TurboTax’s 20-year fight to stop Americans from filing taxes for free (2019)
11 comments
·October 16, 2025zkmon
I never understood why the Revenue can't provide a set of simple online forms for tax returns like India does. Heck, India provided Excel sheets with VBA script for many years, that produced an XML which can be submitted as tax filing. Tax filing is now a 15-minute affair for a salary-only income in India.
jameslk
The complexity is a feature not a bug. If you have more complexity, you have more opportunities for loopholes. Those loopholes are currently used by those wealthy enough to hire creative firms to help them get through them and minimize owed taxes
If there’s one outcome I really hope from AI automating work, it’s taking away the advantage the monied class has in this regard. Then perhaps there’s less purpose for the complexity
dennis_jeeves2
>The complexity is a feature not a bug. If you have more complexity, you have more opportunities for loopholes. Those loopholes are currently used by those wealthy enough to hire creative firms to help you get through them
Agreed that the complexity is a feature but it's not for the rich ( though the rich will take advantage of it, and why not? ) . It's mostly for the powers that be. If there were a 'flat' tax ( and one could argue what constitutes a flat tax) the rich will be more willing to pay that flat tax.
I'd say complexity support a very large govt, keeping several people employed including accountants, tax software companies etc. It serves the parasite class.
null
bni
AI will increase the complexity even more
bilekas
The tax system in the US is complicated, you've got different state taxes as well as the federal, for example if your kids go to a different state for school than you live, add that your partner might work in another state, maybe they have different relief taxes for disasters through the year. It might very well be a feature but it is complicated, and the more activities you have, maybe investments, a small business, multiple jobs. It becomes overwhelming for non accountants.
zegl
Many other countries have figured this out since the early 2000s, the US could do it as well if they wanted to.
throwaway667555
It's so easy that one man creates an Excel 1040 every year. See https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home
ChrisArchitect
tomhow
And some others, macroexpanded.
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It seems their business model is more existentially challenged by LLMs these days. I’m waiting for the regulations preventing AI being used for taxes and legal counsel
Edit: This is timely being on the homepage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45601230