What if there was a magical way to save California taxpayers time and money?
The state of California, which collects wage data more speedily from employers — with a Jan. 31 deadline — shows what is technically possible. With little money to finance the project, and over the objections of the tax-preparation software lobby, the state began a small pilot project to offer a pre-filled state tax return, called ReadyReturn, to a small sample of taxpayers with simple returns for the 2004 tax year. Invitations went out to about 52,000, and fewer than 12,000 ended up participating.
Naturally, Intuit isn’t a big fan of saving your tax dollars:
California has budgeted only $10,000 for getting word out. The meagerness of the funds allotted for the ReadyReturn program reflects the strength of its political opponents, Mr. Chiang said. The most vigorous opposition comes from companies that sell tax-preparation software, “principally, Intuit,” he added.
INTUIT, which publishes TurboTax, does not dispute this description.
“We’re a California company and actively participate in the political process,” said Julie Miller, a company spokeswoman. “Our position has consistently been that ReadyReturn duplicates what is already available.”
Needless to say, what’s already available from Intuit isn’t free by a long stretch.
On the heels of last week’s Supreme Corp decision allowing corporations to spend as they please in the last 60 days before an election, nonsense like this is only going to get worse.