As a tax accountant, I sincerely hope this gets to a point where a vast majority of the population has no need for my services.
I used to play in the big leagues where none of my clients would ever qualify for this and their returns routinely took upwards of a hundred hours to complete. Those guys need to keep paying.
Now I play down in the minors a couple steps above the Block, and I hate seeing the owner sell these three or four hundred dollar returns that might take me an hour to complete in the first year and maybe thirty minutes in subsequent years.
That’s a very interesting transition. Was the catalyst neutral or happy one, or perhaps a sad one?
Mutual disdain was the catalyst. I did it for eight years and probably lost fifteen years of life expectancy from it. Ungodly toxic environment. Fuck big firm accounting. Fuck them all in the most demeaning, painful way imaginable.
I make roughly one third the money today, and I’m much happier for it. I still make a comfortable living where I don’t particularly worry about money, so what would the additional two thirds do for me outside paying medical bills it causes?
No matter how much I try to remove my name from searches, I still get recruited by ambitious young people on a regular basis. I generally make them stop with a response that goes something like this:
I would rather have my eyes gouged out by the white hot barbed penis of Satan himself while he spits in my mouth than return to public accounting for any amount of money.
Mine was too complicated to file for free because I have retirement investments? Seems like a silly reason to force someone to use a paid service.
Sounds like having any 1099 is ‘too complicated’. So anyone with any sort of savings account that managed to get $10 of interest over a year… So if you have like a thousand dollars in a boring old savings account you are ‘too complicated’.
Not really. If you are filling out $10 1099s you’re probably taking a standard deduction so it never matters.
Wow, old comment.
1099 is income, not a deduction.
That’s a good point.
Free if you have no other exemptions to file.
1099? Nope Depreciation? Nope Tax credits? Nope
Makes for a great headline though.
Im sure those of us that do have exemptions other than the standard will see our tax prep fees skyrocket
are you not capable of taking a win? it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
Its a regular sized step, as its targeted primarily at simple filers. But the cutoff is incredibly low. You can’t use it if you’ve got retirement savings through an IRA, if you’ve got deductions for college expenses, or if you’re claiming the child care deduction. I’d wager that’s at least half the people who bother to file returns.
Definitely good news for folks that H&R Block likes to fleece - anyone collecting EITC or Child Tax Credits and not much else. But hardly universal.
