Tag: Taxation is theft

So it’s tax season.

Everyone is “thrilled”. Especially now that we know that 100 billion of our taxes went “Missing” miraculously in transit to Ukraine. Then we’ve seen how more of money has been wasted by USAID and God only knows what other B.S. departments within our government.

What I’m saying is everyone is cranky. Myself included.

This has bearing on me, because I’m trying to locate either an application that I can use to plug in the finite numbers of my income, interest paid, medical expenses, etc. have this super powerful computer in my lap, do the freaking math, then print out the results on a form to mail to the freaking Tax collectors Federal & State.

Or someone to do my taxes that doesn’t add $300 to $1000 to my already overly expensive taxes, which feel like forced donation to a bunch of clowns with zero respect for the American People.

You’d think this would be simple. You’d be wrong!

I read reviews. I’ve been reading reviews about TurboTax (who by the way annoy me because their website tells me to login to a nonexistent account when I try to purchase their software and doesn’t have a provision to create the account. So if they can’t get a website software right, do I have faith in their ability to actually do my tax math right? Perhaps Not!)

It seems that I’m not alone in questioning TurboTax, but others are flat out livid that the applications both desktop and mobile don’t work as advertised and that they nickel & dime you to death to boot.

Then there’s H&R Block. I used them many years ago and was okay with them. Keyword, many years ago… Their reviews are also not particularly favorable. For the same reasons as TurboTax. Unexpected add on fees. Malfunctions in the applications. One review said that the IRS was rejecting the H&R Block filing because the SS and DOB didn’t match IRS records. H&R Block was not only unhelpful, but downright dismissive and apparently didn’t refund the e-filing fee either.

TaySlayer? They too have strings of nasty reviews. Agin citing unexpected fees, application / web site problems and unresponsive customer support. 

To be fair, when I’m looking at reviews I sort them by “most recent”. Given the general crankiness of the American people at Tax time, coupled with what appears to be stratospheric corruption in the government. Perhaps the reviews are more negative because the folks reviewing these applications or agencies are just really pissed off.

Nonetheless, for someone like me that has used an accountant to do my taxes for the past 30+ years…

It makes things more difficult.

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Update: Less than an hour after posting this. Costco sent me an email that said I could get TurboTax through them for ~ $60.

That was by far the best price I’d seen and since all the tax programs were about the same price, $80 – $90 I jumped on the discount from Costco.

My taxes are done. I haven’t sent anything yet. 

I’ve got a multiyear tax mess that I’m fixing and I need to get previous years editions. I want to make sure that the previous stuff doesn’t affect the current data. I don’t think it will but I’m mistrustful of anything associated with the IRS.

Honestly, I’ve been terrified of the IRS and taxes for my entire adult life. Part of that is the way the IRS dealt with my father and stepfather when they’d made mistakes. In the case of my stepfather the mistake wasn’t his.

It was a company he worked for who was purchased. Both companies sent W-2s the purchasing company neglected to check the amended box on the 2nd W2 stating that the 2nd simply changed the name of the company to the IRS which doubled his income. It took 6 months for him to get the IRS to understand what happened. It took corporate attorneys, and all manner of accountants, plus time off from work.

Those memories made unwilling to attempt to do my own taxes when it was just paper, and a calculator. Over the years, it became habit and I thought nothing of it until last year when my accountant really dropped the ball.

This by the way was the second time he’d screwed up in 20 years and both times cost me a shit ton of money. He of course danced away without even a “Sorry about that.” Last year he screwed up the calculation on my state return as well.

So this baggage was on my mind as I fired up my brand new Turbotax. Interesting thing is that the program asked me to create an account, unlike their screwy website that wouldn’t allow a purchase without an account and wouldn’t let me create one.

I sat here for about 2 hours maybe a little longer because I had to dig up some bits of information. In the end, after I’d put all the data in, and answered the questions the program asked, Turbotax put my super powerful computer to the math tasks for about 5 – 10 seconds.

The CPU didn’t even breathe hard. It looked like the program reached out to verify some rules or something because there was a data burst on the router.

Then bingo. 

Everything was finished. The program ran a probability of audit based on the data provided and gave me a near zero possibility. 

The requisite information was transferred to the state tax subroutines. There were a few more questions then another 5 -10 seconds and bingo the state was done too.

I smiled. This is what a super powerful computer is supposed to do!

Something else changed too.

I can do this crap! My computer and I can handle it. 

1/4 of the load was taken off my mind. The remaining 3/4 I can do. Although, the last 1/4 might be a bit of a challenge. I’m confident.

And because I hate the IRS and state taxation… I’m mailing in hardcopies. Maybe next year, I’ll e-file. But why should I make it easy for them?

I’m paying for the software, I paid for the computer, I’d have to pay a nominal fee to e-file. Seems to me the IRS and State should take $100 off our taxes for making their job easy by transferring the preprocessed data directly to their computers.

Maybe I’m being petty.