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I tell you how it works in my shitty eastern european country:
That's all. Usually takes less than 5 minutes for the whole process.
This is a joke btw
The most communist part is that the whole process is fully managed by the government tax office, not some 3rd party private company.
The not communist part is that it takes unbelievable amount of corruption to program and maintain these services under the hood. They figured out that it's hard to measure how much human work needed to develop such a thing, so they can just invoice whatever unbelievable amount they want. American companies help with that as well. Windows and Office license for state offices 3-4 times higher than the normal price for consumers, because for some reason they can't buy it directly from Microsoft, they have to buy from local appointed dealers... Actually MS was fined for this for USD 8.7 Million, the local party in one of this deal was promoted to higher government position afterwards.
So actually this doesn't exist for making the peasant's life easier, just to have jobs to steal from.... It's just accidental that our small life becomes a bit less miserable during the process.
In my shit "third world" country (Brasil) you only need to log in the gov site
This is how it works for me. In january the process starts but companies don't have to send you stuff till the end of febuary. In march you can start and look to see if any options are available to do it for free. there are tons but at some point in the process which they often won't auto get things it says woops this piece of paper means not free. Eventually give up and use spreadsheet. Places have to send you paperwork but electronically they can just send you a note saying get it yourself. After filling in the various forms oh and I mean forms because even an ira contribution (thats the conribution you make to live off of in future since the government just does a token thing) can cause you to need to do a schedule even if you are not itemizing (which you need to do if you have a mortgage). Once you have managed to fill it all out and pray you did not miss anything and if you have unfortunately not killed yourself you can send it. If they owe you money you will get it in a month or few or more and if anything is wrong you will find out with a letter that says you know owe all sorts of fees and interest because you did it wrong.
I thought it was crazy that the report had entry on how much money I lost with my investments and that was deducted in my taxes. I've never told them that I've traded stocks and still the tax man knows my money shit better than I do.
In the US, brokerage companies legally have to send you a Form 1099 which covers all investment income over the year. You then include this when submitting your taxes. They probably send a similar report to your government instead.
Strictly speaking, tax filling software, even the free ones, have simplified it all so much that for people who have a single source of income from work and not a lot of tax forms to collect (most Americans), it's pretty trivial. Maybe 30-60 minutes, once a year.
Less than ideal but far from the grueling, soul sucking work I was told would plague my adult life when I was a kid.
That's why the IRS is finally doing their own online filling system. No more making Americans shell out for software, so everyone gets a nice, simple tax season.
Yeah it’s an unpleasant afternoon the majority of which is from the gathering of financial documents not from the math and filling it out. But if you don’t have government form literacy or basic arithmetic skills I imagine the 1040ez still can be rough. My issue with being expected to fill it out is much more connected to the fact that it just sucks to have to do than the fact that it’s difficult. Though also sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass to get your tax statements from a job you quit like a year prior and moved.
Finland is basically "File a report if your income changes enough to affect your tax bracket. You'll be issued a new taxation statement. Send it to the employer. (If unemployed, don't bother, the agency who pays you already knows.) Your employer/the agency will send the taxes owed to us. You'll be sent an annual tax proposal - If you have no deductions, you don't need to do anything, if you do, then it gets mildly interesting. If you get tax returns, you don't need to do anything if we have your bank details. If you owe us, oh boy, we'll let you know, don't worry."
Love the meme but JFC I wish they would just send us a simple invoice (or refund) every year. You know, the way adult nations do things.
They're working on it. They had a pilot program in several states this year.
That's just for free tax filling software, i.e. a government sponsored TurboTax alternative. And that was definitely needed.
What they're talking about is not having to actually do the filling at all, or at least only having to file in certain cases. The government pays for employees that look at your stuff, says "that's the amount", and asks you to confirm.
Granted, with the way tax filing software has advanced, and how simple the vast majority of people's filings are going to be, the difference is not very substantial anymore. The majority of people just need to click through the screens and answer the questions, so it takes a little time but it's hardly a true hassle.
The reason it's been like this in the US for so long is because of the heavy lobbying to keep software like that proprietary and the system complicated enough that people need to use it.
But it's also been because of decades of conservative bullshit refusing to fund the IRS to the degree that they could provide the services that other countries get. IRS literally could not and cannot afford the manpower to handle the taxes of every American for us. Software lets them circumvent that.
In Germany they just keep the money they think you owe them up front. If you think you owe less you have to send in a report proving it. If you owe more (e.g. from cash income) and they find out, you're punished.
It's insanity. I'm sure there's some rationale for it, but it seems like it could be so much simpler.
The rationale is the tax companies want it this way, and pay politicians a lot of money to keep it this way
I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is there is a "tax accounting lobby" that works hard to prevent any measures to simplify it, because they would go out of business. Intuit and others.
Vote for people who will increase funding to the IRS so they can manage all this.
The reason it's been like this for so long is because they don't have the manpower or (until recently) the technology to handle the sheer numbers. Lobbying from TurboTax and shit also played a big part, but even without that, they straight up can't afford to do all this when they've been strangled of funding from decades of conservative legislation.
Yes but no. They have the numbers already reported to them for most of us. A proper database and front end would spit out the magic number. So it's a one time project that they can't fund because of lobbyists. Other countries have had this for decades.
As he said the it's lacks the funding for those tools. The systems were developed in the 70s, developers are retiring and there are less and less people to handle it. I'm order to even do that for everyone the IRS needs an upgrade. I work with these systems everyday.
Last April, I asked the tax man how much I owed, and he said $350. Then I said, "you ain't no tax man! You the loch ness monster!"
Murica wild as always
"why do you think I stopped you today?"
I don't know, do you?
Is it the speed? You were as fast as me.
IRS:
You gotta do a bunch of math, and if you fuck it up, you go to jail
if you fuck it up, you go to jail
No, no you don't. This is an actual child's understanding of how it works.
If you fuck up they often don't even notice unless it's substantial, otherwise they just send you a notice. You have to be willfully refusing to pay taxes for a while, repeatedly, before you're in trouble (tax evasion) or commiting actual tax fraud.
Why would the IRS send you to jail for making mistakes on your taxes? Where taxes are now paying for your incarceration, and you can't work to make the income to pay taxes.
What if I'm just lazy?
This is the kind of thing that both parties should be able to agree on, anyone defending this ridiculous system is likely some kind of corporate shill.
Having a federal website to file has been a great step in the right direction. What's preventing us from going further? Oh, Republicans think it's anti-business because then TurboTax can't make their billions, got it.
One of the many reasons I’m an anarchist.
Two dollars?
jail :(
gaol
What if I only made 2 dollars?
Then maybe somebody only makes a dime and has every right using your companys toilet to do his business.
I love how you presented the IRS as the good guys here
How so? The color trope of "guy in black is the bad guy?"
Interesting how you don't
I’m all about paying my fair share of taxes, but the way our tax laws are set up are utterly asinine, and they’re the way they are because tax prep companies literally spend millions of dollars every year lobbying to keep them complicated, because the complexity is literally the foundational aspect of their entire business model. I am absolutely not going to defend how insane and Byzantine US tax law is, nor should anyone.
You're talking about laws. They're talking about the IRS.
The IRS doesn't make the laws. They're an agency like any other, and a very important one.