[HN Gopher] Good Riddance, TurboTax. Americans Need a Real 'Free...
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Good Riddance, TurboTax. Americans Need a Real 'Free File' Program
Author : abawany
Score : 325 points
Date : 2021-07-21 04:35 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| bane wrote:
| The way the U.S. tax system is setup is impossibly stupid. The
| government _already_ should have on record all sources of
| possible income you could be making since pretty much all places
| you could be making money are required to send it in anyways. So
| it 's conceivably possible for the IRS to pre-fill your returns
| for you and have you just double check and add anything in that
| they missed -- but it does get complicated very easy outside of
| the trivial "here in my country they just take x% of my income".
| I'm going to guess that almost all of those comments are made by
| people who's earnings come almost entirely _from_ salary /pay,
| but have no idea that lots of people make lots of money in ways
| that are _not_ salary /pay. In some cases it's possible to make
| _most_ of your earnings in ways that external to salary /pay and
| in some cases figuring out what that monetary amount is isn't
| totally trivial.
|
| For example, this is all over the news right now, but suppose
| your company lets you drive a company car? If you only use it to
| drive from home to work or other business related meetings, you
| probably don't need to consider it "income". But what if you can
| use it for all manner of personal activities as well? Maybe then
| it needs to be considered for your taxes. So what's the taxable
| amount of the car? The MSRP x the percent you drive it to non-
| work activities which of course you keep dutifully and precisely
| logged? Why the MSRP? Most people try to negotiate car prices
| under the MSRP. Why not the Blue Book value? In the end, what
| does the government use to consider the car as income in order to
| tax you for it?
|
| In other cases, property ownership, and the layered governmental
| system in the U.S. also complicated things. For example, you
| might get Federal deductions for taxes paid to local governments
| on property you own. But what about locales that don't tax
| property? More importantly, how does the Federal government know
| you own the property at all? What if you own it, but then "loan"
| it out to somebody who uses it exclusively? You're the title
| holder, but should they count it as income a la the previous
| example and now two people are paying taxes on one piece of
| property?
|
| These kinds of scenarios are incredibly common and affect people
| in all socio-economic levels. These kinds of things extend to
| include retirement holdings, investments, cash transactions,
| different kinds of corporate bodies that can affect individuals,
| foreign business/income/investments/etc. and so on.
|
| What Intuit did is take advantage of this messy system, and
| provide some level of organization on it so that people would
| stop seeing and paying for CPAs to do their taxes and could do it
| themselves. They then fed on this like a cancer and the tax
| system started to reflect and assume Intuit was a public service.
| Part of this was the fractured and uncoordinated nature of the
| Federal IRS, State Tax Departments, and local county and city
| level tax systems that don't cooperate at all even though tax
| laws that affect one may affect the others.
|
| In effect, the IRS can't put out a complete tax system because
| the IRS can't process your local tax stuff - the locales need to.
| So the IRS has relied on external non-government organizations to
| do it for them.
| rym_ wrote:
| In 2019 I filed my (Dutch) taxes on my phone, while I was on a
| bus somewhere in the north of Argentina after previously having
| traveled for 20 something hours. It took me about 15 minutes to
| check if the numbers from the government were correct (they were)
| and I was done. Americans are being duped by these predatory
| companies.
| 4cidix wrote:
| last I checked American's have a much more robust economy and
| get far less taxed than Europeans in general. As frustrating as
| the American system and the people in charge are, I would not
| trade it for European style government - which is unfortunately
| the direction we are headed in
| onion2k wrote:
| Here in the UK I don't need to file taxes at all as an
| employee.
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| You would need to if you earned 6 figures. So copying our
| system for the American posters here wouldn't solve their
| problem.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| You can file for self assessment online through HMRC's
| website. It was substantially less complex than the online
| tax filing website I pay in the US.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| That's likely true because like the majority of people, you
| don't make enough money, or wont see enough benefit from the
| effort involved. Anyone earning over PS100k a year is
| required to file a self assessment, and if you've reached
| that point, you also likely have a bunch of tax deductible
| expenses, that even if the PS-value is low, you're going to
| include in your filing since you're doing it anyway.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| This is only true for people earning below a threshold - most
| professionals in the UK will need to file taxes, but
| accountants are very cheap here.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > _most professionals in the UK will need to file taxes,
| but accountants are very cheap here_
|
| I'm guessing you're conflating professionals with
| contractors, as most high earning professionals I know do
| not need an accountant to file their taxes, as it's all
| just done on a self assessment, which is extremely straight
| forward, and there's little opportunity to game that system
| effectively.
|
| Meanwhile contractors operating through Ltd entities (now
| may be hamstrung somewhat with IR35) absolutely should be
| leveraging an accountant to take advantage of the various
| ways to reduce their taxable earnings.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > most high earning professionals I know do not need an
| accountant to file their taxes
|
| Yes you don't need an accountant (and I didn't say that
| you did) but if you want one instead of doing it yourself
| they just about PS100 rather than I don't know how many
| thousand that would cost you in the US.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Likely hundreds rather than thousands through a tax
| preparation service (they're not real accountants.) I
| just use one of the less expensive tax filing websites.
| It's somewhat more complex than filing self assessment
| online in the U.K.
| onion2k wrote:
| _This is only true for people earning below a threshold -
| most professionals in the UK will need to file taxes_
|
| That simply isn't true. An income of PS80,000 puts you in
| the top 4% of adult earners. A salary of PS100,000 is
| probably in the top 2 or 3%.
|
| This was discussed extensively at the last election when
| Labout proposed a new tax rate for people earning over
| PS125k https://election2019.ifs.org.uk/article/labour-s-
| proposed-in...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Worth noting that if someone is a contractor they'll need
| to file taxes, even if they pay themselves a lower wage
| (and thus wouldn't show up in the high earners stats). If
| they're an NHS doctor/nurse who also does some private
| work, same. Or anyone who has more than one employer, or
| is in the gig economy. It's not vast swathes of people,
| but I think it'd be more than 2 or 3%.
| tialaramex wrote:
| No. I don't like paperwork. So, I don't do paperwork.
|
| It can be more _tax efficient_ to file tax paperwork, but
| I don 't want to do paperwork, so I just had an umbrella
| employ me when somebody insisted on hiring me as a
| "contractor" and the umbrella handled the paperwork for
| which of course they keep a fee. As far as the government
| is concerned I just had two PAYE employers, the umbrella
| and my "real" job.
|
| Having multiple employers also does _not_ require filing
| taxes. One of the employers gets given a zero tax code
| and they tax all your pay at full rate, the other one
| gets a normal tax code which reflects your personal
| allowance and other considerations. My tax code was
| oscillating all over the place - but that 's not a
| problem it's all automated.
|
| If you _love_ paperwork you can choose to do all the
| paperwork. Or if you _love_ money and don 't hate
| paperwork maybe you can save a few hundred quid by filing
| and I hope it makes you happy. I hate paperwork, and I
| have plenty of money. So, no, despite earning a _lot_ of
| money and having worked as a contractor I preferred to
| stick with PAYE.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think you need to love paperwork or money. Just
| employ an accountant for a few hours a year.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Filling out paperwork for the accountant to look at is
| _still paperwork_.
|
| The HMRC will take a fair cut of my gross income, which
| is fine, and then _leave me alone_ whereas an accountant
| earns money by bothering me with more paperwork.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The accountant fills out the paperwork for you.
|
| Accountants don't bother you - once a year they ask you
| to sign your accounts.
| consp wrote:
| You employer doesn't know your deductibles in the Netherlands
| due to privacy concerns (and other rules as well), which you
| definitely want to file in most cases since you pay less
| money or get some back. You are also responsible for your
| taxes, if the employer screws up you should check it. This is
| probably different from the UK. It is not a "can't do" but
| more or less a "won't do".
|
| edit: so it's not that different, just a different method of
| doing so. Good to know.
| wdb wrote:
| I wouldn't know what I would be able to get tax relief for
| as an employee. What kind of deductibles?
|
| Guess, I could claim that PS6 per week for Covid work from
| home stuff. Wish you could claim the cost of repairing your
| bike, or public transport costs.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Charitable contributions? How are those treated?
| billpg wrote:
| If I want to give (say) PS100 to a charity, I give PS75
| and sign something agreeing to allow the charity to get
| the rest from the income taxes I already paid.
|
| (I forget the exact percentage.)
| joshuaissac wrote:
| Those are claimed by the recipient under a programme
| called Gift Aid.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| Do I understand correctly that charities report
| contributions to the government, which then adjusts the
| taxes due from the donors? That seems like a good system.
| [deleted]
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than
| the donor. They can claim a top-up of up to 25% of your
| donation from the government, as long as the total amount
| claimed by all donation recipients does not exceed the
| total annual income tax paid by the donor. So if you
| donate PS100 and fill out a declaration saying that you
| 'Gift Aid' that donation, the charity can claim an
| additional PS25 from the government, as long as you paid
| at least PS25 in income taxes that financial year.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than
| the donor.
|
| Half goes to the charity, and half to the donor.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Note that if you're paying in the 40% and/or 45% income
| tax brackets, the charity doesn't know about that, and
| still only gets the 25% topup (equivalent to the 20%
| income tax most people pay).
|
| You can either:
|
| * Gift that remaining amount to HMRC by doing nothing (it
| will not go to the charity)
|
| * Claim it back (I don't know any other way to do this
| other than filing a self assessment)
| beardyw wrote:
| But when you get it back you think - I can give that to
| charity - thus begining a never-ending loop.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I did not know until now that the other 20% could be
| reclaimed by the donor as well, if they paid 40% tax.
|
| If the donor donates that amount as well and we loop
| infinitely, the final amount received by the charity
| would be exactly 1.5625x the originally-donated amount
| (assuming that the HMRC allows arbitrary small fractions
| of a penny to be claimed).
|
| Explanation: if you donate an amount x, the final amount
| would be the infinite series x + sigma(0.25*0.2^(k-1) +
| 0.2^k, k=1, k=inf), which is the sum of two separate
| geometric series, so for each one, we can use the formula
| a/(1-r), where 'a' is the first term (0.25 for the first
| series, 0.2 for the second) and 'r' is the ratio between
| each term (0.2 in both cases).
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Right they can claim 25% but _you_ can also claim another
| 20% back!
| maccard wrote:
| Most of the big ones can be done without a self
| assessment. If you make a pension contribution for
| example, you can call hmrc and tell them and they'll
| adjust your tax code
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Doesn't that more or less equate to doing your taxes,
| just in little updates for each thing, rather than one
| big update at the end of the year?
| maccard wrote:
| Not at all. The list of things you can claim for is very
| limited, and the majority of them are automatically
| applied. Having to actually contact HMRC is a rarity. If
| you are salaried employee with no extra cash coming in,
| you don't need to do anything.
|
| Another example of how the system works - if you are
| working two jobs, both as a regular employee, HRMC will
| instruct your employer as to what your tax deduction
| should be for that paycheck to make sure that things are
| balanced. For <some large number>% of people, this will
| be correct, and if it's not, it will rectify itself over
| 2 or 3 pay periods. If that's _still_ not enough, a phone
| call to HMRC (usually taking less than 10 minuts for the
| two times in a decade I've had to do it) will resolve the
| issue in your next check.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You can claim those, if you use the transport as part of
| your work but notably not for travelling to and from
| work, 20p per mile for the bike.
| philjohn wrote:
| We can deduct far less than you can in the Netherlands -
| mortgage interest for example is deductible for you, but
| not in the UK.
|
| Someone on PAYE will have most of the deductibles handled
| by their employer (pension, any salary sacrifice schemes
| etc).
| teh_klev wrote:
| In the UK, deductibles on mortgage interest payments
| (known as MIRAS[0]) was abolished for private home owners
| in 2000. As a renter this kind of always stuck in my craw
| that homeowners got this preferential treatment and was
| quite glad it was abolished (even after becoming a
| "homeowner").
|
| Oddly, buy-to-let landlords do retain this deductible,
| though HMRC have fiddled around with how this works over
| recent times[1].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_reli
| ef_at_so...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-
| finan...
| philjohn wrote:
| Yes, the BTL sort of makes sense though if you view the
| mortgage as a business expense, but BTL has had a
| distorting effect on the UK housing market for too long -
| changes are desperately needed here, but with so many
| Tory donors being housing firms, it's unlikely to happen.
| pmyteh wrote:
| You tell the tax office of any unusual deductibles, and
| they give your employers a 'tax code' which tells them how
| much allowance to give you (but critically not why, to
| better protect your privacy).
|
| Even this isn't needed in most cases; things are either
| done employer side (paid from pre-tax income, like
| pensions) or directly by the government (basic rate tax is
| semi-automatically added to charitable donations, so only
| higher rate taxpayers need to declare it, and they all fill
| in a short return anyway).
| maccard wrote:
| Your employer doesn't need to know what your deductibles
| are (also the deductibles are much more limited here). If
| you, for example, make a large one off pension
| contribution, HMRC will adjust your tax code, which your
| employer will just apply to your payroll.
| [deleted]
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Same in Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia I think. For most
| people there is nothing to do.
| snorremd wrote:
| Pretty much yeah. I guess there are some deductions which
| need to be filed manually as the government would have no way
| of knowing about them. Like if you have a really long commute
| to work you get to deduct a certain amount per KM from your
| taxes.
|
| But mostly these days, unless you run a company, you don't
| really have to change much about your pre-filled tax
| statement. Only once have I experienced that my housing
| association made addendums to the yearly tax report that
| needed to be changed in my tax statement.
|
| I also lost some money on micro loans last year that
| apparently I had to file deductions for myself, but it
| amounted to so little money that I just let the state keep
| that money.
| hereforphone wrote:
| How complicated were your taxes? Did you work overseas for an
| extended period of time (outside of the EU)? Did you have
| special tax credits to claim, business profits to add, or
| anything else unusual? Simple taxes are relatively easy to file
| in America, too.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Same in France.
|
| But I am going to play devil's advocate here, did you get the
| "best deal"?
|
| It all comes down to deductibles. In France, the "one click
| taxes" option assumes 10% of your salary is deductible, which
| is often a good deal but sometimes, it may actually be more,
| especially if you have a long commute. The government app won't
| help you with that.
|
| It may not help you with incentives too. For example, you may
| get some tax rebates if you did some work to improve the energy
| efficiency of your house, what exactly you can declare? And
| charities, loans, etc... A good accountant may help you save a
| significant amount with all these details.
|
| Tax software are like a middle ground between simple, no
| brainer, government issued "one click" tax filling and hiring a
| professional accountant. Note that in France, most self-
| employed people hire an accountant, proper tax filling can be a
| minefield if you are not an employee.
|
| And by the way, that's Intuit's argument. That it is used to
| justify its evil deeds is a thing, but the argument itself is
| not without merit.
| yunohn wrote:
| > did you get the "best deal"?
|
| From my experience with the NL tax system, next to nothing is
| deductible. Very straightforward taxes, they take 51% of all
| personal income. ;)
| oliwarner wrote:
| AVG income tax in NL is 28%. It's progressively banded like
| most other countries. With complications for withheld
| income (pensions, etc).
| yunohn wrote:
| Could you source the average tax rate number? That's only
| the base tax rate for all income above ~20k.
| oliwarner wrote:
| Honestly, it was a two-second Google for "nl average tax
| rate". I didn't look at it any deeper at the time but the
| source was https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-
| wages-netherlands...
|
| > In the Netherlands, the average single worker faced a
| net average tax rate of 28.7% in 2020, compared with the
| OECD average of 24.8%. In other words, in the Netherlands
| the take-home pay of an average single worker, after tax
| and benefits, was 71.3% of their gross wage, compared
| with the OECD average of 75.2%.
|
| The specific number wasn't as important as pointing out
| that NL doesn't have a magically fixed number (and
| certainly not a high one) for income taxation.
| ninja3925 wrote:
| If this figure is true, do you see the symbolism of it as I
| do? It's not 49%, where the individual will still work
| mostly for themselves but 51%, where the state owns the
| majority of the labor for each individual. I find this
| number chilling.
| tinco wrote:
| The figure is not true, it used to be 51% for income
| above a certain amount (I think 60000?) but now it's
| 49,50% for income above 68000. Even when it was 51%, you
| would have to make more than 500,000 for the total taxes
| to be exceed 50%.
|
| Anyway, what's chilling about it? You're phrasing it in a
| very weird way, the state doesn't own labor. It is due
| taxes for its services rendered.
|
| The Netherlands is ridiculously rich and the government
| takes very good care of its citizens. I think it's hard
| to imagine for Americans how much value we get from our
| government. Traveling from The Netherlands to the states.
| Even your richest cities have poor people hungry,
| suffering and distressed just camping around everywhere.
| I'm not saying we've got it perfect, but I'm pretty happy
| with the deal we got.
| yunohn wrote:
| The 500k figure is quite misleading. Sure that's for 51%,
| but anything over 100k, it already exceeds 40%. That's
| still a huge number.
|
| There are tons of poor and hungry people in NL, and the
| gov is actively hostile to homelessness. There's lots of
| municipal corruption, and central inefficiency. I know
| lots of Dutch citizens who are in student debt, and very
| few families who can afford to buy a home before 35.
|
| It's a fallacy that somehow this is the /the/ tax rate
| that can provide for citizens. There is no magic number,
| and we can always demand more efficiency.
| tinco wrote:
| To me it's simple. My tax as someone trying to get a
| startup to work is about 30%, it would be 22% in the US.
| That means I pay 8% extra to be largely abstracted from
| the harsh reality of the suffering of the unlucky and
| disadvantaged.
|
| Check this video out:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKo8Sv99MkM That's about
| Skid Row, it's how one of the US's richest cities deals
| with the disadvantaged.
|
| Dutch citizens with student debt.. that's a joke right?
| yunohn wrote:
| To add on to my other comment -
|
| Student debt:
|
| https://nltimes.nl/2020/10/27/average-student-loan-
| eu700-per...
|
| "An average loan of 700 euros per month means that study
| debts of 50,000 euros are no longer an exception. (...)
| It makes sense that students work more due to higher
| costs of room rent and tuition fees and less income
| thanks to the lack of the basic grant."
|
| Home ownership:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home
| _ow...
|
| The NL and USA differ in home ownership by ~4% (69 vs
| 65.3). That's not statistically significant to be honest.
|
| ---
|
| There's a lot of myths in Dutch society, and the majority
| of people are not aware of reality.
| tinco wrote:
| I have a student debt of over 40,000 euro. Because I have
| a job I pay 250 euros per month on it. My partner has a
| similar debt, but because she does not have a job she
| doesn't make any payments. Does it suck, yeah. Does it
| make us poor or hurt us in any significant way? No.
|
| It's a joke, because student debt is a sign of wealth,
| not of poverty. My government invested almost 50,000 euro
| into giving me plenty of time and space to study. I was
| able to live as a student for 7 years, usually working
| less than 12 hours per week to supplement the loan. I
| leveraged that loan into getting an education is super
| valuable, if I wanted to I could take a job double my
| current salary and live very comfortably in Amsterdam.
|
| Different story for my partner perhaps, but if she never
| makes income, after a certain amount of time her loan
| will be forgiven even without her ever making payments.
|
| I don't know how home ownership is correlated to poverty.
| It's tied to wealth, sure, and it's a very bad thing that
| it's so low. But the average renting person in The
| Netherlands lives very comfortably, so not owning a home
| is not a strong indicator for poverty.
|
| Homelessness, that's the indicator you're looking for.
| But you are right, it seems I am living in a bubble,
| because there's a severe problem with homelessness in The
| Netherlands right now.
| https://nltimes.nl/2020/02/17/homelessness-netherlands-
| doubl...
|
| According to wikipedia there's more registered homeless
| people in The Netherlands than there are in the states, I
| don't know how to make sense of that because the scenes I
| saw in SF, Portland and SLC were unlike anything I've
| seen in any wealthy European country. It made me think of
| Hungary and Romania.
| yunohn wrote:
| > abstracted from the harsh reality of the suffering of
| the unlucky and disadvantaged
|
| > Dutch citizens with student debt.. that's a joke right?
|
| To be brutally honest, both these statements lead me to
| believe that you live in a bubble within NL.
|
| I personally know tons of Dutchies in both situations,
| and I have a feeling you might (unknowningly) as well.
| Might be worth expanding your social circle if not.
| pksebben wrote:
| > very few families who can afford to buy a home before
| 35
|
| So, imagine knowing very few families who can afford to
| buy a home. Like, at all. So long as we're still
| comparing the Netherlands and the US, I don't think
| there's much of a contest.
|
| That said, the central thrust of your comment holds true;
| always room for improvement.
| yunohn wrote:
| > I don't think there's much of a contest.
|
| Now, this may surprise you, since you haven't bothered to
| research it (1), but NL and USA differ in home ownership
| by ~4% (69 vs 65.3). That's not statistically significant
| to be honest.
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ho
| me_owne...
| Hokusai wrote:
| > where the state owns the majority of the labor for each
| individual
|
| I guess that it all depends what do you get back. To live
| in a well functioning society is worth a kingdom.
|
| In many places your landlord owns more than half of your
| income, that could be more worrisome. At least I can vote
| for my representants in the government.
|
| Finally, I pay over 50% on part of my salary in Sweden,
| with what I have left I have an awesome live and extra to
| save, so I will not complain.
| yunohn wrote:
| > In many places your landlord owns more than half of
| your income
|
| My understanding of rent in both Sweden and the
| Netherlands, is that of any EU capital: easily 30-50% of
| your monthly income goes to landlords.
|
| Could you clarify your view on this?
| Hokusai wrote:
| Meanwhile other markets were heavenly corrected around
| 2009-2015 after the housing crush Sweden came out quite
| unscratched. Low interest rates also have created an
| incentive to invest in housing for the average citizen.
| On the other side construction companies in Sweden are
| quite shy to build new housing as investment goes to
| other more profitable industries, Sweden is below EU
| average in construction. Finally Sweden population have
| grown more than the EU average.
|
| So, the swedish housing availability is insufficient and
| prices reflect that. It is an imbalance that is difficult
| to solve short term. And probably also overpriced as the
| interest rates are low and predicted to be low.
| yunohn wrote:
| I read your comment twice, but I still don't see any
| agreement about the high rents going to landlords in
| Sweden. Perhaps you bought a house a while ago, and have
| been insulated from this crisis. Either way, you can't
| deny reality...
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Marginal tax rates in California also reach this level.
| Health insurance is not included.
| tinco wrote:
| I'm Dutch as well. A couple of years ago my university fees
| were made tax deductible, I'm hazy on the details but
| basically I dropped out of my masters degree to work on a
| startup. Normally if you finish your degree some of your
| costs are relieved by the government with some loan
| forgiveness scheme. After 5 years or so they decided I
| definitely wasn't finishing that degree and all my university
| costs were suddenly tax deductible.
|
| Obviously I had no idea of this scheme, I have no accountant
| and my university fees of 5 years ago were far from my mind.
|
| Randomly got EUR6000 euros income tax back, very nice
| windfall courtesy of the Netherlands government.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| That seems like a surprisingly large amount of money. I
| thought university wasn't that expensive there (enough that
| the deduction of the income saved 6000 euros on taxes). Did
| you mean it became a tax credit and you just got all the
| money you paid in fees back?
| tinco wrote:
| Yeah it was all of it for three years, education costs
| are 100% deductible, so if it was 3 years at 2000/yr
| (standard university rate back then) it would be 6000
| total. I forgot the exact amount because in that same
| year I also bought a house and there's a bunch of tax
| deductibles there as well, I think I got back over 8000
| in total that year.
|
| Normally the final dues are a lot less, probably 0 for
| people who have no mutations and a regular job. I had to
| pay 300 euro this year because I did a single freelance
| gig on the side.
|
| edit: Note that this is probably a very exceptional
| situation. Normally college students don't make enough
| money to be paying taxes in the first place, I had the
| perfect storm of having all the deductibles being
| applicable in a single year, and making a good wage that
| year. I'm just telling this story because it's an example
| of the system randomly giving me the sort of tax benefit
| even a dedicated accountant might have missed, just
| because it system applied its rules to all the
| information it has about me.
| EE84M3i wrote:
| In the US that's called a "tax credit". A "deduction" is
| something that reduces the amount of income used for tax
| calculations.
|
| So I thought you meant you got 6000 back because your
| university fees became deductable. At 25% tax rate, that
| would be 24,000 in fees. It sounds like you got a tax
| credit.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| And yet all those deductions are possible in France. You make
| it sound like they'd be impossible to claim with that system.
| surge wrote:
| I believe the way it works here (US), is most people with the
| standard deduction works for probably 80-90% of cases because
| their finances aren't complex enough or they're not doing
| enough where the deductions exceed the standard. So most
| would be fine with government just telling you what you
| owe/they owe and you just signing off or making a correction.
|
| If you're doing a lot of charity donations, real estate,
| student loan debt, saving receipts for work related expenses,
| calculating depreciation on assets, etc, then its worth it,
| but by then you probably have a personal accountant doing it
| for you, not a program.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Also factor in the removal of the State and Local Tax
| deduction. Prior to that I ended up writing off my CA taxes
| instead of taking the standard deduction.
|
| I'll save my personal political ranting for a different
| space.
|
| Addressing the GP, yeah our system has been messed with by
| the tax prep companies. One year I had a complicated (for
| me) tax situation and I hired a CPA. They managed to make a
| mistake that lead me to overpaying by thousands. The IRS
| was nice enough to mail me a check.
|
| The IRS clearly has enough info to run a European style
| system. We (as a country) just underfund the IRS and have
| special interest vested in maintaining the status quo.
| Clearly those special interests are doing a great job if
| someone with a state certification and professional tax
| software can mess up the math. A friend had the same issue
| with this past tax year and owes a balance plus penalties.
| She has every intention of paying her taxes. Why does our
| system make it hard for her to do so?
|
| There's no good reason why we should have to chance these
| situations. We should just be able to pay our taxes
| correctly at time we are paid and move on.
| [deleted]
| brezelnbitte wrote:
| The reason your taxes are simpler though is because the Dutch
| government doesn't use the tax system to implement policy like
| the US does. The US Congress uses the tax system to influence
| social policy as well as to deliver benefits for specific
| groups and industries. And over time all of these legislative
| additions have turned a simple revenue raising system into a
| complex mess of deductions and credits.
|
| Now I am not defending turbo tax's predatory actions in the
| past but it's not complicating the tax system just taking
| advantage of it being complicated.
| mjburgess wrote:
| To add to this even further:
|
| In europe we just directly regulate behaviour either by
| directly taxing it or making it illegal.
|
| In the US they set tax levels _much higher_ and then offer
| breaks as _incentives_.
|
| The latter has the philosophical virtue of making behaviour
| "expensive but not illegal" (ie., in europe you cannot
| legally avoid the tax).
|
| However it dramatically complicates government and makes US
| citizens dramatically "overtaxed" absent these breaks. What
| we in europe often miss is that the US anti-tax lobby is
| reacting to a very different tax environment that is, on
| paper, very extreme.
| specialist wrote:
| What does neutral social policy taxation look like? Which
| countries should the USA emulate?
| guerrilla wrote:
| Sweden uses tax policy to influence things and our taxes are
| just as easy. The state knows most stuff and then we just go
| in and adjust the default.
|
| So, no, the reason is that they have all the information
| already and for most people just need you to verify it. In
| the US, the tax companies are lobbying the government to keep
| it difficult. The subject has been covered on HN every year
| during tax season.
| azemetre wrote:
| Aren't like >70% of the populations taxes extremely simple
| tho? Most people are just taking the standard deduction and
| not much else.
|
| Most of the complications in tax policy are affecting a small
| minority of people and corporations.
| aksss wrote:
| Yeah if you work a W-2 job and the company is making tax
| deductions from your paycheck, your taxes are pretty
| simple. If you have a mortgage, you can deduct the
| interest. I think most people are in this category. Taxes
| just start getting complicated proportionate to the
| creative compensation some jobs offer - deferred stock
| purchase programs, etc., - or if you have some complicated
| deduction or third-party income sources.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| > If you have a mortgage, you can deduct the interest. I
| think most people are in this category
|
| That's true, but you need to have other deductions or a
| fairly large mortgage for it to be worth taking that
| deduction instead of the standard deduction. Most people
| are better off with the standard deduction.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| US has twenty times more people than Netherlands.
|
| A fairer comparison would be with the tax system of a small US
| state or a large city in the US.
|
| Edit: Downvoted as it goes against the narrative, lol.
| aksss wrote:
| People always gloss over the massive scale differences when
| comparing the US to European countries, whether it's prisons,
| taxes, healthcare, etc. It's like, show me the system
| operating as well with 5x the population before even joking
| that it should work as efficiently at 10x, much less 20x.
| Call me when you're filing EU taxes as individuals in
| addition to your nation-state taxes.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| That should just make it easier to afford an automated system
| because you can spread out the cost across more people.
| u678u wrote:
| Its not the predatory companies that are the problem its the US
| tax system. If it was possible for people to "check the numbers
| from the government" on an app, it would happen here too.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It is somewhat known that these companies continue to lobby
| to keep it complicated enough to require their services.
| viraptor wrote:
| Of course it's possible. The government will charge you if
| you filled out the forms wrong, so they have a lot available
| - instead they could prefill a lot of the information.
| warricksothr wrote:
| It absolutely is a problem of predatory companies spending
| money on lobbying against simpler tax code. An equal share of
| the blame is on the politicians accepting these "legal"
| bribes against the interests of their constituents.
|
| Lobbyists were supposed to be for promoting the interests of
| small groups that might not have the representation among a
| politicians constituents to warrant paying attention to.
| Instead we have rampant and excessive spending by
| corporations that lobby to keep their monopolies over
| segments of the market that harm American citizens.
|
| - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-
| sp... - https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-
| could-be-fre... - https://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-
| lobbies-lawmakers-t...
| u678u wrote:
| > In 2016 alone, Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, spent $2
| million on lobbying, ProPublica reports. H&R Block spent $3
| million, some of it on the same efforts.
|
| I'm not convinced $5m a year would make such a big impact.
| LanceH wrote:
| TurboTax is buying influence...who is selling? _They_ are
| the problem.
| jeltz wrote:
| No, both are the problem. Look at how we solved bribes.
| We made it illegal both to give and to accept.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I strongly suspect that it's not the $5m/yr these
| companies are spending that's doing it; there's basically
| three other camps who push (directly or indirectly) for
| this:
|
| * Special-interest groups whose preferential tax
| treatment might be threatened if there's a push to
| simplify the tax code (as having the government do the
| taxes for you kind of requires the taxes be simpler to do
| so).
|
| * Ideologues who hate government spending but don't think
| that tax cuts count as spending.
|
| * Anti-tax crusaders who want to make filing taxes
| painful so there's more grassroots support for cutting
| taxes. (Think Grover Norquist here).
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The companies spend an enormous amount of money lobbying to
| ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen, so yeah,
| they're culpable.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| With all the wrongs about Turbo Tax and monopolizing tax filing
| - criticisms are appropriate. That said, I much prefer the US
| system. The US IRS already knows what how much tax an indiviual
| owes just like the Dutch government. Having to manually file
| taxes is a feature, not a bug IMO. The only difference is that
| the US IRS assumes you'd want to itemize and customize your tax
| return _by default_ whereas the Dutch government makes standard
| deductions the default. I wouldn 't want the government to just
| send me a number of what I owe. Sure you can challenge it, but
| I prefer the default to be that the citizen files taxes and the
| government can tally up the proposed taxes against the data
| they have and either accept or challenge it.
|
| However, this Turbo Tax monopoly needs to go. There should be a
| free (OSS) software that can file the taxes.
| natex wrote:
| Not sure why this comment is getting downvoted. Seems like a
| rational opinion? What am I missing?
| aliswe wrote:
| "disagree, lets downvote"
| e12e wrote:
| Probably? I don't really agree with gp, but up-voted, as
| it reads like a reasonable argument. Normally I'd
| probably neither up or down vote, but I generally browse
| with "show dead" - and it's sad to see comments down
| voted to oblivion when users offer an opinion that's just
| slightly against the consensus. Without dissenting
| opinions there's not much debate left. /meta
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yup. I have come to realize that not seeing any
| dissenting opinions is scary and terrifying. So thanks
| for being charitable in this pursuit. There are a lot of
| ideas on HN that get no pushback and mob mentality that I
| want to challenge and contest. I don't think tax filing
| process is that bad but it is magnetizing to say "I filed
| my taxes while on a bus on a vacation" than to dig into
| the deeper implications of what that means.
|
| To be honest, I objectively like Dutch system for simple
| taxes similar to 1040EZ form in USA. I philosophically
| and ideologically oppose it. And, furthermore, I have no
| faith in our government and its ability to run
| efficiently.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It's not a rational opinion. It's based on not
| understanding how the process works in other countries.
| jeltz wrote:
| That the word challange is overly dramatic plus technically
| incorrect (adding a deduction that the government could not
| possibly know of is not a challenge). In actuality you just
| add any missing deductions, double check the numbers and
| then submit. His proposed system is just busy work.
|
| That said I did not downvote.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I've outlined the reasons here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27908298
|
| The problem is that I am not a tax expert and but it
| rings a lot of alarm bells of expansion of government
| power.
|
| We're effectively bandwagoning behind Netherland's system
| while ignoring the massive differences between levels of
| government, size of population and scale, and the overall
| law making process.
|
| All for a stupendous reason = Ease of filing. Filing
| taxes on a bus while on vacation is such a outrageously
| insignificant 'feature'.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| It's more of an oligopoly than a monopoly as you can pay
| TaxAct or TaxSlayer or H&R Block, etc if you don't want to
| pay TurboTax. The issue is that the IRS could relatively
| easily provide online federal tax filing as a free service
| but they choose not to compete with the tax prep industry.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| You don't seem to understand how things work. The government
| would send you a pre-filled tax return that contains
| everything they already know. You would check that and could
| then make amendments as needed. It doesn't make sense to view
| it as a feature to have to put in the work to fill a tax
| return from scratch while the government already knows what
| should be there and will check it.
|
| Like In every negotiation the advantage is on the side of the
| party who has the most information. The government first
| disclosing what they know gives you as taxpayer an advantage.
| distances wrote:
| There's no advantage though as you have to pay the same
| taxes in any case. It's about convenience.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Yes. And overall the country saves a lot of unnecessary
| work.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Have you ever been to a DMV in the USA and see how
| dysfunction it is?
|
| So many reasons why I don't support this. Ease of filing is
| one of the aspects, rather small for me.
|
| 1) USA's government is far more incompetent than Dutch
|
| 2) If US IRS sends me a prefilled tax form with erroneous
| income, say off by 10%, sure I can correct it and file it
| but now the onus of proof is on the citizen to disprove the
| error. You might say 'Ok, it is just prefiling it, you can
| always correct it' - future laws will ask for proof.
|
| 3) For a small and nimble country like Netherlands it works
| very well. Voicing concerns in Netherlands is direct and
| easy. Not here, USA would mess this up big time.
|
| 4) Ideologically, I have issues. It would be extremely
| orweillian and big-brotherish to get a tax bill from the
| government - yes I know its just 'pre-filling the boxes'
| but it will creep up from there.
|
| 5) I hate paying for Turbo Tax but there is no denying - it
| works extremely well. USA's federal system with 100%
| gaurantee would not be as good. We need to go open source,
| not put more power in the hands of the massively
| incompetent IRS and more generally Federal Government.
|
| 6) Local and State taxes - this would mean absolutely a
| patch work of systems that are supplied by shitty software
| companies to local and state governments. Hard pass.
|
| 7) Laws would creep up and change to not just say pre-fill
| the tax forms but would require massive effort from the
| citizen to disprove the government. If the filing process
| initiates from the citizen, the government has to go out on
| a limb to prove that it's incorrect which is how it should
| be.
|
| 8) I would support ease of filing taxes. But hey! We have
| that. It is called 1040EZ which takes no more than 10 mins
| for simple taxes. No software required.
|
| 9) I prefer totally offline tax filing. I use Turbo Tax but
| always print out the tax forms. You might think this is old
| fashioned but I like doing things old fashioned way. I
| don't want to digitize anything especially when it comes to
| automated shitty SaaS hired by the government, I have zero
| confidence.
|
| 10) Even without OSS, I just think that $79 + $____ owed
| taxes is the marginal rate. $79 -> goes to private industry
| (Turbo Tax, which does a great job) and $_____ owed to the
| government. I don't want tax payer money to fund a massive
| national 'prefiling' tax program. I would support getting
| rid of $79 effective flat tax that _only goes to_ Turbo
| Tax.
|
| If the only advantage is the 'pre-filling' part, then I
| much prefer assembling the data (W2, 1099s, etc) myself and
| file taxes. Period.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "If the only advantage is the 'pre-filling' part, then I
| much prefer assembling the data (W2, 1099s, etc) myself
| and file taxes. Period."
|
| Why? The government gives you all they know and you can
| then accept, amend or totally rewrite the return. I don't
| see the downside to this.
|
| "2) If US IRS sends me a prefilled tax form with
| erroneous income, say off by 10%, sure I can correct it
| and file it but now the onus of proof is on the citizen
| to disprove the error. You might say 'Ok, it is just
| prefiling it, you can always correct it' - future laws
| will ask for proof."
|
| The burden of proof is on you already when you write your
| return from scratch. It gets compared to what they know
| already which is the data a prefilled return would
| contain.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| In Norway the system is similar to the Netherlands. I think
| you are missing the part where it is mind numbingly easy to
| go in and add your own deductions. Also, you aren't
| challenging the amount you owe, you are simply adjusting it.
|
| Having filed taxes in America and Norway, the American system
| is designed to make you fail and to use paid for nonsense to
| do something that is incredibly easy.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I spent a year working in Norway and forgot to tell the tax
| authorities to give me my return in English. Made do by
| typing stuff into Google translate. Still took less time
| than filing my US taxes does now.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > The US IRS already knows what how much tax an indiviual
| owes just like the Dutch government.
|
| Citation very much needed; that's not true for anyone running
| a business (even a side business), for anyone with shares of
| stock purchased before Jan 1, 2011 or mutual funds before Jan
| 1, 2012, and many other not uncommon situations.
| andi999 wrote:
| "I always feel like somebody's watching me
|
| And I have no privacy (ooh ooh)
|
| I always feel like somebody's watching me
|
| Who's playing tricks on me?
|
| And I don't feel safe anymore, oh, what a mess
|
| I wonder who's watching me now (who?), the IRS?"
| unishark wrote:
| Did the parent comment about the Netherlands also apply to
| business owners? I have dealt with business taxes in other
| countries besides the US (though not Netherlands) and you
| absolutely are expected to hire an accountant to do it. It
| may well be impossible to file them otherwise. In the US
| for the most common businesses you can do pass-through
| taxation and just add a schedule to your regular return.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Even in a pass-through business that can use schedule C
| or E, this part is still almost always false: "IRS
| already knows what how much tax an [individual] owes".
| They almost never have enough information to correctly
| and completely fill out schedule C or E for you.
| unishark wrote:
| Sure but the point was the comparison to the Dutch
| system, hence the "...like the Dutch government" part of
| that sentence. So while its great to make sure people are
| clear about describing tax laws here on the internets, it
| may not be an aspect of the argument that is relevant.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I read that sentence most plainly as having two claims:
| The IRS has enough information to prepare returns for US
| individuals. This is similar to the Dutch ability claimed
| above.
|
| Rather than as "the IRS has the same limitations in
| individual tax return preparation as the Dutch system".
|
| (GP then goes on to claim that while the IRS has this
| ability, they are philosophically opposed to this
| becoming the standard method of tax preparation, which
| further biases me to thinking that the first reading was
| their intent.)
| koyote wrote:
| > Sure you can challenge it, but I prefer the default to be
| that the citizen files taxes and the government can tally up
| the proposed taxes against the data they have and either
| accept or challenge it.
|
| But why? Both have the same outcome but one is more work and
| costs more as well as has a greater chance of you getting it
| wrong and being fined in the process.
|
| Would you also prefer supermarkets to make you calculate the
| total amount you owe when you get to the cashier, making sure
| you applied all promotions and frequent shopper deductions
| manually?
| [deleted]
| raptor99 wrote:
| That's awesome! In 2006 I did the same thing with Turbotax for
| free at my PC at my desk in 15 minutes. I'm sure I could have
| started doing it on my phone once I got a smartphone but opted
| not to.
| dustymcp wrote:
| this is crazy..
| todfox wrote:
| Not to cut Intuit any slack, but in my mind there already is a
| useful free file program. I've been totally satisfied with Free
| File Fillable Forms for many years. I wouldn't trust the guided
| programs even if they were free.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| It's probably worth noting in this context that Free File
| Fillable Forms is also run by Intuit, despite not being branded
| as an Intuit product.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I've use TurboTax before, but this year I used freetaxusa.com and
| it worked really well. I actually did my taxes in both of them to
| verify the numbers were the same (in TurboTax, you only pay to
| submit your return and by exploring the UI you can find a preview
| of your full return before paying). The numbers matched, so I
| submitted via freetaxusa.com for $0.
|
| I think the anti-TurboTax argument makes sense, but with a free
| alternative like freetaxusa.com the idea that the IRS should
| prepare on our behalf is slightly less compelling.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Been using them for about a decade with no issues. Highly
| recommend them. I will also happily pay them the ~$14 for the
| State Income tax filing as well (Federal is free).
| maininformer wrote:
| I went into freetaxusa this year from turbotax expecting clunky
| ui, but I was surprised how nicely it looked and worked.
| Moreover, there is this sense of they want you to succeed in
| filing and understanding your taxes versus bying the next tier.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Credit Karma (owned by Intuit) is totally free. FreeTaxUSA has
| been free for 15 years. There is no shortage of actually free
| ways to file taxes.
| cable2600 wrote:
| I used Turbo Tax Home and Business for my income and small
| business. The federal part is free the state filing cost costs
| money. Does this mean I have to pay to file federal taxes then
| when I next buy Turbo Tax?
| chrismcb wrote:
| I thought only the 1040ez version for individuals was free. The
| small business version always had a coat associated with it
| JonathonW wrote:
| If you pay for TurboTax, you're paying to file-- the cost to
| e-file is included in the price of the software.
|
| Free File is a separate thing, and provides both free prep
| software and free filing for eligible returns. This is the
| program that Intuit left.
| badmadrad wrote:
| Good Riddance, Tax. Americans Need Real Freedom.
|
| https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-all-offers
|
| If you can't figure out how to choose one of the above, I don't
| know what to tell you.
| toastal wrote:
| Let's not forget the US and Eritrea are the only countries still
| taxing citizens abroad. You can escape the country and still have
| this tax bullshit, but now it's even more complicated because
| you're filing from abroad. Then a lot of the free options become
| unavailable strictly from filing from a non-US location.
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| Pretty ironic given the countries creators were fleeing the
| British to escape this bullshit
| wil421 wrote:
| Every time this is brought up I will ask the same question.
|
| Has anyone personally had to pay taxes to the US while living
| abroad? Not talking about a stock sale or business sale.
| Talking about making income abroad and owning the US for it. I
| don't want to hear about your friend of a friend, you
| personally.
|
| I've known people living in places like Costa Rica, China, and
| all over Europe. No one had to pay a cent ever.
| mwarkentin wrote:
| I was a dual us / Canadian citizen who have *never lived or
| worked in the US*.
|
| I revoked my citizenship 2 years ago, after going through a
| stock sale here in Canada.
|
| The process:
|
| - cost me around $20,000 for the lawyer, accountants (had to
| go back and do 5-6 years of taxes), another $3,000 (I think?)
| to the US for the revocation process
|
| - had to go to the Bahamas in order to get an appointment at
| an embassy, I never got a response from the ones here (this
| was the best part, nice little vacation during Canadian
| winter xD)
|
| - cost more tens of thousands in Canadian tax as I couldn't
| claim all of my tax deductions in Canada for the year of the
| sale of it would've pushed me over 25,000 owing on the US
| side and meant I'd have had to pay (there's a program for
| clearing up to 25,000 owing taxes when you revoke now)
|
| - the IRS fucked up and came back to me this year as owing so
| I'm continuing to pay the accountants to deal with that for
| me
|
| - caused untold amounts of stress for myself and my wife
|
| I had previously basically ignored the whole situation as it
| seemed entirely ridiculous that I should have to deal with
| this, however the US has started forcing foreign banks to ask
| their customers about their citizenship status. It didn't
| seem smart to lie about this to my bank (who also happens to
| be my wife's employer), so it seemed like I may have been
| ending up on the IRS radar at some point regardless.
|
| All in all an entirely SHIT situation even though technically
| I probably never would've owed outside of your caveats about
| a stock sale. Had I been compliant it would've cost me in
| money and time each year.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I know if you're born from a US parent you get citizenship,
| but what's stopping them from only filing for the birth of
| a Canadian child in Canada and never acknowledging they
| have American citizenship? As long as you don't get a birth
| certificate and SSN in the US, the IRS will never know.
| mwarkentin wrote:
| I had a birth certificate, my parents thought it would be
| potentially helpful for me (this was also almost 40 years
| ago so a lot of these extra compliance requirements
| didn't exist back then).
|
| We were concerned that my kids would also potentially be
| US citizens but it seems like I would have to have lived
| there for some amount of time for that to kick in.
| jfb wrote:
| You do have to apply for an acknowledgement of US
| citizenship for your kids, and when they're 18, they have
| the choice of renouncing US citizenship without all the
| bullshit hassle adults face.
| nraynaud wrote:
| Yes I hit the minimum taxation rate in the US. And I just had
| a green card.
| BrentOzar wrote:
| > Has anyone personally had to pay taxes to the US while
| living abroad?
|
| Yes, I'm living in Iceland at the moment and paying income
| taxes in the US.
|
| Iceland has a teleworker visa that lets you live here tax-
| free while working remotely for your current employer. That's
| a fantastic deal for most countries, but I'm not saving any
| money while we're here. (We're not doing it to save money,
| just doing it to social distance and enjoy the scenery.)
| wil421 wrote:
| That's not the same you are still considered as working in
| the US. You just happen to be staying in a foreign country.
| BrentOzar wrote:
| I own my own business, and I sell online training. I'm
| not working in the US - I'm working in Iceland, selling
| to people globally, and still paying income tax in the
| US.
| jfb wrote:
| Yes. Most of my tax is covered by reciprocal tax treaties
| between my country of residence (Canada) and the US, but I
| still have to file, and differences in tax regimes mean that
| there are decisions my family has to take that other
| families, in the same situation but without a US citizen,
| don't. For instance, if we sell our house, I will have to pay
| capital gains in the US, but not in Canada (it's our primary
| residence and gains from that sale are not taxable in
| Canada).
|
| It's a minor inconvenience _for me_ , but that's because we
| pay an accountant to handle a relatively complicated tax
| picture already.
| mwarkentin wrote:
| The US also recognizes RRSP in the tax treaty but not TFSA
| so that's a pretty major retirement planning tool that's
| off the table.
| jfb wrote:
| Yep.
| valtism wrote:
| I met someone running an AirBnB in London who was in the
| process of revoking his US citizenship because he was being
| taxed by the US despite not working there or having any
| business there. What blew me away is that he was having to
| pay thousands of pounds to _revoke_ his citizenship. From an
| admittedly naive standpoint that seems like a real rort.
| mattjaynes wrote:
| Yes, I pay taxes living abroad. Any US citizen overseas that
| earns over $107,600 in 2020 (changes slightly every year) may
| be liable to pay US taxes (depending on what other deduction
| they may have, etc)[1].
|
| There is the direct financial cost of paying US taxes when
| living abroad, but it is also a significant cost in time and
| energy to file taxes for 2 countries. It can get pretty
| complex, so many need to hire a tax service to handle it
| properly.
|
| Then there are the additional reporting requirements for any
| banks that you have accounts with, so some banks will not
| allow you to have an account with them because you are a US
| citizen.
|
| The point is that there are some real downsides to
| maintaining US citizenship when living overseas.
|
| There are many upsides of course, like being able to return
| to the US at any time and live and work there. If there were
| an emergency situation, I could probably count on the US
| embassy to help me evacuate if necessary.
|
| Overall, it's a cost/benefit evaluation. If you have
| citizenship in another advantageous country (or country in a
| powerful union like the EU) and significant resources, I can
| see why it would be tempting for some to drop the US
| citizenship.
|
| [1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/figu...
| wil421 wrote:
| How much taxes do you pay to the US?
|
| Yes the US will help get you out when you need to. Hostage
| rescue by special forces in Nigeria[1]. State Department
| Wuhan evacuation in Jan 2020[2]. 100,000 people evacuated
| by State Department as of June 2020.[3]
|
| [1] https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-
| military/2020/10/31/...
|
| [2] https://www.state.gov/the-untold-coronavirus-story
|
| [3] https://washdiplomat.com/as-coronavirus-spread-state-
| departm...
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Except dropping your us citizenship may prevent you from
| ever stepping foot in the US again, if things like the
| SAFER Act [0] were to actually pass. Additionally,
| renouncing puts your name in criminal databases, and
| probably has lots of other downsides compared to someone
| that just never had citizenship in the first place. Not to
| mention all the accidental Americans that never stepped
| foot in the US!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Amendment_(immigrati
| on)?w...
| diognesofsinope wrote:
| The threshold is > ~100k living abroad to pay taxes.
|
| Almost nobody pays this. Moreover, it's not ridiculous that if
| you're a tycoon traveling the world and you're implicitly using
| US citizenship as your escape card, you should pay taxes.
|
| Anyone who has lived abroad knows most countries don't want to
| jail/detain other country nationals.
| toastal wrote:
| That's _if_ you take the expatriot exemption. Doing so has
| many implications including not being able to legally
| contribute to an IRA or SEP account. Even with the exemption,
| you still owe taxes on Social Security and Medicare. Social
| Security checks ship abroad, but the Medicare is not
| redeemable nor are there any exemptions for it. There 's been
| years of editorials of regular Joe retirees not realizing
| this til late that they paid Medicare their whole lives to
| get in a big medical bind in another country.
| viraptor wrote:
| > if you're a tycoon traveling the world
|
| You've got a biased view here. This is not a tycoon level of
| earnings. That's a standard citizen who moved abroad and
| works as a (senior) software engineer.
| jwr wrote:
| > Almost nobody pays this.
|
| Do you have statistics to back this bold claim?
|
| There is an additional problem in the form of FBAR/FATCA
| requirements, which impose a _huge_ burden on taxpayers
| abroad. Ever tried to report the exact max amounts and
| interest in all of your accounts? It 's not fun, it takes a
| lot of time and effort, and it costs money.
| toastal wrote:
| The FBAR issue means you have to report if at any time you
| had more than $10k, a number that hasn't changed since the
| 80s I think, as if you are a criminal for keeping a
| reasonable amount of money in savings for a place you
| reside. I know Democrats Abroad has been trying to push to
| remove the FBAR requirement at least to some extent for
| banks in the same country you filed your taxes from in.
| It's not a tax haven if you spend all of your time living
| there.
|
| Not only this but it's difficult to open accounts abroad as
| an American because foreign banks _really_ don 't want to
| deal with filing all of this paperwork for the IRS.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I don't even owe anything and I still have to waste time and
| money filing! And they just keep making getting rid of
| citizenship more and more expensive! So authoritarian.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I found submitting my tax in "Third World" South Africa so easy.
| Just log on to the website and submit. Most of the information is
| already there provided by the employer.
| pdinny wrote:
| 100% agree. The argument presented in many other threads seems
| to reason that the easy tax filing systems do not allow for
| custom deductions or are easy because the tax system is
| simplistic.
|
| I think that in the South African case the tax system isn't
| simplistic and I can add all kinds of details that might be
| specific to my tax requirements.
|
| I'm surprised by how many people seem to be defending the lack
| of a government provided system on the basis that somehow the
| citizen will get a worse deal as a result.
| CrendKing wrote:
| What I don't understand is, if I make a mistake (e.g. missing a
| schedule or wrong number) in the form 1040 and send it to IRS,
| I'll be guaranteed to receive a CP notice from them later asking
| me to pay the missing tax and penalty. Clearly IRS has their own
| algorithm to calculate everything based on what they got (which
| is exactly the same as what I have, W-2, 1099, etc., for most
| Americans) anyways.
|
| If IRS already know precisely how much tax I owe, and whatever I
| "claim" has no power, why do I need to play the game of "cat and
| mouse", every year? Why not just send me a pre-filled 1040 that
| their internal algorithm calculates and ask for my approval, like
| those Europeans do? How is this more "prone to raise tax"?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| They don't know everything. They automatically compare your
| return against information they've received from other parties
| (W-2s, 1099s, other tax returns' dependents' social security
| numbers, mostly) so you will get a notification if your return
| contradicts those in an obvious way. Beyond that, you need to
| be audited to get a notice. Audits range in their degree of
| inspection so most people just get a letter, but those kinds of
| audits usually just focus on one/two easy-to-discover issues.
|
| They certainly could develop the ability to do your return for
| you, but it would be an effort.
| jeltz wrote:
| They do not know everything here in Sweden either but they
| still give you prefilled forms with what they do know (based
| on what other parties like employers and banks have
| submitted) and then you can add the rest yourself plus add
| corrections if you disagree with them. Seems less work and
| less back and forth.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Most Americans are pretty close to that level right now
| with autofill from their previous year. Granted, it's
| provided by private companies in partnership with the IRS.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > If IRS already know precisely how much tax I owe, and
| whatever I "claim" has no power, why do I need to play the game
| of "cat and mouse", every year?
|
| The tax preparation industry has successfully lobbied to stop
| the IRS from being able to do this.
| codeduck wrote:
| In the UK it's possible to see a running estimate of your
| current tax position and the estimate for the end of the year.
| HMRC issues you a tax code which is used by your employer to
| determine how much tax they should be deducting each pay
| period. This means that in most cases you get no nasty
| surprises at the end of the year.
|
| I've always found the US tax system bizarre.
| [deleted]
| eightysixfour wrote:
| What would it take to develop a piece of Open Source software
| that makes it easy for accountants/tax attorneys to build
| TurboTax form equivalents? Basically a CMS for tax forms to be
| translated into plain english, and then the inputs to be put back
| into the correct places on the forms.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| A bigger question is: What does it take to update it
| constantly? The problem is that US Tax law is incredibly
| complicated and changes in impactful ways nearly annually (last
| tax year and next tax year in particular will require tons of
| updates, due to COVID-bill related programs).
|
| I think Open Source works well when the underlying work is fun
| and the software is somewhat timeless to minimize ongoing
| workload. Tax software by its very nature is none of those
| things.
|
| Honestly I think OSS is great but this is more fitting for the
| IRS to do itself rather than hoping that a bunch of lawyers/tax
| professionals/financial programmers suddenly decide they want
| to spend their evenings writing the most boring software
| imaginable.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| That's why I suggested building the infrastructure for the
| tax tool (CMS) to make it easy and fast to build the
| questionnaire for the forms. Since the forms are going to
| change, what we need is to make it so that it takes very
| little time to build a TurboTax competitor each year.
|
| There is no way I am going to get a bunch of accountants and
| tax lawyers to write a ton of code each year for free, but
| ask them to build a plain English questionnaire for a form as
| easily as you would create a survey in SurveyMonkey? Maybe.
| onefuncman wrote:
| https://github.com/ustaxes/UsTaxes found via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26330902
|
| for an actual e-file it's a lot more complex, is called MEF
| https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/modernized-e-file-progr...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Blocked by paywall, but I'm not asking for a workaround - I'm
| having trouble parsing the title because of the comma, so please
| answer me this question:
|
| Is the article expressing joy about Intuit getting beat, or about
| Intuit beating something?
| ftyers wrote:
| Do you have JavaScript turned on? No paywall here.
| beaunative wrote:
| America's way behind in government digital services in comparison
| to Europe and China. It's almost impossible without a meeting.
| You'd have to make an appointment for anything, even though most
| of the time all you do is filing an document, and nothing else.
| frenchman_in_ny wrote:
| Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27889618
| philjohn wrote:
| Shows how powerful lobbying is.
|
| In the UK, unless you're a special case (e.g. Lloyds Name) you
| simply file on the HMRC website.
|
| Then again, we can deduct far less, don't have state AND federal
| tax, so it's somewhat simpler.
| smitty1e wrote:
| I contend that Americans need to rise up and require a government
| that makes federal legislative and tax "code" visible through a
| read-only fossil[1] repository. Maybe a state can lead the way.
|
| For non-classified matters, the fact that we are paying customers
| and aren't privy to the who/what/where/when/why of these
| important decisions is just last-century.
|
| [1] https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki
| z3ugma wrote:
| Use the government's official web app,
| https://freefilefillableforms.com
|
| It's the sketchiest URL ever
| kemayo wrote:
| Link's broken because you need the www. It's one of those sites
| that doesn't auto-forward to it. (Again, not helping with the
| impression of the site.)
| kyrra wrote:
| Correct link: https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/
|
| Yours doesn't load. For those wondering, you can find the link
| to this site on IRS's website. https://www.irs.gov/e-file-
| providers/free-file-fillable-form...
|
| Reading some more, that site was created by Intuit. Checking
| the ToS:
|
| > These Terms of Service ("Agreement") is a legal agreement
| between you ("you", "your", "licensee"), and Intuit Inc. ("we",
| "our" or "us").
| colpabar wrote:
| I remember reading something recently that this site was
| designed to be ugly and scary so that people just go back to
| using turbotax.
| onefuncman wrote:
| This is run by Intuit (and requires the www,
| https://www.freefilefillableforms.com/ )
|
| Looks like their AppDynamics RUM js config is leaking their
| internal hostnames in the page source too.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| >In 2019, ProPublica reported that Intuit added lines of code to
| the free version of its TurboTax website so that the site would
| not appear in search results on Google.
|
| It's almost refreshing to see such an obvious "fuck you" move,
| without having it be covered by tons of PR and legalese.
| moosebear847 wrote:
| TurboTax recently tricked me using some dark UI patterns into
| spending 30+ minutes painstakingly filling out my tax forms in a
| way that made it seem like it was for the free filing.
|
| Only at the very end, did they reveal that it was in fact for the
| paid version, with no way to change it to the free version and
| also keep the work. Essentially holding my work hostage.
|
| So I had to redo it again in the hard-to-find free version. I am
| now anti-TurboTax for life.
| willis936 wrote:
| The same thing happened to me a few years ago. I wanted so
| badly to stick it to them on principle, but I didn't want to
| waste anymore of my time. I put my tongue to their boot and
| paid them for the privilege of getting scammed. Real 1984 shit.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > Real 1984 shit
|
| ???
|
| Hypothetical scenario - Real 1984 shit would be to get a tax
| bill prefilled from the government to get you to sign on a
| dotted line. If you want to contest it, you'll need to hire
| lawyers but most refuse to work with you. Average citizen is
| left to defend themselves which is an impossibility. Sign on
| the dotted line or get arrested.
|
| Folks, we need to go towards an open source route. Not put
| more power in the hands of a massively incompetent
| government.
| orwelly wrote:
| 1984? People throw that reference around that have never read
| the book.
|
| What do a private company's payflow dark patterns have to do
| with mass surveillance by a totalitarian state? Everything
| slightly dystopian isn't "real 1984 shit."
| willis936 wrote:
| Nice username. My comment triggered you hard enough to make
| another account? I suppose it's good cover for avoiding
| responsible posting.
|
| To help you out since you won't help yourself: the end of
| 1984 shows how psychological torture brings hard, rational
| people to doublethink. "I will not pay for my tax return. I
| will pay for my tax return."
| zingplex wrote:
| I think something by Kafka would be far more apt. It seems
| that 1984 has become a shorthand for anything vaguely
| dystopian.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I'm a vocal anti advocate. Hope you do too.
| meowster wrote:
| IIRC, they advertise it is free to "fill out", not to actually
| file.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Did something similar. I didn't care if the fee was like $30.
| But I needed their investment/small business tier and it was in
| the multiple hundreds of dollars.
|
| Switched to a different service.
|
| I know people want privacy, but I'd sell my income and personal
| company finances for $500. Where is that tax company?
| analog31 wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible for the government to specify
| the logic of the tax code in computer readable form. (I would say
| "source code" but maybe there's a better way). A company like
| TurboTax could still exist, but could compete on the basis of
| their user interface and optimizations.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The Brazilian government has been providing such a program for
| ages now. The last version I used (moved from Brazil 5 years ago)
| was a Java program that ran well on my Linux box. It advises on
| how to better submit your deductibles - either as a full all-
| things-counted or as a simplified model.
|
| There has been some constant pressure to provide it as open-
| source so we could improve it, but, last time I checked, the
| government was reluctant. There was one guy who reverse
| engineered the formats and wrote a GPL version that's compatible.
| I assume it's still maintained.
| nyc wrote:
| Planet Money/Pricenomics had a fascinating story about
| California's trial of a streamlined system that was _incredibly_
| well-received. However, Intuit 's lobbyists teamed up with the
| small-government movement to sink it.
| https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...
| flerchin wrote:
| freetaxusa.com despite the funny name is what it says on the tin.
| ajyey wrote:
| +1 for freetaxusa. Been using them for the past couple years
| and have had no problems
| dmckeon wrote:
| The US taxpayers, thru their government, could just do a buy out
| of Intuit/TurboTax for under $4 billion, and make the software
| free to use as part of a transition process.
|
| Any Intuit employees who at competent at tax preparation could be
| employed by the IRS, which takes in 4-6 dollars for every 1
| dollar it costs. Win/win. Would never happen.
| cpursley wrote:
| I trust Intuit more than the US government to provide a service
| like that. Have you ever used a US government web form? Who do
| you trust more, UPS or USPS?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I don't support their monopoly. The only
| real solution is to move away from such a complex tax system
| and do things European style (no tax return).
| arcticbull wrote:
| I actually trust USPS a lot more than UPS. They're a
| fantastic service, and my opinion isn't unique. The USPS is
| America's most trusted federal service and 74% of people
| think they do an "excellent" job. [1] I agree.
|
| In fact, USPS is ranked as a "more trusted brand" than UPS in
| surveys (#1 vs #8 nationwide respectively). [2]
|
| [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/257510/postal-service-
| americans...
|
| [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/people-trust-amazon-
| and-go...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It is easy to cherry pick, how about the DMV?
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/nyregion/nj-mvc-lines-
| dmv...
|
| Have you ever been to USCIS or the US SSA?
| mikestew wrote:
| DMV in WA is fine, more private companies should run that
| way.
|
| It doesn't matter, as it seems you'll just keep throwing
| three letter agencies at the wall until something sticks.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Yeah, my personal experience lines up with that - it
| varies a lot from place to place. Los Gatos DMV isn't
| half bad. Downtown SF on the other hand is an experience
| all its own.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Whenever someone says USPS is great, my mind immediately
| jumps to Newman trying to indict Seinfeld for mail fraud.
|
| Also, "Because the mail never stops..."
| wffurr wrote:
| The MA state free online tax forms are about as easy to use
| as Turbotax.
|
| US Digital Service and GSA 18f have been doing good stuff for
| the government for over a decade.
| jpmoral wrote:
| Here in Australia (as in other countries mentioned in this
| thread) filing taxes on the government-provided website is
| super easy. Wait a few weeks to a couple of months after the
| start of the financial year and most of the fields will be
| pre-filled from employers, banks, investment accounts, and
| IIRC private health (if any). Just need to fill in deductions
| and hit Submit. I don't see any technical reason the US
| government couldn't build something similar.
| [deleted]
| simlan wrote:
| Well making nice forms and services costs money. If the
| agency does not have that no nice front end.
| simonh wrote:
| Dealing with botched tax returns, late filings and court
| cases also costs money.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Americans (and citizens of other countries) need a society where
| they don't have to spend any time worrying about how to navigate
| the byzantine maze of tax deductibles and special cases. The
| income tax code should be "pay x% of your annual income". Just
| one line is enough. All else is just introducing inefficiency and
| creates loopholes.
| benzayb wrote:
| Here in the Philippines, filing tax returns are not a problem.
|
| If you're an employee, your employer does it for you.
|
| The employer just deducts the tax owed by each employee, and pays
| it to the government every quarter.
|
| The total tax amount owed per month may vary from 10k USD (10 to
| 20 employees) to 20K USD (20 to 50 employees).
|
| But the catch is: If the taxman is corrupt (highly likely), and
| the officer-in-charge of the remittance of such withheld taxes is
| also corrupt (not improbable), do not expect that the full tax
| amount will end up in government's coffers. Both parties will
| pocket a "small" percentage of it, per quarter, every year.
|
| This scenario is highly likely for offshore companies, where the
| real owners are outside (e.g. US, Europe) and there's a "trusted"
| individual (or group of people) that does the "administrative"
| stuff for the company.
|
| Crazy.
| aurizon wrote:
| For years I have seen the USA grab taxes from lottery winners -
| yet they do not allow people to claim the amounts they pay to buy
| lottery tickets. The same for gambling. This is crooked on it's
| face, as we know the casino makes money and is taxed on that, so
| on the whole the bettors lose money. Same with the lottery.
| Strictly speaking the aggregate of deductions would exceed the
| winnings = zero tax due - but no, they tax one and not deduct the
| other. The US tax authority (IRS ~~= Inland Revenue in the UK)
| does this, yet the IR in the UK does not tax winnings or allow
| deductions of bets - this is simple fraud by fiat against the
| people, and the IRS has a huge infrastructure devoted to this. I
| suspect it is based on the so-called christian label 'evil'
| attached to lotteries/gambling?
| pokerhobo wrote:
| We need the IRS to simply file on behalf of the user and they
| just have to sign off.
| sathackr wrote:
| I've seen this so many times.
|
| US Tax law is far too nuanced and complex for this. Just simple
| things like donations create issues.
|
| Donations to registered 501(c)(3) charities are tax exempt. But
| how does the IRS know if you gave the Salvation Army bell
| ringer $20? You have to tell them. On your tax return.
|
| Medical expenses in excess of 7.5% of your income are also
| exempt. And the IRS has no clue which of your expenses were
| medical. So you have to tell them.
|
| It's far more involved and complex than even just this. Did you
| move? Are you a member of the military? Costs related to your
| move are not taxable.
|
| There are probably thousands of potential exemptions. Few of
| which could be automatically identified and credited without
| massive privacy issues. And even then couldn't be perfect.
|
| That cardboard box you bought at the local big-box store? Was
| it a tax exempt moving expense?
|
| Oh, and the IRS has been sitting on my return for 2 months now
| and I did all the work for them. Could only imagine what it
| would look like if they had to track all of this.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's not that hard really. You can get everything prefilled
| as if none of those points applied. Then you make changes
| which apply to you.
|
| Various levels of deduction exist in other countries too -
| for example in Australia. But I get 95% of the form prefilled
| from employers/banks/insurance and only add what's missing.
| ip26 wrote:
| 1040EZ is basically what you describe. It may not be pre
| filled but it's something like two pages, and there's not
| much to it.
| sseagull wrote:
| There are many possible deductions, however a lot of people
| can't/shouldn't use them because of the large standard
| deduction. The question is how many people file taxes which
| are basically W2 plus standard deduction? My bet is quite a
| lot.
|
| Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
| acdha wrote:
| The figures I've seen have around 80% of taxpayers taking
| the standard deduction:
|
| https://taxfoundation.org/standard-deduction-itemized-
| deduct...
| sseagull wrote:
| I feel like that is about right, especially with the
| higher standard deduction.
|
| I bought a house early last year for 250k. Including all
| the interest, fees, taxes, etc, plus all my family's
| medical expenses, and even things that I'm not sure I
| could include, I still couldn't reach the standard
| deduction. It really is a lot of money for most people.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The vast majority of Americans take the standard deduction.
| Those that don't can afford an accountant.
| worker767424 wrote:
| This works if your tax situation is W-2 income and investment
| income from mainstream investments. You start to run into
| issues for anything you have to report, like small business
| income. There are also privacy concerns. Mortgage interest is
| tax is tax deductible, but should the lender be obligated to
| tell the government it has a relationship with you? In the case
| of an employer, it makes more sense because the government is
| taking what it's owed. For deductions, it's what you're owed,
| so the onus can be more on the individual.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Mortgage interest is _already_ reported to the IRS on Form
| 1098 and that form is required to be filed by the lender if
| you paid more than $600 in interest for the year.
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| > Mortgage interest is tax is tax deductible, but should the
| lender be obligated to tell the government it has a
| relationship with you?
|
| Yes, the govt has an interest in knowing the source of
| revenue for banks. Not only for money laundering and tax
| fraud, but ensuring the banks have stable income sources to
| avoid bank failures.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| My understanding is that this is precisely how it works in many
| other developed nations - the US is a bit of an outlier in this
| regard.
| emdowling wrote:
| In the UK, it is like this for the vast majority of tax
| payers. Certain criteria, like earning over PS100k, mean you
| need to file a return. The government will usually send you a
| letter informing you that you've met the criteria too, as
| they know how much you earn each month.
|
| At any time, you can log in and easily see how much the
| government thinks you have earned and from who, and which tax
| rate (tax code) is being applied to you. You can correct this
| as well if it is wrong.
|
| Having lived in Australia, the US and UK, I've found the UK
| system to be the easiest to understand and navigate.
| Australia isn't too far behind. The US is just a mess.
| oblio wrote:
| In Romania if you're a salaried employee you don't even need
| to sign off, they do everything for you.
|
| There are no deductions, for a lot of stuff you just get
| money directly from the government, as an incentive.
| programmer_dude wrote:
| Also in some underdeveloped nations (e.g. India). The US is
| truly the third world of the western hemisphere.
| jopsen wrote:
| Im Denmark that pretty much how it works. If you have complex
| scenarios you might need to adjust the numbers a bit, for
| example if you have stocks abroad or income from gigs.
|
| Many trading platforms in Denmark do automated reporting, and
| some gig-economy apps do automated reporting too. But if you
| setup a lemonade stand, well, reporting is in you :)
|
| The tax authorities also have pretty good phone support. It's
| a bit overloaded around filing season (but getting through is
| possible), but if come home from an internship abroad and
| call them, they are happy to tell you where and how to report
| income and taxes paid in Canada for example.
|
| I bet it's expensive to offer phone support. But if you want
| people to pay taxes the best way to do it is to make it easy
| to do the right thing.
|
| This advice goes pretty much everywhere, if you make it easy
| to do something, people will do it :)
| Kosirich wrote:
| I fill out my Danish one in like 10 minutes. First year in
| DK I had help but after that it's kind of easy. Most what
| it takes time is filling out the deductible for travel
| where you have to indicate days traveled. I guess in the US
| is deliberately complicated or get's changed a lot as for
| the ordinary folk this shouldn't take a lot of time, even
| if you had to input all your income.
| refurb wrote:
| A big part of that is the complexity of the tax code.
|
| Not sure how IRS is going to know how many dependents I have
| living in my house or whether I've lost my hearing and am now
| deaf.
| jopsen wrote:
| Usually, you dependents have an SSN and requirement to
| maintain an address on record, as well as a birth
| certificate indicating who their parents are.
|
| IRS could possibly reach into some of that. Or it simply
| relies on what you reported last year.
|
| But sure, you'll have to correct some details every few
| years. This might also be the case if you have income from
| bitcoin, etc.
| Retric wrote:
| None of that changes very often. For most Americans filling
| out tax forms or paying someone to do so is simply economic
| dead weight.
|
| The IRS could use easily use last years data plus what was
| submitted by companies to pre fill most Americans taxes
| accurately and people could amend those forms as needed
| with less effort than starting from scratch.
| refurb wrote:
| If your taxes are simple enough that the gov't can just
| fill them out for you, then the EZ file should work
| pretty well too?
| CiceroCiceronis wrote:
| Sure, but then why not just roll it into the IRS' own web
| portal instead of letting every service roll their own
| and potentially screw with it (like Intuit did when it
| prevented Google from indexing its Free File tier)? The
| result is far more consumer friendly and potentially
| allows for greater integration with and prepopulation
| from other government services.
| mellavora wrote:
| So then the right question to ask is "why is the tax code
| so complicated?"
|
| Yes, EZ file should work for 99.9% of the US. But it
| doesn't, because the tax code is horrendously complex
| simondotau wrote:
| In Australia we have something of an in-between approach.
| Essential tax data (e.g. total income and withheld tax) is
| sent directly to Government by your employer and it is pre-
| filled into the relevant fields of tax filing software
| developed and maintained by the Government.
|
| However it is not a "one click to accept the default" system
| because there's still a lot of important information it does
| not know.
| foxpurple wrote:
| They have some awesome tools built in to the tax form. The
| asset calculator lets you put in stuff like "I paid this
| much for an office table" and it tells you that the
| expected lifetime is 10 years and it will automatically
| insert the deduction for the next 10 years without you
| having to think about anything.
| lasftew wrote:
| Not in Switzerland. Bank accounts and salary information are
| not accessible to either level of government (communal,
| cantonal, federal), due to strong privacy legislation and a
| traditional distrust for central data collection and
| authority.
|
| But nevertheless the yearly filing process is rather
| straightforward, as the tax authorities provide their own
| free web app for this purpose. It hasn't always been great
| but it improved significantly over the last few years.
| bbarn wrote:
| Didn't read the article (paywalled) but I'm commenting on the
| context of the title.
|
| People have been saying this for years, but Intuit has invested
| billions in fighting the idea off.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
|
| Not only that, for a lot of people, Turbo Tax "feels like" a
| great thing. If you have a simple tax situation, it takes minutes
| to go through, you pay 10$ and get your refund very quickly. The
| free alternative is to fill out a 1040EZ and wait a few months.
|
| For the comparisons to Europe, I'm living in Iceland now, and the
| tax filing system is incredibly easy simply because the tax
| system is incredibly easy - there is only one tier of taxation,
| everyone pays the same percentage. That's the core of the
| problem. The tax code in the US is incredibly complex, and that's
| why software like turbo tax exists.
| failrate wrote:
| Intuit is to blame for much of our current US tax fiasco, as are
| politicians, and key to the bs is this guy:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
| smudgy wrote:
| Brazil has a tax program that has always been multi-platform for
| well over a decade. This year, when filing my taxes, that there
| was also a simplified online/mobile version for folks without
| computers.
|
| To be fair, US's tax code is a wild collection of tax breaks and
| exemptions so it's very complicated but still...
| luckywatcher wrote:
| The article is behind a paywall for me. I love the irony here.
| cable2600 wrote:
| https://archive.is/pQIly
| betaclass wrote:
| Irony? Filing taxes is a government-imposed obligation for many
| Americans. Accessing content from a private company is neither
| an obligation nor a right.
| badmadrad wrote:
| I think the point was that using Turbo tax isn't an
| obligation. So criticizing something for not being free but
| charging for your own content seems hypocritical. You could
| use another tax service or file via mail. Seems to be a lot
| of choices here: https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/browse-
| all-offers
| Barrin92 wrote:
| it seems a little bit strange to compare paying for journalism
| to paying for a piece of software that basically exists because
| of regulatory capture and lobbying.
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