this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Some congressional Democrats say three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over at least two years.

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[–] Dark_Arc@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If you're wondering who but don't want to read the article:

Their report urges federal agencies to investigate and potentially go to court over the wealth of information that H&R Block, TaxAct and Tax Slayer shared with the social media giant.

[–] SpaghettiProgrammer@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yikes. Side question- anyone know if GDPR protects against stuff like this?

We really need a way to protect our data in the US. (I know GDPR isn’t related to US)

[–] eric5949@lemmy.cloudaf.site 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some states do have at least something, Virginia and California that I know of. We aren't Europeans though to gdpr doesn't apply to us, we just get tangential benefits from companies who don't want to have two ways of doing things depending upon if you're in Europe or not. If all those websites that added opt in cookie boxes to their websites and whatnot wanted to strip all that out and serve special pages to Europeans they could.

[–] grahamsz@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

Except H&R Block have offices in the EU and they, knowingly, serve EU citizens living in the US (and likely EU citizens living in Europe).

[–] Scanzy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Holy shit why are these companies doing anything with Meta. This is super scary.

I don't want anything to do with Meta, but now I can't use pretty much any service without Meta getting my data anyway? I want off this ride.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

More money.

[–] cedarmesa@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
[–] Asafum@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That shit makes me so angry it's crazy... Socialism for the corporations, "rugged individualism" for the citizens...

Republicans will scream and cry about socialism when we discuss healthcare, but gladly give corporations all the public money/wealth they could possibly want while also allowing them to charge us for the "product" they create...

[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The IRS already has all the relevant tax info for 99% of people. With only a few tiny changes in practice (like opening portals for applying for certain tax credits e.g., IRA incentives), we could get rid of tax prep software almost entirely and replace it with a simple bill. And for most people, the stuff they don't automatically know about increases your tax burden instead of decreasing it. If you aren't wealthy, they have zero incentive to chase you down on this kind of minor stuff like grey-market income, so diligently using tax prep software can really only increase the amount you owe. But we're forced to do so.

Having prefilled tax returns / billed taxes would likely lead to less cost and overhead within the IRS. It would nearly entirely fix the vast amount of unclaimed annual refunds that exist, which represents real money taken out of the pockets almost exclusively of the working class. Very wealthy people and folks who have extremely complex tax liabilities would still likely need professional preparation... but odds are they needed it anyway. And anyone could still have the option to contest/manually file if the new system were set up well.

The tax prep lobby (H&R Block, Intuit, et al) are powerful, but their power has flagged significantly in the last few years. It may finally be a time where we can push for a better way. The IRS getting ready to offer its own tax prep software is a fabulous first step.

The point is, there's absolutely zero reason to have some weird market-based approach to taxes. It's just adding additional layers of rent-seekers for no purpose. Basically, it's US Conservative politics in a perfect microcosm.

[–] Catasaur@lemmy.catasaur.xyz 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The USA is sounding like a cyberpunk corpo dystopia more and more every day.

[–] Hotdogman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

RoboCop was only a movie...right?

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

It honestly feels like that's the end goal.

[–] Marxine@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Just sounding? They've already crossed that line some years ago IMO

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Equifax and TransUnion entered the chat.

[–] xuxebiko@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

Tax data is tightly regulated, with penalties for improper sharing including fines and jail time. The report found the companies involved likely didn’t receive proper consent to share the data and could face criminal penalties.

Jail time for the heads of Meta/Facebook, Google, H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer?! No chance. All corporates involved will, at most, get a 'tsk,tsk' and a fine they'll earn back in an hour.

[–] iN8sWoRLd@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like a great time to mention the Firefox Facebook Container add-on!

[–] suckmyspez@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty sure you don’t need the extension anymore. All cookies are now isolated on a per website basis…

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-protection/

[–] iN8sWoRLd@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The add-on I linked is written and maintained by Mozilla and was updated as recently as Jul 6 of this year. The blog post you linked to is from 2021. If it wasn't doing something more it seems like Mozilla would be wasting their time. I do admit to being too ignorant about everything it is doing and thats on me, so if anything your post has made me want to know more. Here's the repo where it is being developed: https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook

[–] suckmyspez@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Me too tbh. I used to use the extension but removed it assuming it was no longer required.

I found this issue on the repo which seems to suggest there’s still a benefit to using both…

https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook/issues/851

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My bank has Facebook and Adobe trackers on their website. I block them but it’s just so dumb that they do that. Obviously most people have no idea it’s happening.

[–] lagomorphlecture@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

This is a part of a larger issue, obviously, but this specific part of the problem could easily be resolved with tax reform. The IRS knows exactly how much you owe them so why do you have to pay a 3rd party to prepare it for you? Apparently in other countries the government tells you how much you owe and you just let them know if you disagree with that amount for some reason.

But that type of tax reform won't happen because these companies dump massive amounts of $$$ into lobbying.

[–] Rayspekt@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago
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