this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
310 points (97.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43984 readers
853 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not the sole reason. They play a part, same with H&R Block, but it's more the people working for the ultra-wealthy who keep bribing politicians to create laws that allow their clients to avoid paying taxes. The companies that have tax software for the small people benefit from the tax system getting more complex, but they don't directly lobby for those rules, they just want any kind of complexity. Their big fight is against any kind of free tax preparation for the poor and middle class.
It's pretty disgusting what they do though. They make say $20 from someone filing their taxes. They take say $3 from that $20 and spend it to ensure that their customers are never offered a free alternative. They're basically making their customers pay to lobby the government to keep taxes so complex that the customer has no choice but to use them again next year.