by beej71 on 4/18/25, 3:40 AM
Oregon made its own turbo tax competitor and it's great, and getting better every year. I was really looking forward to Direct File. (I used an accountant this year so I didn't get my chance.) Back to filing my own returns by hand next year.
Thank you, DOGE brainiacs who decided I had to keep doing it the inefficient way.
by irrational on 4/18/25, 4:03 AM
Use Free Tax USA. Federal is free. If you need to file state, it is $15. I’ve used it for years and it works great. For a number of years I prepared my taxes on both Turbo Tax (without actually paying for it) and Free Tax USA. They always came up with the same numbers.
by mandeepj on 4/18/25, 4:56 AM
Mr. Bessent (Treasury Secretary) was repeatedly asked during his confirmation hearing whether he would protect DirectFile and he said "Yes" :-)
A small snippet of that conversation. The video recording has much more details -
Do you agree with the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) report finding that the Direct File pilot was successful and should be expanded?
Answer: As noted during the hearing, I commit that for this tax season, Direct File will be operative to prevent any disruptions for taxpayers. And if confirmed, I will consult and study the program and understand it better, and evaluate whether it works to serve the best interests of taxpayers.
From page 36 at https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/responses_to_qu...
So he evaluated not to expand :-(
by stevenpetryk on 4/18/25, 2:47 AM
FreeTaxUSA only cost me like… $20? in California this year and had very little upsells. Highly recommend!
by atrettel on 4/18/25, 3:03 AM
Regardless of what happens to Direct File, I recommend people learn how to do their tax returns by hand. I do it by hand every year. Yes, it is tedious, but I am not beholden to anyone and I don't need a "product" (paid or otherwise) to solve it for me. It takes me between 10 to 15 hours per year for both my federal and state tax returns. That is all. Once you get a hang of it, it is not that bad.
(I recognize that not everyone can do this, but if you have the technical skill to handle the math, I do still recommend it.)
by wnevets on 4/18/25, 3:43 AM
The average tax payer takes the standard deduction and doesn't require anything special. There is absolutely no reason for this process to be privatized for the typical American.
by jmward01 on 4/18/25, 3:27 AM
I believe companies should use every inch of leeway in existing laws to do business. It isn't evil, it is rational. However, I believe evil companies are the ones that attempt to change laws to do business. Businesses should not have a voice in law. Intuit is an evil company and they are making the lives of every person in the US worse in order to make a profit.
by rootsudo on 4/18/25, 2:42 AM
$240,000 is really inexpensive in the end. Makes you wonder why most
Companies aren’t; If not already are doing the same.
by hliyan on 4/18/25, 5:11 AM
Meanwhile where I live (Sri Lanka), we're all able to directly file our taxes with the Inland Revenue Department:
https://eservices.ird.gov.lk . It's called RAMIS. It has it's warts and has had some outages in the past, but it gets the job done.
Note that Sri Lanka is a third world country that's currently recovering from a major economic crisis in 2022.
by tmshapland on 4/18/25, 3:26 AM
It's amazing how little it costs to pay off lawmakers. I've seen this before in the first Trump admin where some private weather services paid a fairly small amount (tens of thousands) to get some NWS services shut down. Considering how much Intuit has to gain, they really didn't have to pay much. Great ROI.
"A glance at Intuit’s 2025 first-quarter lobbying disclosures gets at this continued, quarter-century saga. The company shelled out $240,000 to lobby members of Congress on tax-related issues."
by otikik on 4/18/25, 3:46 AM
It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Your wealthy are now saying the quiet part out loud, and your poor are cheering.
by temporallobe on 4/18/25, 2:59 AM
This may be confusing as e-file is not the same as DirectFile and it should have little or no impact to most taxpayers since you can still always file your taxes for free. DirectFile is just an in-house “competitor” to software such as Turbotax and is only available if you made less than $250k jointly. BTW I’ve been using FreetaxUSA for about 10 years with no issues.
by insane_dreamer on 4/18/25, 4:43 AM
I’ve been using Cash App to file for the past 2 years and it’s 100% fee and worked well, good interface etc. I have fairly complex taxes but it handled it all. State return too. Never going back to TurboTax or HRBlock.
by yieldcrv on 4/18/25, 3:06 AM
When DOGE is shutting every contract down, as well as programs within the federal government, as well as firing everyone or getting appointed agency heads to do so
How much could any one program be attributed to lobbying?
by presto8 on 4/18/25, 1:47 PM
Did my taxes with taxes.cashapp.com this year. I recommend it. It's free to file both federal and state. It handled my complex tax return, including rental income with depreciation, RSUs, ESPP, section 1256 contracts, etc. And it can import last year's info from a TurboTax or other PDF.
Oh and it comes with 1-year of free audit defense as well.
I'm not sure what their long-term business stategy is, but I would rather pay them than TurboTax. I find Intuit's political lobbying distasteful.
by flashgordon on 4/19/25, 2:29 AM
A slightly different angle. Every ceo is chomping at the bits for getting rid of all their employees because ... AI. What would it take to build a fully open source turbo tax alternative using AI? I suppose the hardest part would be keeping uptodate with rules etc but id assume that'd be the perfect use for LLMs?
by silexia on 4/25/25, 9:43 PM
How about if we shrink the amount of taxes we pay so no software is required at all?
by dmart on 4/18/25, 2:41 AM
I used Direct File this year. Super fast and simple, no upsells or bullshit. Feels like every little thing just gets worse and worse lately.
by anon6362 on 4/18/25, 6:35 AM
Regulatory capture and lobbyists win again. Corruption at its finest.
Other countries like Norway have much simpler tax systems that pre-compute the amount for taxpayers.
by ChrisArchitect on 4/18/25, 3:39 AM
by ksec on 4/18/25, 4:16 AM
Sometimes things like this I am reminded in the discussions of AI, not everything problem can be solved with AGI or even ASI.
by krupan on 4/18/25, 4:01 AM
My dream is that the government puts Intuit out of business by massively simplifying tax laws, but I am most definitely not holding my breath
by twothreeone on 4/18/25, 4:22 AM
I must be missing something.. why is nobody mentioning Free File Fillable Forms? I use it every year.. it's great! Super easy and seems like completely separate from both Direct File and Free File options.
by dkobia on 4/18/25, 8:33 AM
As context size in LLMs grows I suspect getting taxes done in a very near future will be something trivial. For most people it is merely a form filling task moving a set of numbers from here to there.
by jdenning on 4/18/25, 5:42 AM
It’s crazy that it only costs $240k to buy control of tax filing policy and fuck over the entire nation.
by gibbitz on 4/18/25, 4:47 AM
I just pay an accountant. I never get a comparable return from turbo tax even after the 10x he charges me. To top it off, he gets to make a living without having to game our democracy.