Introducing this market with a resounding “fuck Intuit” on behalf of the US taxpayers (and Mint users). When will this Intuit-lobbied nonsense end?
TurboTax owner Intuit spent more on federal lobbying in the first three months of 2023 than any prior first quarter . The surge in spending comes on the heels of heated debate over whether the government should provide its own free tax filing service that was reignited by an $80 billion funding increase to overhaul the IRS as part of the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.
Will Americans be able to file taxes directly to the government for free before the 2025 tax season?
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I believe this meets your resolution criteria for ‘Yes’ : https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free
@snazzlePop Yes, yes this does. Unfortunately, this was true at time of market creation, which makes this a bit awkward. As I made a pretty shitty market here (true since May).
I’ve mulled over whether to resolve this as YES or N/A (and will be flagging this to mods who may overrule my decision). But the fault here is squarely mine for making a market that should’ve resolved on day 1. However, anyone could’ve done the research and figured out the flaw in this market, and only @snazzlePop did. It feels unfair to make this an N/A, hence the YES resolve.
I’ll make sure to do more thorough research on all my markets to avoid this mistake again. Sorry for this market not being completely correct in its framing of the current state of the world.
@mattyb Well, blame Intuit. They have been deliberately trying to make it so that the smallest amount of Americans know about Free File, while at the same time telling the IRS that they definitely don't need to develop their own tax filing tool because "trust the free market".
@snazzlePop @mattyb note this is only for “qualified Americans”, mostly meaning you have to be under an income cap to use it. I’ve been aware of Free File for many years yet still voted NO in this auction. As @Shump points out, thanks to Intuit (and “public-private partnerships”) it’s too hard to use. See for example https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/taxes-tedious
@BlueDragon your podcast was from 2017, I read through the transcript and to the best of my knowledge, this does not include the 2023 changes from May (see coverage here, or an article directly from the IRS here).
“Free File”, what you’re referring to, is not the same as Direct File. I’ve returned your money, and I’m sorry you’re not happy with this resolve, but I stand by the correctness given the Direct File new info.