Why does Ottawa make it so hard to file taxes online?
It’s spring again, and having received all my T4s and the other information I needed, I decided to do up my taxes again for another year. I figured that by now, after several years of Netfile, the federal government would surely have come up with free software for us to be able to file online. (I refuse to pay to be able to pay the government. It just seems not right somehow.) So I figured it would be nice to attempt to file online this year and join the 21st century.
After two wasted days of downloading all the government-accepted free software to my computer and typing in all my tax information for the 12th time, and my wife’s and my daughter’s, only to be refused certain deductions that I know are due me, I was morphing into a maniacal lunatic. There I sat raging with these unresponsive, uncooperative, defiant wizards. They were not Gandalf, but rather dark, evil, deceitful, corrupt wizards like Saruman. Not one of these free programs allowed me to get all my deductions — and my taxes are not that complicated. I wondered how many people must be getting ripped off on their taxes by using and trusting these programs. None of the programs I tried were interactive enough, and believe me, I went into every nook and cranny I could to attempt to extrapolate the information I needed. The vile creatures thwarted my every attempt.
I’m all for saving a tree, but if the government insists on our filing online, why is it not giving us a simple program to do so? It isn’t right that I to have to pay $50 to buy a program so that I can pay the government, or $60-plus to some production-line tax preparer who is indifferent to me and doesn’t properly scrutinize all my information to give me all the deductions I deserve. I’ve been there, done that, having to argue with the manager (“Why didn’t you give me this deduction?”), only to have him concur after a long, heated argument. Believe me, I’m just a regular Joe and no genius, so I’m not bragging, but if I can read it and see it, why can’t they?
With all the billions of dollars the government spends every year on abject, ludicrous stupidity, why can’t it give us a simple, free way to file our taxes online? We are paying the government and it wants our money, so it should make it easy and free for us to do so.
The government already has programmers on the payroll, so would it be that hard to come up with a simple, interactive program that we could use? An interactive program where we could bring up all the forms and schedules as they are now on paper, where we could put in our information line by line and click on any given line to bring up the guide’s information pertaining to that line? To give us an access code at the beginning so we can save and continue at any point, and just a “submit” box at the end when we are done, just like they have for filing employment insurance? (See? They already have it.)
Seriously: Is our government that stupid or indifferent? I expect better from those I elect and to whom I entrust the governing of me and mine.