TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes

Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by rayiner on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:36PM (#19720324)

There may be many arguments in favor of having the IRS sending out pre-filled-in tax forms, but this one just isn't true:

> It would cost the IRS almost nothing to send out pre-filled forms

Enhancing the IRS databases to actually plug in the information used on a typical tax return almost certainly would not cost "almost nothing." Back when it existed, less than 20% of people filed a 1040-EZ (the simplest tax form). That means you need something beyond just "plug in the numbers from the W-2" for the vast majority of tax filers. The IRS almost certainly doesn't have all that machinery already. Some of that data, the IRS doesn't have at all. (How many children live with you for purposes of the EITC?)

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by username223 on Monday April 22, 2019 @01:14PM (#19720658)

The US government currently takes in about $1.7 trillion in individual income taxes per year, so even spending $500 million to pre-fill forms would be almost nothing (0.03%). Heck, that's less than a useless aircraft carrier or a Facebook consent decree violation.

The IRS already has W-2s and 1099s, which cover ordinary pay and retirement investments, and enough money has probably been automatically withheld already. Remember that this isn't automatic billing, but automatic filling. They'll send you the form, and you can insert the number of children. If your taxes are much more complicated than that, you can probably afford TurboTax.

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by harryh on Monday April 22, 2019 @01:36PM (#19720854)

For the record, the IRS (in partnership with various tax companies) already providers for free filing for people making less than 66k/year.

https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by int_19h on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:19PM (#19722513)

The whole point of doing it this way - via the tax companies' own services - is to make it an advertisement for those companies, so that once somebody starts earning more, they would preferentially pick them. It's also a form of mild lock-in, since already having their return history etc there makes filing that much easier, creating an incentive to pay.

In the meantime, the same lobbyists who created this scheme are trying to prohibit IRS from developing its own free filing system:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19613725

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by JohnFen on Monday April 22, 2019 @12:52PM (#19720452)

The proposals I've seen for having the IRS prefill returns are that they'd just do the equivalent of the 1040EZ for you. If you want something more comprehensive than that, then you'd still have to do your own taxes.

I think that's a very reasonable approach.

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by smacktoward on Monday April 22, 2019 @01:18PM (#19720686)

> Back when it existed, less than 20% of people filed a 1040-EZ (the simplest tax form). That means you need something beyond just "plug in the numbers from the W-2" for the vast majority of tax filers.

Or it means that lots of people who qualified to use the 1040-EZ didn't know about it.

Or it means that lots of people who qualified to use the 1040-EZ kept on filing 1040s because that's what they were used to doing.

Or it means that lots of people who qualified to use the 1040-EZ were using tax software that just generated a 1040 for everyone, regardless of their eligibility to use the 1040-EZ.

Etc.

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by harryh on Monday April 22, 2019 @01:33PM (#19720825)

The IRS releases aggregated information on what % of people take various deductions or use various aspects of the different tax forms. This information does not support your various alternative hypotheses.

For the record any of the following disallowed someone from using the 1040-EZ

  - being over the age of 65
  - having any dependents/children
  - making over 100k in income
  - claiming any deductions at all

It was a very limiting form.

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Re:TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to F... by jtuente on Monday April 22, 2019 @01:49PM (#19720999)

Adding one more

    - claiming EITC

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