I don't know much about investing, but i wonder if it would it be a good time to short those companies?

I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.

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?

are you not capable of taking a win? it's a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.

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.

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.

Kind of? Are you going to tell us that the US healthcare system is "sorta silly" next?

I think that some companies like turbotax are employing lobbyists to make impossible filing for taxes unless you go through a gatekeeper

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.)

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.

…to print my ID in the first place?

(But yes clearly worse to allow personal data to be stored in an additional system.)

Interesting that third parties like TurboTax aren't required to obtain copies of your photo ID.

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'.

🤞