category. They're people who've worked (seeing their income taxed once already), saved a bit instead of (over)spending, and are now retired.

Quote:

Originally Posted by redpoint5
... T-minus 364 days until the next planned torture event.

Why do you consider it torture? Unless your return is a lot more complicated than mine (which includes Schedule C, D, SSE, and several pages of numbered forms), it's not all that difficult.

Fat Charlie 04-18-2018 02:27 PM

I'm not saying Mustachians are evil people who buy congresscritters, I'm saying that evil people who buy congresscritters have most of their income structured as coming from investments.

jamesqf 04-20-2018 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie (Post 567185)
I'm not saying Mustachians are evil people who buy congresscritters, I'm saying that evil people who buy congresscritters have most of their income structured as coming from investments.

Why do you think it's "evil" to support a policy that helps out retired people and benefits the overall economy? FTM, why is it evil to buy a Congresscritter or two?

Xist 04-20-2018 01:34 PM

Everything depends on your definition of evil and not evil. If you use your money and influence to convince politicians to change policy to benefit you, while it makes life worse for 99% of people it affects, you may not be evil, but you very well may be a jerk.

gone-ot 04-20-2018 01:42 PM

Self-centric?

redpoint5 04-20-2018 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesqf (Post 567166)
Why do you consider it torture? Unless your return is a lot more complicated than mine (which includes Schedule C, D, SSE, and several pages of numbered forms), it's not all that difficult.

Any complication is unnecessary, so I start off hating it. I've never had a year where all of the forms I was supposed to receive made it to me, so when I finally build the will to do my taxes, I run into something that's missing and have to stop and make phone calls, etc.

I am 50% owner of a 4 unit dwelling in Enid, OK, so adding up all income and expenses on this, depreciation, etc and splitting it in half is cumbersome.

We're on an HSA/HDHP and this complicates things.

My wife was in school, so there is that extra process.

Mortgage interest.

Investments.

Assigning a value to all the things donated to charity is a burden (charity should be charity, not a tax deduction).

Tracking business related mileage.

Home office expenditures.

Then I have to count how many eyes and limbs I have. :p

This whole process is corrupt. Why should people wealthy enough to buy a brand new EV get $7,500 from other taxpayers? How about first time home buyers getting $8,000 (I got that one).

The financially wise find ways to exploit the system, and those least capable of exploiting the system get screwed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesqf (Post 567342)
Why do you think it's "evil" to support a policy that helps out retired people and benefits the overall economy? FTM, why is it evil to buy a Congresscritter or two?

Policies don't help people. There isn't a single policy that has ever helped a person. People help people, there is nothing else. A policy might compel me to open my pocket to help out those poor EV buyers at the threat of violence, but ultimately it's me (and all the other taxpayers) that helps those unfortunate folks. The policy merely gives the theft the illusion of legitimacy.

Policies are ineffective at addressing the root of issues. This is why anti-discrimination laws are worthless. You can't legislate goodwill, or legislate away badwill. I want to see these horrible, pointless, and non-constitutional laws eliminated, not because I want to see the rise of bigotry, but because I don't want it to live in the shadows. Let the bigots act out so we can appropriately shame and boycott them.


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