this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Wait, do US citizens have to pay to file taxes? Or is this a service to help navigate the complexities?
Not American, bit my understanding is that filling taxes in the US is complicated and confusing to the point where most people use paid software to do it. There is an obvious lobby of tax filing software companies keeping it that way.
nailed it.
It isn't even that complex if you are doing basic forms. Literally plug in numbers from a document that gets mailed to you January 15.
These are just private companies that typically fleece you out of a percentage of your income tax return.
My ex made us file taxes using "experts" for 17 years, even though I proved to her I could do it myself, and came up with the same numbers the "experts" did, because "they insure you if something goes wrong"
It's a scam. TurboTax, Jackson Hewitt, it's a scam
The government charges no fee to file.
However, until this year, lobbying has prevented the IRS from providing online services to help taxpayers fill out the forms or file directly, instead being required to outsource that and only expose a (wildly insecure btw) API for electronic filing.
Because the US tax code is also complicated as fuck and changes all the time, services like TurboTax exist and charge you to fill out the forms.
Repeat the above for each state you work / have income / own property in.
US citizen here. Used to file my own for free. At one point I bought a house and qualified for some tax credit so I paid an accountant to do my taxes that year to ensure I got everything right, bascially never went back becuase it was worth the $175 to litterally do nothing except mail my tax documents to an accountant.
You have a pretty basic tax situation so you might reconsider paying that $175. I'm in roughly the same boat as you and pay $10 for FreeTaxUSA (and previously $0 for CreditKarma Tax) to file my state return and $0 for the federal return.
It's the latter.
The short short version is that Intuit and H&R block make software to make filing taxes easier, market heavily and lobby heavily to prevent the IRS (which is itself a separate entity from the federal government whose sole customer is the federal government) from making similar software
For most people who have a job and rent the place they live they can fill out all of their taxes in just a couple of pages of forms (see the 1040EZ for example. Just punch in the info from the W2 your work gave you, some quick addition and subtraction then mail it off) and the IRS already knows most of the information, so it's already extremely easy, and if you own your home or want to take advantage of additional tax incentives it might be a bit more complicated. You can always download the forms and do it all manually, but tax software generally makes it easier
You can download forms from the IRS website or use free software like TaxHawk. Many people prefer to use similar software that you have to pay for or pay an accountant to do their taxes for them.