2y ago

Congressional Report Finds Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data

Congressional Report Finds Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data – The Markup

Might be old news for some... TLDR: Some big online tax prep sites have tracker pixels from Meta and Google, which collect things like income, filing status, tax credits, etc.

Original congressional report file

Privacy @lemmy.ml

N01 @mlem.a-smol-cat.fr

2y ago

Congressional Report Finds Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data.

themarkup.org /pixel-hunt/2023/07/12/congressional-report-finds-meta-and-tax-prep-companies-recklessly-shared-taxpayers-data

News @kbin.social

kjr @kbin.social

2y ago

Congressional Report Finds Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers’ Data – The Markup

themarkup.org /pixel-hunt/2023/07/12/congressional-report-finds-meta-and-tax-prep-companies-recklessly-shared-taxpayers-data

12 comments

Private profit driven companies doing shady shit?! Colour me shocked 🙄
- Cue the $1m fine, that'll show em!
Almost as if the entire issue could be avoided and circumvented by having the government handle everything from their end by default since they already have all out tax and income data, but allow those who want to do more complicated filings or individual deductions above the default calculation the option to do so on the back end
- Yeah, it might be true for federal taxes, but US tax system is complicated...
  
  IDK the tax software already also does state taxes too, and asks about at least some relevant city taxes. The software can be made - we have it already. It just doesn't seem like the government couldn't run the same stuff we do at home really.
Maybe it is time we finally change the way taxes are done. Most of us could just have the IRS do our taxes then we confirm what they did.
WOW, I'm so fucking surprised I almost fell out of my chair.
I see that some folks here suggest that a change in how taxes are reported is a solution to this.
For me it sounds weird. The problem is with having big tech trackers deployed on most web sites by site owners who don't care about privacy implications. It doesn't look like tax prep firms are profiting from user data, it's just their negligence.
I hope that they will do a good thing and replace these invasive trackers with something better.
But meanwhile, people can use their desktop software. I've seen H&R block software a few years back - it was slightly buggy, but it worked. I don't think they put Meta trackers there.

12 comments