
What Intuit knows about its users - nwrk
https://www.axios.com/what-intuit-knows-about-you-d4ea9f53-c116-48e1-948f-e204c3767b54.html
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neilv
And if you use an accountant instead, what software does your accountant use,
and does the publisher of that software claim rights to exploit your financial
information?

(I've been buying the TurboTax personal and small business edition for a few
years, on CD-ROM. I've had a protocol with a KVM virtual machine on Linux, in
which the image is loaded into a new Windows 7 image, TurboTax installed and
updated over the network, and then that image booted without network, and
never again connected to the network, before I load last returns' data, and
begin entering data for the new return. My sense is that this is probably not
sustainable, and, any year, Intuit can make it so that you have to give them
rights to your data if you want to prepare your tax return. A couple years
ago, I implemented the entire federal form 1040 and some schedules as Scheme
code, as an experiment, and it was a huge headache, but doable, for a startup.
It seems like an unpleasant/disreputable business to be in, especially if
companies are lobbying politicians to make the US tax return process a huge
burden, so that people will buy their software/service. And perhaps share
their private financial information.)

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Hello71
there is "Open Tax Solver" for US tax returns now, but it's written in C
instead of FP, and the code quality is terrible even for C. off the top of my
head, two of the biggest problems were huge arrays instead of structs and
horribly inconsistent indentation.

~~~
swiley
It doesn't open any network connections or need any data from anything other
than the XML files provided by the author.

I get that bad code is annoying if you want to modify it but I don't see how
that's a real complaint here.

~~~
Hello71
as a prospective user, bad code makes me skeptical of the computation
accuracy.

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timeimp
Or, you know, have your federal government implement self-filing online which
covers 80% of the population.

Tragedy of the Commons at its finest.

~~~
matthewaveryusa
I don't know man, the redesigned 1040 forms are pretty easy to fill out:

[https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
pdf/f1040.pdf)

~~~
pandapower2
Serious question from a non-American. Do you actually have to fill that out as
part of doing your tax return?

~~~
froindt
That's the bare minimum you'll have to fill out. If you have investment
accounts, you tack on more forms. If you have an inheritance, there's more
paperwork. If you withdraw from your retirement accounts, you could have more.

~~~
MatthewMcDonald
not to mention filing state returns

~~~
pandapower2
WTF? I honestly had no idea that state returns were a thing.

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bobblywobbles
This is why I wrote free, open-source budgeting software. All of the source is
available on Github, and it is available on all OS-es.

[https://github.com/reZach/my-budget](https://github.com/reZach/my-budget)

I'm tired of people being sneaky and selling all of our information and making
billions off of us. Of course, we let them, but only because it's very
confusing reading (and understanding) all the legal jargon.

(FYI - I'm actively developing this software, so if you have comments or
wants, let me know and I can see if I can make it happen for you. Thanks
friends of HackerNews).

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freewizard
Mining user data on Mint seems relatively understandable as Mint is free
service. However, why bother do the same on TurboTax? TurboTax sells $60-$150
per copy per year, it has 31 million users in 2016, that's about $3B annual
revenue. Isn't that profitable enough?

~~~
dasanman
People always want more man

~~~
reaperducer
_People always want more_

Automated stock trading platforms operated by massive Wall Street investment
banks always want more.

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drngdds
Is there anything like a self-hosted alternative to Mint? The automated
balance and expense tracking is really nice but it's obviously a security and
privacy nightmare.

~~~
bobblywobbles
As the author of a free open-source budgeting software, you yourself own all
your data, nothing goes off your computer. Of course it's not as fully-fleshed
out as Mint yet, but it's getting better every commit:

[https://github.com/reZach/my-budget](https://github.com/reZach/my-budget)

~~~
astura
The GP expressly mentioned the only selling point of Mint: "automated balance
and expense tracking," Mint imports data automatically without any user
action. Unless your software does this, your audience will be extremely
limited.

Budgeting software has been ubiquitous since the dawn of personal computing,
that's a solved problem.

~~~
bobblywobbles
There's support for this, but it's limited at the moment. Getting OFX
supported is a priority of mine (in the meantime, it uses screen scraping to
pull transaction data).

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homero
I love Mint but wow do they have more data on me than Google and Amazon
combined.

I used to think that selling me credit cards is fine but now I'm sure my
analytics are sold every which way.

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OkGoDoIt
I used TurboTax for Windows for the first time this year to do my taxes. Since
I don’t trust them as a company, I set firewall rules to block all internet
access to the program and all its other helper programs. It refused to run
until I connected to the internet update it. So I let it connect and update
and then blocked it again before starting to enter my data. I got everything
entered and then tried to output the tax return for printing but it wouldn’t
let me finalize everything until I connected it back to the internet to do
another update. Why even bother buying locally-run software if it requires an
active connection to the internet? Very frustrating experience all around.

(Also it’s super crappy software besides, I would not recommend it even if you
get it for free. And even after you buy it, they upcharge you at the last
second so be ready to pay more than expected. It’s the Comcast of tax
software.)

~~~
astura
If you don't trust TurboTax as a company why did you use their software? It's
not like they are the only tax prep software in existence.

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felixfbecker
I wonder if Mint is GDPR compliant? I am an EU citizen with an American bank
account that’s linked to Mint

~~~
elliekelly
A quick look at their privacy docs tells me there’s no chance they’re GDPR
compliant. They use the phrase “comply with all applicable regulations”
liberally (instead of saying they “comply with GDPR”) which I suspect means
they’ve taken the position that for one reason or another GDPR is not an
applicable regulation. I suspect any plans to become GDPR compliant will be
implemented as slowly as they can manage to get away with.

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r_singh
I hope mass users/customers of such applications start caring about things
like GDPR compliance

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TeMPOraL
GDPR doesn't apply to US citizens in the US, and I think no other country has
a tax-filing software lobby that successfully keeps filing taxes as difficult
as possible.

~~~
ephaeton
Speaking from a german perspective (who has lived and taxed in the US as
well), let me point out to you that US tax forms are a piece of cake to fill
compared to the djungle we have here.

~~~
maxxxxx
Agreed.

