IRS will pilot free, direct tax filing in 2024::Direct File is a shot across the bows of Turbotax, H&R Block, and others who have resisted free and simple tax filing for decades.
IRS will pilot free, direct tax filing in 2024::Direct File is a shot across the bows of Turbotax, H&R Block, and others who have resisted free and simple tax filing for decades.
What? The government will actually collect taxes itself like every other sane country, instead of privatizing it out to middlemen grifters? Oh my, where is mah fainting couch?
Oh no they’ve always collected it themselves, you just have to wade through ~4K pages of tax code that has averaged one change a day for the last decade.
But if you get it wrong, they’ll happily mail you a correction if you erred low. Plus penalties and interest of course.
The middle men like Intuit are a symptom of the legislature trying to use taxes to incentivize or disincentivize every little thing and still get pork for their districts. There’s a good 20 pages of code and case law on the depreciably of race horses that I’m sure the Senators from Kentucky had a hand in.
Beautiful :)
You always had the ability to freely file your taxes.
In Canada, unless you have some weird stuff, the tax filing form is smaller than the census. They just need to confirm things that links your accounts. They already have your pay and taxes amounts from your employer, your bank tax statements from your banks, etc. So unless you’re doing something only like 1% of the population does, it’s a two pager online, 20 minutes in and out, that’s it.
That’s not far from the same for simple filings here in the USA. Both my adult kids do their own in about 10-15 min. Maybe less after the first year. This is through TurboTax online.
Also, it’s free as long as you don’t make much or have things like HSA or 401k.
Isn’t 401k pension payment? Not from USA.
It is a retirement savings plan that most employers offer. You put money in it from your pay period into it, and it is taken out pre-tax, as in your taxes are calculated from your pay during that period after the retirement deduction is taken out (other things are pre-tax also, but 401k is one of them)
Filing taxes still isn’t free then, if filing for something basic as pension isn’t.
It’s still free, just not through turbo tax.
Filing taxes is always free. But for some people, it can be more complicated than they are comfortable doing. If all you have is a W-2 job with an HSA and a 401(k), your taxes are so straightforward you could do them yourself very easily in 10 minutes using the irs.gov ffff site.
Oh, but then there is the issue of state taxes which most states have. I can’t speak to all 50 states, but I do know if you live in a state with no income tax there’s literally nothing to file.
sure down vote the truth