1251
Legalized bribery
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
1251 points (99.7% liked)
Microblog Memes
10442 readers
771 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If a post is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Be nice. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Okay so the "paying" is for when you use third parties to "help" you file, yes? You don't pay the government for the privilege of being able to file, yes? So what does/did this Free File thing do?
Taxes aren't easy in Germany either, I'm glad I have a husband who is level-headed enough to do them for us both because I'd always have a near mental breakdown when I tried. But it's always been obvious to me where and how to file without involving anyone I'd have to pay. Fuck.
Personal filing is always free, the "free" in "free filing" refers to the prep part. It just means you fill out and submit your taxes yourself rather than paying a tax firm's accountants to do it for you. Calling it that makes it seem like the firms are part of the process rather than bloated parasites feeding off taxpayers. I wouldn't be surprised if the name was also a result of their influence.
Their accountants can claim exemptions and rebates buried in the tax code that laymen wouldn't know exist - ones that they lobbied for to make their services more attractive. It makes them worthwhile for some households, but only because they're solving a problem they birthed and grew in the first place.
IRS Direct File was just a free government-run alternative to the tax filing programs like TurboTax.
You can still do your taxes by hand without the help of any software for free, but they've killed the website that fills out the forms automatically and the manual process is significantly more complicated.
Free file is software that people use to file. As far as I'm aware, it's always been free to print out the forms and mail it all in.