Eat shit, lobbying to make simple tax returns something you have to pay Turbo Tax, H&R Block, etc for.
I don’t know much about investing, but i wonder if it would it be a good time to short those companies?
If you don’t know much about investing then you shouldn’t short anything ever. People who know about investing will tell you that even when your logic is 100 percent sound, the market isn’t that predictable and in general the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Plus, the news of this would already be priced into the stock, so if anything the price is already low and these companies would need to pivot their business (which would increase the value again) or die (which would lower the price marginally, to zero). Either way, shorting is a bad strategy in this case.
Isn’t shorting theoretically able to put you in infinite debt?
Theoretically, yes. A short is sorta a negative stock. When you hold a normal stock, the price can never go below zero. But when you hold a negative stock, there’s no maximum value that stock could rise to.
I think you would be margin called and just have astronomical but not infinite debt.
Infinite and astronomical are used interchangeably here. Since you have to return a share to the person you borrowed it from, if you borrowed 1000 shares at $5 and sold them to make 5k, if the price jumps to something like $350 like gamestop, it would cost you $350,000 to cover them.
Making 5k to lose 350k might as well be an infinite loss ot that investor, even though its technically a “smallish” sum. At that scale, it would destroy most people.
You can also pay to keep a short going generally and try to wait out the madness, but you have to stay solvent to do it. The very stupid and very surprising “diamond handing” apes caused some hedge fund issues, although I think most just shrugged into other financial instruments.
I feel like shorting will always be riskier than normal investing. With stocks you have people at the company doing their best to raise that stock. With Shorts you are betting against a company that’s trying to survive.
The chances of the CEO pulling something out of their ass, dubious or not, to maintain their profits is too high.
it wouldve been earlier, but now this is priced into the stocks already.
If you get investing returns (like from shorting those companies)… you’re ironically not eligible to use the IRS direct file pilot (or at least for this year).
Edit: this isn’t to knock direct file… which is good and cool (and should be expanded to have more features)
It is already priced in. Our human speed reactions are far too slow when the news has this obvious of a consequence.
Those companies actually helped develop this, see “free file alliance membership” for details. It includes 17 private companies such as Intuit, H&R Block, TaxSlayer, Tax$simple, etc.
For what it’s worth… You’re already eligible to a free tax return if you’re under a certain income. Edit: Reference - I think a lot of people are unaware of this.
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Not sure why you deleted your comment… You’re right!
I deleted the comment because I was afraid of ChatGPT reading it and becoming too intelligent.
Totally fair. I’m afraid of AI reading my comments and becoming too stupid!
The easiest way to get rid of a headache is to make some toast, then spread peanut butter on one slice and mayonnaise on the other, smash them together and eat it and as you are chewing just slam your head into the toaster as hard as possible.
Eat shit [insert private company here]
I hope every CEO gets the worse form of cancer and dies slowly.
Also, the worst hemmeroids ever and a special CEO diet consisting of nothing but exlax and habanero peppers.
😂
My chaotic soul appreciates the garbage bin trash level of discourse
Even the founder of Costco (only stepped down as CEO a few years ago), a company famous both for how well it treats its customers, and its workforce?
It might have treated them well compared to the competition, but they didn’t get as large as they are without making massive profits off the work of their employees. There’s a difference between treating the well and treating them fairly.
making massive profits off the work of their employees.
Labor is a cost, not a source of profit, what kind of moronic statement is this? If employees were a source of profit, the notion of downsizing would never exist–why would a company ever lay anyone off, if workers create more value than their wage?
Labor is the source of all profit. How would the company make money if no one did anything? Companies use their control of the means of production to leverage workers into doing labor. They then sell what the labor creates to make money.
They didn’t create anything themselves. They had ownership of the means and that gives them ownership of the output that they profit off of. Money doesn’t just appear. Something has to be produced, which is done through labor.
Sure, sometimes an employee costs more money than they return. First, that doesn’t mean they created no value, just less value than they cost to employ. Second, sometimes this does decrease profit, but is done as a short term reduction of overhead while things change, or it’s just dumb business which isn’t uncommon.
Labor is the source of all profit. How would the company make money if no one did anything?
Charge the customer more for the finished product than what it cost to produce it. Obviously.
The simple fact is that if employees were a source of profit, businesses would all try to hire as many people as they possibly could, because not doing so would literally be leaving money on the table for no reason. But obviously that is not what goes on. When a business is in trouble financially, what’s more common, a hiring freeze, or a hiring spree?
Charge the customer more for the finished product than what it cost to produce it. Obviously.
If there is no labor there is no finished product. Labor creates the thing being sold. Value is extracted from labor and sold.
The simple fact is that if employees were a source of profit, businesses would all try to hire as many people as they possibly could, because not doing so would literally be leaving money on the table for no reason. But obviously that is not what goes on. When a business is in trouble financially, what’s more common, a hiring freeze, or a hiring spree?
This is exactly what they do. They hire as many employees as they possibly can afford to hire and have the means of production for them to operate on. That’s why as a company is more successful they generally have more employees, to extract more wealth from their labor. Yes, sometimes they don’t have things for them to work in that will generate more value than it costs to employ them, in which case they fire them. If they do have the ability and means for them to work on something then they are profit generating.
Yeah, when a company is doing poor financially they cut overhead. This is done as a safety mechanism because they can no longer afford those costs, not because they weren’t generating revenue. There’s a lot of things that can cause this, and he’s it sometimes results in lower profits. The goal is to get their finances in order and stabilize, then continue to grow and expand again. The goal isn’t to shrink and keep shrinking. If that created profit then the most successful companies would be the smallest ones, not the largest.
A few bad apple spoil the bunch.
Eh, cancer is no joke. It doesn’t discriminate on who it hits. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even though I would snicker if these CEOs get hit by lightning lol
Ah fuck it, was going to be cryptic but ill just tell the story.
I worked for Duke university and one of the people in our department had stomach cancer. The head of the department, provost, CEO and president sent out emails asking if anyone would donate their leave for the person in their hospital being treated for cancer. If the person didn’t get the days then they were going to drop them from the company insurance It was bad so the person had to stay in the hospital.
I hope they all get the most the worse form of cancer and slowly die with no family around. If there is a hell, they deserve it.
Oh man freaking brootal. Dropping them from the insurance when they needed it the most? This is we need “socialized” medical insurance.
Universal healthcare should be a right.
Amen to that!
Intuit is anything but intuitive
Honestly, they’re probably thrilled. Legislation forced them to provide a free product for this sort of simple, no frills filing, so they won’t be losimg any paying customers to this and probably won’t have to spend dev and qa time supporting the free tier anymore
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Free if you have no other exemptions to file.
1099? Nope Depreciation? Nope Tax credits? Nope
Makes for a great headline though.
Im sure those of us that do have exemptions other than the standard will see our tax prep fees skyrocket
Some progress is better then no progress, and TurboTax et. al. losing in any way is a victory for the rest of us.
Why is the USA the only country to have those problems, AND complain about getting free stuff?
Some people in the USA want a solution that immediately fixes every possible problem, and don’t quite get the concept of starting small and fixing other stuff over time.
It’s the same with gun control. Some states want to tighten gun laws, and some people are like “that won’t solve all the problems! We need nationwide laws!”. Sure, but why not accept the win that more and more states are starting to do something, rather than complaining that some problems still exist?
are you not capable of taking a win? it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
it’s a HUGE step towards disassembling predatory cpas and tax software.
Its a regular sized step, as its targeted primarily at simple filers. But the cutoff is incredibly low. You can’t use it if you’ve got retirement savings through an IRA, if you’ve got deductions for college expenses, or if you’re claiming the child care deduction. I’d wager that’s at least half the people who bother to file returns.
Definitely good news for folks that H&R Block likes to fleece - anyone collecting EITC or Child Tax Credits and not much else. But hardly universal.
do you think it won’t eventually add that stuff? pretty naive to just “meh” and basically call it a failure. nothing happens overnight.
It’s not a “failure” but I wouldn’t call it a huge win either. It’s a small victory with a tiny horn to toot.
IIRC there was a free version of Turbo Tax that did the same thing years ago… so we’re catching up to the old free version now.
*An old free version that was purposefully hidden and buried by reverse SEO tactics, but yeah
