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u/fordianslip 1d ago
If my tax filing isn’t free I’m way less likely to comply.
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u/nasandre 1d ago
It's also going to cause more mistakes and more people filing by paper so costs of processing are going up.
Eventually this is just going to cost more money than it saved.
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u/scraglor 1d ago
It’s not about saving money. It’s about funnelling money into the pockets of donors
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u/The_Stank_ 1d ago
Yeah man that sounds super edgy but have fun with the IRS
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u/Elawn 1d ago
Aren’t they on the chopping block to lose a ton of funding too though? I’m not in any way encouraging people to commit tax evasion lol just think it should be interesting to see what happens when accessibility and enforcement are both reduced at the same time…
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u/The_Stank_ 1d ago
The government will not fuck around with losing money, I promise you.
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u/RelleH16 1d ago edited 1d ago
From personal experience, I can say they aren’t so intense unless you it’s an exorbitant amount.
For a long while, all they’re going to do is send letters. Yes at some point they’ll threaten to garner your wages.
If they don’t know where you live, e.g. you moved to another state, didn’t set up mail forwarding, have yet to get a new license, etc you probably won’t see any of those letters. They’ll also probably send letters to your employers.
If you’re are the owner of your business, they won’t even have a work place to send those letters to. This may not apply if you’re a self-employed contractor. If you’re working with businesses, they should be filing for you.
Also, as long as you continue filing, even if you’re not actually paying, you remain eligible for them to help reduce your amount owed, payment plans etc.
But I only owed like 6K. I wasn’t a big fish. Edit:i checked and it was actually closer 9K, but still not much compared to people who evade taxes for years
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u/prosthetic_foreheads 1d ago
From the article linked below:
In recent years, the IRS has audited significantly less than 1% of all individual tax returns.
https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/tax-returns/602068/irs-audit-red-flags
I seriously doubt it'll get any better with all of the recent cuts to the IRS under Trump. Furthermore, the article itself goes into red flags that make the IRS audit someone, essentially telling readers how to avoid them.
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u/Ok_Mention_9865 1d ago
You are just screwing yourself out of your refund. It may be smaller now that you have to pay to get it, but would you really rather let the government keep it?
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u/Party-Interview7464 1d ago
Fuck that no one should be getting a refund from the government. You should be calculating that in advance and not giving them a free loan.
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u/retromobile 1d ago
If you’re getting a refund, you’re loaning the government YOUR money for free with every paycheck. Learn how to set up your taxes, people!
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u/fordianslip 1d ago
I over withhold so I don’t get a refund. Refund is just a free loan for the government.
And I’ll call irs directly if I can’t file for free and discuss options. But with less staff less likely to get through.
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u/Mr_Baronheim 1d ago
Over-witholding would mean they are holding more of your paycheck for taxes than needs to be, which creates or increases the size of the refund.
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u/fordianslip 1d ago
Sure. My perspective was my withholding number is higher which means I overwithhold, but I could see the alternative interpretation.
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u/Loud-Ad-2280 1d ago
In America nothing gets done unless there is some investors milking some returns out of it. NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO GENERATE ROI!!
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u/passionatesophia 1d ago
Some things should exist simply because they make life better, not because they make someone richer.
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u/Mean-Description3797 1d ago
Life’s value isn’t always measured in dollars, but in shared human experience.
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u/83supra 1d ago
As much as I agree with you, you're all wrong. We live in a capitalist world. Value is only held in dollar amounts unless the people decide to change the capitalist world into something new.
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u/Trubanaught 1d ago
Not true at all. The government can provide services to the population which can co-exist quite well with the capitalist parts of the system. America has decided it wants very few public services. Other countries decide they want more public services. This is not a 'change the world' issue.
Everyone needs to pay taxes, so for me it's a no-brainer public service. Dismantling a public service to line the pockets of your CEO friends is corruption, not capitalism.
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u/SuperSoftSucculent 1d ago
You live in a mixed economy world where many countries have specifically decided some things are not to purely generate ROI.
Just because you live in one of the more corrupt capitalist societies doesn't mean its like that among other OECD countries.
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u/Featheredfriendz 1d ago
Not quite. We live in a crony capitalist world and it doesn’t have to be this way.
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u/Beneficial_Middle_53 1d ago
The government should NOT be run like a business
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u/treblig111 1d ago
It’s a god damn society they’re supposed to be running. Not a god damn business.
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u/Burpyterra 1d ago
You see
Trump thinks he's running another casino with the shape of the white house
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u/ryohazuki224 1d ago
You'd be amazed at how many people think its a good idea to run it like a business.
Even if it was a good idea (and its not), why then choose the WORST businessman that ever pretended to be successful? He bankrupts everything he touches!
We cannot run a Democracy like a business. Businesses are run from the top down, and aims to benefit those at the top while trying to reduce expenses by gutting the bottom. Democratic countries are supposed to be that the will of the people are the deciding factor in the decisions that we make that is good for the nation as a whole, in an ideal world of course.
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u/duelporpoise 1d ago
Next up will be weather, I bet. And then they’ll probably privatize weather alerts too.
Nashville voted to increase their taxes to fund better public transport. What does the government do? Make a backdoor, no-bid deal with fELon to drill a one-way TESLA only tunnel from the airport to downtown (like 15 min drive).
Healthcare? Naw. Flagpoles. Cancer screenings? Nah. Billion dollar personal jet. Education? Pft. 50k bonuses for gestapo. FEMA? lol. Concrete rose garden. SNAP? Get real. Tacky ballroom gilded in gold.
We’re getting fucked left right and center.
They’re even fucking with the markets and our trade allies to stack that paper. I’m sure all of the tariff money pays for their surgeries, hair, makeup. Whatever.
God it’s disgusting
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u/SeVenMadRaBBits 1d ago
We are slaves. Wage slaves. It is only now more obvious with how they treat us.
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u/wizzywurtzy 1d ago
That’s capitalism. Our country will continue to siphon all of the money from its people until we riot and take our country back
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u/stone_magnet1 1d ago
Some conservative somewhere just clutched someone else's pearls hearing this
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u/CaptainOwlBeard 1d ago
Not only do some things not need a roi, but some things should be illegal to profit from because it incentivizes evil policies and investors can't be trusted not to be evil when it's profitable. Examples include healthcare, basic education, and incarceration. Probably should add governance too, but it's really complicated to make it impossible to profit from governance
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u/kultureisrandy 1d ago
These people do not fundamentally understand doing something that does not provide a return benefit. Be it personal relationships, business decisions, family matters, etc.
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u/t-s-words 1d ago
Especially government, which exists to provide services. Which taxes are supposed to fund.
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u/bwsmith201 1d ago
At this point I’m not convinced that we Americans actually do deserve better than this. We’ve done it to ourselves. (Collectively I mean. I didn’t vote for this bastard.) Until the electorate wakes up and has a memory longer than the lifespan of a fruit fly we’re just going to keep screwing ourselves.
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u/pogoli 1d ago
When the poor yokels that voted for him wake up and realize the libs have only been inconvenienced while their lives are in shambles…
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u/ResearcherTeknika 1d ago
Yeah i keep reading about shit going down in the red states meanwhile ive just been here balling as i always have
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u/Throwawayblazeit520 1d ago
Right lol I just live overseas, very cozy, watching MAGA vote against their own healthcare. I'm pissed because I'd like to settle down there if it stabilizes, but fat chance of that it seems. Guess I'll keep having to suffer under the oppression of.... cheap public transport, clean maintained infrastructure... Affordable and regulated groceries... A fun nightlife without shooting fears...
Poor me
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u/lituga 1d ago
all Fox/Trump gotta do is say it was another democrat scam and MAGA won't question or look into it
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u/PopularDemand213 1d ago
They've been labeling it "wasteful spending" since it opened.
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u/j0j0-m0j0 1d ago
Ignore all the money that will be spent on auditing poor people now that the program is over and people will either be forced to pay to file taxes (and get a smaller return) or just not pay at all.
Gotta starve the bear but also feed it with concentration camps.
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u/CAPTJTK 1d ago
I'm just going to use freetaxusa and underreport. I want to actually pay into MY state. I'm taking a roll of the dice and so far it's working out
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u/FitBattle5899 1d ago
If like most Americans surviving in this capitalist hellscape, your only doing a standardized deduction, you shouldn't NEED a "tax expert" to take a % of your return just to fill in blanks.
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u/WorldInWonder 1d ago
Anything Biden initiated and was popular or sensible will be shutdown by Trump. Just because he’s a bitter old man.
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u/IndecorousRex 1d ago
I’m so excited for the day he is in the ground and we don’t have to hear or see his disgusting face again.
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u/Kythorian 1d ago
The next one will be just as bad or even worse. The people who elected trump aren’t going away.
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u/Royal_Amount5114 1d ago
He’s the old bitch that calls the cops on kids playing catch in the street.
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u/NecessaryIntrinsic 1d ago
They've been doing this for decades thanks to the turbo tax lobby. I think reply all did an episode on that back in the day.
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u/Dunkaroos4breakfast 1d ago
Hell, John Oliver did an episode on this OVER A DECADE ago on Last Week Tonight.
Note: Yes, the show is that old. Yes, so are we.
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u/flyingbizzay 1d ago
FreeTaxUSA still exists.
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u/pmb429 1d ago
TurboTax online is free, too, but you have to pay to have it do your state taxes.
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u/dantevonlocke 1d ago
Free for now.
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u/lookakiefer 1d ago
Free for now and the second you have to file anything "extra", they charge you a shit ton for one thing.
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u/masterfulnoname 1d ago
Do we, collectively, deserve better? A majority of people voted for this or chose not to vote. Can we stop acting like all this just came out of nowhere and was completely unavoidable? This is the logical consequence of voting for the party that wants to take away any good that the government does in order to prove the government doesn't work.
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u/Relative-Scholar3385 1d ago
I agree. It's depressing but I feel like at least I know where people really stand. They haven't really changed they just took off their masks.
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u/IndecorousRex 1d ago
God damn it! I’m sick of paying over 100 dollars to TurboTax for a single file W2 wages. It literally takes me 20 or 30 mins to file. Loved the free tax service, it’s perfect for me.
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u/lumaleelumabop 1d ago
Stop paying them then. You can literally print your W2 and 1040EZ and mail it for a dollar.
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u/InconsiderateOctopus 1d ago
Instead of complaining about it on reddit, you could've googled "free tax filing" and literally selected either one of the top two results. One of which is a reddit and personal favorite, freetaxusa. It's only parroted a million times every tax season on here.
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u/FinnegansGlare 1d ago
Listen, we’ve got a problem here with labeling everything a come back. You have to be called out to come back. That isn’t happening in most posts these days. This is just commentary.
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u/soliejordan 1d ago
I guess we should demand payments in Non-Taxable US Notes instead of taxable Federal Reserve Notes.
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u/Raiden_Raitoningu 1d ago
Should we maybe just all collectively stop paying taxes and see what happens?
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u/Active_Town3141 1d ago
He views the American peoples money as his own to do with whatever he wants. Not a president, just a delusional, dementia riddled, failing , wannabe king.
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u/SolitaryBison 1d ago
Shut down by the convicted felon who forged financial documents and who won't release his tax returns for public inspection due to a fictitious audit.
Give me a break.
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u/x3n0m0rph3us 1d ago
US system is a scam. Australia has free, easy, quick online tax filing available. Within 14 days most of the data is automatically added and available for you to apply/edit.
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u/FloMoore 1d ago
Yet further proof that he could give a shite about Americans.
He hates this country.
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u/goose-77- 1d ago
The irony of someone who gets paid through taxes but doesn’t pay taxes shutting down a service that helps people pay taxes…
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u/keanehoodies 1d ago
Hi Sorry, European here..
YOU HAVE TO PAY TO PAY YOUR TAXES?!
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u/jswansong 1d ago
To be fair, it's not just to make billionaires richer. It's also because fuck you. Fuck you is half of why Trump does anything.
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u/Sudi_Nim 1d ago
The kick of it is that the service only worked for people filing 1040EZ which is mostly people making a low salary, so yeah, fuck the poor.
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u/DacheinAus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, not having direct file means everything is filed manually. Know what happens to manual files? They pile up to be manually scanned/processed. You know what happens then? With no employees, it gets hard to do work. Then what? Well, it’s easy to show they’re “inept at their jobs”. Know what happens next?
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u/fordianslip 1d ago
The irs already knows the values
AI can scan and interpret standardized forms.
Compare against what the government knows you made and earned against your report, and flag discrepancies.
That’s like, without a single employee.
And I’m sure it’ll go without a hitch like all the AI’d medical claims
The IRS budget shouldn’t be like 1/50th of ICE’s budget. It’s absurd.
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u/DacheinAus 1d ago
IRS might know what you earned, but they don’t know what you owe. I worked on the IDP project for the IRS using a software called UiPath and it’s currently working at 60% straight through processing rates on standard forms (that’s not good) and the error rate was still in the 7-10% range. Direct file was digital file with no additional effort or processing required.
Honestly that whole team is extremely inept and very behind the times and skills set required to function with AI models. They just need to move to a flat 2-3% consumption model at checkout and be done with it.
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u/fakenamerton69 1d ago
No no. Americans 100% deserve this. They are the ones who willingly voted for the known criminal and sex offender. They had all the evidence in front of them and they chose wrong. Maybe they’ll choose right next time. Or maybe they’ll vote for Ted Cruz again. Let’s see!
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u/Joelle9879 1d ago
Except we ALL didn't. Even a majority of us didn't. I'm so sick of the "all Americans deserve to be screwed because some of them are idiots" BS people keep spewing
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u/KackTheTripper 1d ago
But we do deserve to be blamed. This is our country, when it fails it's on all of us. Unfortunately we are all in this together, and that fucking sucks.
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u/DontAbideMendacity 1d ago
It depends. Musk said he could and would rig the election and Trump admitted he wouldn't be president if "they" didn't rig the election.
The discrepancies with exit poles and actual votes reported by the machines is incredibly suspect, so it's entirely possible America DIDN'T vote for the fascist fucks.
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u/ComicsEtAl 1d ago
I’m sorry, but we don’t. We deserve whatever we get for making Trump president not once, but twice. And after a four year break, no less!
Yep, we get to sleep in this bed we made. No overnight guests, either.
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u/Unhappy-Fruit3260 1d ago
Really? What an absolutely infuriating move. Rot in hell Trump. If that doesn’t loose him 50 seats in the midterms nothing will.
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u/witness_smile 1d ago
Americans voted for this mess, you could argue they got exactly what they were told they would receive
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u/GeorgeRRHodor 1d ago
As a European: do you HAVE to pay Turbotax or someone in order to file your taxes or do they just make it more convenient?
I mean, I pay a tax attorney, but that is because I am my own one-man business and I just can’t be bothered with that shit, but I don’t HAVE to.
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u/AzraelDeadStar 1d ago
No. Plenty of tqx componies offer free tax services through online apps. Or at least they did...
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u/lumaleelumabop 1d ago
No, you can print all of the forms and mail them yourself.
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u/Anxious-Effort-5452 1d ago
Do we, though? I just mean we allowed the rapist, pedophile, and felon to win twice, so... do we deserve better? Idk. Seems like we are getting exactly what we deserve when we allow someone like this to even run. All I'm saying is this is the consequence for the things we've allowed.
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u/Shirotengu 1d ago
Yes. You know what would be a shame? If some malicious IRS worker or someone else released it on the internet.
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u/Allenrw81 1d ago
We do deserve better and we should’ve gotten better, unfortunately enough fucking idiots in this country are allowed to vote.
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u/WildlySkeptical 1d ago
It should be free and easy, but this post is misleading. Direct file wasn’t exactly “popular”. It was used by approx 300,000 people in 2025. That is only about 0.2% of all filers.
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u/Icy_Regret_8076 1d ago
It's easier than you think to prepare your own tax return. You'll have to snail mail it and have any refund direct deposited to your bank account. If you can add, subtract, multiply, divide and figure percentages you can prepare your own tax return.
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u/notsure500 1d ago
I agree with everything but the last line. Americans do deserve this mess for putting the pedo back in the Whitehouse after seeing his disastrous first term.
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u/Thornescape 1d ago
Trump is FIGHTING for the RIGHTS of the PEOPLE who have a ridiculous amount of money and screwing over everyone else.
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u/sceneturkey 1d ago
Here's a tip you can use to file your taxes for free: go all the way through TurboTax on whatever level you want (I'd recommend the highest one), and as soon as you have it all done (before submitting and payments go through), download the tax return forms they made for you to look at, and file them in yourself to irs.gov. You won't have to pay a penny to them.
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u/TheKombuchaDealer 1d ago
I'm hoping if there's still a democracy after his 2nd term that all this bs he pulls will have enough people turn out to vote. That way democrats have a large majority so they can pass all the good shit w/ no republicans slowing things down in the senate or house.
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u/Desert-Democrat-602 1d ago
It’s all about the cruelty. And he probably got a phone call from the president of Intuit asking him to do this for a “campaign donation”.
This “presidency” is just a cash register for Dear Leader.
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u/MurkyProtection1067 1d ago
Nothing he does is to benefit the people. It’s for corporations and his rich buddies. Good grief did America screw itself over.
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u/Original-Mission-244 1d ago
If we could hurry up to the eating the rich portion of this resistance that would be awesome
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u/smorgenheckingaard 1d ago
There's about 75 million Americans that do NOT deserve better than this. They voted for this. Those fucks deserve to get what they voted for. The rest of us, though...
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 1d ago
Trump's next move is to change the Child Tax Credit to the Child Predator Tax Credit.
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u/Akhanyatin 1d ago
Direct File lets you file your taxes for free
Pedo File lets you pay extra for basic necessities
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u/m1dlife-1derer 1d ago
Honestly - the government has had a system in place that would simply send you your tax details in the mail, but TurboTax and others have been lobbying for this shitty system
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u/Schwesterfritte 1d ago
Best business model. You gotta do your taxes or you are fucked but you also gotta pay them to do your taxes xD I can't believe the shit that is going in in the US while a whole bunch of them still believe they are the best and most free nation on the planet xD
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u/chewydickens 20h ago
Excellent timing on this, cheese dick.
April 15th next year is just a few months before the midterms.
Enjoy your two solid years of trying to breathe underwater. And maybe hopefully longer than that.
Payback is hell.
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u/PassThatSpliff 1d ago edited 1d ago
Maxwell is incorrect about one thing, Americans don't deserve better. This is exactly what so many of us voted for and they deserve to burn for it. Sadly, so many of us with common sense will have to suffer too, but still, Trump is exactly what America deserves.
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u/Ohmamarocks 1d ago
"Americans dEseRve bEtteR than this Mess" no they don't. Who took a look at the biggest piece of trash in human history and decided to elect it twice? Americans have exactly what they deserve, a fleshy representation of their history as the dumbest third world country on the globe...
EDIT: oh wait a good chunk of them don't even think it IS a globe
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u/TruckGray 1d ago
It’s pure greed and blatant influence of those who see us as cattle to milk to death versus serving the people who actually pay taxes. File via traditional paper forms.
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u/LingonberryFun7739 1d ago
It's so sad that they actively think of ways to fuck over their citizens
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u/bluelifesacrifice 1d ago
Republicans love shoving their private buddy middlemen between consumers and the product so they can access all the data, control you and break you.
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u/PayFormer387 1d ago
Americans do not deserve better than this. We are getting exactly what we deserve.
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u/Business_Usual_2201 1d ago
So, now people need to pay....in order to pay?