Planet money had a story where a similar superficially good idea ended up with Etrade selling a man's Amazon stock and deactivating his account after he didn't log in for a certain period of time. He was able to reclaim about $8000 for stock that would be worth ~$100k today.
This is mildly infuriating because the whole point of long term investing is to buy a stock, and well, do nothing -- besides hold it for decades. The stock should continue being held whether a user logs in or not.
Shouldn’t that have gone to the state’s Auditor & Controller’s Unclaimed Property dept? If you look at California’s Unclaimed Prop., you’ll see shares sitting in there. Heck, I have a few shares I need to claim.
If I remember it did go to unclaimed property. The problem is that the stock today was worth much more than the selling price when they closed his account (and he intended it to be a long term holding).
This could work for you, in the chance an investment didn't pan out and you're liquidated at the top. But for long periods of time, cash loses value to inflation. Seems off that states wouldn't accept shares. They're not as liquid as cash, but not far from it.
Allulose is an interesting sweetener that has the same molecular formula as fructose, and IMO tastes much more similar to table sugar than other sweeteners.
I'm guessing because of the molecular similarity I've found it to have similar browning as sugar when cooking.
A few downsides--it has a cooling sensation depending on what I use it to sweeten. Also if I consume too much it can cause bloating (a downside of not being absorbed like sugar is). In general it doesn't look like it's as well researched as other sweeteners, so it's hard to tell if there are more subtle/long term downsides.
Sometimes I google home maintenance videos for information on a project, and I need to spend a lot of time looking for a certain level of quality of the source since I'm a complete amateur. I'll often want to confirm by looking for multiple videos and making sure the sources converge on some basic points since I have so little background.
But since I'm much more knowledgeable about certain programming or mathematical techniques, I can do much quicker searches to refresh my memory since my BS filter is going to go off pretty quickly, and I can verify the truth of a source based on a more extensive background.
The fear mongering in this article requires you to assume that doctors are much more like amateur carpenters clicking on links at random rather than highly trained practitioners with years of education in their field.
In the source they cite (https://gcemetery.co/), do they consider only products that have died? Or do they track all products that have started? (hopefully they have right censoring, otherwise it seems they're underestimating the average lifespan).
I'm having a hard time finding the data in tabular format.
Looking at that tool, though, it has some obvious problems in how they are summarizing the data. That tool only looks at salary one year out vs. total debt. That makes some professional degrees (like dentistry) look horrible when they are actually good investments, because these degrees require essentially apprenticeships (e.g. internships/residencies) where early pay is very low but subsequent pay (say for a cosmetic dentist) can be extremely high.
Absolutely hilarious to see the elite schools (tried Brown, UPenn, MIT, CMU) completely blow the lesser schools (NC State, Clemson) out of the water for both lower or equal debt with higher compensation. Really puts a dent in the "it doesn't matter where you go to school for a CS degree" mentality.
Also keep in mind that elite schools have a selection bias to kids from much more affluent backgrounds. Affluent kids often have parents with friends in the industries they are entering. So take the data with a grain of salt unless they controlled for factors like that.
It's a bit odd seeing Zucman as a contributor here, considering his recent economic advice has been criticized for assuming that tax avoidance isn't a thing.
It sounds cliche, but I've found the yEd graph editor crucial in reading a Dostoevsky novel and keeping up with all the characters and their relations. Is yworks pretty much the only game in town when it comes to graph editing?
If you still have that graph somewhere, we'd love to see it. We're always curious (and sometimes surprised and astonished) what people create with yEd.
As far as competitors go, there are lots of other options, both in end-user applications for graph editing, as well as libraries.
For end-users it seems many stick with the first tool they really like and get used to its features, strengths, and idiosyncrasies (and from my experience there are many weirdnesses among those applications, including our own). Automatic layout may be a killer feature for our offering, though. As far as I know there is not much that can compare here (although for many people simple hierarchic or force-directed approaches may suffice and they might not need every option).
For library users it often comes down to a decision based on required features, cost, custom development effort, and target platform. I think we're well-situated for customers where cost is less of an issue, that have competent developers and require extensive customization (and support). It's not uncommon that D3 might be a better choice, depending on the requirements.
Thanks for the response! FWIW, I find nothing lacking in the application, but I'm working on an ipad and it seems a native app would be less constrained by the browser quality.
There is Gephi, which is very capable, though I've also found it frustrating to work with, particularly for graph editing. Interface glitches, unresponsive elements etc. quickly get in the way.
Development seems to have stalled somewhat, so I'm not optimistic that this has improved.
yEd is my default go-to graph drawing tool. I use it mostly for engineering diagrams. It's kind of incredible what you can make with it, and it's basically cross-platform and I use it on Windows and Mac OS. The graph layout engine is first class and it has a ton of options.
If you can get into the flow with it, and trust the layout engine (instead of foofing around with placing your own things) it's basically replaced visio for 99% of my team's diagramming.
I like propublica's reporting on this but geez, this needs an award for one of the top HN obsessions. Within the past 7 months:
TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free; 211 points -- 54 minutes ago
TurboTax to charge more lower-income customers; 144 points -- 3 months ago
Congress Scraps Provision to Restrict IRS from Competing with TurboTax; 82 points -- 4 months ago
Listen to TurboTax Lie to Get Out of Refunding Overcharged Customers; 171 points -- 5 months ago
TurboTax Uses a “Military Discount” to Trick Troops into Paying to File Taxes; 170 points -- 5 months ago
TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat; 355 points -- 6 months ago
TurboTax Hides Its Free File Page from Search Engines; 881 points -- 6 months ago
TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes; 608 points -- 6 months ago
How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing (2013); 462 points -- 7 months ago
edit: if you _still_ haven't gotten enough TurboTax reporting, there's a great Reply All episode that covers propublica's reporting as well https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nhgol
Americans are starting to wake up to the fact they live in what is by far the richest country, but that the systems in place just make the rich richer, while nothing is done to improve the lives of the middle and lower classes.
In this particular case, the rich are actively using the system to stop an improvement to the quality of life of regular people.
What's the point in living in the richest country in the world when your quality of life is lower than many countries that don't have nearly so much money?
The fact that America has the 10th highest GDP per capita [1] and huge swaths of it are little better off than a third world nation is a complete disgrace.
1: (its 4 micro city states above it, which are economically special, and 5 nations that could reasonably be considered full sized countries, however all of them still have relatively small populations)
I would argue that there are few, if any, countries in the world that this description would not apply to.
However, I agree with the point that you're making wholeheartedly. There's a very serious amount of wealth disparity around the world, and the rich have gotten so rich that they can't even feasibly spend all of their money if they had to.
The lives of middle and lower class people in Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, etc. are much, much, much better than Americans, and improving all the time.
Do you think so? I live in Toronto and wealth inequality is still constantly at the forefront of political discourse. Obviously Toronto isn't indicative of the rest of Canada, but I don't feel as if poor Canadians are especially better off than poor Americans.
And yet the cost of implementing a government algorithm has not yet fallen to near-zero.
Furthermore, the government has surely implemented the algorithm itself in order to verify submitted tax returns, so the implementation cost of pre-computing everyone's tax should be comparatively small.
Maybe I’m overly cynical, but creating tax returns for everyone for free would prevent the IRS from allowing you to incriminate yourself by mis-filing (intentionally or not) and then levying huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later.
Everyone is hating on TurboTax for making money, but they’re pretending the government tax machine has no such motivation, which simply is not true.
The government tax machine is in the business of collecting taxes, not running up fines. I've had several interactions where the IRS was totally with in their rights to fine me but they waved each fine because they understood it was unintentional.
The only times I've heard of the IRS going after people who unintentionally violated the rules, they were intentionally and obviously violating the spirit of the law but thought they were within the letter and were wrong.
In my experience you can make a good faith effort to figure out what your supposed to owe and pay it. In this case the IRS will treat you fairly and waive all types of fines. Or you can try to aggressively avoid taxes that you should owe in spirit. And in this case you have to be damn sure you're within the letter of the law because the IRS will try to hammer you if you color outside the lines. These seem like two fair options to me. And everyone I know who was slammed by the IRS was doing the latter.
> Maybe I’m overly cynical, but creating tax returns for everyone for free would prevent the IRS from allowing you to incriminate yourself by mis-filing (intentionally or not) and then levying huge penalties and interest on you 10 years later.
Many countries pre-fill the tax return, but require the citizen to submit it. The citizen is responsible for the submitted information, not the government.
That would expose the level of identity theft that the IRS does nothing about and actively tries to hide by refusing to provide identity theft victims with documentation.
Yeah, that's overly cynical. :) If they switched to a pre-filled system, the revenue from penalties would go down, but it's quite likely the amount they would bring in would actually go up, assuming this reduced tax fraud. In 2016, they charged $24.1 billion in penalties -- but they estimate tax fraud cost them around $458 billion. If they lost 90% of the revenue for the penalties but cut the tax fraud even by 25%, they would be way, way ahead.
We aren’t going to get anywhere in this thread, my friend. TurboTax is evil. Ignore the fact that there are a dozen other companies offering the same service and that prices have actually fallen because of that competition.
Also no mention of filling out the free 1040 form... that’s too difficult. As if the companies charging you to do that for you just existed because they were forcing people to pay them...
I haven't looked this up, but I'm pretty sure audits are way down. There was a recent an article saying the IRS was focusing on auditing poorer people because it's too expensive to audit rich people. Since their budget is completely separate from tax income (and their budget has consistently been reduced), it was driven by their local incentives even if that means total tax income was way lower.
Sure, that's always an option, but due the complexity of the tax codes, it's very easy to make a mistake when doing everything yourself.
For example, I used to work in New Jersey, and live in New York, meaning I would have to file two state tax returns, in addition to the federal. There are weird rules that you can deduct one state's taxes from the other, and then deduct the remainder from the federal taxes. The rules get complex really quickly, and even with helpful software I made a mistake one year resulting in a fine. I can't imagine how frequently I'd make mistakes if I had to do it manually.
TurboTax definitely provides a service by making it so that schmucks like me can do taxes, but if the tax code is that complex, shouldn't we have a software like this for free? At the very least, to provide some motivations to politicians to help simplify the tax code?
> to provide some motivations to politicians to help simplify the tax code?
You speak of NJ, NY, taxes, "mistakes", fines, potential "audits" by the IRS, then wonder why politicians would want to simplify and improve something that many of them likely grift from or cheat on themselves, due to that same complexity...
...and one of the biggest of these tax cheats hails from NY, likely has had his now (on again, off again) lawyer, who used to be mayor of NYC and before that as a US AG - probably ran interference for his cheating and other scams.
But all of them - and plenty of others - benefit from the complexity and other issues, and don't want it any other way, unfortunately. No real good solutions to that.
Tax code complexity and the mechanics of filing are orthogonal. Fixing both is not a requirement for fixing either separately, or an excuse for not doing it.
It wasn't actually directly due to the multi-state thing. I paid for my wife's college, and NY has a thing to let you deduct tuition from dependents on taxes. I had forgotten to attach the proof of payment for tuition, leading to me getting audited (in the most technical send of the word) and fined slightly. The biggest pain in the ass was the back-and-forth I had to do to close my case, which involved me faxing things multiple times.
There have been a couple of years where I worked several different out-of-state contract gigs, and a couple of years where I received unemployment due to me from an out-of-state employer. I was not trying to do anything monstrously complicated, nor was I some millionaire - I just did the jobs that I was able to land to feed my family and pay our mortgage.
I went to experienced tax professionals to help me with those returns, and _they_ were baffled, spent hours pulling out phone book-sized paper guidebooks, and debating with each other, and making phone calls to colleagues, and I had to file amended returns - in one case, _twice_. Fortunately they never charged me anything to correct the errors, but... wow.
What hope would I have had to get it right myself, trying to fill out the various schedules?
I do that because I think it's inappropriate that any third party should have access to private financial information that's no one's business but mine and the IRS's.
Still, it's an irksome chore that I would prefer not to have to do.
That's an average of 5.28 months ago, which would've been around the beginning of May, less than a month after taxes were due to be filed. Three of the articles are from 6 months ago (mid-April), and one from 7 months ago (before filing was due). It shouldn't come as a surprise that taxes, and the cost to file them, would be fresh on peoples minds at that time.
It's an issue that affects almost every American, why not obsess? I've seen two stories in the past day about Google Nest which affects maybe 10%? What a bizarre obsession.
I'm not sure about how much causation is being captured here, but I don't doubt the effect directionally. Here's a paper that came to similar conclusions, which I think captures causality better
Basically it compares performance of students who transferred into schools upwind vs downwind of major highways. Unsurprisingly, those who ended up in downwind schools saw
> decreases in test scores, more behavioral incidents, and more absences
The article itself references many such studies correlating long term exposure to polluted environments with cognitive impairment.
This study however focuses on short term effects (within the same day).
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159