It’s tax season, and boy do I have things to say about it

Today I’m not blogging about the books or about writing, but about the dreaded annual American pastime of tax preparation. (If you’re not American, chances are that tax preparation for you is a much simpler, and possibly even automatic, process.)

If you’re like most Americans though, you probably get anxious just thinking about tax season and the necessary paperwork involved. Chances are you’ve probably also used paid software like H&R Block or Intuit’s TurboTax. After all, these services provide convenient tools to expedite the tax process… right?

Living abroad, tax filing for me is an especially arduous process. I’m required by the US government to report foreign earnings as well as any money made in the US. Of course, this includes Amazon book sales and PayPal donations. For years, TurboTax seemed like the best option to handle all of these details. After all, it was only about $40 per year to purchase the software.

Well, this year I ran into major problems. For whatever reason, the 2018 software was incredibly buggy and slow, and update downloads sometimes took hours to complete. I actually had to shut the software down multiple times since it completely froze my computer. It was so frustrating that I decided that next year I’d try some other option and abandon TurboTax altogether. So, while waiting for the program to perform one of its many hours-long updates, I did some digging online.

And this is when I found out the ugly truth behind TurboTax: It’s parent company, Intuit, actively lobbies in congress to make the tax filing process as complicated as possible. In 2016, for example, they spent $2 million on lobbying. This money was primarily spent to fight a bill that would pave the way for a free, automatic tax-filing service. The reason for all the lobbying? Simple. Easier tax filing would rob these companies of their customers. (According to their own fiscal reports, Intuit made $5.2 billion in 2017 alone.)

Of course, this isn’t the only example of big companies throwing money at government entities to protect their interests. Cigarette companies, big pharma, and weapons manufacturers all play the same games.

This blog post isn’t meant to be political in any way, or to suggest any kind of reform or boycott. After all, we all know the only solution to these problems is a completely clean slate, where corrupt governments, lobbyists, and greedy corporations don’t exist. Still, I find it especially frustrating to know that even a simple thing like a piece of software is really just another cog in the greed machine.

Can’t wait for the end!

(If you’d like to read up more on the subject, check out these articles: Vox & NBC)