Quick survey: How do you prepare and file your federal and state income taxes?
a. Paper and mail self prepared with no outside help (e.g., fed and state forms and info alone).
b. Paper and mail with outside help (e.g., Lasser).
c. Electronic and mail self prepared (e.g., TurboTax).
d. Electronic and electronic self prepared with mail refund to your home (e.g., TurboTax)
e. Electronic and electronic self prepared with electronic deposit of refund to bank account.
f. Outside tax preparer (e.g., H&R Block).
g. Other (please explain).
Over the years I've gone from a to e. That worked well, with fed and state refunds deposited in bank account in nine days. After collecting tax info all year in one folder, took me 4 1/2 hours start to finish filing electronically with TurboTax.
It is progress. Much less chance of error. Much faster. Downside is cost $79 for TurboTax Premier fed and state software (needed for stock actions) and $34 for state and fed electronic filings and deposits, total $113.
Ideally, taxes should be simple enough that everyone with a grade school diploma should be able to file at no cost, meaning the fed and state governments should make the forms simple and easy enough and the filing procedures likewise.
Electronic filing is faster and more accurate, so it was free the first couple of years to hook taxpayers into using it. Although it saves tax merchants and government processors a lot of work, now taxpayers are soaked about $17 a return to file electronically by the taxpayer software profiteers. If there is a way to stick it to the average consumer, business and government will do it.
This huge intermediary tax market has sprung up because many taxes have become far too complicated for individuals to accurately decipher by themselves. The complicated pork barrel and special interest tax infiltration mocks the ideals of informed citizenry and participatory democracy.
Ooops, lapsed into a rant there. Still an interesting question. How do you now file and pay or recover overpayments in federal and state income taxes?
Do you think federal and state income taxes ever will be simpified to the point that the gigantic tax parasite industry no longer would be needed?
Seems to me federal and state governments should develop simple income tax forms that any grade school graduate could prepare with free tax software (cheaper than present paper mailings) and free electronic filing (cheaper and more accurate than handling paper mailings).
If government can make the rules so complicated that the present expensive workaround is needed, government can makes the rules simple enough to fulfill the promise of informed citizenry and participatory democracy.
