The Internal Revenue Service is moving ahead with a plan to build its own free tax filing program, known as Direct File, announcing Tuesday that a pilot version will be available to some taxpayers in 13 states next year.

Armed with an influx of new money approved by Democrats last year, the IRS is conducting a major overhaul of its operations – despite continued threats from Republicans to cut future funding and even abolish the agency altogether.

Eventually, the IRS tax filing system could serve as an alternative to private tax preparation companies like H&R Block and Intuit’s TurboTax.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Plenty of people were happy to get sick and die, rather than accept Obamacare. I can imagine the same idiots thinking that they’ll get a better refund if they pay for Turbotax.

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nothing would prevent someone for doing the calculations with both programs and comparing.

    • DrPop@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      No they will done some random person on the street or Facebook. This year’s tax scheme is the fuel tax credit. People seem to believe a $20k refund with $5k income is normal.

        • DrPop@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          The fuel tax credit is generally used by farmer for the purchase of fuel for no highway vehicles like farm equipment and kerosene for heating. For some reason people are reporting the gas they put in their car for this credit. Their returns have a credit for as much as $20k. Their returns generally are low income. People are being told about this credit through means like Facebook.

          For tax year 2020 and 2021 there was a credit for self employed people who lost money due to the pandemic could claim a credit of up to16k. People would claim this but have no history of self employment.

          These returns are prepared either by individuals or by someone who applied for a preparer id to open a little tax clinic. You also have people who hang out around the tax places telling people they can get them a larger refund and the people don’t question where these numbers are coming from. Part of it is due to poor education on the taxpayers part and shady preparers trying to increase their commissions.

          The IRS implementing their own software could reduce this impact. The issue is the IRS is not great at advertising.

          • Habahnow
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            1 year ago

            Very interesting. This also means some of these people msy owe taxes with interest right?

            • DrPop@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              Interest and penalties are assessed from the original due date of the return(usually 4/15). So yeah there will be interest. Most have been stopped but some slipped through so if you got an oversized refund you may want to make sure as they are planning to audit each instance of these credits. (Fuck them, but, Don’t cheat the government)