“The government has a program called the Free File Alliance, but it allows free filing only if you earn $52,000 a year or less. That covers 70 percent of taxpayers, the IRS says in a news release announcing the program’s renewal for 2007, but it leaves out a lot of middle-income taxpayers who like to prepare their own returns.”

They may be wrong, but they are consistent.

Higher tax rates for higher earners. No free filing either.

The philosophy of “soak the rich” has a nasty way of permeating everything.

Geeze, if you earn at least $52k per year, you can easily afford the nominal fee for electronic filing. Just give up a few lattes at Starbucks before April 15th. What a bunch of whiners!

jtg61 #2

I don’t do Starbucks.

I think people making over $50k can afford to spend $25 on TurboTax. Better yet, go to a tax professional and spend a couple hundred bucks. More than likely, a good CPA may be able to find deductions or file a more accurate return than a person could on their own.

Why should we have to pay a fee to perform an obligation. It amounts to an extra tax paid to a private entity that I have no representation in. Some government tax authorities allow free filing on their sites already. If the tax software is really better at saving you money, then let them compete in a free market. This is just another example of special interest influence imposed on a free market.

Exile Mike,

You are not paying a fee to perform an obligation. You can file your taxes for free already - on paper. You are paying the fee for the software that will make return preparation much, much faster. You have to separate the two.

Filing is an obligation. You are being charged not only for the software but also a fee to file it. Since I moved to Ohio for example, I can simply fill out a PDF on the Dept of Revenue web site and I’m done. If I want to buy software to act as a deduction finder or other such thing, I can voluntarily do that. And I did for awhile fill out the paperwork along with using paid software. After 3 years of finding that the software wasn’t saving me any money I wonder why do I have to do this? It is sanctioned robbery, pure and simple. It is a wasteful use of resources that costs the IRS (re: all of us) money to process all the “free” paper filings in order to direct income to a private party. It might as well be an extra tax; certainly the extra expense to the IRS is.

The cost of the software is trivial in comparison to the cost of entering into it all of the information necessary to calculate the tax owed. This cost is largely explicit for people who use a tax preparation service, but it is implicit for those who don’t (in terms of the value of their time). I would rather have fewer actual or potential deductions, and a simpler tax form, such as that proposed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. (With fewer deductions, tax rates could also be somewhat lower, assuming that the total revenue required would be the same.)