this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Bout fuckin time. The tax filing system is such a racket. Paying private companies to do meaningless paperwork for us, with severe consequences if we refuse. Making shit so complicated that you need a professional to figure it out. Etc.

Did you know in other countries you don't have to file taxes, that shit just gets taken care of when you get your wages. But I bet there's still some control freaks and bootlickers who wanna say it's better to do it yourself....

[–] Hestensiermjau 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I live in Norway, and every institution like banks, employers etc reports to the tax authority. My tax papers are prefilled and the only thing I have to do is check that everything is correct. Most times it is, it's just major stuff like buying a house, getting married, moving etc which might entitle you to deductions that's not automatically added. If I don't do anything, the prefilled default is filed on a certain date, so I never even have to sign in and open the tax forms if I don't want to.

If you run your own business as a sole proprietorship taxes gets more complicated, but most people don't do that.

[–] halcyoncmdr 10 points 11 months ago

Oh our system in the US works the exact same way... Except you also have to send the IRS your own version that they will then compare to what your employer and financial institutions sent them. Better send it in too, because they need both versions to compare of course. And if you mess it up they'll check every nook and cranny of your financials and under all your mattresses and couch cushions for that discrepancy.

[–] beebarfbadger 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But how will the companies who make money off the fact that people are forced to line up to get fleeced by them get victims now? Socialism! Communism! Terrorism! I thought this was America!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

lol right. Same reasoning we need more traffic cops so we can write tickets to get money to pay for the traffic cops. Justice!

[–] beebarfbadger 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I resent your slandering of traffic cops as self-serving institution! If each village police force weren't funded with enough military hardware to win a war against a medium-sized country, who would provide the private industrial prison complex with such insane amounts of free slave labour? Do you think all those members of minorities would turn themselves in to provide free work for the owners of those prisons? They sure as hell wouldn't put themselves into the spiral of ever-deepening debt originating from arbitrary legal charges leading to prison stays where they can finally put all that freedom to good use as right-less worker drones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

funded with enough military hardware to win a war against a medium-sized country

private industrial prison complex with such insane amounts of free slave labour

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.