This has TurboTax written all over it.
If they actually do this there needs to be a nation wide denial of tax payments. People should just straight up not pay in large enough numbers that they can’t prosecute everyone.
I know it will never happen and we’ll just be mandatory piggy banks for Intuit, but it’s nice to dream…
God I hate this country.
there needs to be a nation wide denial of tax payments
Nearly 10% Of S&P 500 Companies Paid No Tax in 2023 — Including Tesla
Way ahead of you!
People should just straight up not pay in large enough numbers that they can’t prosecute everyone.
For the vast majority of salary earners, taxes are collected at the point of wage payment. You fill out a W-2 when you are hired and your employer sets aside a percentage of your income based on your anticipated tax debt. This often results in over payment, at which point taxpayers file returns to recoup the balance.
For instances in which a taxpayer owes on their return and fails to pay the balance, the IRS can simply order the employer to zero-out exemptions on the W-2 and recoup the excess due over time plus a penalty. Alternatively, they can file with the courts to garnish wages in excess of the W-2, put liens on property, and seize unprotected assets.
This is incredibly easy for the professional legal and prosecutorial team at the IRS. It is comparatively much harder to resist by individuals - even in large numbers - without comparable legal firepower. Your employer is almost certainly not going to assist in tax avoidance, as that exposes the company to legal liability.
The threat of the IRS coming to take what little you have is just too great. It’s too bad they are not as aggressive with billionaires and multi-million dollar companies.
Didn’t sometime leak the source code to the government tax filing software, with the intent of making it open source? It’s not an ideal solution, but if that is a viable solution (and if it’s maintained properly) then that’s a pretty big nose-thumbing at these curious government officials.
Problem I think is the API from the IRS being closed. You could still maybe use it generate pdfs and send it, but the tool allowed you to just click send. And also, no more updates from the official source could mean they get to change a few rules and make it obsolete. We could keep it up with a bunch of volunteers, but unlike other open source projects, this has a serious legal aspect that people might not be willing to take a risk.
The IRS itself released the code, as planned.
