A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 281 of 725
Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free
In 2008, TurboTax was a market leader, but only a small portion of Americans filed their taxes online. By 2019, nearly 40% of U.S. taxpayers filed online and some 40 million of them did so with TurboTax, far more than with any other product.
But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it.
Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states.
The centerpiece of Intuit’s anti-encroachment strategy has been the Free File program, hatched 17 years ago in a moment of crisis for the company. Under the terms of an agreement with the federal government, Intuit and other commercial tax prep companies promised to provide free online filing to tens of millions of lower-income taxpayers. In exchange, the IRS pledged not to create a government-run system.
Since Free File’s launch, Intuit has done everything it could to limit the program’s reach while making sure the government stuck to its end of the deal. This year, Intuit was close to realizing a long-held goal: enshrining the Free File program in law, effectively closing the door on the IRS ever creating a free tax filing system. But an outcry followed ProPublica’s reporting on the matter and Intuit’s treatment of its customers, prompting the provision to be dropped and state and federal investigations into Intuit’s practices.
Yet even after this setback, the company remained steadfastly confident that its clout in Washington would win the day. Intuit revved its lobbying machine. A group of Republican lawmakers, led by TurboTax’s hometown congressman, wrote to the agency arguing that there was no reason for the government to “compete” with the “well-established” private tax prep companies. Intuit’s lobbyists also went above the OMB and pressed their case directly to the White House, Forman recalled.
At the IRS, “all hell broke loose,” remembered Terry Lutes, who was then the head of electronic filing at the agency. Intuit’s clout on the Hill meant that lawmakers were soon accusing the IRS of making “secret plans to undercut the industry,” Lutes said. The agency ran the risk of seeing its funding cut if it were to pursue the Free Tax Filing software plan.
Intuit’s success has made the men who run the company rich. Smith, the CEO who stepped down last year and is now executive board chair, had a stake worth $20 million when he became chief executive. It ballooned to $220 million by last year. Co-founder Scott Cook is now among the country’s wealthiest people, his fortune soaring to $3.3 billion.
More at www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-ameri
cans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:6ix, you are thinking small. As far as I know, you can't remember details from one day to the next, except your bitterness at how poorly you have it in life, something I see in nearly all Trump lovers. Trump voters who are rich don't love Trump. It is too obvious to them how dishonorable and greedy he is.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Somehow, I don't think I'm being programmed, but rather the bottom 50% are programmed to accept their fate without violence against people like me:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's why I hate you Democrats so much for the last 10 years and pushing me to that side.
Open your fucking eyes and see that the other side of the Legacy Media arm is programming you dumb fucks the exact same way.
They're all in cahoots.Quote:I don't have to do a damn thing to protect myself because the GOP protects people like me from people like you by keeping the minimum wage at a minimum and by lowering my taxes. On the other hand, the Democrats don't protect me from higher wages and higher taxes. Maybe I should vote for Trump next time?
Between 1989 and 2018, the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion. The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period.
www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/14/eye-popping-analysis-shows-top-1-
gained-21-trillion-wealth-1989-while-bottom-half
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Oh... that's right. I woke up this morning and forgot entirely that you're rich.
Thanks for our daily reminder of how great you are.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ix, you have not been able to put what few details you remember to good use in building a prediction model of how the world works and people react in order to predict what will happen next. Knowing what is likely to be next gives you a huge advantage over people who can't, or won't, do it, people who live in the eternal now with no larger purpose than birds, pets, and bees have - Jayne Cobb, for a fictional example and Adam Baldwin for a real example. Today, Baldwin only has 172 bird tweets, because he keeps erasing older tweets and forgetting his past. The only thing he clearly remembers in detail is his bitterness at his enemies. Trump remembers his past. He has 45,200 tweets and he obviously does have a prediction model of how the world works and people react. Too bad about what he uses his model for.
https://twitter.com/AdamBaldwin
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
There's no evidence that I don't remember everything since I sobered up, nearly 3 years ago.
There is plenty of evidence that you chucklefucks can't remember what happened in the news 2 weeks ago (Caused by 1 part ADD and 1 part it's-the-only-way-to-justify-your-otherwise-constant-state-of-hypocrisy).
When do you hear me bitching about my life?
I'm out here solving problems all the time and making constant improvements.
You're out here projecting again.
You're rich. STFU and take a dip in your golden coin tower, McDuck.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Stop Americans From Filing Their Taxes for Free
In 2008, TurboTax was a market leader, but only a small portion of Americans filed their taxes online. By 2019, nearly 40% of U.S. taxpayers filed online and some 40 million of them did so with TurboTax, far more than with any other product.
But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it.
Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting “encroachment,” Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. “For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,” reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing “3rd-party grass roots” support. “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media,” one internal PowerPoint slide states.
The centerpiece of Intuit’s anti-encroachment strategy has been the Free File program, hatched 17 years ago in a moment of crisis for the company. Under the terms of an agreement with the federal government, Intuit and other commercial tax prep companies promised to provide free online filing to tens of millions of lower-income taxpayers. In exchange, the IRS pledged not to create a government-run system.
Since Free File’s launch, Intuit has done everything it could to limit the program’s reach while making sure the government stuck to its end of the deal. This year, Intuit was close to realizing a long-held goal: enshrining the Free File program in law, effectively closing the door on the IRS ever creating a free tax filing system. But an outcry followed ProPublica’s reporting on the matter and Intuit’s treatment of its customers, prompting the provision to be dropped and state and federal investigations into Intuit’s practices.
Yet even after this setback, the company remained steadfastly confident that its clout in Washington would win the day. Intuit revved its lobbying machine. A group of Republican lawmakers, led by TurboTax’s hometown congressman, wrote to the agency arguing that there was no reason for the government to “compete” with the “well-established” private tax prep companies. Intuit’s lobbyists also went above the OMB and pressed their case directly to the White House, Forman recalled.
At the IRS, “all hell broke loose,” remembered Terry Lutes, who was then the head of electronic filing at the agency. Intuit’s clout on the Hill meant that lawmakers were soon accusing the IRS of making “secret plans to undercut the industry,” Lutes said. The agency ran the risk of seeing its funding cut if it were to pursue the Free Tax Filing software plan.
Intuit’s success has made the men who run the company rich. Smith, the CEO who stepped down last year and is now executive board chair, had a stake worth $20 million when he became chief executive. It ballooned to $220 million by last year. Co-founder Scott Cook is now among the country’s wealthiest people, his fortune soaring to $3.3 billion.
More at www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-ameri
cans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
12 years of public school and they never bother to teach you how to fill out a 1040. I blame that.
Filing your own
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:It is not school's fault that 90% of Americans are stupid about money. (90% are stupid about politics, too.) As a 12 year old child, I was filling out my income tax return. I must have let my Father mail it, because I don't have a copy of that 1964 return, but I do have all of them from 1968 to today. In 1968 my wages were $1,236.84. My interest was $248.07. I paid $111.70 to the IRS. If I had been paying more attention to Warren Buffett, who was already famous, than my Burger King manager Father, I would have placed my money in the stock market rather than the Savings and Loan.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
12 years of public school and they never bother to teach you how to fill out a 1040. I blame that.
Filing your own taxes for a majority of Americans is so ridiculously simple that I don't feel bad for anybody who doesn't do it.
www.forbes.com/profile/warren-buffett/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It is not school's fault that 90% of Americans are stupid about money.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
12 years of public school and they never bother to teach you how to fill out a 1040. I blame that.
Filing your own taxes for a majority of Americans is so ridiculously simple that I don't feel bad for anybody who doesn't do it.
Yes. Yes it is.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:In 1968 my income were $1,484.91.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:It is not school's fault that 90% of Americans are stupid about money.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
12 years of public school and they never bother to teach you how to fill out a 1040. I blame that.
Filing your own taxes for a majority of Americans is so ridiculously simple that I don't feel bad for anybody who doesn't do it.
Yes. Yes it is.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Adjusting for inflation, $1,484.91 in 1968 equals $10,955.86 in 2019. Way back then I could have been making more than 6ixStringJack makes today. I did that while working only on Saturday and half of Sunday. (Went to Church in the afternoon). The rest of the week, Monday through Friday, I was either at school or vacation. Those were the good old days. I could have married my wife then instead of 11 years later. (I was worth waiting for, she says. She's being nice.) My oldest daughter would be 50 years old today rather than a 39 y.o. And I could have avoided Vietnam. But then I might have ended up as Burger King manager, same as my Father. Those are the trade-offs.
www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1968?amount=1484.91
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:OMG. Given, yanno - who you are online - it sounds like they're in a hostage situation.
Originally posted by second:
my wife
My oldest daughter
And I sure hope their politics never, ever strays one iota from yours, otherwise you'll do anything from fire them in the meanest way possible to bragging about how good a shot your are with a rifle and talking about how death is too good for them.
The insane never-Trumpers will be driven even more insane in the wash/rinse/spin/repeat/ cycle they mistake for reality.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The embarrassing epilogue to the media’s obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails
Maybe Clinton’s emails shouldn’t have been covered as if they were the single most important issue facing 2016 voters?
We can all finally stop worrying about Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Last week, Congress received a brief, nine-page report from the State Department, which summarizes the department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account to conduct work business while she was secretary of state. The report can be fairly summarized in two sentences: She shouldn’t have done that. But it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Thus, America finally has closure on a minor scandal that many of the nation’s most powerful and influential news editors treated as if it were the most important issue facing voters in the 2016 election. “In just six days,” according to an analysis of 2016 coverage published in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), “the New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” And the Times was hardly alone in this regard.
By contrast, the Times’s piece on the State Department report concluding that her emails weren’t actually that big of a deal ran on page A16 in print.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924795/hillary-clinton-em
ails-new-york-times-state-department
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Same as it ever was - no change for Russian hacking in upcoming 2020 election:
https://wapo.st/35XSFbF
"Facebook takedowns show new Russian activity targeted Biden, praised Trump
The company disabled a network of accounts that posed at times as locals in swing states to post on divisive political issues and the upcoming presidential election
By
Tony Romm and
Isaac Stanley-Becker
Oct. 21, 2019 at 6:46 p.m. EDT
Facebook on Monday said it removed a network of Russian-backed accounts that posed as locals weighing in on political issues in swing states, praising President Trump and attacking former vice president Joe Biden — illustrating that the familiar threat of Russian interference looms over the next U.S. presidential race.
Facebook said the network bears the hallmark of the same Kremlin-backed group that interfered in the 2016 election by sowing social discord, seeking to boost Trump and attacking Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The new disinformation campaign appears to follow the same playbook.
This time, a coordinated group of Russian accounts that appears to show some links to the Internet Research Agency largely took to Facebook’s photo-sharing app, Instagram, to post content this year about U.S. politics and memes targeting Democratic presidential contenders.
The operation demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of the schisms within the Democratic Party as it labors to choose a nominee to face Trump in 2020. One Russian account, which portrayed itself as a black voter in Michigan, used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to hammer Biden for gaffes about racial issues. Some of the accounts boosted one of his rivals on the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The Russian network was the subject of one of four takedowns Facebook announced Monday; it also disabled three misleading campaigns originating in Iran. Researchers said the efforts demonstrated how those seeking to interfere in U.S. politics continue to exploit radioactive topics, including racial and religious fault lines. And they said it offered fresh evidence that foreign actors are pursuing new platforms that rely on a steady stream of images, making detection more difficult despite Facebook’s heightened investments in election security."
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
As a reminder of how a little Russian influence can go a long ways:
You Could Fit All the Voters Who Cost Clinton the Election in a Mid-Size Football Stadium
While nearly 138 million Americans voted in the presidential election, the stunning electoral victory of Donald Trump came down to upsets in just a handful of states that Hillary Clinton was expected to win. It has been cold comfort for Democrats that Clinton won the popular vote—at the last count, she was up by about 2.5 million votes, and climbing, as ballots continue to be counted. Even more distressing is the tiny margin by which Clinton lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—three states that were supposed to be her firewall in the Rust Belt, but that ultimately tipped the electoral college map decisively in Trump’s favor.
Trump’s margin of victory in those three states? Just 79,316 votes.
This latest number comes from Decision Desk’s final tally of Pennsylvania’s votes, where Trump won 2,961,875 votes to Clinton’s 2,915,440, a difference of 46,435 votes. Add that to the official results out of Wisconsin, where Clinton lost by 22,177 votes, and Michigan, which she lost by 10,704 votes, and there you have it: 0.057 percent of total voters cost Clinton the presidency.
It is not entirely unusual for the electoral college to be lost by such a slim margin. In 2000, Al Gore lost Florida (and therefore the election) by 1,754 votes, triggering a painfully drawn out recount drama that only ended with a Supreme Court ruling. And in 2004, John Kerry lost to George W. Bush by losing Ohio by a little over 118,000 votes. But it is worth considering just how few voters ultimately set the country on its current, arguably terrifying course. The 79,316 people who voted for Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—all states that Democrats carried since 1992—is less than the entire student body of Penn State (97,494 students). If you put all these voters in the Rose Bowl, there would be slightly over 13,000 seats left over.
More at www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/hillary-clinton-margin-loss-votes
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME