The unthinkable just happened in Congress: Democrats and Republicans set
aside their differences to take an idea that literally everyone wants and they
voted unanimously to make sure that we never, ever get it...
ever.
This is the story of both parties working together against us. The way Americans pay taxes is
profoundly stupid and absurd. It is so flagrantly dumb, both parties are forced
to agree here. From Reagan and Trump on the right to Obama and Bernie on the
left everyone's on the same page. Yet this problem keeps getting worse. In fact,
the House voted unanimously to prevent us from ever fixing it ever. The bill was
called the taxpayer first act. Which is kind of like when a barbecue joint is
named after the animal they are cooking. Taxpayers do not come first, that pig is
not happy. Both are just dinner. Here's what happened.
It's the 90s, the Internet is created, suddenly we can all file our taxes
online which could save the IRS millions of dollars because paper returns are a
nightmare. So, Congress decides it's time to modernize the IRS and there are two
ways to do this. Two ideas so exceedingly simple and obviously that we're gonna
we're gonna pretend that this goat came up with them.
That's right, it's just like TurboTax only... without TurboTax. You file directly on the IRS website,
if you don't like the service they offer you can still use TurboTax if you want.
Very simple. Or idea number two...
Reagan had this idea all the way back in 1985 so, I'll let him explain...
What Reagan is saying is the IRS already does our taxes. So, when we do them
they're just making us play "guess what number I'm thinking of". It's an
unnecessary redundancy like the phrase "shrimp scampi", why not have the IRS just
send us our taxes. Scampi means shrimp, you're just saying "shrimp shrimp"!
Thirty-six other countries already have systems like this in place it would save
us and the government time and money but we'll never get it and this is where
TurboTax and H&R Block come in at first glance these companies seem like Ben
Affleck from the accountant super smart math wizards kick ass but after a closer
look you'll see they're a bit more like Ben Affleck TurboTax and H&R Block need
taxes to stay stupid and complicated anything that saves us money costs them
money so they had to kill those policies and in order to do so they pulled a real
Ben Affleck they assembled Earth's Mightiest embarrassments 12 tax prep
companies who called themselves the Free File Alliance and they waged an all-out
war on common sense over the past two decades they have spent millions upon
millions of dollars lobbying Congress to great effect and to keep these movie
references rolling it was almost an ocean's 11 style heist they snuck into
our legislation repealed the stuff we like replaced it with policies that scam
us and snuck out without anyone realizing Ben Affleck was never in that
movie it's called Free File it's supposed to let 70% of us file online
for free only 3% of us use it here's how this epic scam works when you go to a
tax prep website for example TurboTax you will see turbo tax free addition you
could be forgiven for thinking and the free edition is free because it's called
free and it says free guaranteed and it all seems very very free it's not the
free version of TurboTax is called TurboTax freedom it's really hard to
find on their website because it's not there in fact it's nearly impossible to
find you'd have to google it by name but how would you know what it's called it's
not mentioned on their website so you'd probably Google something like TurboTax
free which will return you to the non free version fun fact if you google free
TurboTax you'll turn up all kinds of results about how TurboTax actually
hides it's free version from Google searches TurboTax is funneling people
into their paid services for example say you made thirty thousand dollars last
year but you didn't have health insurance well you have to pay to submit
that form or say you were a private contractor like a housecleaner you'd
have to pay for that or say you wanted to itemize your deductions like a
teacher does you'd have to pay for that all of these people are
eligible to file their taxes for free but they end up paying because turbos
hides that service from them it all amounts to taxes that are more expensive
and time-consuming for the people who can afford at least meanwhile turbo tax
billionaire Edition just wires your money directly into a suitcase
handcuffed to this guy in the Cayman Islands this free file system has failed
us for 20 years yet every few years Congress has to renew the agreement so
every few years Congress has a chance to get it right but they never do in fact
this year they let free file Alliance lobbyists tweak the language of the bill
to make those common-sense solutions we talked about impossible forever this
issue is a perfect example of something we'll call the stupidity paradox it's a
catch-22 that traps our policies in a cycle of futility and corruption and the
way it went down in tax line is just mmm so dumb one legislators craft bad
policies like tax policy that too cost us time and money so we three spend
our money on places like TurboTax and those companies then for use our money
to lobby Congress so that one policies are dumb and stupid that to cost us
money etc it's just it's a you know you get it it's a cycle yeah sure tax prep
is not the most important issue we face as a country but the stupidity paradox
is in a broken system every policy is trapped in that cycle of futility
whether it's education health care pharmaceuticals debt the environment you
name it the cumulative effect of that is devastating our political system has
been completely overpowered by special interest money is more powerful than
common sense it's more powerful than public support or bipartisan consensus
it's more powerful than three ex presidents who all vowed to fix this
problem it's more powerful than the very ideals our nation was founded on that
our government should be of by and for the people we have to fix this problem
for Republicans for Democrats for everyone's sake luckily some smart
people have come up with a plan follow the link below to get involved remember
to tear each other apart mercilessly in the comments section below and thanks
for tuning in you
you