Comment by mixmastamyk
19 hours ago
It started requiring phone numbers and things and I stopped using it in favor of my own spreadsheet.
19 hours ago
It started requiring phone numbers and things and I stopped using it in favor of my own spreadsheet.
> It started requiring phone numbers and things...
a) You're already trusting them with every piece of information in your tax return. It'd cost like five cents to use that information to discover your phone number... if they're malicious, you're already fucked.
b) When? At the end of the process where you're doing stuff like attesting that you're not lied on your tax return? I don't remember them demanding a phone number up front, and I also don't remember whether or not I refused to provide a phone number at the end.
No, I didn’t enter PII into it, just let it do math, downloaded, and printed. Wrote contact info by hand.
(The efiling never worked for me, always complained about something esoteric.)
They’re just values as far as it’s concerned. And it is dumped every October. But phone # validation up front is too much, an overstep.
Like I said, I just used it for the calc ability so a spreadsheet works as well. Bit of work the first year, then tweak.
Weird. The electronic filing has worked flawless for me every year for the past like four or five years. Was the "esoteric" complaint delivered as an email after you'd submitted your paperwork? If so, then in my experience, that's because you've fucked up the data you input into the form and the IRS's backend has a funny-but-useful way of spelling that.
> But phone # validation up front is too much, an overstep.
They definitely didn't do this to me any of the years I've used them to file taxes. When did you file yours? Did you file them long after the 2024 taxes were due?
3 replies →
The 1040 has a spot for phone number too...
The 1040 has a spot for both a phone number and an email address. The 1040 instructions make it completely clear that both are optional.