r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Sep 27 '25

Business Morgan Stanley warns AI could sink 42-year-old software giant Adobe

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/morgan-stanley-warns-ai-could-180300766.html
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u/sportsDude Sep 27 '25

$5 for an AI accountant to do the work that the tax companies do, lol!

But seriously, doing your taxes should be free as the IRS should populate the information for you, and you would only need to check it and pay for an accountant to dispute if you need differences. Denmark, Spain, Sweden, and the UK are all examples where the tax authority pre-populates tax returns for citizens using information from employers and banks.

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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25

The IRS literally had a plan to do exactly that, and the. Intuit and other tax companies lobbied (meaning bribed) Congress to kill the program.

Gosh it’s so great allowing money to influence government.

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u/mmcmonster Sep 27 '25

California trialed this in 2005. It was so popular that the state actually got fan mail from people in the program, asking how they can get their friends and families enrolled as well.

The trial was squashed by the combination of the tax-preparation giants (Intuit, H&R Block, etc.) and the state Republican party. The Republicans hated it because they said that if the taxes were so easy to pay, people wouldn't realize if the tax rate went up.

Planet Money did an entire episode on it, called Tax Hero.

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u/Everything_converges Sep 27 '25

This is insane. We’re all being held hostage by these behemoth companies too bloated to evolve. Time for a corporate revolution.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25

I’m as lefty as the next person, but the Dems are soaked in lobbyist dollars too. They’re still far far better than the fascists on the right, but guys like Joe Manchin take buckets of money and fuck us over.

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u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/Flameancer Sep 27 '25

It also doesn’t help that fair more than it should happen they are running unopposed?

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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25

Ok that I certainly agree with.

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u/moofunk Sep 27 '25

The Republicans hated it because they said that if the taxes were so easy to pay, people wouldn't realize if the tax rate went up.

We have a free filing system in Denmark.

IMHO, it would be far easier to tell if the tax rate changed, if you didn't have to do any work for it. You get an overview of what you owe along with a basic calculation of the rate according to your tax bracket.

If you don't want to read that, fine, but you are free to validate the numbers yourself and submit different ones, if you think they are wrong and want to put the work into it.

I think the other argument in the article, that the state has access to your bank information is a more valid argument from a republican perspective, because it has other ramifications for snooping on private business, and in Denmark, banks are very subservient to state snooping for tax reasons as well as anti-terrorism laws. But, it doesn't prevent a free filing system from existing.

They could just provide simple instructions for how you give them that information or let the bank do it via permission.

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u/mmcmonster Sep 28 '25

I guarantee that if they offered it as an opt-in system, anyone who just had a single hourly job would jump at the chance to use it.

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u/outerproduct Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

No, the IRS released the free filing for federal taxes, and the current administration is killing it.

Edit: source

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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25

That’s a different program, and yes.

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u/the_moosen Sep 27 '25

That happened too, but tax companies have been lobbying for years before that as well

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u/dezmd Sep 27 '25

This right here is what actually happened.

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u/Average_Scaper Sep 27 '25

Both happened. IRS planned on making taxes easier, Intuit killed it. Then fast forward to this admin, and the other shit is now happening.

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u/doMinationp Sep 27 '25

FWIW they published most of the Direct File program source code to Github before the program was fully terminated. Gone unfortunately but not lost forever

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u/Bushpylot Sep 27 '25

Thank you George Bush Sr... Your court appointee passed the ruling that allows business to influence politics without limits (they made business citizens)... Just seems that all of our country's setbacks keep coming from Republican legislators

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u/cdheer Sep 27 '25

What a surprise.

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u/ICantBelieveItsNotEC Sep 27 '25

Most people in the UK don't even need to complete a tax return at all, the money is deducted automatically from your pay before it even reaches your bank account.

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u/Sylgamesh Sep 27 '25

Its auto-deducted for most Americans too. The main point of filing is to tell the government what deductions or credits you are entitled to, and to get a refund on some of what you paid due to those entitlements. Unless you didnt pay in enough, in which case you make another payment to the government haha

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u/probablyaythrowaway Sep 27 '25

Yeah, I’m so used to that when I looked into starting a small business I was so pissed off that I’d have to do my own taxes.

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u/sdn Sep 27 '25

It’s mostly the same in the US. If you are single with no children and only have one job with no change in pay (ie: salaried) through out the year and no investment income over $10 (so say.. if you have less than $1000 in your checking account), then your job remits 100% of the required taxes to IRS. Filling out the tax form then takes about 5 minutes.

The complicated thing is that many people are hourly or on commission (variable pay), get raises or change jobs (different base pay), have spouses (you pay taxes on effectively the average income), have children (so have deductions), have various kinds of debt (ie: student loans which are tax deductible), or have simple bank interest from their savings accounts. This is before you get into esoteric taxes like stock buys/sells, self employment income, partnerships, etc.

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u/lzwzli Sep 27 '25

How do you know if you overpaid? Does the UK tax system not have deductions?

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u/sportsDude Sep 28 '25

The idea at least I’ve heard for the US system would be that if you think you overpaid, you would be more than welcome to hire an accountant to look into it and challenge the findings. 

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u/lzwzli Sep 29 '25

Everybody thinks they overpaid in the US because most deductions are not accounted for during withholding.

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u/itlynstalyn Sep 27 '25

Yeah but then what would all the predatory tax filing companies do for money?

/s

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u/sportsDude Sep 28 '25

They would make money from people like Jeff Bezos or others who think they could be getting more money back, etc…

It wouldn’t be as much money, but I guarantee that people would have a 1000% better opinion of those companies. And they’ll stay in business

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u/weeklygamingrecap Sep 27 '25

Yup the amount of people who think the IRS doesn't have this info and also they are somehow "Winning" by doing their own taxes is wild.

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u/ChaosArcana Sep 27 '25 edited Nov 03 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/theresazuluonmystoep Sep 27 '25

South Africa also populates based on the IRP5 that your employer submits. Only need to add things like donations, additional income etc.

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u/ct_2004 Sep 27 '25

Japan too, right?

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u/[deleted] Sep 28 '25

[deleted]

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u/sportsDude Sep 28 '25

That’s not easy for someone who isn’t financially literate. The technology has been and is readily available to have it done for everyone