Very basic analysis by da bot says it costs the government roughly 226$ per filing vs a private company 40$.
Would love to hear the opposite argument but the point I first saw online is saying the same, that it cost more tax payer money to run than it saved those tax payers.
Scale problem? Open to hearing the opposite argument.
It was a pilot and was open to a small subset of taxpayers. It was intentionally not benefiting from economy of scale to incrementally deliver value rather than probably badly trying to hit every use case the first go around.
The cost per filing criticism is generally posited in bad faith, by people who don’t understand incremental software delivery, or both
Ok but why even make it? 40$ per taxpayer filing vs the government doing it with our taxes.
I doubt it's going to beat private industry's price.
It's not a bad faith argument though. If it cost the gov 40$ or it cost a tax payer 40$ what's the difference?
Your "226" includes the one-time initial development costs. You're comparing $40/yr in perpetuity versus something like $220 once, $6/yr after that - and I suspect the actual costs of running the system are far lower.
If you read further you'll see that in 2025 they spent $40 million additional and served 300000 people - so $130/user?
The metrics for this project don't sell it - the politics do. You'll either love it or hate it.
Again, assuming the government can outcompete on price vs private industry.
It's a real point but I don't know an example of that happening elsewhere. The US government outcompeting private industry is exactly why communism doesn't work
You’ve already received the answer to this. The platform was already built. There’s every reason to think it would require only very small operating costs from now on, whereas a company has every reason to maintain profit margins with a fixed price.
The government outcompetes the private sector in almost everything it gets into. Healthcare, mail delivery, fire relief, and far more. The private sector is all about slashing quality and raising prices.
It’s not communism. It’s literally how most of the rest of the developed world file their taxes.
Given taxes are a government system, and one that’s complicated enough that you shouldn’t expect the average tax payer to need to understand it nor have the money to afford an accountant, it’s actually insane to argue that this should be operated in the private space.
This is exactly the kind of thing the government should operate in capitalist societies.
Most of the developed world aint doin so hot
Those who fund their government branches are generally doing better than those who are not. America being the prime recent example of this.
And those who’s government places policies which benefit their voters generally have a better quality of life than those who accept lobbying, and corruption dictate government policies.
Why should a malicious third party have our financial records? Why would a third party know filing reqs better than the IRS? They already know the data anyway. Other countries have done this for decades already, cheaply.
Is this fixed cost per filling, or does it include cost of developing the system? I somehow doubt that for all Americans to fill taxes it would cost 6.5b$ (163x40)
I think its like building a bridge analogy, when it costs you to use ferry only 0.01% of price of the bridge. But when its built its essentially free and ferry goes out of business.
Yes that I'd like to hear. It's possible it would be cheaper over time if we assume tax filling is artificially held at a higher price by companies but competition says that shouldn't be true.
But also, the "bridge" is built? There are tons of companies already doing this.
They made it to start somewhere. How to start without starting? Just like when a startup has crappy unit-economics, then refines and scales to better.
Also, where can I get tax software for $40? Even freetaxusa isn't free.
Even if that's true, there's no reason it can't be streamlined over time. The true scaling problem is profit. The government has an interest in accurate tax collection -- not collecting a service fee.
da troof soshul bot?
the billion dollar tax prep industrial complex as a group spends the most lobbying dollars on tax policy -- in particular, suppressing any effort eliminate or even reduce filing complexity -- and lobbying ops like theirs don't happen because their service's value to tax payers speaks for itself
I mean it's right there in the price? Not doing rocket science analysis here.
I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that? Government naturally makes all sorts of stuff overly complicated all on its own.
> I mean it's right there in the price? Not doing rocket science analysis here.
That's been answered in at least one other reply
> I do wonder on the point of making it complicated on purpose though. Like is there actual evidence of that?
- https://apnews.com/article/irs-free-file-tax-returns-391ded1... - https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
> Government naturally makes all sorts of stuff overly complicated all on its own.
By all means let me put a couple of things aside so I can debate this corny gospel for hours n' hours ...
Go back to reddit if you don't want to chat
This ignores the time cost of having to find the right private company to file your taxes (everyone loves price shopping!) and manually funnel all your data into it, data the government probably already has. Tax prep costs me at least an entire day of my time every year.
P.S. When citing that you had AI do a basic analysis of something, specifying what you analyzed and which AI you used would be nice so other people can reproduce it or dig deeper.
The government inefficiency is in doing the small pilot program and using those costs as per filing costs. Of course it's going to cost more if you only do a handful of them. The first iPhone cost a hojillion dollars to make, but Apple sells them for $1,000 and make a ton of money at that price point because they've made millions of them. This is so true for government spending that the shipyard building aircraft carriers did a press release begging congress to buy two at once because it would be cheaper than buying one and then waiting a long time and then buying a second one anyway.
https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/News/Article-View/Article/...
Kinda a hard argument to say the government can do something cheaper than private industry.
Governments regularly do things cheaper than private industry. And regularly do things more expensively.
Turns out, governments can be efficient and run things well. You just have to tune the incentive structure correctly.
(Aside, I don't care about cheaply as an axis nearly much as I care about "for the benefit of many". I'd take expensive programs that help everyone, every time.)
What do they do cheaper?
Public transit is a great example. Pretty much every attempt to privatize transit worldwide has resulted in, if not failure and subsequent deprivatization, at least higher prices and worse service for the people using the service.
The interstate highway system, which replaced a complex system of partially privately owned roads, is another.
In most countries, healthcare is another great example. And arguably education as well - public schooling produces generally pretty good results worldwide for not that much money per student, and outside the US, higher education is often public and incredible value for money.
US public transit is a finacial disaster far beyond any other country.
Road maintenance is normally cheaper/faster with private.
Healthcare is a can of worms but you could be right. The real problem with public health is what happens when these gov can't afford it anymore. US is likely in the wrong now but I want to see the results 50yrs from now when social spending cannot keep up with rising costs and decreasing taxes in EU (population collapse).
Would you like to see how private industry would handle city water system, and how much subscriptions would cost? They probably could do it cheaper, but they would charge the hell out of the end consumer as profit. Because thats the idea of private industry - profit.
Not saying private do everything but if they already are and it's cheaper why screw with it?
Charging a consumer or taxing them, what's the difference
Take the bridge analogy. Why screw with the ferry business and build a bridge?
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