Tax-Filing Sites Ask to Blab Your Financial Info to 'Business Partners' (msn.com) 34
Online tax-filing services from TurboTax and H&R Block "want to blab your tax return secrets," warns the Washington Post. "Why? To help them make more money."
If you prepare your taxes online with TurboTax or H&R Block software, at some point you'll see a message that I found confusing. "We can help you do more," TurboTax says. In this case, that "help" is funneling the private information from your tax return to Intuit — the company that owns TurboTax, Credit Karma and accounting software QuickBooks. H&R Block offers to "personalize your H&R Block experience."
If you say yes, you're going to see email and other marketing from Intuit and H&R Block or its business partners that are tailored to what's in your tax return.
That might include how much money you make, how much you owe in student loans, the size of your tax return and your charitable contributions. For example, a credit card company might pay Intuit's Credit Karma to show offers to high-income people. Intuit knows that information from your tax return. The Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote last year about how these two companies grab for your secret tax return information. He dubbed it "the Facebook-ization of personal finance."
In a way, the tax prep companies are more aggressive than Facebook. What they're doing is mission creep. You might already be paying TurboTax and H&R Block to prepare or file your tax return. Now they also want your permission to pass along your secrets to make even more money off you.
If you say yes, you're going to see email and other marketing from Intuit and H&R Block or its business partners that are tailored to what's in your tax return.
That might include how much money you make, how much you owe in student loans, the size of your tax return and your charitable contributions. For example, a credit card company might pay Intuit's Credit Karma to show offers to high-income people. Intuit knows that information from your tax return. The Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler wrote last year about how these two companies grab for your secret tax return information. He dubbed it "the Facebook-ization of personal finance."
In a way, the tax prep companies are more aggressive than Facebook. What they're doing is mission creep. You might already be paying TurboTax and H&R Block to prepare or file your tax return. Now they also want your permission to pass along your secrets to make even more money off you.
WTF. They are already sharing the data with FB (Score:2, Informative)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
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I found this information in the EULA and TOS when installing Turbo Tax. I was not happy to have to agree to it to use the software.
You understand that by using certain Services, you are providing written instructions in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other applicable law to permit Intuit Inc. and its affiliated companies to obtain and periodically refresh your credit information and other information about you from third parties for marketing, eligibility, and other purposes described in Intuit's Global Privacy Statement [https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/]. You understand that your instructions authorize Intuit and its affiliated companies to obtain such information now and periodically in the future for as long as you have a registered Intuit account. We will stop refreshing your credit information when you cancel your account through your account settings.
Limits are needed around collected data (Score:2)
Re:Limits are needed around collected data (Score:5, Insightful)
I have resisted for years, going so far as to file paper returns, but it's getting unworkable. The IRS is not really staffed to handle paper returns any more, so it takes months and months for them to do anything with it... then if there's an arithmetic error, months more to correct.
We badly need an official IRS.gov filing site.
Re:Limits are needed around collected data (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not so much that TurboTax is involved in a transaction between you and the government, but that the tax code is so complex that "regular" people need help filing their taxes.
Rich people with lots of investments have always hired help to file their taxes. Their taxable income has always been complex. But for people who hold an hourly or salaried job, own or rent a house and car, and hopefully have some retirement savings, there is *NO* reason it should be so complicated that software is needed.
For most of us, filing taxes shouldn't even need to be done, it should be automatic, the IRS should just send you a statement, along with your refund or a bill. Property tax authorities do this, why can't the IRS!
Re:Limits are needed around collected data (Score:5, Insightful)
I do paper returns, it's actually required in my case. They are not that hard, with the exception of Schedule AI, which is part of Form 2210. If you have no withholding you must do Form 2210, although you may not have to actually send it in.
The only refund I've gotten in the last decade was from the pandemic. Otherwise I arrange to owe them, so how long it takes for them to get to my return is irrelevant. I do note it's never taken more than two weeks for them to cash any of my checks. With no withholding I also get to do estimated taxes. Since my income is not evenly distributed throughout the year I might or might owe them money in any given quarter.
To avoid math errors I've ended up duplicating some of the forms and worksheets in a spreadsheet. What would be really nice is if the IRS built an official set of tax form spreadsheets. Given the formatting capability of Excel or LiberOffice they should be able to duplicate the forms. Then fill them out, print them, and mail them.
The freefile fillable forms were a good start, but they were too limited, and trying to do complicated taxes over a web page isn't workable, and the business of having to reenter my entire W-2 when they already have it is stupid.
My two cents.
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I think the root issue is: The primary reason we even have an internet is to allow entities to collect information about us. What percentage of the internet is designed specifically to collect personal information? 70-800%?? How much of the internet would remain if tomorrow we implemented a method of internet access the eliminated the ability to collect our data? 20-30%?? So fine – companies provide online service to us and in return they are compensated by the acquisition of our data. That
Re: Limits are needed around collected data (Score:3)
Re: Limits are needed around collected data (Score:1)
Such a law is unlikely to ever be pushed by politicians because these financial companies spend far more on politicians than you or I do.
Scum (Score:3)
Trash companies.
In other news, the US needs to introduce privacy rights. The EU does a lot wrong, but this they have mostly right.
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The real WTF (Score:1)
In Northern Europe (say, Finland) the Tax Authority itself provides a pre-filled tax form in their e-services site and if everything is ok, you don need to do anything. If you have some deductions that the tax authority did not know about, you fill the in on their web site and click Submit.
Re:The real WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
See, this is your problem. You seem to think the government is all righteous and all-knowing. In the U.S., the idea is to scam the government as much as you can so you pay as little as you can. That's why elected officials are bribed, er, "lobbied", to create massive loopholes for companies and the wealthy to avoid paying taxes.
It's why Republicans are up in arms the IRS is hiring 87,000 more people with some being used to increase audits [businessinsider.com] on those making $400,000 or more. To them, it's a travesty the wealthy should have to pay anything, let alone have the government rooting around in their tax returns to verify if they have paid the correct amount of taxes, or even paid taxes at all.
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Republicans introduced a bill that would have confined those audits to those making $400K or more.
Ever Democrat voted against it, and it died.
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How come people earning less than $400 are somehow exempt from oversight? They are somehow righteous Americans for not making over $400K?
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How come people earning less than $400 are somehow exempt from oversight?
They are not. You didn't read the parent post properly: it was discussing the extra agents the IRS will hire.
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No, but in pure pragmatic terms, an hour of an agent's time spent checking on a high earner vs. a low earner has much higher return in terms of revenue collected.
There are two sides to tax enforcement; one is to make sure everyone follows the rules, and the other is to make sure the garment collects what is due. In terms of the first part, everyone is equal; in terms of the second part, the goverment gets much better bang for buck going after the high earners. This is of course because there is more tax t
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Citation fucking needed.
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Yes, the IRS pretty much does know everything, financially speaking at least. Several times, when one of my sons filled out their electronic tax filing incorrectly, the IRS adjusted it and sent back the corrections.
If the goal is to "scam" the government, then there's no way that accepting "returns" created by taxpayers, would reduce the level of scamming going on!
Re: The real WTF (Score:1)
You're not wrong. I've worked for companies that navigate the tax landscape. It's a huge industry, and it's only getting bigger as the tax code becomes more complicated.
At this point, it's self sustaining. The industry would fight tooth and nail any effort to simplify the tax code, and we're all funding them.
Time to put them out of business (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can't do it. The tax code is so complicated the government has no idea what tax write offs to which you are entitled.
Congress would have simplify the tax code and they'd have to properly fund the IRS to build up their backend systems. The former they won't do because big money contributors like having a complicated tax code they can hide all sorts of sins within. And the latter would require the Republicans take their thumb out of their mouths and tell Grover Norquist to shove his up his ass.
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Can't do it. The tax code is so complicated the government has no idea what tax write offs to which you are entitled.
Most people don't have any write-offs, especially since Trump took away the deduction for unreimbursed business expenses.
If you use the standard deduction (which is much more likely since Trump limited the state and local tax deduction to $10k), and you only have W2 and perhaps some interest and dividends, already reported on 1098s and 1099s, which the government already knows about, your tax return should be quite simple and the IRS should have all the information required to calculate your taxes.
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Re:Time to put them out of business (Score:5, Interesting)
Married: It probably does, actually. Most people don't get married/divorced/widowed any given year. If not, well, it's fairly simple for you to just tell the IRS you're married. Maybe some procedure where you use your account to say you're married to X, and X uses their account to say they're married to you, and then the IRS combines the information of the two into a joint return.
Mortgage interest deductions: IRS doesn't know about them? Uh, they get the 1098, "Mortgage Interest Statement". So yes, the IRS knows how much interest you paid, unless you're owner financing or such(where you buy the property by paying the owner in installments, which may contain interest).
Besides, ever since Trump disallowed a lot of deductions and doubled the standard deductions, a large majority of Americans don't itemize anymore, which means that they aren't taking this deduction in the first place.
401k distributions: That's the 1099-R, also given to the IRS. 529 distributions? 1099-Q.
Literally every income/deduction you list the IRS gets a copy of, unless something very odd is going on.
As for writing stuff off, like I said, most people don't itemize anymore, so that doesn't matter: We can still service the vast majority of Americans without them going to a tax preparation company and paying them money to fill forms out.
Now, credits can be a complicated thing, ranging from compensating teachers for supplies they bought for their classes using their own money*, a big thing this year would be energy improvements(solar panels, insulation, all that), EV cars, etc... But you can just have the ability to enter those amounts into the IRS system directly, and have IRS recalculate on that.
*Just fund the damn schools for it! And punish the schools that invest in sports shit before classrooms have what they need.
Though PE/Gym is a legit class in my opinion, physical activity is good. So a rack of various types of ball is good. A gym is good. Running track, and all that. What you don't need is a stadium with more seating that the school's population, their own jumbotron, etc... You can be cheap: A place for kids to run around.
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Having an HSA adds two pages. ACA covered health insurance adds two more. Since the subsidy depends on your income which you obviously don't know until the end of the year, reconciliation is needed.
The government might know your capital gains, but probably not if you bought it before 2012. It's up to you to provide the correct basis.
The government does not know about the new insulation you installed, the energy efficient windows, the heat pump, the solar panels until you send in the tax forms.
And those are
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I never said that the IRS knows about everyone's tax situation.
The government might know your capital gains, but probably not if you bought it before 2012. It's up to you to provide the correct basis.
Sadly, a large percentage of the population have no capital gains.
The government does not know about the new insulation you installed, the energy efficient windows, the heat pump, the solar panels until you send in the tax forms.
Again, only a small fraction of the population do any of these installations. Also, it would not be difficult for the IRS to offer a web page where you could enter such information.
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Would be nice but they would never do this. They wouldn't even make it easier to file online.
The current admin wanted enough funding to hire 87k IRS agents...and that's not to audit the rich. That funding was later rescinded after Republicans took the house. They replaced it with a bill that would only allow funds to pay for customer service and IT implementations. Democrats called this "shameful", so I doubt that they have any interest in using the funding for either of those things. It's a lot harder to c
Of course, it’s implemented as a dark patter (Score:5, Informative)
I used TaxAct for the last two years and ran into this, and the way they implemented it, it’s absolutely a dark pattern. The page where they harvest your consent to share information with third parties has extremely roundabout, legalistic wording that overall looks like they’re asking for your consent to simply process your taxes. The true details are in there if you read very carefully, but good luck if you don’t have training in logic or law. The form includes inputs for “Signature” (your name) and the date. The big, obvious “I Agree” button accepts their terms; a smaller “I Don’t Agree” text link skips forward and lets you finish your tax filing without approving third-party info sharing.
Text from a screenshot of last year’s consent form:
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Consent to use your tax information.
Plain Talk: In order for TaxAct to personalize your refund options, we need your permission to use some of the tax information you entered.
Federal law requires this consent form be provided to you. Unless authorized by law, we cannot use your tax return information for purposes other than the preparation and filing of your tax return without your consent.
You are not required to complete this form to engage our tax return preparation services. If we obtain your signature on this form by conditioning our tax return preparation services on your consent, your consent will not be valid. Your consent is valid for the amount of time that you specify. If you do not specify the duration of your consent, your consent is valid for one year from the date of signature.
By clicking “I Agree", I, [your name], authorize TaxAct to use the information I provide during the preparation of my 2021 tax return along with my prior year refund funding rate and similar information from prior years as needed to communicate with me and to evaluate and present refund and payment options available to me. By completing this form my consent will be effective until December 31, 2025.
[pre-filled input: "Signature"] [pre-filled input: "Today’s Date"]
If you believe your tax return information has been disclosed or used improperly in a manner unauthorized by law or without your permission, you may contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) by telephone at 1-800-366-4484, or by email at complaints@tigta.treas.gov.
[button: “< Back"] [text link: "I Don’t Agree"] [highlighted button: "I Agree"]
Re: Of course, it’s implemented as a dark pa (Score:2)
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my employer already uses these companies (Score:2)
IRS Follies (Score:1)
I buy the HRBlock software but mail paper to the IRS and the state. No way do I trust either TT (who failed once) or HRB to file electronically for ANY reason. BUT the IRS claimed I hadn't sent my payment on time so they dinged me for a late-payment penalty PLUS interest. I KNOW I mailed everything on time; they just lost my envelope for a few months. I convinced them based on my many decades of NEVER filing late to forgive the penalty, but I still owed $30 in interest. They warned me that this was a o