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.
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.
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.
I think you would be margin called and just have astronomical but not infinite debt.
Infinite and astronomical are used interchangeably here. Since you have to return a share to the person you borrowed it from, if you borrowed 1000 shares at $5 and sold them to make 5k, if the price jumps to something like $350 like gamestop, it would cost you $350,000 to cover them.
Making 5k to lose 350k might as well be an infinite loss ot that investor, even though its technically a “smallish” sum. At that scale, it would destroy most people.
You can also pay to keep a short going generally and try to wait out the madness, but you have to stay solvent to do it. The very stupid and very surprising “diamond handing” apes caused some hedge fund issues, although I think most just shrugged into other financial instruments.
I feel like shorting will always be riskier than normal investing. With stocks you have people at the company doing their best to raise that stock. With Shorts you are betting against a company that’s trying to survive.
The chances of the CEO pulling something out of their ass, dubious or not, to maintain their profits is too high.
it wouldve been earlier, but now this is priced into the stocks already.
If you get investing returns (like from shorting those companies)… you’re ironically not eligible to use the IRS direct file pilot (or at least for this year).
Edit: this isn’t to knock direct file… which is good and cool (and should be expanded to have more features)
It is already priced in. Our human speed reactions are far too slow when the news has this obvious of a consequence.
For what it’s worth… You’re already eligible to a free tax return if you’re under a certain income. Edit: Reference - I think a lot of people are unaware of this.
deleted by creator
Not sure why you deleted your comment… You’re right!
I deleted the comment because I was afraid of ChatGPT reading it and becoming too intelligent.
Totally fair. I’m afraid of AI reading my comments and becoming too stupid!
The easiest way to get rid of a headache is to make some toast, then spread peanut butter on one slice and mayonnaise on the other, smash them together and eat it and as you are chewing just slam your head into the toaster as hard as possible.
Eat shit [insert private company here]
I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.
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?
Charge the customer more for the finished product than what it cost to produce it. Obviously.
If there is no labor there is no finished product. Labor creates the thing being sold. Value is extracted from labor and sold.
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?
This is exactly what they do. They hire as many employees as they possibly can afford to hire and have the means of production for them to operate on. That’s why as a company is more successful they generally have more employees, to extract more wealth from their labor. Yes, sometimes they don’t have things for them to work in that will generate more value than it costs to employ them, in which case they fire them. If they do have the ability and means for them to work on something then they are profit generating.
Yeah, when a company is doing poor financially they cut overhead. This is done as a safety mechanism because they can no longer afford those costs, not because they weren’t generating revenue. There’s a lot of things that can cause this, and he’s it sometimes results in lower profits. The goal is to get their finances in order and stabilize, then continue to grow and expand again. The goal isn’t to shrink and keep shrinking. If that created profit then the most successful companies would be the smallest ones, not the largest.
A few bad apple spoil the bunch.
😂
My chaotic soul appreciates the garbage bin trash level of discourse
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!
Intuit is anything but intuitive
Honestly, they’re probably thrilled. Legislation forced them to provide a free product for this sort of simple, no frills filing, so they won’t be losimg any paying customers to this and probably won’t have to spend dev and qa time supporting the free tier anymore
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
Some progress is better then no progress, and TurboTax et. al. losing in any way is a victory for the rest of us.
Why is the USA the only country to have those problems, AND complain about getting free stuff?
Some people in the USA want a solution that immediately fixes every possible problem, and don’t quite get the concept of starting small and fixing other stuff over time.
It’s the same with gun control. Some states want to tighten gun laws, and some people are like “that won’t solve all the problems! We need nationwide laws!”. Sure, but why not accept the win that more and more states are starting to do something, rather than complaining that some problems still exist?
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.
It’s not a “failure” but I wouldn’t call it a huge win either. It’s a small victory with a tiny horn to toot.
IIRC there was a free version of Turbo Tax that did the same thing years ago… so we’re catching up to the old free version now.
*An old free version that was purposefully hidden and buried by reverse SEO tactics, but yeah
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
Freetaxusa does them for like 20 bucks
I use them. I love telling friends I use that because it sounds like such a scam site
Yeah idk why anyone thought that name was a good idea for their marketing
“just put your social here…”
I’m no statistics major, but that’s like 100% of the sample!!!
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.
I’ve had 1099s and tax credits and I’ve never sent in a paper return. I keep the records in case of an audit but it’s not like e-file hasn’t existed forever.
But it hasn’t always been free to file electronically. The government made it required for them to offer free versions for simple returns, but that was recent.
Also, access to the Internet isn’t universal. You’d be surprised how much of the US doesn’t have affordable Internet and a fair number don’t have Internet available at all, or limited to just dialup which is not very useful. And a lot of apps don’t work right on phone browsers, especially older phones, so then you need a desktop or laptop which a lot of people don’t have. Some have access in libraries, but a lot don’t or traveling to a library is a burden. And lots of other reasons that internet isn’t a given for a large portion of households. So paper is still not just necessary, but the easiest way.
I read
1099? Nope depreciation. Nope tax credits? Nope
I would suggest you get hired by the IRS and start rewriting all their ancient code to build in and allow every deduction rule and that it’s applied correctly every time so everyone can use it.
The tax laws are so large and so complex and the code running all this stuff is so old and now locked in because they didn’t keep up with updating their software as they went along. I’m amazed they got this far. Oh, and like you, I can’t use it either. But that’s why I have an accountant.
why isn’t this constitutionally protected.
Can we pass an amendment for this shit? It’s actually kind of fucked up.
Kind of? Are you going to tell us that the US healthcare system is “sorta silly” next?
Sorta silly?! It’s fucked beyond belief. Source: me, someone who profits off the healthcare industry as a corpo. Sorry 🤷.
god if i had the arcane knowledge of the entire field of healthcare, i would do some unbelievably fucked up shit.
And by that i mean writing open documentation that is continually maintained and represents most healthcare providers in the US specifically to fuck up their entire existence.
Doo iiiiit! (If you can).
Honestly I do the best I can to fudge numbers and drive down prices, but I can only do so much. They’re eventually going to catch on and replace me with someone who doesn’t give a fuck.
lol, perhaps one of these days i will have enough expendable income and time to dedicate to this kind of shit.
It’d make for a rather fun experience.
i mean, it is sorta silly. Not full sillyness, full sillyness would be forcing people in immediate life threatening injury to recite the ABC’s backwards before operation as protocol.
Sure, there’s degrees of silly
i spose there would be, but at the end of the day. Silly is a rather silly word to be using in this manner.
From a certain point of view? Yes.
I think that some companies like turbotax are employing lobbyists to make impossible filing for taxes unless you go through a gatekeeper
yep, which is why its weird that we don’t have a legally protected avenue of direct filing.
I have a couple of other constitutional amendments I’d like to advance before this.
idk man i think i disagree honestly.
Tax is one of the very few constants that we all have to legally deal with, aside from like, auto insurance.
Welcome to 2005, America!
Huh, I went to check - we did it in 2003 (for vat and income tax iirc, ofc they expended it since, nowdays only courtroom stuff doesn’t have online admin systems).
Prior to that you just got the (already filled out) income tax form in the mail - if everything was ok that was usually it. In case you still owed, it included the bill, it they owed you they wired the money to your bank.
If the tax forms were incomplete for some reason (or just not optimised between the members of the same family) you could fill in what they missed (like literally with a pen) & send it back (for them to verify & return it to youb revised).
(This system still works so folk who prefer to do it via paper can do that.)
Hold my beer…American pulling out checkbook
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.
I hope more scrutiny is given to ID.me. I’ll only be using Direct File if they remove it as a dependency.
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.
@huginn @binomialchicken let’s just say they have the feeling of an extremely sketchy organization. They actually started verifying ids for government employees for in-store discounts (like 10% off for active duty service and such). And somehow that migrated into being the government’s sole identity verification provider for citizens.
I even had to make a login.gov account to apply to some federal jobs (ironically enough one was with the IRS even!)
On a related note, it appears based on their job listings that the IRS will not hire anyone who owes them money
…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
The problem is that given all of the data breaches, anyone can use your social security number, address, etc. and file a return on your behalf.
In theory, that’s what ID.me is preventing.
But if your wallet gets stolen, good luck.
Interesting that third parties like TurboTax aren’t required to obtain copies of your photo ID.
I looked it up, and there is an article from the end of last year that says they are about to be required or are already required.
I can’t recall ever putting my license on one of these tax preppers, but I am also older and more privacy concerned in my older age, so I would definitely not do it now.
At that point, might be better to hand-file your return. In many of these programs they offer you the ability to print and mail your return.
Your refund takes longer of course.
Eh, I’ve only gotten like $20 back max the last three years. They can take as long as they want, I will not be giving any third parties anything that they truly do not need.
Huh, I already signed up for it because they started requiring it a while back to access historical tax return documents through the IRS website.
Why, do they sell data?
It would not surprise me in the least, but more importantly, if they get breached and they have sloppy mechanisms in place, my license could be fully out there in the wild. May be whatever to some, but I think it’s too risky to trust some company with it that also has contracts with the government itself.
Wouldn’t they need to already have your data to check your driver’s license against it?
I had to use that for my unemployment insurance claims.
Mine was too complicated to file for free because I have retirement investments? Seems like a silly reason to force someone to use a paid service.
You’re not supposed to be wrecking our economy like that. Spend, baby, spend.
😂😂
Sounds like having any 1099 is ‘too complicated’. So anyone with any sort of savings account that managed to get $10 of interest over a year… So if you have like a thousand dollars in a boring old savings account you are ‘too complicated’.
Yep, kinda surprised me to be honest.
Yeah. Mine was “too complicated” because I had an HSA. Are you fucking kidding me?
Feels like a ruse
Same. It sucks having to pay H&R Block $300/year to file my taxes, but their online records save my ass every time I buy a house. I sincerely hope we see a more robust free file system in my lifetime.
$300? Just use Free Tax USA. It’s free for federal and $15 for each state. No, you don’t need extra stuff, unless you think you’ll be audited.
If you spend a little time figuring out your tax situation, you don’t need to pay someone else to do it. Here’s a secret: the people they have doing your taxes don’t necessarily have a master’s degree in tax. Those people are helping corporations or wealthy people with trusts.
You missed the point of my reply. I pointed out that the benefit of H&R block is that they keep the records easily accessible, so when I buy a home I just link the H&R block account to the lender and they pull all of my tax and income history. Saves countless hours of gathering info and filling out paperwork. That’s worth $300/year to me.
You wanna pay and extra ~$280 a year because you save a little bit of time when you buy a house? You know FreeTaxUSA has all your documents too, right?
You’ve never bought a house if you think it’s saving “a little bit” of time. We’re talking easily 40 hours of gathering and filing paperwork here. That’s $2,200 of my time. If I buy a house once every 7 years it works out.
I’ve bought two houses and it did not take me 40 hours of gathering paperwork. Maybe an hour or so maximum to get my paperwork for the bank.
Do you buy houses all the time? Do you want your income info to be sold to anyone who will pay? You are paying extra for them to have access to your info.
I buy a house on average once every 3 years and it saves me apx $2,200 worth of time.
Thank fuck. Finally
Biden did that, among many other great things for the average american citizen
Even without access to Direct File since I wasn’t in a pilot state, I’ve been using the IRS’ “Free Fillable Forms” for the last few years and they’ve worked great! They don’t hold your hand as much as the paid software but for my returns they’ve been more than adequate and free!
Does anyone know how “Direct File” differs from the “Free Fillable Forms”? Does it hold your hand a little more and help you find credits/deductions? Free Fillable Forms worked well, but only so long as I knew what I needed to file. New circumstances, like adding a dependent, lead to a lot of research.
Yes, direct file is guided with a checklist. However there are only certain situations where a taxpayer would qualify for direct file - there’s income limitations and only certain income types qualify (u would not be able to use it if u are self-employed or own rental properties for example). The IRS is planning to expand this but for now it’s limited tho the vast majority of taxpayers would qualify.
Anyone can use the free fillable forms but u either have to know what you’re doing or be comfortable reading irs form instructions if you have a more complex tax situation.
Good. Now make it work for everyone’s tax situation.
You need to enable JavaScript to use Direct File.
On the plus side, UBO only had to block one script (on the login page at least).
Fuck TurboTax, fuck H$R Block
how much longer til they just do it for me and leave me the fuck alone?
🤞
He gets it
Dude’s face alone has accounting credentials: https://www.congress.gov/member/brad-sherman/S000344
I’ll take that over celebrities as politicians any day
As a tax accountant, I sincerely hope this gets to a point where a vast majority of the population has no need for my services.
I used to play in the big leagues where none of my clients would ever qualify for this and their returns routinely took upwards of a hundred hours to complete. Those guys need to keep paying.
Now I play down in the minors a couple steps above the Block, and I hate seeing the owner sell these three or four hundred dollar returns that might take me an hour to complete in the first year and maybe thirty minutes in subsequent years.
That’s a very interesting transition. Was the catalyst neutral or happy one, or perhaps a sad one?
Mutual disdain was the catalyst. I did it for eight years and probably lost fifteen years of life expectancy from it. Ungodly toxic environment. Fuck big firm accounting. Fuck them all in the most demeaning, painful way imaginable.
I make roughly one third the money today, and I’m much happier for it. I still make a comfortable living where I don’t particularly worry about money, so what would the additional two thirds do for me outside paying medical bills it causes?
No matter how much I try to remove my name from searches, I still get recruited by ambitious young people on a regular basis. I generally make them stop with a response that goes something like this:
I would rather have my eyes gouged out by the white hot barbed penis of Satan himself while he spits in my mouth than return to public accounting for any amount of money.
