- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25117460
Summary
Elon Musk claimed on X that he eliminated the IRS team responsible for the “Direct File” program, which allows Americans to file taxes online for free.
His statement came in response to a right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
However, the Treasury Department confirms that the Direct File system remains active, offering free tax filing with customer support.
The program, available in English and Spanish, is optional, allowing taxpayers to choose between using it or filing their taxes manually.
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You’d think that if DOGE was really DOGE that this is the exact kind of thing they’d double down on and make really good, saving everyone shit load of money.
You’d think that’s the case, if you thought saving money or helping average Americans was actually their goal. The American government is being carved up as fast as they can get away with it. Gotta free up cash to give billionaires more tax cuts!
Don’t forget… Eliminating any government oversight that might affect their business interests…
And eliminating any funding they can for media that will speak against them.
Edit: these people are directly tanking the platform Mr. Rogers had. The magic school bus, sesame Street, Arthur, Clifford, Barney, Reading Rainbow… They come from PBS, which is under attack by Elon Musk and Donald Trump
I get advertisements trying to give free pamphlets to kids about what Trump has done for our country and how he is saving it. He’s looking for the fucking Hitler Youth. Period
You mean instead of “deleting” it right?
Ya, don’t delete, make it even better and save even more money for everyone
That’s fine. I wasn’t planning to pay taxes to a fascist government anyway.
The sooner average Americans realize that these people are America’s enemies, the sooner we can do something about it.
So you are saying we better not wait standing up?
The IRS?
Cool so I’m not doing my taxes again this year
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
How the hell does this lower costs?
right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
They’re against the slaves not using TurboTax.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
You may want to look into Grover Norquist and his organisation Americans for Tax Reform. It is one of the most influential political lobbying groups in the United States, and it has the support of essentially the entire republican party. They essentially consider tax to be evil on principle and ask every politician to sign a pledge opposing any tax hike.
ATR is strongly against automatic filing, as they want to keep taxes difficult and complicated to stoke anti-tax sentiment. That is to say, they fear that if filing tax is easier, citizens would be less likely to fight taxes in the way that the ATR wants (mostly they like a low flat tax, because it’s simple and good for rich people).
This version of the right wing is against any service provided to the public for free which their own companies could profit from by charging for it. And they also, as a matter of principle, believe that the poor should be punished, and punished again.
yes because it takes money away from companies like intuit and taxact and hrblock… ,sarcasm.
So the right is against self-service now? wtf
Why are looking for coherence in their ideology? They’ve never made any indication that they are ideological consistent. Its projection on our part to do so, and the constant exacerbation at the obvious and consistent conclusion is tiresome.
I find it useful to look for ways to make their arguments coherent. What’s the underlying motivation where their actions make sense?
In this case, it makes a lot of sense if they’re in favor of billionaires profiting off something currently being provided by the government. In other cases (and somewhat on this one, too), “cruelty is the point” is what gets you there.
So the right is against self-service now?
No, fascists are. It just so happens that the right are fascists.
Cruelty is the point. The goal is to make the lives of impoverished people harder.
Oh man.
In Germany this would mean dismantling the only functioning digital government service. Haha.
His statement came in response to a right-wing influencer criticizing the program as government overreach.
… HOW??? This movement simply has no real agenda or philosophy - they just want to burn everything down.
The government providing a free service that private companies charge for is considered overreach by the wealthy elite who stand to gain from holding a monopoly over access to a necessary thing.
They literally ran on dismantling our government and the majority of voting Americans voted for them.
For the first time in my life I’m seriously considering getting citizenship elsewhere. Nothing good can happen for the future of this nation with a populace that stupid.
It’s over.
The slimmest majority of the minority of Americans who voted
Anyone of voting age that didn’t vote is just as bad as anyone that voted for this.
There’s your supermajority of stupid Americans.
Disclaimer: I don’t agree with this but providing a possible rationale. They believe the government is overreaching because “easy” tax filing has been privatized and it would harm those businesses. Never mind those businesses harm people
That seems a reasonable guess…
This movement simply has no real agenda or philosophy - they just want to burn everything down.
That is the agenda
Sorry - I don’t mean “agenda” in the weird meaningless pejorative way that partisans use it but rather in the more traditional “plan of things to be done” manner. Like - these people have no problem statement with “here is how we will fix it”.
Yes, causing chaos is part of their “plan of things to be done.”
If you want to know their agenda, read Project 2025.
Private companies and consultants make millions on tax advice. Wrongly filed tax returns result in fines. Need I continue?
I took what you said as the traditional meaning, there is no “fixing” unless destruction is fixing. Their “agenda”, imo, is to tear down as much as possible, crash the economy, then buy up everything that they can; housing, businesses, etc
That’s the agenda. Burn everything down.
Have you ever seen someone on social media who CLEARLY did not read the post they are responding to but saw a mention of AI or the word “implication” and posted the same tired old meme for points? And then notice that actually works because the vast majority of the internet doesn’t want to discuss anything and just want to giggle at their comfort memes?
It is like that. Except they also want to enslave all lgbtq+ folk, brown people, and women. All while lining their pockets.
Removed by mod
Bluesky will delete X, but give him time.
Then they’ll become X eventually.
I think I’ll skip paying taxes this year, my religion states I cannot support terrorist groups.
Not religious, but my ethics, and laws against aiding and abetting should also apply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objection_to_military_taxation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Freedom_Peace_Tax_Fund_Act
but also: Office of Chief Counsel Internal Revenue Service Memorandum https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-lafa/20133303f.pdf
Good luck with that.
But, in all seriousness: Everyone should do their taxes ASAP. If you are due a refund? File very quickly. If you owe money? Wait until the last possible minute. Because there are decent odds that we don’t have an IRS after a month or two of this…
That said, DO make it a point to file state taxes regardless since those actually go toward things that, even in red states, are focused on the populace.
I’m still waiting on two forms that the companies say won’t be available till 2/28. Otherwise I’m ready to submit.
To late he just got rid of what takes to do our fucking taxes. I REFUSE TO USE TURBOTAX OR HR BLOCK OR ANY OTHER PREDATORY TAX FILING COMPANY.
Guess no refund for us and no child tax credit.
Btw what the fuck is Congress doing? This motherfucker should not be able to do any of this, yet no one stopping him.
I REFUSE TO USE TURBOTAX OR HR BLOCK OR ANY OTHER PREDATORY TAX FILING COMPANY.
Isn’t freetaxusa still good?
Btw what the fuck is Congress doing?
Republicans? Sucking a lot Trump, Musk, and any other billionaire’s dick.
Democrats? Completely self-sabotaging any attempt to get any opposition going.
You can file by paper
You do you. Personally, I want to get my money while I still can. But if you would rather throw away you and your children’s money then … 'kay.
Because there are basically 3 outcomes for the IRS at this point
- musk et al completely destroy it and insist that income tax is no longer a thing and only sales tax exists. I forget if this is part of project 2025 but it is something republicans have been arguing for decades because it predominantly hurts lower income households
- Democrats do their fucking job and intervene and we file taxes normally
- musk et al completely compromise the IRS and make it a point to attack “the little guy” so they can insist they are hard on crime while actively ignoring all their cronies who refuse to ever pay taxes again.
And if you truly refuse to use any software? You can file by hand. I did back in college when I couldn’t afford even fricking turbotax.
yet no one stopping him.
Turns out America is weak as fuck. We’re only good at applying force when it comes to other nations.
The article goes on to mention he is either lying or doesn’t know what he is talking about as the system is very much still in place. It could be either, and likely it’s both, that he doesn’t know enough to be sure if he did or not, but would be ok if it turns out to be a lie anyway.
I use cash app and it’s free, or at least it was last year.
Cash App Taxes is still free 👍
Plus I suspect the states will outlast the feds at this point. With maybe the sole exception of Utah, and that has more to do with the fact that the nuttier Mormons have a weird fucked up prophecy where theyll save America in its dying days or some shit.
Nothing makes the government more efficient than cleaning house on the group responsible for bringing money into the government and which has an ROI of 5.
Man who pays someone else to do his taxes makes it harder for people who do their own taxes because he doesn’t seem to understand how annoying and frustratingly difficult it is to file in USA
He thinks people with less money than him are inferior people, morally, intellectually and socially. If there’s anything he’s unaware of it’s what a pathetic little man he is, and how billions of dollars can’t fix that. But deep down I suspect he knows it.
Stop thinking that these people are stupid and don’t understand what they’re doing. They know exactly what they are doing.
He understands. His cronies make big bank from paid services.
In Denmark We’ve had easy tax filing on the Internet for more than a decade, and before that it was also extremely easy, as we got a form with all the usual data filled out, and we only had to send in if we had changes. I haven’t done my taxes for 30 years!!!
Except when we bought a house we’ve had a few tax deductions on energy saving changes, which took 2 minutes to enter.Every piece of standard information is collected automatically, like wages, bank info, stock profits, real estate taxes, and the rest if you have anything additional is super easy to fill out. The old paper tax return form is AFAIK completely abandoned since more than a decade ago.
USA under Trump with Elron Musk making it even worse is what we would call working like monkeys in a cage. If they really end this program, it makes it more difficult to do your taxes, AND cost tax payers MORE!!
Thanks, we know the rest of the modern world has it better in literally every way literally everywhere else. Can someone just like invade and save us please?
Sorry, you’ve spent 75 years arming your own government to the point of making this impossible. In the name of “security”. Do you feel secure yet?
Unfortunately USA is extremely good at violence, probably the best in the world, so I guess you’ll just have to fight it out amongst yourselves. But I wish all the best to all the reasonable Americans, that still believe in decency and democracy.
This is most accurate and depressing assessment of the United States I have ever read.
Being a child of the 60’s in Europe, the first President I remember is Jimmy Carter. It is really disappointing that we have seen no other president of USA come even close to caliber of Jimmy Carter.
Nobody since can even “Nå ham til sokkerholderne.” Sorry but I can’t find a fitting translation, the literal translation is “reach his sock holders” the closest AFAIK is “head and shoulders above”, but it doesn’t really illustrate the huge distance between Jimmy Carter and every US president since.
Back then we dreamed of peace, tolerance and progress of society. Since then it’s been all about money, and at the most scraping a few benefits for the worst off.
So when you say it’s depressing, you are goddam right it’s depressing. USA threw away their future, mostly to just benefit big oil and the 1%. But more than that, almost all of the developed world is following in the footsteps of USA!? So although it’s not nearly as bad, we are going the wrong way too. 😥
Once they have control of all the people and property used to commit that violence… I mean, it’s not going to stay within US borders, is it?
No probably not, I hope MAGA will be thrown out when the stupid people rooting for them realize what it really is.
But as things are going, it doesn’t look good.
Even this easy file was ineligible for anyone who did any IRA which americans have to do to have retirment funds and is super common. Of course the idea was the thing was supposed to be expanded not sunk.
They’re still developing it. This was a test rollout to see if they could do it. IRS software was still running on cobol mainframes. Upgrading from these things take time and a lot of development. And they’re doing it from scratch.
I mean its sorta funny though because if someone does not put in their taxes the irs will send them a filled out one and ask for a signature to go forward. They also have this great form 1040x that would be perfect to send a prefilled tax return out and leave room for modifications.
This real only works for W2 workers, and a few 1099ers.
They know when you leave some things (banks, brokerages, employers) that also report to them off. They don’t know everything.
So yes, they could prefill it a majority, but the filing companies didn’t want that to happen
Sorry as a non American IDK what IRA is in this context, usually it’s Irish Republican Army, but that doesn’t fit the context. Obviously pension funds are automatic too here, I just forgot to mention those.
Individual Retirement Account
👍
sorry I thought mentioning it had to do with retirement would be enough. if you put money into a special account you can’t touch till you retire then they will not tax it right away but only when you withdraw it once your retired. Alternatively you can pay the tax and put it into an account where they will not tax any investment growth of it or tax what you withdraw. Yeah I even feel stupid typing it out. I hope this helps anyone in a country with politicians trying to sell privatizing shit.
sorry I thought mentioning it had to do with retirement would be enough.
I prefer to know what an acronym stands for, before claiming I know what is meant, and looking up 3 letter acronyms for another country is not as easy as I suspect most Americans think it is.
But from your explanation I now figure the RA is retirement account, so now I only lack the meaning of the I? Which with my new knowledge I could look up, and find out means Individual.
So now I know in this context, IRA is Individual Retirement Account.
ah. I see. I thought you want meaning and did not realize it was more just the name thing.
Thanks, it was good enough to figure it out. 😀
https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions
Read the instructions, download what you need, print it out, fill it out, and mail it in.
Even better, use the free fillable forms. You can fill them out and submit them all within your browser, no mail or paper required. Even has a
do the mathbutton that will add stuff up for you.Have been using it for the past two tax cycles and once you understand it it’s quite easy, only 2 pages needed if you’re doing the standard deduction with a w2.
And get fined because I’m overseas and the mail takes so long to get there the IRS fines me for a late filing
Last time the IRS sent me mail here it took almost half a year for me to receive it
If you don’t have capital gains taxes or deferred tax deductions, doing your taxes is really easy.
That said, this is a way to stop providing free services that private companies want to get paid to do. HR Block makes billions from people who are either too lazy or too bad at math to do simple stuff. Real accountants earn their living on complicated taxes, but millions of Americans can do a 1040 EZ, which takes about 5 minutes to fill out.
The statistics show that even though 70% of Americans are eligible to file for free with the IRS tools, only 3% actually use that tool to file for free. So I’m not sure how much business is even being lost here.
