If you have a complex situation you should pay for help. However most people should not have a complex situation where they need that help, and tax preparation has made a ton of money preying on people who have a simple tax situation. This long predates software.
It shouldn’t matter how complex your situation is if you’re filing using software. I can understand paying for actual help like chat support, but a user filing a complex return and user filing a simple return are going to be using the software all the same. TurboTax loves to force you into a higher cost tier if you have simple stock sales or have an HSA which are both pretty basic.
Orrrr - and hear me out - maybe that rag-tag collection of state and federal governments you’ve got going on over there in the US should have a way of online filing that’s free?
You know, like how most civilised countries have been doing for the last decade or so.
Implementing the software to handle the labyrinthine tax code takes a lot of development effort. And not just for annual updates, they often identify bugs in the logic and issue updates monthly or weekly, especially as tax season ramps up. All that development labor needs to be paid.
… And the various Departments of Taxation can handle that. Half of them already have the software to handle direct filing, but simply can’t turn it on for contractual reasons (because of Intuit).
If you have a complex situation you should pay for help. However most people should not have a complex situation where they need that help, and tax preparation has made a ton of money preying on people who have a simple tax situation. This long predates software.
It shouldn’t matter how complex your situation is if you’re filing using software. I can understand paying for actual help like chat support, but a user filing a complex return and user filing a simple return are going to be using the software all the same. TurboTax loves to force you into a higher cost tier if you have simple stock sales or have an HSA which are both pretty basic.
Orrrr - and hear me out - maybe that rag-tag collection of state and federal governments you’ve got going on over there in the US should have a way of online filing that’s free?
You know, like how most civilised countries have been doing for the last decade or so.
They had one half built, but then a pedophile took over the government
Of course, but you still have to file your taxes in spite of those things being nonexistent.
Implementing the software to handle the labyrinthine tax code takes a lot of development effort. And not just for annual updates, they often identify bugs in the logic and issue updates monthly or weekly, especially as tax season ramps up. All that development labor needs to be paid.
… And the various Departments of Taxation can handle that. Half of them already have the software to handle direct filing, but simply can’t turn it on for contractual reasons (because of Intuit).