One of the easiest ways to convince the public that the government is inept and wasteful is to make it as difficult to do the necessary as possible. If politicians cared, this wouldn’t be an issue.
This results in a lot of K-1s, which tax preparers charge you like $500 a form for, except all of mine had values like $2.
Luckily you just kind of do it halfway right in TurboTax and it works out.
H&R has lobbyists to ensure taxes are complicated and stressful.
They could also learn to file their taxes, as well as simple tax planning, in a very short video.
You are all done.
Unless you have something wack going on its not even a process. I have had signups which are more complicated then it.
American taxes on the other hand mega suck, and have 9000 pitfalls.
And amending is online form where everything is clearly explained, links to documentation. And longest time it takes is actually to look up numbers from your own records.
The only opposing political argument I've heard is that if income taxes were this simple, many people would be overpaying. I think that argument has many obvious flaws. Unfortunately few US citizens demand anything of their politicians on this topic or other topics that would dramatically improve their lives. Instead they care more about vanity topics that don't even effect them.
That's the financial impact. Depending on what you're missing, the nonfinancial might be opening yourself to perjury, because you're knowingly claiming a falsehood as a fact on a tax return (even if it's financially in the government's benefit)... never mind potentially screwing up future tax returns in the process.
An intern or 2 could do this for the entire nation to benefit!
In contrast, if the process is streamlined every year, most people won't even pay attention to how much they pay in taxes - which isn't great if your ultimate goal is to keep government as small as possible.
The ruling class doesn't even have to actively communicate and conspire with one another (although they do). Their independent attempts to undermine and control government furthers the agenda of all private businesses.
All this is with just the very basics, not counting step up basis, trusts or anything slightly complicated.
The session was an hour long, and I was done with my return by the end of the hour. I dropped it off in the mail on my way back from the library and that was the end of it. From the subsequent year onwards, a pre-printed form arrived in the mail with like 90% of the stuff prefilled, and it took like 5 minutes to fill out the rest and drop it in the post box.
I honestly didn't think it could have been any easier - of course, not having taxes withheld from a far-below-minimum wage salary would have been nicer.
As a long-time Estonian resident and engineer, how can I help? (My email is in my profile)
Are people going to jail for a math error?
I've had the IRS reach out to me several times, each time it's a letter explaining their position and I responded and we went back and forth a few times and it was over.
No police showed up...
I paid on the actual official website, did not get scammed BTW...
Having seen their work before, wakeuptopolitics is a sort of fetishist for appearing unbiased or centrist so they won't bother calling out "one side" in order to appear to be enlightened and above the fray at the expense of the truth. While Democrats also get money from turbo tax et al., it was Trump who ended it likely just to spite Joe Biden, in his usual manner.
The government doesn't know the exact answer - if they did we wouldn't have to file at all. Have a kid? Buy a house? Go to college? Make $60k selling illicit drugs on the black market? Get a $200 bank signup bonus? These all affect taxes. One could argue in a dystopian way that technically "the government" as a whole does know these things, but suffice to say, the IRS doesn't, necessarily.
The whole point of filing is that our tax code is ridiculous. We shouldn't get mad at filing, but at our ridiculous tax code. But it'll never be fixed, there's way too much pork stuffed in it from both sides.
Also, nobody files 100% correct taxes. Show me the person, I'll show you the crime(so to speak). You do not go to prison for making mistakes!
Lmao in Australia, other then the drugs, yes the government knows because everything is reported to them.
America is just behind.
My favorite interaction to tell however belongs to the TSA. I went through the scanner and it flagged the back of my head. The TSA agent said he needed to verify, so put on gloves and patted the back of my head before letting me go. I wear a military cut, the back of my head is done with a #1/2 guard. For those not in the US, that's a buzz cut of length 1.5mm.
If you're a child then they're not going to just know who you're a dependent of.
https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
All German readers spew out their drink in disbelief - Pardon what?
For a country which loves complaining about tax, and where half the political campaigning was traditionally about lowering tax, they sure love overcomplicating tax.
It's relatively easy to calculate the maximum someone with only ordinary income needs to pay.
However to pay less you need to understand all of the potential tax deductions, of which there are vastly more than most people realize.
> United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, among other countries.
One should note that the cited study quotes the 45% from a 1992 study. These days, with gig economy and quasi-self-employment, that number is probably higher since you don't have an employer who reports your income for you.
Still, here in Australia, where we have the return-free tax system, adding what you earned from your various gig jobs isn't too hard: you add that as items to the web form: 'I made 15,123 from Uber Eats'. That just gets added to your overall return. I don't see how that's so hard compared to the US?
The issue is the broad range of deductions and credits that depend on things like the composition of your household and your primary residence. Contra some expectations, the IRS does not keep a database of who’s shacking up with whom, where, or if kids are in the picture.
If uber paid you $15123 but you:
Just bought a new bike bc your other was stolen
You paid $1200 for insurance
You bought a helmet and cold weather clothes etc etc.
Those things reduce your taxable income.
Other countries presumably rely on other fraud signals. They might have more visibility into your day-to-day financial transactions, or there might be more of a culture of leaving an anonymous tip if you suspect your neighbor isn't paying a fair share.
They have simplified it nicely, though: if you work from home you can claim a per-hour deduction so you don't have to do the math of wear-and-tear, electricity, internet etc. I think it was $0.6 per hour?
Thankfully(\s), they are simplifying it even further next year and removing whole thing. Now you only get to deduct money if you actually rent an office...