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Tax prep software companies and tax prep services in general.
Yep.
Government already knows everything you owe.
They just cant tell you
Cause Tax prep lobbying said it would be unfair to their business.
So you gotta play the whole complicated game of figuring out your taxes, because H&R Cock wants your refund.
Pretty sure being able to figure it out on your own is the entrance to the legal loophole wealthy people use to squirm out of a huge bill.
Saved me $3000ish last year
There's all kinds of esoteric rules the typical tax software doesn't know how to handle
Yes,and this just means you can interpret them as creatively as you can pay an accountant to get funky with the guidelines!
No, that's not how it works.
On a certain level, if you can afford to pay lawyers to delay the process you can "get away" with anything, but there's only so much creative accounting that can be done before it's clearly a crime.
You can call them clear and obvious crimes or even chicken sandwiches if you want but it doesn't actually matter what label we'd personally like to put on it if the government doesn't prosecute it. Wealthy people and companies in our society have been successfully funneling money to sidestep tax law out in the open for as long as law and government itself existed and will continue to do so. It's no secret that Apple pays no federal taxes. It's acknowledged by both sides. Donald Trump publicly filed for bankruptcy several times despite making significant profits and walked away with huge write-offs and possibly even a huge refund. Hes openly bragged about it for decades now. He would love the opportunity to talk highly about himself by doing so again to a room full of IRS agents. Nothing will ever come of cases like these.
It makes me sick also, because I feel like Bernie was our last chance to stop it. But at this point to even get angry about it anymore is a waste of energy and time. I was around in 2011 when the occupy protests did dick all to stop wall street from getting away with financial crimes. They all yelled and screamed that it was illegal, and it at least partially was. But who gives a shit if it doesn't affect anything? Wall street hasn't changed in almost a century aside from automated trading. Several movies were made named wall street, several decades apart, and it was almost literally the same movie. Our options are: just fucking cope already, or go mental. It's likely not going to happen, at least not for a long time, and by that time most of the ones that already did or are happening now that we know about will already have too much time passed to be legally persuable. We have to just let it go and persue another battle. Cope.
Lol it's so funny how many bad takes there are in this thread. But saying that the government knows everything g you owe is one of the worst one.
No they fucking don't. Sometimes they aren't even sure that someone who got both his legs cut off needs disability, or that they can't regrow their legs.
Or that a dead person can't have a job.
Like, there are plenty of independent contractors and businesses that need to report their income, ecause how the fuck would they know that ?
I get that there are a lot of people with special types of jobs where their specific financial circumstances or the way they earn money is unusual. In that regard, I get why those people need to file their taxes.
But what about the remaining vast majority of people with standard jobs? The government absolutely does know how much I make and it makes zero sense for us to have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and not make a mistake on something that the government already knows the right answer to.
I'm going to catch some flak but I found myself in a position where H&R Block came in handy. It wasn't for any services they rendered but because they have something akin to a protection plan where you pay a one time fee and they provide legal representation if any tax authority decides to come at you after filing.
The two times I used them were when I made an interstate move and the following year when I purchased a house. The place I moved to has a byzantine regional tax authority that collects local taxes on behalf of most - but not all - municipalities in the county (like I said - byzantine). This regional tax authority is notoriously disorganized and aggressive, opening investigations about years old tax debt that amounts to pennies only to discover that the debt was paid but their records were misplaced.
Both years I filed with H&R Block and signed up for their protection plan. Both years the regional tax authority opened investigations. Both years H&R Block paid for a lawyer to get on the phone and get the stick out of the tax authority's ass.
This is a super niche case but until I have a year where I basically don't do anything interesting (move, have a kid, change jobs, etc.) or the regional tax authority gets it's shit together and chills out H&R Block is actually providing value to me.