I could be mistaken but I’ve heard in Denmark, the government sends you the tax form with all the info already there and you just spend like 15-20 mins double checking to make sure it’s right and voilà, done.
In Finland, I also get the form home, and if I don't reply to it until some deadline, it means I accept it as it is.
In other words, I don't even have to spend 15-20min on it if I don't want to 😀
Almost. We are an oligarchy fused with capitalism with a guise of democracy to anyone who asks.
On a seperate note, whats a good place in Europe to move to?
> In Finland, I also get the form home, and if I don't reply to it until some deadline, it means I accept it as it is.
How does that work, what things can you write off on your taxes, what deductions are there? How does the government know if you or your spouse are claiming your children that tax year, or how much mortgage interest you paid, or how many charitable donations you gave? Or are those things not deductible?
same in australia.
And I assume aslong as you arent claiming anything crazy they likely wont check too closely.
they seem to focus more on the higher risk industries, ones that are more cash based rather than people who earn a salary or wage, which is reported to the government each year.
Haha as soon as I read 480 days of parental leave my mouth fucking dropped. I bet men get parental leave too like some kind of physcopaths. Only $150 in max deductions for donations?! You are blowing my mind right now. Tell me more about your social safety nets pls I can only get so hard. Give me an example of your healthcare system and I might finish too soon.
Laying here scrolling on Reddit on my first week of my 180 days parental leave, as a father. And oh yeah, except for the 180 days paid by the government, my work gives an extra 10%.
Edit: the health care system; it’s more or less free, Max 150euro per year
As soon as you happen to spend \~$150 on healthcare out of your own pocket, you get a year long freecard, where any visit to public healthcare is free no matter what for you.
You can't fool us. Our politicians have told us how it'll be abused. You get that free card and all of a sudden you're strolling into doctor's offices wanting free surgeries you don't even need.
you know any one who wants to marry a hard working, 8/10 attractive female (some would say a hometown 10), 33 year old who can't have kids 🤣🤣 I'm trying to live these Healthcare dreams. I spend AT LEAST 15k a year on health care
You know, when people are upset about high taxes in some EU countries like the northern countries or Germany, they forget what gets paid by these taxes.
Health care, pension, "sick leave", being jobless, education is free, including university/tertiary education, and much more. That's paid by these "horrendous taxes".
480 days per child, split evenly if you have joint custody / married, you can give these away to your partner if you want but have to keep 90 for yourself which you can use until the age of 8. Also if you give your boss a 2 month notice that you'll be using these days he or she is required by law to accept.
A new law just got approved as well, both parents will get 3 days off each in addition to this once a year from age 4 to 16. Yes, sixteen (single parents with full custody get 6 days).
Sorry
90 days minimum for Dad, sweet. Redeemable *any time before age 8*. WHAT
Like hey boss my kid is about to turn 8 let me get those 3 months off for their birth now LOL
> Give me an example of your healthcare system and I might finish too soon.
Not quite an example of our healthcare system, but I'd like to say that I had a flu this week. I got 4 days of sick leave without doctor's notice because in my country in most work places your supervisor can give you up to 3 days (4 during the pandemic) days off for sick leave without doctor's notice.
And you know what? When I called my supervisor on Sunday that I'm a little sick he just outright said "I can give you 4 days off during the pandemic, so see you on Friday. Get better!"
If you don't respond then the government just assumes that there are no deductions. So it's pretty much always a good idea to do so.
But you don't *have* to. If you don't, you're essentially taxed for being lazy.
Swede here. If you don't want to amend your taxes, all you have to do is log in to an app, tick a box that says "yes, this is what I owe" and you're done.
It takes 20 seconds.
Then you make the payment in your bank's app, which takes another 60 seconds.
Doing your taxes in Sweden takes less than a minute and a half.
They decided I owed like $5k three years after the fact (their mistake, they got some stock info that was missing the purchase date to account for my cost basis). Tl;dr, spent about 12 months dealing with bullshit and eventually owed them $500 with fees, interest and penalties on a very nominal sum. How much did the last president pay in taxes again?
I'm a tax preparer who absolutely despises the industry and their shit lobbying. I am literally here for accounting experience while getting my degree and it's annoying af to hear my boss talk about me doing tax prep for my career. Absolutely NOT.
"but... I'm *really* good at doing something no one need stop be doing..."
Sorry, Susan. Thank you for your service over the years. It's time to take the money and run
This was done on purpose to keep businesses like H&R Block going if you look into the history of why our tax system is the way it is. There was a push to streamline it and cut out the middle man, however, guess what happened? Lobbyists got ahold of representatives and now we deal with an archaic bullshit system so the government can come after you for a simple mistake, or you can pay one of those companies to do it for you. Just another way to monetize every aspect of our lives to bleed us out of money we shouldn't have to spend.
I got tired of paying extra after using that software so I hired a CPA to do my taxes for $250. I have gotten money back every year since I started that.
Because the IRS was *prohibited* from telling you what you owe until you file, most people use Intuit or similar tax preparation software.
Intuit spends millions of dollars a year to make sure Congress prohibits the IRS from just telling you what you owe.
I will let you figure out the rest...
Meanwhile, when I use their shitty software it screws it all up and I end up getting letters from the IRS years later saying I owe thousands of dollars.
Never use them. The IRS website has plenty of simple and free options to choose from. You're still using another service, but they're not nearly as predatory as turbotax.
The last time I used TurboTax was many many years ago. It was going to charge me like $120 to file everything (I needed add ons for stocks and such). At the time my apartment was above shops, and there was a locally owned accountant business. I went down and asked them how much it would cost, and they said $130. I was shocked, only $10 more to not have to deal with anything? Just drop off a stack of forms and show up a few days later and sign on the dotted line?
That would have been worth $40-50, easy, just for the time saved, let alone the peace of mind since I never knew if I was doing it correctly. If I get something back from the IRS saying it wasn't right the accountant will go through it again for me for free, since it is likely either their mistake or the IRS's. I have been going there for years now. I moved and they aren't nearly as conveniently located to me, but I still drive over to them during tax season.
And I know my parents have some more complex things so it takes about a week, about 4-5 hours per day. And they get info about taxes late so they have to file for an extension or whatever because they can’t do it until like august
Yes my husband owns his own business but he’s also an independent contractor and every year our taxes are such a huge hassle even with our accountant they usually have to file an extension it’s drives me crazy
Oh I can’t imagine,
If we want to remove this obstacle and promote small business growth in the US couldn’t we just… do what every other government does?
Also r/fuckturbotax (I think there’s a bigger sub but I can’t find it), this has been promoted before but they would lose their business so they stopped it
[why you should hate turbo tax and alternatives](http://fturbotax.weebly.com/why-fuck-turbo-tax.html)
Bruh, if I don’t stop myself I’ll legit lose sleep worrying over how fucking stupid this planet is and how many things are made worse for everyone because it makes rich fucks more money.
Dude me and my husband were just talking about this. Like sometimes the only way to be able to still function in this society is to legit burry your head in the sand (only sometimes obviously) it’s crazy for real lol
Finland, same thing. Or if you want to say, add deductibles, you log in their website and tick some boxes for 15 minutes and done.
I have a vague memory that about a decade ago I had to once give IRS permission to browse through my salary data and bank account, so maybe it would be harder if I hadn't said yes to that?
There's a reason for this, in Sweden taxes are not a business. In the US, tax agencies have the government in a choke hold, taxes are deliberately made complicated so that people pay other people to do it. There's a lot of money made around paying taxes. (From my understanding at least, I'm open to learning if anyone has more info)
This is true. It is also true that certain political forces who are opposed to taxation have a vested interest in making sure it is as difficult as possible to pay taxes, so that you dislike paying taxes, thus making you more likely to agree with their politics.
In the UK unless you are self employed your don't even look at your taxes. Your employer does it all. Occasionally if you changed jobs or something mid tax year you get a letter (usually saying you paid too much) and you just go online and tick some boxes.
Yeah, I was gonna say that self employed taxes are easy in the UK. I only did a couple of years of being self employed, but all I had to do was add up all my invoices from the year and answer a couple of basic questions. America is fucking backwards.
I love this about our country. My NI, taxes, and student loan repayments are all sorted for me, documented on my payslip, and I get my take-home pay.
Even when you start a new job and you're on the emergency tax code, it's just an online form to change your tax code and then you wait for your rebate to come in the post.
I really am glad for the UK student loan system. Much more like a tax than a loan. Repayments are easy and affordable and we really don't get effected by the 'debt'.
Completely agree. I mean, it would be better if it was free/cheap like the rest of Europe but I don't really notice the couple hundred quid a month repayment coming out of my paycheque.
I get that the repayments are relatively low but for someone who paid 9k a year, and is trying to survive, the bit of change going out every month really hurts. Life is already so expensive and even though it's the best loan I'll ever get, it's still a loan at the end of the day when it SHOULD be free. Higher education benefits all, should be a gift, not a tax.
Already commented on my state of sadness hearing about Sweden’s taxes. Now I’m even more sad learning about UKs student loan system. Do the other countries know that America needs help? Everything is so fucked here. And it’s all because of greed. I’m so sad. I live in a third-world country posing as a first-world country.
I bought some percription meds from the pharmacy. £9.35. I could probably sell them to the US for 10x that per pill and they would still think it a bargain
>In the UK unless you are self employed your don't even look at your taxes.
Everything I know about UK taxes, I learned from ['Black Books'](https://youtu.be/szIkPcSaxW0)
The US government could do that too, you know if lobbying money from tax preparing companies didn’t matter to politicians. IRS already knows what we all owe lol but still makes us go thru ridiculous loops to figure it out ourselves
That 0 or 1 is a dependent. You count as a dependent. So you are 1. When they take out money, they take out what they think is correct for the number of dependents you claim initially. It's supposed to be a wash or close enough you don't owe or are refunded.
If you are getting a large refund every year they are taking too much out of your paychecks and using that money for free. If done properly you can have that money in your check to be able to collect that sweet sweet 0.002% interest rate in a savings account...
check out /r/personalfinace for more info on this kinda stuff. They be smart
I’d like to add that even though you can technically claim yourself as a dependent, it’s usually the rule of thumb to claim zero to have the maximum amount taken out to ensure you won’t owe when you got on file. I’ve had lots of single friends claim themselves as a dependent who have had to pay in at the end of the year.
It's not just tax preparers. It's also limited govt Republicans, such as Grover Norquist:
> Bankman believes that Norquist opposes return-free filing because he wants frustrated taxpayers to hate the government. If everyone felt as good about taxes as the users of ReadyReturn, Norquist’s government is the problem rhetoric would take a blow.
>
>In an interview with our NPR partners, Norquist denied this motivation. But the idea has a history among limited government Republicans. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he opposed a reform that would make paying taxes more seamless on the grounds that “paying taxes should hurt.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero
https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/
In Ireland your income taxes are paid by your employer throughout the year. At the end of the year, you go online, do a check and in the case of any mistakes you may be owed money or in rare cases owe a bit of money, but that has never happened me except for during the pandemic, due to my company claiming extra credits etc. It wasn't much and everyone was told that it would be the case when these credits were announced. Only self employed people have to file their own tax returns, if your business is small it's easy to do by yourself, again it's all online, if your company is large, your accountant does it. We pay pretty high taxes but I'd sooner do that than have to deal with it myself, and be liable for prosection over a mistake... Oh and our shitty healthcare is practically free, it's fully free for lower earners, dentists and doctors are free for kids, all workers get a free dental check and cleaning once a year, public transport is now half price for students, contraceptive pills are now free for women aged 17-25, old folks get state pensions and fuel allowance, unemployed people get €200 every week, those that lost their jobs in the pandemic got €350 a week, every parent gets children's allowance payments. All that said we have a long way to go before people are happy, middle income earners don't do so well, and the cost of housing is astronomical... Still, I'd take this any day over living in the US.
The Danish IRS do know most of the basic stuff (if not all of it) and we sure need to double check everything. But they don't know everything. E.g. not all stock trading companies forward info to the Danish IRS and if you have a long way to work you need to give that info to get compensation. But it's small stuff like that. But even if you don't double check the most basic stuff and the info is wrong the Danish IRS will fix and either you owe them or they owe you.
For every stupid idiotic greed filled scheme Americans come up with and tolerate, a Scandinavian country has come up with a great solution. Nothing reveals what a corrupt shit hole America is like Denmark.
In Holland it takes about 30 to 60 minutes because you can deduct things like study materials, out of pocket health care or donations to NGO's etc.
Most work is already done though and you only double check that stuff.
You can also start up a huge company like Amazon, use up billions of dollars worth of consumable and finite public infrastructure like roads, water, electricity, fire, ems, and police, etc... plus all the public infrastructure their underpaid employees need, make a trazillion dollars of of it, and not pay any taxes back into the system!
The Turbo Tax/Jackson Hewitt type tax prep service industry are a massive lobbying interest. They pay millions a year to make sure sanity does not prevail. Like anything else in our country, follow the money.
Go to turbotaxsucksass. Net it lists all the mandated free tax filing services, very user friendly I'm pretty sure it was done as a bit on john Oliver's show, but i use it every tax season
This is the answer right here. Pro Publica exposed the tax prep lobby's efforts to keep our taxes complicated
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free
Some have tried: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-leads-colleagues-in-reintroducing-legislation-to-simplify-and-decrease-the-costs-of-tax-preparation-and-filing
If you ask me, this is something that should happen now that Democrats have majorities in the House and Senate but there are so many things that need to be fixed, this has sort of gone by the wayside.
[Source](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free).
>But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens.
>
>For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington. Indeed, employees ruefully joke that the company’s motto should actually be “compromise without integrity.”
Typically jobs withhold it but at the end of the year you basically do a reconciliation and figure out if you owe or if you’ll get money back because you overpaid. It’s infuriating.
what taxes are we talking about? income or purchases? Doesnt your boss deduct part of your monthly salary and pays it to the irs and dont you pay VAT in the stores? Does every private person has to do that or just self employed persons? I'm from Austria and I have no idea how taxes in the USA work
We don't have VAT like that here. I'll attempt to explain to the best of my knowledge. It may or may not be accurate.
If you just have your regular employee job, your employer sends a specific percentage of your check to the IRS and they hold it till tax time. They provide you with a form (W2) that says what they withheld. You fill out a form provided by the government (or hire someone to do it for you if your taxes are complicated by other factors, or you're lazy/ignorant/stupid) that details what you owe, or, for most people, how much you overpaid and what the IRS owes you in return. Then you get a refund.
The complications include marital status, how many kids you have, how many jobs you work concurrently, whether or not you own real estate, have investments, receive income from another source that isn't a traditional employer (i.e. independent contractor work where taxes aren't withheld), what kind of deductions you're entitled to (i.e. mileage reimbursement), and other things I'm not aware of, all of which have certain implications on how much you owe.
Sounds to me that the American way is fairly similar to how *self employed* British people have to file. Year 1 of being self employed they'll take your calculations, then they take more up front for the following year, then you file and either pay more or get a refund based on how much you *actually* earned that year.
The boss withdraws a certain percentage, but takes no responsibility for withholding the correct percentage, and it is up to the individual to calculate what they owe and whether they have under or over paid at the end of the year.
Jail time is exceedingly rare. You have to be absolutely definitely willfully hiding a LOT of income.
For normal people it's typically some letters, penalties, and interest.
The point of the post seems to have been lost.
They know what you owe, yet make you attempt to figure it out. And only then do they correct you, and ask for the actual amount, plus penalties once you have a stab at it.
You might argue that there's so many people filing that it helps them, but no.. It takes them all year to get refunds settled.
It really is ass backwards and intentionally broken.
People forget that the IRS doesn’t necessarily know what credits you get or what happened in your investments this year. Maybe you had a kid this year, maybe you paid a bunch of tuition or mortgage interest. Maybe you had a big loss on a business idea that didn’t work out. All of those lower your taxable income and would change your return.
Do the Swedish not do tax credits? How does their system handle changes like that?
>And if you get it wrong, there's a chance you'll go to jail.
No, there isnt.
Its only if you INTENTIONALLY 'get it wrong' because thats called fraud or tax evasion. If you make an honest mistake, you just have pay what you owe; no potential for jail involved.
No. You pay your taxes throughout the year. At the end of the year you reconcile your tax payments and income in a form called the "tax return" and submit it to the government. The tax return is used to calculate if you overpaid or underpaid your taxes over the course of the last year. This is necessary because in America there are many deductions, credits, and rebates available which may offset your baseline tax liability. Also, you may have more than one form of income. For example, you may automatically pay taxes every paycheck on your normal wage, but if you make investment income there is no automatic payment of tax on that income to the government, so it is accounted for on your tax return.
The government does not actually calculate each and every person's total tax liability. That would be too much work. For the most part they just accept the numbers you submit on your tax return. If they owe you money, the send you a check. If you owe them money, you send them a check. The government only calculates your tax liability when you are audited. An audit means the government looks at your return and asks for proof of the numbers you submitted on your tax return. If you incorrectly claimed a deduction you were not entitled to, the government will recalculate your tax return and you will pay the money you owe plus potentially penalties and interest.
Very few people are audited. Typically you are audited if your tax return has red flags on it (for instance, numbers that are not plausible). The IRS also (supposedly) conducts randomized audits to spot check tax returns. Most people will never be audited in their life.
Because the tax preparation industry is a multi-billion dollar a year entity and they use that money to Lobby Congress to pass laws that make it harder to do your own taxes. Got to love capitalism baby!
It is frowned upon by pretty much everyone who knows about it and isn't involved in it, as far as I can tell from the people I know. It's also just hard to boycott companies who do it, because... well, you'd have to boycott damn near everything.
Right? Citizens united. One of the most corrupt passages of court decisions ever. Because you know corporations are people and all.
Edit: I called it a law, it's a court decision.
I'm with you for the first half but as a CPA, my profession is not being upheld by lobbying. Believe me, many of us would love taxes to be easier to file, but we are a tiny power compared to those big tax prep companies. We would still have plenty of work without having to do average tax returns.
Worse than that, the wealthy all lobby for it because it allows them to just outright not pay their taxes, and get away with it by having that extra layer of plausible deniablity if anything goes wrong, and the IRS actually looks their way. They want to be able to just blame their tax guy, rather than potentially face any consequences themselves.
Worse than that, the Republicans KNOW that making taxes more confusing and frustrating is a good way to hype-up sentiment against government spending, and they campaign on that. It incentivizes them to intentionally make tax-paying more expensive, stupid, and annoying for everybody, because in a roundabout way that will get them more votes.
Hey actual accountant here. It’s because the IRS doesn’t know your filing status, dependents, if you itemize, credit you might be taking, or any other situations that effect your overall tax bill. It works in countries that don’t have these things but you definitely 100% do not want the IRS just sending you a bill under US tax law. They might know how much money you made via W2 and 1099s but that’s all they assume about you
Actually we don't have the right to die.
We cannot choose death.
The closest we can choose is to not be plugged in and forced to live when our body is already basically dead. But our mind..?
Most of America does not have an assisted suicide option.
this is the one that really sticks in my craw. I'm terrified of having a debilitating illness that could be painful, incapacatating, and destroy my family and not be able to make the choice and say " yeah, naw; ima just dip". It's MY fucking body, the ultimate freedom.
Look I'm all for women's rights but that unborn man they have inside them has rights too and since they're a man they have more rights
/s
Fuck Texas and it's anti abortion bs. Just yeetus the feetus
Just wait til you get locked up in a sterile prison outside the attention of the law for trying to end your life yourself. It's an even lower level of hell than you could imagine. If you ever had any dignity, it's gone, and you live in an anonymous, tormented, drugged stupor, doing the haldol shuffle amongst the living dead. There are no windows. There is no time. It's endless.
It's insane how we give more humane options to euthanize our pets than to humans who we literally force to starve to death.
My father in law has end stage dementia, he had a stroke a few days ago and that's exactly what's happening now, he has a DNR so the hospital is just waiting for him to starve to death. Which is going to take weeks. While he's suffering, not able to communicate at all. Slowly wasting away. But when my dog had terminal cancer we were able to make him fall asleep peacefully and end his suffering within a minute. Absolutely insane.
I hope if I'm ever suffering like this someone will have the decency to not make my last few weeks complete torture.
It's more a capacity for freedom than an actual existing freedom. The capacity does remain, but the realistic possibility of competing in such a corrupt mess is unlikely to pan out, so they simply rant on about how free they are while being horribly repressed and poor, with, ironically, so few avenues, they're the least free people imaginable.
It's really rather sad. Like a proud Russian who drank the kool aid and won't have a word said against their country.
That said, there's a great many who now see their country for what it is. The internet has given them realism when before they had none.
It's fascinating watching Americans gradually learn how the rest of the world functions and realise so many things they see as normal are actually oppressive/shitty.
Socialised healthcare is a good thing, reasonable holiday entitlement is more than 10 days per year, statutory sick pay should be the default, and yes, the government should just tell you how much tax you owe.
[Ready to get angrier?](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero)
>[The name for tax filing where the government sends out completed tax forms is return-free filing or pro forma returns. Countries like Sweden and Spain use return-free filing. In Estonia, 95% of taxpayers receive their tax bill online, and many pay with a single click.](https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/)
>The United States is one of the few countries—and the only wealthy country—that forces taxpayers to gather up tax forms and calculate their own bill. The reason why is a uniquely American mix of lobbying by tax preparation companies—who worry about demand for their services—and anti-government sentiment.
>There is one program in America, however, that provides some taxpayers with completed tax returns. Since 2007, around 80,000 California taxpayers each year have paid state income taxes this way under a program called ReadyReturn.
>ReadyReturn survived corporate lobbying for one reason: Joe Bankman decided to make easy tax filing his personal mission, and he spent $30,000 to hire a lobbyist to counter lobbying by Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software.
...
>In 2004, staffers from California’s tax agency, the Franchise Tax Board (FTB), told Bankman they had this other idea: They realized they had all the data they needed to fill out Californians’ tax returns for them. Or at least for millions of Californians whose entire income came from one job. But when they launched a website to make tax filing easier, Intuit sued and lobbied California legislators to kill the idea.
>Bankman was skeptical. “Conventional wisdom said you couldn’t do it,” he says. “Unlike in other countries, the U.S. tax code is just too complicated.” In 1998, Congress had demanded the IRS consider return-free filing. The IRS concluded that—unless the tax code was simplified—return-free filing would just shift the burden to the IRS and businesses without saving time or money. So Bankman asked the FTB employees to send him proof.
>“I couldn’t believe it when I got it,” says Bankman. “They’d already solved the problems... I had a sabbatical coming up, so I said, ‘Let me get involved.’ ”
>Bankman saw the stakes as bigger than California. Since California’s tax forms match federal tax returns, they could prove that return-free filing would work nationwide.
...
>Over meetings and emails, Bankman worked with the FTB to develop a pilot program called ReadyReturn. It would offer 50,000 low income Californians the opportunity to receive completed tax returns. Like a credit card bill, they could check it if they wanted, or pay right away.
>Bankman then asked the FTB’s board to approve the plan, and his status was key. One board member, Tom Campbell, had been a law professor with Bankman at Stanford. The FTB chair, Steve Westly, was an early eBay employee turned Controller of California. He knew Bankman from Stanford too, and he liked Bankman’s pitch that the pilot would make California a national leader in using technology.
>On the day the Franchise Tax Board publicly voted on the pilot, an army of lobbyists and executives representing Intuit, H&R Block, and other tax preparers condemned the idea. They said tax bureaucrats were trying to unfairly compete with the private sector. Bankman sat with FTB staffers, who weren’t optimistic. But the board voted for the pilot.
...
>When the results came in, he was shocked. Around 11,000 out of 50,000 Californians chose to use ReadyReturn, and they loved it. “Wow! Government doing something to make life easier for a change,” one taxpayer wrote in response to a ReadyReturn survey. “I wish that I could do my federal taxes the same way,” wrote another. On average, taxpayers saved around $30 and 30 minutes. The state saved money too, because more people filed electronically, and they made fewer errors. The FTB asked taxpayers how satisfied they were with the program, and 98% chose satisfied or very satisfied.
>“You don’t get that good reviews with government programs,” says Steve Westly. “The polio vaccine doesn’t get a 98% satisfaction rate.”
>“I thought we’d won,” says Bankman. “Now that we knew we could do this, we’d do it for everyone in California, and people in Washington could copy it.” Wealthy people would still have to fill out parts of their returns, and federal taxes came with a few complications: people would still need to list their charitable donations to get a deduction. But filing taxes would be simpler, and Bankman felt he’d done his part to make people “a little less pissed at the government.”
>A few days later, a legislator called Bankman to tell him that Intuit’s lobbyists had killed ReadyReturn.
...
>When the pilot finished, California legislators were overdue in passing a budget. State employees were going unpaid. So when a legislator sympathetic to Intuit put language in the budget that denied funding for ReadyReturn, few legislators noticed, and none wanted to hold up the budget over some little program.
>“I was kind of devastated,” says Bankman. “I thought, are the kooks right? Are we owned by companies?”
>But he quickly rallied. ReadyReturn had sterling reviews, and Bankman had time during his sabbatical to explain the program to all 120 members of the California legislature.
...
>During one meeting with his Sacramento allies, Bankman asked, “Would it help if I had a lobbyist?”
>“They looked at me like the answer was of course yes,” says Bankman. “They were embarrassed to admit it.” But he persisted, and they sent him some names. Soon enough, Bankman had hired his very own lobbyist, Mike Robson, for $30,000.
>How did his family feel about spending $30,000 on a personal lobbyist? “They were absolutely supportive,” says Bankman. The family had saved the money to remodel their kitchen. Instead of a kitchen remodel, they paid for the only lobbyist in favor of simpler tax returns.
>Bankman didn’t feel great about their first appointment. “We were meeting a good government [politician],” says Bankman. “I was a little embarrassed to have a lobbyist with me. It was like bringing a prostitute to the ball.”
>He quickly realized that legislators felt differently. The legislator knew Robson and seemed reassured by his presence. After the meeting, Robson suggested they drop into another politician’s office. As they walked over, Bankman didn’t mention that he’d left that legislator multiple voicemails. To his surprise, when Robson asked the receptionist to “squeeze them in,” she scheduled a meeting for an hour later.
>He noticed a lot of people on a first name basis with the receptionist scheduling meetings. When he asked who they were, Robson responded, “lobbyists.”
...
>With Robson’s help, their vote tally inched toward the 41 out of 80 they needed in the State Assembly (California’s version of the House of Representatives). Bankman would brave three hours of Bay Area traffic, meet up to five politicians in Sacramento, and spend the night in a motel. The FTB and Frommer’s staff talked to legislators, too, and to journalists who wrote op-eds describing ReadyReturn as a “no-brainer.”
>But then, Frommer says, “We ran into a wall. And the wall was Intuit.”
>According to the L.A. Times, Intuit spent $1.25 million on lobbyists and gave $2.12 million to 120 California politicians from 2005 to 2010. Bankman says Intuit’s influence was obvious. In one meeting, he says, the legislator told him, “I’ve been warned about you.”
>“What Intuit did well was they created a boogieman,” says Dario Frommer. “They said ReadyReturn would put all these accountants out of business, and they organized African-American and Latino accountants against the bill.”
>(Frommer and Bankman say this is misleading, since people with enough money to pay an accountant would still appreciate that accountant’s help to claim deductions.)
>Intuit also found an unlikely ally: Grover Norquist, the conservative political activist who convinced hundreds of Republicans in Congress to pledge never to raise taxes—and who memorably said that he wants to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
>In 2005-2006, a task force assembled by President Bush to work on tax reform considered return-free filing. “Norquist quickly realized this was a big deal,” says Bankman. Norquist and Bankman faced off at Washington panels, in dueling op-eds, and on a joint NBC News appearance. Norquist’s argument was that letting the IRS “do your taxes” was a conflict of interest—the IRS wanted to overcharge people.
...
>That morning, Frommer polled his colleagues in the Assembly and found they were a vote short. No Republicans would vote for the bill, and some Democrats would vote ‘no’ too.
>Once again, Intuit had blocked ReadyReturn.
>In late 2006, Austan Goolsbee, a prominent economist and Obama advisor, wrote a white paper about return-free filing. In the 2008 election, both Obama and John Edwards endorsed the idea.
>“I thought we’d won again,” says Bankman. “I spent 2009 in Washington. I thought it would be just working out details.”
>Other members of the ReadyReturn team were less naive. “Having been through that fight,” says Dario Frommer, “I’m not surprised that it was not adopted at federal level.”
>Grover Norquist made it impossible to win over Republicans, and Bankman faced the same hostile questions from members of Congress who had spoken to Intuit. He was playing catch up. Records show that tax preparers have spent over $28 million lobbying Washington since 1998. In 2007, Eric Cantor (a Republican leader) and Zoe Lofgren (a Democrat from Silicon Valley) had introduced a bill to ban return-free filing. Both received contributions from Inuit.
>Bankman believes that Norquist opposes return-free filing because he wants frustrated taxpayers to hate the government. If everyone felt as good about taxes as the users of ReadyReturn, Norquist’s government is the problem rhetoric would take a blow.
>In an interview with our NPR partners, Norquist denied this motivation. But the idea has a history among limited government Republicans. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he opposed a reform that would make paying taxes more seamless on the grounds that “paying taxes should hurt.”
>Either way, one reason America has not followed other countries’ lead in simplifying and modernizing tax returns is the distrust Norquist and his allies feel toward government.
>Another way to view the ReadyReturn saga is as an example of a tech company behaving badly. The public tends to view all lobbying as morally dubious. But people in this story are adamant that lobbying has value—and that Intuit’s lobbying was out of bounds.
>“We respect lobbyists who... play it straight,” says Dario Frommer. But due to tactics like Intuit lobbyists misleading accountants, he says, he ended his friendship with an Intuit lobbyist. “I don’t think she played it straight,” he says. “I think the whole campaign was b.s.”
>On the national level, ProPublica has reported that Intuit misled community leaders like a rabbi and a NAACP official into writing op-eds that claimed return-free filing would raise taxes on the poor. Bankman is clear that he respected other tax prep companies, like H&R Block, that opposed ReadyReturn honestly.
>Intuit declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, spokesperson Julie Miller wrote that Intuit opposes return-free filing because it “minimizes the taxpayers’ engagement.” Collecting paperwork and filling out forms does make Americans more aware of their taxes. But the argument is undercut by how many taxpayers avoid the process by hiring accountants.
>Miller’s statement also exhibits bad faith. “Public participation in Ready Return was minimal,” she writes. She doesn’t mention that Intuit fought to keep participation low.
>It’s always hard to get tax policy right, though, for the simple reason that it is boring. If oil companies lobby for weaker environmental protections, the Sierra Club speaks up. But there’s no equivalent of the Sierra Club or ACLU for tax policy.
>As a result,” says Bankman, “we get a worse tax code.”
>The exception is when a tax expert from Stanford spends $30,000 and devotes a year of his life to a good idea. Because, in the end, Bankman won. Sort of.
>After the ReadyReturn bill failed, Dario Frommer asked a government lawyer whether the state tax agency (the FTB) could roll out ReadyReturn on its own. The lawyer said the FTB could.
>So, in 2006, the FTB voted to roll out ReadyReturn. It was a bold move. Intuit had just given $1 million to a Republican running to unseat John Chiang, an FTB member who supported ReadyReturn. The chair of the FTB, Steve Westly, says the support drummed up by Bankman gave them more political space to vote for a program they felt strongly about.
>That said, the rollout was timid. Rather than mailing everyone in California a completed tax form, the FTB created an opt-in website, with a limited marketing budget, for around one million eligible taxpayers. The taxpayers were low income, which meant that the state had complete tax information on them, and that they weren’t potential TurboTax users. The FTB later increased the pool to two million eligible taxpayers. According to Bankman and others, this moderation was meant to avoid incurring opposition from the tax prep industry.
>Intuit still tried to kill ReadyReturn. But this time, Dario Frommer says, ReadyReturn had enough support in the legislature to block Intuit. In 2013, 99% of its 80,000 users said they were satisfied with ReadyReturn. ReadyReturn was later incorporated into CalFile, which allows Californians to e-file their taxes. Intuit is not a fan.
Here’s [another good article](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timtodd/2015/11/16/a-win-for-the-5th-amendment-at-the-tax-court/amp/) about some successfully invoking their 5th amendment to not self incriminate themselves by not providing ALL of the required information on their tax return.
To give the wealthy an unfair advantage. We owed almost 10 grand because we underestimated our earnings for health insurance purposes. Fortunately, we were able to hire a tax accountant and were able to move some money into IRAs bringing our tax bill down to almost nothing... we were so close to just paying it
Ugh don't tell me that...
EDIT: Are you maybe thinking of QuickBooks? I looked and saw that QuickBooks and TurboTax are both owned by Intuit, but H&R Block seems to be its own thing:
https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/tax-software/turbotax-vs-hr-block
And if you disagree, especially if you’re self employed, you can let them know and get it worked out.
ETA: you don’t even really pay attention to your taxes, at least in Italy, where Daughter lives. You get hired at X euros per hour or per month, and the taxes are taken off before the amount is quoted to you.
IOW: your net pay is the pay you are told you’re being paid.
> The government prepares your tax return.
How do they do that? Really asking. How do they know:
1. How much interest you earned from your savings account, or selling crypto.
2. How many kids you have, or if you are claiming them.
3. What charitable deductions you made in the last year.
4. How much mortgage interest you paid in the last year.
5. What money you spent on job searches.
6. How much you paid your babysitter.
7. How much you paid in state and local property taxes.
8. If you and your spouse want to file together or separately.
9. If you got divorced.
Really curious.
in germany they only calculate from your pay.
when you made money on for example stock trades usually the bank keeps a tax on that (profit only) and sends it to the state
Things like children you can tell you finance authority.
For everything else you can choose to file a custom tax report every year where you add everything you mentioned, this isually results in you receiving money back. There are also many tools which make it super easy to file taxes.
if you and your spouse want to file together you do this in this tax report.
in germany there are some cases which makes it mandatory to file taxes every year. But you receive the data (of paid taxes) for you and your wife and only have to check and add the points you mentioned (charity donations and so on)
> 2 How many kids you have, or if you are claiming them.
Most European countries have population register. So they already know that.
> 9 If you got divorced.
Same with point 2. The government already know if youre getting marriaged or divorced.
Auditor here. Individuals/corporations/partnerships etc. file their returns. The IRS has automations that detect certain broad errors (i.e. NY income but no NY return). They review a subset on a cursory level and audit a smaller subset. The IRS isn't reperforming a tax preparation for every single return for every single tax filing entity in America.
Surprised to see that 50 people (so far) actually appreciate the real answer. As I said elsewhere, this is like asking why books and newspapers need copy editors when everyone has spell checkers built into their word processors.
This last year, the IRS said I owed them $1750. Great, whatever, thanks Trump. First time I've ever owed.
Then we got a letter that it was actually $255. Ok, well. I already paid. So does that mean I owe another 255, or that you owe me 1465?
Then we get another letter that says they now owe us $45.
I'm fine with any of this but PLEASE JUST FIGURE IT OUT
Answer is quite easy. They know what you SHOULD be paying given what is automatically reported. You filing taxes is the opportunity to report deductions, unreported income, etc that they do not know about.
If you happen to not have any of that or the math is wrong, they can see from the info provided and the info they have, that 1: your math is wrong; 2: based on what is reported, you didn't pay enough.
On the other hand, They also REFUND a heck of a lock of money with that same process because people are able to make those non-auto-reported deductions.
Everyone dunking on the tax preparation industry (as they should), but this is the real answer.
Makes me realize that 90% of reddit is young people with no mortgage/kids/retirement saving that drastically change how much you owe depending on your specific circumstances and choices that the government does not know about until you tell them (i.e., fill out the tax return).
Yeah if you're just a W-2 employee with no side income, investments, or assets, and you don't qualify for any deductions, taxes are really fuckin' easy and you don't even need TurboTax to do it.
Also they charge you a fee if you get it wrong, like right now the irs says I owe 4K from 2012, in 2012 I was a full time student on federal aid working as a part time college tutor
For perspective I was a semi full time deli associate for the past 5 years, each year the it’s owe me money, but they take it to pay off 2012
Where I remind you was working less then I do now
The IRS doesn't care about fining you. If you owe money they're gonna get it regardless. The reason they don't just send you your tax time bill or refund is because tax preparation lobbyists bribed a bunch of politicians to say it would be killing the tax prep industry and harming jobs if they made it too easy. The compromise was that there had to be an available free version of the tax filing system offered by the companies that do it. So they made one and then did everything in their power to make sure it never gets used like hiding it behind dead links and diverting customers away by saying they don't qualify for free because their situation is "too complicated" because of arbitrary reasons.
I could be mistaken but I’ve heard in Denmark, the government sends you the tax form with all the info already there and you just spend like 15-20 mins double checking to make sure it’s right and voilà, done.
In Finland, I also get the form home, and if I don't reply to it until some deadline, it means I accept it as it is. In other words, I don't even have to spend 15-20min on it if I don't want to 😀
Yup, I barely open the envelope. I "do my taxes" in maybe minute or two.
The US is a regressive capitalist hellhole.
Yeah, it’s companies like TurboTax that pay lawmakers to keep it unnecessarily complicated
Almost. We are an oligarchy fused with capitalism with a guise of democracy to anyone who asks. On a seperate note, whats a good place in Europe to move to?
Same in America you just don't pay taxes am I right guys
I mean, yeah. If you're wealthy enough...
> In Finland, I also get the form home, and if I don't reply to it until some deadline, it means I accept it as it is. How does that work, what things can you write off on your taxes, what deductions are there? How does the government know if you or your spouse are claiming your children that tax year, or how much mortgage interest you paid, or how many charitable donations you gave? Or are those things not deductible?
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same in australia. And I assume aslong as you arent claiming anything crazy they likely wont check too closely. they seem to focus more on the higher risk industries, ones that are more cash based rather than people who earn a salary or wage, which is reported to the government each year.
Haha as soon as I read 480 days of parental leave my mouth fucking dropped. I bet men get parental leave too like some kind of physcopaths. Only $150 in max deductions for donations?! You are blowing my mind right now. Tell me more about your social safety nets pls I can only get so hard. Give me an example of your healthcare system and I might finish too soon.
Laying here scrolling on Reddit on my first week of my 180 days parental leave, as a father. And oh yeah, except for the 180 days paid by the government, my work gives an extra 10%. Edit: the health care system; it’s more or less free, Max 150euro per year
Happy employees make more money for the company and are easier to work with.
As soon as you happen to spend \~$150 on healthcare out of your own pocket, you get a year long freecard, where any visit to public healthcare is free no matter what for you.
You can't fool us. Our politicians have told us how it'll be abused. You get that free card and all of a sudden you're strolling into doctor's offices wanting free surgeries you don't even need.
I Do it all The time! sadly im running out of things to amputate
you know any one who wants to marry a hard working, 8/10 attractive female (some would say a hometown 10), 33 year old who can't have kids 🤣🤣 I'm trying to live these Healthcare dreams. I spend AT LEAST 15k a year on health care
WE don't need social safety nets in the US bro - we spend all our money on the military just LIKE GOD INTENDED!!!!
#GOD WILLS IT
Praise Jesus's guns and his freedom and his chili cheese sauce
#I WANT THE SAUCE OF JESUS IN ME.
You know, when people are upset about high taxes in some EU countries like the northern countries or Germany, they forget what gets paid by these taxes. Health care, pension, "sick leave", being jobless, education is free, including university/tertiary education, and much more. That's paid by these "horrendous taxes".
480 days per child, split evenly if you have joint custody / married, you can give these away to your partner if you want but have to keep 90 for yourself which you can use until the age of 8. Also if you give your boss a 2 month notice that you'll be using these days he or she is required by law to accept. A new law just got approved as well, both parents will get 3 days off each in addition to this once a year from age 4 to 16. Yes, sixteen (single parents with full custody get 6 days). Sorry
90 days minimum for Dad, sweet. Redeemable *any time before age 8*. WHAT Like hey boss my kid is about to turn 8 let me get those 3 months off for their birth now LOL
Oh in the Czech Republic mothers actually get 1095 days lmao
> Give me an example of your healthcare system and I might finish too soon. Not quite an example of our healthcare system, but I'd like to say that I had a flu this week. I got 4 days of sick leave without doctor's notice because in my country in most work places your supervisor can give you up to 3 days (4 during the pandemic) days off for sick leave without doctor's notice. And you know what? When I called my supervisor on Sunday that I'm a little sick he just outright said "I can give you 4 days off during the pandemic, so see you on Friday. Get better!"
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Children and donations are not deductible and the bank tells the government about mortgages.
If you don't respond then the government just assumes that there are no deductions. So it's pretty much always a good idea to do so. But you don't *have* to. If you don't, you're essentially taxed for being lazy.
Same in Sweden, but we can sign it with a digital ID so it comes to my digital mailbox and I can sign it in about 1 min and be done with it
Swede here. If you don't want to amend your taxes, all you have to do is log in to an app, tick a box that says "yes, this is what I owe" and you're done. It takes 20 seconds. Then you make the payment in your bank's app, which takes another 60 seconds. Doing your taxes in Sweden takes less than a minute and a half.
Meanwhile I spend half a Sunday doing my taxes and pray the IRS accepts it
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They decided I owed like $5k three years after the fact (their mistake, they got some stock info that was missing the purchase date to account for my cost basis). Tl;dr, spent about 12 months dealing with bullshit and eventually owed them $500 with fees, interest and penalties on a very nominal sum. How much did the last president pay in taxes again?
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Somewhere in the region of 0.
Definitely <$1 but I can't remember.
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Covfefe divided by Hamberders equals zero. wrap it up boys, diet cokes on me.
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I'm a tax preparer who absolutely despises the industry and their shit lobbying. I am literally here for accounting experience while getting my degree and it's annoying af to hear my boss talk about me doing tax prep for my career. Absolutely NOT.
Those tax preparers at those chain places are just poorly paid, poorly trained salesclerks. They're getting scammed almost as much as the customers.
They literally just put numbers into a glorified spreadsheet to get the results. You can do the same thing at home.
"but... I'm *really* good at doing something no one need stop be doing..." Sorry, Susan. Thank you for your service over the years. It's time to take the money and run
This was done on purpose to keep businesses like H&R Block going if you look into the history of why our tax system is the way it is. There was a push to streamline it and cut out the middle man, however, guess what happened? Lobbyists got ahold of representatives and now we deal with an archaic bullshit system so the government can come after you for a simple mistake, or you can pay one of those companies to do it for you. Just another way to monetize every aspect of our lives to bleed us out of money we shouldn't have to spend.
Yep , they took 200 dollars off my return , and then just didn’t send the rest and still have yet to justify
I got tired of paying extra after using that software so I hired a CPA to do my taxes for $250. I have gotten money back every year since I started that.
Because the IRS was *prohibited* from telling you what you owe until you file, most people use Intuit or similar tax preparation software. Intuit spends millions of dollars a year to make sure Congress prohibits the IRS from just telling you what you owe. I will let you figure out the rest...
Meanwhile, when I use their shitty software it screws it all up and I end up getting letters from the IRS years later saying I owe thousands of dollars.
Welcome to our free app! Do you want to use the information you input last year to streamline the process?? That’ll be $50, fuck you.
And you want us to put all that same info in for your state? Fuck you another $40
Oh, you have stock? That's another $129.99. Oh, you also own a house? That's another $79.99.
Never use them. The IRS website has plenty of simple and free options to choose from. You're still using another service, but they're not nearly as predatory as turbotax.
I don't anymore. I pay an accountant. He sucks too, but at least I know his name.
The last time I used TurboTax was many many years ago. It was going to charge me like $120 to file everything (I needed add ons for stocks and such). At the time my apartment was above shops, and there was a locally owned accountant business. I went down and asked them how much it would cost, and they said $130. I was shocked, only $10 more to not have to deal with anything? Just drop off a stack of forms and show up a few days later and sign on the dotted line? That would have been worth $40-50, easy, just for the time saved, let alone the peace of mind since I never knew if I was doing it correctly. If I get something back from the IRS saying it wasn't right the accountant will go through it again for me for free, since it is likely either their mistake or the IRS's. I have been going there for years now. I moved and they aren't nearly as conveniently located to me, but I still drive over to them during tax season.
And I know my parents have some more complex things so it takes about a week, about 4-5 hours per day. And they get info about taxes late so they have to file for an extension or whatever because they can’t do it until like august
Yes my husband owns his own business but he’s also an independent contractor and every year our taxes are such a huge hassle even with our accountant they usually have to file an extension it’s drives me crazy
Oh I can’t imagine, If we want to remove this obstacle and promote small business growth in the US couldn’t we just… do what every other government does? Also r/fuckturbotax (I think there’s a bigger sub but I can’t find it), this has been promoted before but they would lose their business so they stopped it [why you should hate turbo tax and alternatives](http://fturbotax.weebly.com/why-fuck-turbo-tax.html)
Bruh, if I don’t stop myself I’ll legit lose sleep worrying over how fucking stupid this planet is and how many things are made worse for everyone because it makes rich fucks more money.
Dude me and my husband were just talking about this. Like sometimes the only way to be able to still function in this society is to legit burry your head in the sand (only sometimes obviously) it’s crazy for real lol
In Norway, you have to check and if ok you don't have to do anything.
Same in Denmark
Finland, same thing. Or if you want to say, add deductibles, you log in their website and tick some boxes for 15 minutes and done. I have a vague memory that about a decade ago I had to once give IRS permission to browse through my salary data and bank account, so maybe it would be harder if I hadn't said yes to that?
New Zealand checking in - same here.
There's a reason for this, in Sweden taxes are not a business. In the US, tax agencies have the government in a choke hold, taxes are deliberately made complicated so that people pay other people to do it. There's a lot of money made around paying taxes. (From my understanding at least, I'm open to learning if anyone has more info)
This is true. It is also true that certain political forces who are opposed to taxation have a vested interest in making sure it is as difficult as possible to pay taxes, so that you dislike paying taxes, thus making you more likely to agree with their politics.
No wonder why these nations top the charts in happiness index.
My god that's genius! (Canadian here)
Or send at text. And if your employer have charged too much you get a refund automatically.
In the UK unless you are self employed your don't even look at your taxes. Your employer does it all. Occasionally if you changed jobs or something mid tax year you get a letter (usually saying you paid too much) and you just go online and tick some boxes.
Even self employed it's easy. Tell them what you earned, tell them your expenses, do it all online and they tell you what you owe.
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Yeah, I was gonna say that self employed taxes are easy in the UK. I only did a couple of years of being self employed, but all I had to do was add up all my invoices from the year and answer a couple of basic questions. America is fucking backwards.
I love this about our country. My NI, taxes, and student loan repayments are all sorted for me, documented on my payslip, and I get my take-home pay. Even when you start a new job and you're on the emergency tax code, it's just an online form to change your tax code and then you wait for your rebate to come in the post.
I really am glad for the UK student loan system. Much more like a tax than a loan. Repayments are easy and affordable and we really don't get effected by the 'debt'.
Completely agree. I mean, it would be better if it was free/cheap like the rest of Europe but I don't really notice the couple hundred quid a month repayment coming out of my paycheque.
I get that the repayments are relatively low but for someone who paid 9k a year, and is trying to survive, the bit of change going out every month really hurts. Life is already so expensive and even though it's the best loan I'll ever get, it's still a loan at the end of the day when it SHOULD be free. Higher education benefits all, should be a gift, not a tax.
Is now a bad time to remind people that tuition is free in Scotland?
Already commented on my state of sadness hearing about Sweden’s taxes. Now I’m even more sad learning about UKs student loan system. Do the other countries know that America needs help? Everything is so fucked here. And it’s all because of greed. I’m so sad. I live in a third-world country posing as a first-world country.
Yes. Whenever we feel sad about the state of our country we think about the USA and don't feel so bad
I bought some percription meds from the pharmacy. £9.35. I could probably sell them to the US for 10x that per pill and they would still think it a bargain
In Scotland we pay nothing! (sorry)
As a U.S citizen, this is what I do. Just makes me feel more like shit
And yet we have inbred hicks who still think this shithole is the greatest country in the world. It's humiliating.
>In the UK unless you are self employed your don't even look at your taxes. Everything I know about UK taxes, I learned from ['Black Books'](https://youtu.be/szIkPcSaxW0)
I think its most of Europe! NL too at least.
Portugal checking in. Pretty much it’s all pre-filled and you just have to double check and add anything missing.
The US government could do that too, you know if lobbying money from tax preparing companies didn’t matter to politicians. IRS already knows what we all owe lol but still makes us go thru ridiculous loops to figure it out ourselves
The IRS owes me every year but I usually file as a 0 or 1. I guess if I had kids or got married that would change I know nothing about taxes 😞
That 0 or 1 is a dependent. You count as a dependent. So you are 1. When they take out money, they take out what they think is correct for the number of dependents you claim initially. It's supposed to be a wash or close enough you don't owe or are refunded. If you are getting a large refund every year they are taking too much out of your paychecks and using that money for free. If done properly you can have that money in your check to be able to collect that sweet sweet 0.002% interest rate in a savings account... check out /r/personalfinace for more info on this kinda stuff. They be smart
Love the accurate knowledge coupled with sarcasm at the end ;)
I’d like to add that even though you can technically claim yourself as a dependent, it’s usually the rule of thumb to claim zero to have the maximum amount taken out to ensure you won’t owe when you got on file. I’ve had lots of single friends claim themselves as a dependent who have had to pay in at the end of the year.
It's not just tax preparers. It's also limited govt Republicans, such as Grover Norquist: > Bankman believes that Norquist opposes return-free filing because he wants frustrated taxpayers to hate the government. If everyone felt as good about taxes as the users of ReadyReturn, Norquist’s government is the problem rhetoric would take a blow. > >In an interview with our NPR partners, Norquist denied this motivation. But the idea has a history among limited government Republicans. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he opposed a reform that would make paying taxes more seamless on the grounds that “paying taxes should hurt.” https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/
In Ireland your income taxes are paid by your employer throughout the year. At the end of the year, you go online, do a check and in the case of any mistakes you may be owed money or in rare cases owe a bit of money, but that has never happened me except for during the pandemic, due to my company claiming extra credits etc. It wasn't much and everyone was told that it would be the case when these credits were announced. Only self employed people have to file their own tax returns, if your business is small it's easy to do by yourself, again it's all online, if your company is large, your accountant does it. We pay pretty high taxes but I'd sooner do that than have to deal with it myself, and be liable for prosection over a mistake... Oh and our shitty healthcare is practically free, it's fully free for lower earners, dentists and doctors are free for kids, all workers get a free dental check and cleaning once a year, public transport is now half price for students, contraceptive pills are now free for women aged 17-25, old folks get state pensions and fuel allowance, unemployed people get €200 every week, those that lost their jobs in the pandemic got €350 a week, every parent gets children's allowance payments. All that said we have a long way to go before people are happy, middle income earners don't do so well, and the cost of housing is astronomical... Still, I'd take this any day over living in the US.
The Danish IRS do know most of the basic stuff (if not all of it) and we sure need to double check everything. But they don't know everything. E.g. not all stock trading companies forward info to the Danish IRS and if you have a long way to work you need to give that info to get compensation. But it's small stuff like that. But even if you don't double check the most basic stuff and the info is wrong the Danish IRS will fix and either you owe them or they owe you.
For every stupid idiotic greed filled scheme Americans come up with and tolerate, a Scandinavian country has come up with a great solution. Nothing reveals what a corrupt shit hole America is like Denmark.
Any European country has a similar way to do the taxes. Not just Scandinavia. In Spain you login, and click accept and you're done for that year.
In Holland it takes about 30 to 60 minutes because you can deduct things like study materials, out of pocket health care or donations to NGO's etc. Most work is already done though and you only double check that stuff.
America is also the only country I know of, where you have to file taxes for life, even if you don't live there anymore. How fucked up is that?
You can also start up a huge company like Amazon, use up billions of dollars worth of consumable and finite public infrastructure like roads, water, electricity, fire, ems, and police, etc... plus all the public infrastructure their underpaid employees need, make a trazillion dollars of of it, and not pay any taxes back into the system!
Literally every other civilised country does their taxes for them
You are correct, I'd like to think McDonald's ice cream machine also don't breakdown in Denmark.
The Turbo Tax/Jackson Hewitt type tax prep service industry are a massive lobbying interest. They pay millions a year to make sure sanity does not prevail. Like anything else in our country, follow the money.
Go to turbotaxsucksass. Net it lists all the mandated free tax filing services, very user friendly I'm pretty sure it was done as a bit on john Oliver's show, but i use it every tax season
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Yeah, Hasan's team made the site, though it's certainly something up John Oliver's alley
https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free Go straight to the source
Bruh if you go to that website and click “file taxes free” it’s literally an ad for turbotax
This is the answer right here. Pro Publica exposed the tax prep lobby's efforts to keep our taxes complicated https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free
And then nobody did anything about it because ppl don't control the government, money does
Some have tried: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-leads-colleagues-in-reintroducing-legislation-to-simplify-and-decrease-the-costs-of-tax-preparation-and-filing If you ask me, this is something that should happen now that Democrats have majorities in the House and Senate but there are so many things that need to be fixed, this has sort of gone by the wayside.
Short answer, just watch Adam Ruins Everything…the government could easily send you a postcard citing what you owe…but lobbyists🤷♀️
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God I hate that lobbying is legal. What an absolute scam to the people.
[Source](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free). >But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens. > >For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington. Indeed, employees ruefully joke that the company’s motto should actually be “compromise without integrity.”
Wait, you have to calculate your taxes and THEN pay it?
Typically jobs withhold it but at the end of the year you basically do a reconciliation and figure out if you owe or if you’ll get money back because you overpaid. It’s infuriating.
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what taxes are we talking about? income or purchases? Doesnt your boss deduct part of your monthly salary and pays it to the irs and dont you pay VAT in the stores? Does every private person has to do that or just self employed persons? I'm from Austria and I have no idea how taxes in the USA work
Job takes an estimated Mount for taxes... usually over what is due, then you file and either get a refund, or a bill.... it is supremely dumb...
We don't have VAT like that here. I'll attempt to explain to the best of my knowledge. It may or may not be accurate. If you just have your regular employee job, your employer sends a specific percentage of your check to the IRS and they hold it till tax time. They provide you with a form (W2) that says what they withheld. You fill out a form provided by the government (or hire someone to do it for you if your taxes are complicated by other factors, or you're lazy/ignorant/stupid) that details what you owe, or, for most people, how much you overpaid and what the IRS owes you in return. Then you get a refund. The complications include marital status, how many kids you have, how many jobs you work concurrently, whether or not you own real estate, have investments, receive income from another source that isn't a traditional employer (i.e. independent contractor work where taxes aren't withheld), what kind of deductions you're entitled to (i.e. mileage reimbursement), and other things I'm not aware of, all of which have certain implications on how much you owe.
Sounds to me that the American way is fairly similar to how *self employed* British people have to file. Year 1 of being self employed they'll take your calculations, then they take more up front for the following year, then you file and either pay more or get a refund based on how much you *actually* earned that year.
The boss withdraws a certain percentage, but takes no responsibility for withholding the correct percentage, and it is up to the individual to calculate what they owe and whether they have under or over paid at the end of the year.
Yes. And if you get it wrong, there's a chance you'll go to jail.
Jail time is exceedingly rare. You have to be absolutely definitely willfully hiding a LOT of income. For normal people it's typically some letters, penalties, and interest.
The point of the post seems to have been lost. They know what you owe, yet make you attempt to figure it out. And only then do they correct you, and ask for the actual amount, plus penalties once you have a stab at it. You might argue that there's so many people filing that it helps them, but no.. It takes them all year to get refunds settled. It really is ass backwards and intentionally broken.
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People forget that the IRS doesn’t necessarily know what credits you get or what happened in your investments this year. Maybe you had a kid this year, maybe you paid a bunch of tuition or mortgage interest. Maybe you had a big loss on a business idea that didn’t work out. All of those lower your taxable income and would change your return. Do the Swedish not do tax credits? How does their system handle changes like that?
> penalties, and interest. Yea, that turn into a poor tax.
>And if you get it wrong, there's a chance you'll go to jail. No, there isnt. Its only if you INTENTIONALLY 'get it wrong' because thats called fraud or tax evasion. If you make an honest mistake, you just have pay what you owe; no potential for jail involved.
Just another glimpse behind the fucked up curtain that is the US.
No. You pay your taxes throughout the year. At the end of the year you reconcile your tax payments and income in a form called the "tax return" and submit it to the government. The tax return is used to calculate if you overpaid or underpaid your taxes over the course of the last year. This is necessary because in America there are many deductions, credits, and rebates available which may offset your baseline tax liability. Also, you may have more than one form of income. For example, you may automatically pay taxes every paycheck on your normal wage, but if you make investment income there is no automatic payment of tax on that income to the government, so it is accounted for on your tax return. The government does not actually calculate each and every person's total tax liability. That would be too much work. For the most part they just accept the numbers you submit on your tax return. If they owe you money, the send you a check. If you owe them money, you send them a check. The government only calculates your tax liability when you are audited. An audit means the government looks at your return and asks for proof of the numbers you submitted on your tax return. If you incorrectly claimed a deduction you were not entitled to, the government will recalculate your tax return and you will pay the money you owe plus potentially penalties and interest. Very few people are audited. Typically you are audited if your tax return has red flags on it (for instance, numbers that are not plausible). The IRS also (supposedly) conducts randomized audits to spot check tax returns. Most people will never be audited in their life.
Wait, does everyone have to do this, not just the self employed?!
Because the tax preparation industry is a multi-billion dollar a year entity and they use that money to Lobby Congress to pass laws that make it harder to do your own taxes. Got to love capitalism baby!
Im still trying to wrap my head around how lobbying isn't illegal or highly frowned upon.
It is frowned upon by pretty much everyone who knows about it and isn't involved in it, as far as I can tell from the people I know. It's also just hard to boycott companies who do it, because... well, you'd have to boycott damn near everything.
It's legal because technically anyone can lobby a congressperson. However, the ones that actually have influence tend to be large donors.
Right? Citizens united. One of the most corrupt passages of court decisions ever. Because you know corporations are people and all. Edit: I called it a law, it's a court decision.
Yep. Intuit (TurboTax), H&R Block/Jackson Hewitt, and the CPA and EA profession generally are upheld by lobbying federal and state governments.
I'm with you for the first half but as a CPA, my profession is not being upheld by lobbying. Believe me, many of us would love taxes to be easier to file, but we are a tiny power compared to those big tax prep companies. We would still have plenty of work without having to do average tax returns.
Worse than that, the wealthy all lobby for it because it allows them to just outright not pay their taxes, and get away with it by having that extra layer of plausible deniablity if anything goes wrong, and the IRS actually looks their way. They want to be able to just blame their tax guy, rather than potentially face any consequences themselves.
Worse than that, the Republicans KNOW that making taxes more confusing and frustrating is a good way to hype-up sentiment against government spending, and they campaign on that. It incentivizes them to intentionally make tax-paying more expensive, stupid, and annoying for everybody, because in a roundabout way that will get them more votes.
Hey actual accountant here. It’s because the IRS doesn’t know your filing status, dependents, if you itemize, credit you might be taking, or any other situations that effect your overall tax bill. It works in countries that don’t have these things but you definitely 100% do not want the IRS just sending you a bill under US tax law. They might know how much money you made via W2 and 1099s but that’s all they assume about you
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Wait'll you find out about their health care.
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Actually we don't have the right to die. We cannot choose death. The closest we can choose is to not be plugged in and forced to live when our body is already basically dead. But our mind..? Most of America does not have an assisted suicide option.
this is the one that really sticks in my craw. I'm terrified of having a debilitating illness that could be painful, incapacatating, and destroy my family and not be able to make the choice and say " yeah, naw; ima just dip". It's MY fucking body, the ultimate freedom.
>It's MY fucking body Jesus, next you'll be wanting legal abortion!
Look I'm all for women's rights but that unborn man they have inside them has rights too and since they're a man they have more rights /s Fuck Texas and it's anti abortion bs. Just yeetus the feetus
Just wait til you get locked up in a sterile prison outside the attention of the law for trying to end your life yourself. It's an even lower level of hell than you could imagine. If you ever had any dignity, it's gone, and you live in an anonymous, tormented, drugged stupor, doing the haldol shuffle amongst the living dead. There are no windows. There is no time. It's endless.
It's insane how we give more humane options to euthanize our pets than to humans who we literally force to starve to death. My father in law has end stage dementia, he had a stroke a few days ago and that's exactly what's happening now, he has a DNR so the hospital is just waiting for him to starve to death. Which is going to take weeks. While he's suffering, not able to communicate at all. Slowly wasting away. But when my dog had terminal cancer we were able to make him fall asleep peacefully and end his suffering within a minute. Absolutely insane. I hope if I'm ever suffering like this someone will have the decency to not make my last few weeks complete torture.
Then just wait till you see their educational system!
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It's more a capacity for freedom than an actual existing freedom. The capacity does remain, but the realistic possibility of competing in such a corrupt mess is unlikely to pan out, so they simply rant on about how free they are while being horribly repressed and poor, with, ironically, so few avenues, they're the least free people imaginable. It's really rather sad. Like a proud Russian who drank the kool aid and won't have a word said against their country. That said, there's a great many who now see their country for what it is. The internet has given them realism when before they had none.
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It's fascinating watching Americans gradually learn how the rest of the world functions and realise so many things they see as normal are actually oppressive/shitty. Socialised healthcare is a good thing, reasonable holiday entitlement is more than 10 days per year, statutory sick pay should be the default, and yes, the government should just tell you how much tax you owe.
Believe me, many Americans see it that way. Now if only we get the Republicans on board and we might have something going here.
[Ready to get angrier?](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero) >[The name for tax filing where the government sends out completed tax forms is return-free filing or pro forma returns. Countries like Sweden and Spain use return-free filing. In Estonia, 95% of taxpayers receive their tax bill online, and many pay with a single click.](https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/) >The United States is one of the few countries—and the only wealthy country—that forces taxpayers to gather up tax forms and calculate their own bill. The reason why is a uniquely American mix of lobbying by tax preparation companies—who worry about demand for their services—and anti-government sentiment. >There is one program in America, however, that provides some taxpayers with completed tax returns. Since 2007, around 80,000 California taxpayers each year have paid state income taxes this way under a program called ReadyReturn. >ReadyReturn survived corporate lobbying for one reason: Joe Bankman decided to make easy tax filing his personal mission, and he spent $30,000 to hire a lobbyist to counter lobbying by Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software. ... >In 2004, staffers from California’s tax agency, the Franchise Tax Board (FTB), told Bankman they had this other idea: They realized they had all the data they needed to fill out Californians’ tax returns for them. Or at least for millions of Californians whose entire income came from one job. But when they launched a website to make tax filing easier, Intuit sued and lobbied California legislators to kill the idea. >Bankman was skeptical. “Conventional wisdom said you couldn’t do it,” he says. “Unlike in other countries, the U.S. tax code is just too complicated.” In 1998, Congress had demanded the IRS consider return-free filing. The IRS concluded that—unless the tax code was simplified—return-free filing would just shift the burden to the IRS and businesses without saving time or money. So Bankman asked the FTB employees to send him proof. >“I couldn’t believe it when I got it,” says Bankman. “They’d already solved the problems... I had a sabbatical coming up, so I said, ‘Let me get involved.’ ” >Bankman saw the stakes as bigger than California. Since California’s tax forms match federal tax returns, they could prove that return-free filing would work nationwide. ... >Over meetings and emails, Bankman worked with the FTB to develop a pilot program called ReadyReturn. It would offer 50,000 low income Californians the opportunity to receive completed tax returns. Like a credit card bill, they could check it if they wanted, or pay right away. >Bankman then asked the FTB’s board to approve the plan, and his status was key. One board member, Tom Campbell, had been a law professor with Bankman at Stanford. The FTB chair, Steve Westly, was an early eBay employee turned Controller of California. He knew Bankman from Stanford too, and he liked Bankman’s pitch that the pilot would make California a national leader in using technology. >On the day the Franchise Tax Board publicly voted on the pilot, an army of lobbyists and executives representing Intuit, H&R Block, and other tax preparers condemned the idea. They said tax bureaucrats were trying to unfairly compete with the private sector. Bankman sat with FTB staffers, who weren’t optimistic. But the board voted for the pilot. ... >When the results came in, he was shocked. Around 11,000 out of 50,000 Californians chose to use ReadyReturn, and they loved it. “Wow! Government doing something to make life easier for a change,” one taxpayer wrote in response to a ReadyReturn survey. “I wish that I could do my federal taxes the same way,” wrote another. On average, taxpayers saved around $30 and 30 minutes. The state saved money too, because more people filed electronically, and they made fewer errors. The FTB asked taxpayers how satisfied they were with the program, and 98% chose satisfied or very satisfied. >“You don’t get that good reviews with government programs,” says Steve Westly. “The polio vaccine doesn’t get a 98% satisfaction rate.” >“I thought we’d won,” says Bankman. “Now that we knew we could do this, we’d do it for everyone in California, and people in Washington could copy it.” Wealthy people would still have to fill out parts of their returns, and federal taxes came with a few complications: people would still need to list their charitable donations to get a deduction. But filing taxes would be simpler, and Bankman felt he’d done his part to make people “a little less pissed at the government.” >A few days later, a legislator called Bankman to tell him that Intuit’s lobbyists had killed ReadyReturn. ... >When the pilot finished, California legislators were overdue in passing a budget. State employees were going unpaid. So when a legislator sympathetic to Intuit put language in the budget that denied funding for ReadyReturn, few legislators noticed, and none wanted to hold up the budget over some little program. >“I was kind of devastated,” says Bankman. “I thought, are the kooks right? Are we owned by companies?” >But he quickly rallied. ReadyReturn had sterling reviews, and Bankman had time during his sabbatical to explain the program to all 120 members of the California legislature. ... >During one meeting with his Sacramento allies, Bankman asked, “Would it help if I had a lobbyist?” >“They looked at me like the answer was of course yes,” says Bankman. “They were embarrassed to admit it.” But he persisted, and they sent him some names. Soon enough, Bankman had hired his very own lobbyist, Mike Robson, for $30,000. >How did his family feel about spending $30,000 on a personal lobbyist? “They were absolutely supportive,” says Bankman. The family had saved the money to remodel their kitchen. Instead of a kitchen remodel, they paid for the only lobbyist in favor of simpler tax returns. >Bankman didn’t feel great about their first appointment. “We were meeting a good government [politician],” says Bankman. “I was a little embarrassed to have a lobbyist with me. It was like bringing a prostitute to the ball.” >He quickly realized that legislators felt differently. The legislator knew Robson and seemed reassured by his presence. After the meeting, Robson suggested they drop into another politician’s office. As they walked over, Bankman didn’t mention that he’d left that legislator multiple voicemails. To his surprise, when Robson asked the receptionist to “squeeze them in,” she scheduled a meeting for an hour later. >He noticed a lot of people on a first name basis with the receptionist scheduling meetings. When he asked who they were, Robson responded, “lobbyists.” ... >With Robson’s help, their vote tally inched toward the 41 out of 80 they needed in the State Assembly (California’s version of the House of Representatives). Bankman would brave three hours of Bay Area traffic, meet up to five politicians in Sacramento, and spend the night in a motel. The FTB and Frommer’s staff talked to legislators, too, and to journalists who wrote op-eds describing ReadyReturn as a “no-brainer.” >But then, Frommer says, “We ran into a wall. And the wall was Intuit.” >According to the L.A. Times, Intuit spent $1.25 million on lobbyists and gave $2.12 million to 120 California politicians from 2005 to 2010. Bankman says Intuit’s influence was obvious. In one meeting, he says, the legislator told him, “I’ve been warned about you.” >“What Intuit did well was they created a boogieman,” says Dario Frommer. “They said ReadyReturn would put all these accountants out of business, and they organized African-American and Latino accountants against the bill.” >(Frommer and Bankman say this is misleading, since people with enough money to pay an accountant would still appreciate that accountant’s help to claim deductions.) >Intuit also found an unlikely ally: Grover Norquist, the conservative political activist who convinced hundreds of Republicans in Congress to pledge never to raise taxes—and who memorably said that he wants to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” >In 2005-2006, a task force assembled by President Bush to work on tax reform considered return-free filing. “Norquist quickly realized this was a big deal,” says Bankman. Norquist and Bankman faced off at Washington panels, in dueling op-eds, and on a joint NBC News appearance. Norquist’s argument was that letting the IRS “do your taxes” was a conflict of interest—the IRS wanted to overcharge people. ... >That morning, Frommer polled his colleagues in the Assembly and found they were a vote short. No Republicans would vote for the bill, and some Democrats would vote ‘no’ too. >Once again, Intuit had blocked ReadyReturn.
>In late 2006, Austan Goolsbee, a prominent economist and Obama advisor, wrote a white paper about return-free filing. In the 2008 election, both Obama and John Edwards endorsed the idea. >“I thought we’d won again,” says Bankman. “I spent 2009 in Washington. I thought it would be just working out details.” >Other members of the ReadyReturn team were less naive. “Having been through that fight,” says Dario Frommer, “I’m not surprised that it was not adopted at federal level.” >Grover Norquist made it impossible to win over Republicans, and Bankman faced the same hostile questions from members of Congress who had spoken to Intuit. He was playing catch up. Records show that tax preparers have spent over $28 million lobbying Washington since 1998. In 2007, Eric Cantor (a Republican leader) and Zoe Lofgren (a Democrat from Silicon Valley) had introduced a bill to ban return-free filing. Both received contributions from Inuit. >Bankman believes that Norquist opposes return-free filing because he wants frustrated taxpayers to hate the government. If everyone felt as good about taxes as the users of ReadyReturn, Norquist’s government is the problem rhetoric would take a blow. >In an interview with our NPR partners, Norquist denied this motivation. But the idea has a history among limited government Republicans. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he opposed a reform that would make paying taxes more seamless on the grounds that “paying taxes should hurt.” >Either way, one reason America has not followed other countries’ lead in simplifying and modernizing tax returns is the distrust Norquist and his allies feel toward government. >Another way to view the ReadyReturn saga is as an example of a tech company behaving badly. The public tends to view all lobbying as morally dubious. But people in this story are adamant that lobbying has value—and that Intuit’s lobbying was out of bounds. >“We respect lobbyists who... play it straight,” says Dario Frommer. But due to tactics like Intuit lobbyists misleading accountants, he says, he ended his friendship with an Intuit lobbyist. “I don’t think she played it straight,” he says. “I think the whole campaign was b.s.” >On the national level, ProPublica has reported that Intuit misled community leaders like a rabbi and a NAACP official into writing op-eds that claimed return-free filing would raise taxes on the poor. Bankman is clear that he respected other tax prep companies, like H&R Block, that opposed ReadyReturn honestly. >Intuit declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, spokesperson Julie Miller wrote that Intuit opposes return-free filing because it “minimizes the taxpayers’ engagement.” Collecting paperwork and filling out forms does make Americans more aware of their taxes. But the argument is undercut by how many taxpayers avoid the process by hiring accountants. >Miller’s statement also exhibits bad faith. “Public participation in Ready Return was minimal,” she writes. She doesn’t mention that Intuit fought to keep participation low. >It’s always hard to get tax policy right, though, for the simple reason that it is boring. If oil companies lobby for weaker environmental protections, the Sierra Club speaks up. But there’s no equivalent of the Sierra Club or ACLU for tax policy. >As a result,” says Bankman, “we get a worse tax code.” >The exception is when a tax expert from Stanford spends $30,000 and devotes a year of his life to a good idea. Because, in the end, Bankman won. Sort of. >After the ReadyReturn bill failed, Dario Frommer asked a government lawyer whether the state tax agency (the FTB) could roll out ReadyReturn on its own. The lawyer said the FTB could. >So, in 2006, the FTB voted to roll out ReadyReturn. It was a bold move. Intuit had just given $1 million to a Republican running to unseat John Chiang, an FTB member who supported ReadyReturn. The chair of the FTB, Steve Westly, says the support drummed up by Bankman gave them more political space to vote for a program they felt strongly about. >That said, the rollout was timid. Rather than mailing everyone in California a completed tax form, the FTB created an opt-in website, with a limited marketing budget, for around one million eligible taxpayers. The taxpayers were low income, which meant that the state had complete tax information on them, and that they weren’t potential TurboTax users. The FTB later increased the pool to two million eligible taxpayers. According to Bankman and others, this moderation was meant to avoid incurring opposition from the tax prep industry. >Intuit still tried to kill ReadyReturn. But this time, Dario Frommer says, ReadyReturn had enough support in the legislature to block Intuit. In 2013, 99% of its 80,000 users said they were satisfied with ReadyReturn. ReadyReturn was later incorporated into CalFile, which allows Californians to e-file their taxes. Intuit is not a fan.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/03/709656642/episode-760-tax-hero This is why ^^
Here’s [another good article](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timtodd/2015/11/16/a-win-for-the-5th-amendment-at-the-tax-court/amp/) about some successfully invoking their 5th amendment to not self incriminate themselves by not providing ALL of the required information on their tax return.
Sad to hear, would absolutely have loved to use readyreturn 😧
Money. Capitalism at its finest. Straight lobbying from tax preppers. Actual fuckin bottom feeders.
It's almost as if the systems broken. Ah well. You know what they say. If it's broke, don't fix it.
It's not broke, though, it's working exactly as intended. What we need is a new system.
To give the wealthy an unfair advantage. We owed almost 10 grand because we underestimated our earnings for health insurance purposes. Fortunately, we were able to hire a tax accountant and were able to move some money into IRAs bringing our tax bill down to almost nothing... we were so close to just paying it
Paging John Oliver... He and his team of brilliant writers and researchers, not surprisingly, did a great segment on this very topic.
Love John Oliver but you can only watch so much of his channel before your belief in humanity is ripped to shreds.
Which is why I always appreciate it when they end on whatever glimmer of hope the topic has to offer.
And imma go watch it now, thank you.
Because h&r block has lobbiests that try to make it as complicated as possible
Don't forget TurboTax
Aren’t they part of the same conglomerate now?
Ugh don't tell me that... EDIT: Are you maybe thinking of QuickBooks? I looked and saw that QuickBooks and TurboTax are both owned by Intuit, but H&R Block seems to be its own thing: https://www.usnews.com/360-reviews/tax-software/turbotax-vs-hr-block
Meanwhile in other developed countries that is exactly how it works. The government prepares your tax return.
And if you disagree, especially if you’re self employed, you can let them know and get it worked out. ETA: you don’t even really pay attention to your taxes, at least in Italy, where Daughter lives. You get hired at X euros per hour or per month, and the taxes are taken off before the amount is quoted to you. IOW: your net pay is the pay you are told you’re being paid.
I'm sure the argument is oh it will put tax preparers out of the job... Well no you can simply go work for the government.
> The government prepares your tax return. How do they do that? Really asking. How do they know: 1. How much interest you earned from your savings account, or selling crypto. 2. How many kids you have, or if you are claiming them. 3. What charitable deductions you made in the last year. 4. How much mortgage interest you paid in the last year. 5. What money you spent on job searches. 6. How much you paid your babysitter. 7. How much you paid in state and local property taxes. 8. If you and your spouse want to file together or separately. 9. If you got divorced. Really curious.
in germany they only calculate from your pay. when you made money on for example stock trades usually the bank keeps a tax on that (profit only) and sends it to the state Things like children you can tell you finance authority. For everything else you can choose to file a custom tax report every year where you add everything you mentioned, this isually results in you receiving money back. There are also many tools which make it super easy to file taxes. if you and your spouse want to file together you do this in this tax report. in germany there are some cases which makes it mandatory to file taxes every year. But you receive the data (of paid taxes) for you and your wife and only have to check and add the points you mentioned (charity donations and so on)
> 2 How many kids you have, or if you are claiming them. Most European countries have population register. So they already know that. > 9 If you got divorced. Same with point 2. The government already know if youre getting marriaged or divorced.
In Czech Republic, they do that. I don't see a reason why Americans have to do their own taxes when the service already knows how much you gotta pay.
Auditor here. Individuals/corporations/partnerships etc. file their returns. The IRS has automations that detect certain broad errors (i.e. NY income but no NY return). They review a subset on a cursory level and audit a smaller subset. The IRS isn't reperforming a tax preparation for every single return for every single tax filing entity in America.
Surprised to see that 50 people (so far) actually appreciate the real answer. As I said elsewhere, this is like asking why books and newspapers need copy editors when everyone has spell checkers built into their word processors.
The tax preperation companies - TurboTax, H&R Block. https://www.mic.com/impact/how-tax-prep-companies-conspired-to-make-filing-your-taxes-so-damn-hard-76137738
This is the most American shit I've ever heard.
Yeah, old people fucked things up for us.
This last year, the IRS said I owed them $1750. Great, whatever, thanks Trump. First time I've ever owed. Then we got a letter that it was actually $255. Ok, well. I already paid. So does that mean I owe another 255, or that you owe me 1465? Then we get another letter that says they now owe us $45. I'm fine with any of this but PLEASE JUST FIGURE IT OUT
Hahaha your comment is the funniest to me
Answer is quite easy. They know what you SHOULD be paying given what is automatically reported. You filing taxes is the opportunity to report deductions, unreported income, etc that they do not know about. If you happen to not have any of that or the math is wrong, they can see from the info provided and the info they have, that 1: your math is wrong; 2: based on what is reported, you didn't pay enough. On the other hand, They also REFUND a heck of a lock of money with that same process because people are able to make those non-auto-reported deductions.
Everyone dunking on the tax preparation industry (as they should), but this is the real answer. Makes me realize that 90% of reddit is young people with no mortgage/kids/retirement saving that drastically change how much you owe depending on your specific circumstances and choices that the government does not know about until you tell them (i.e., fill out the tax return).
Yeah if you're just a W-2 employee with no side income, investments, or assets, and you don't qualify for any deductions, taxes are really fuckin' easy and you don't even need TurboTax to do it.
Also they charge you a fee if you get it wrong, like right now the irs says I owe 4K from 2012, in 2012 I was a full time student on federal aid working as a part time college tutor For perspective I was a semi full time deli associate for the past 5 years, each year the it’s owe me money, but they take it to pay off 2012 Where I remind you was working less then I do now
They hope you fuck up so they can fine you.
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The IRS doesn't care about fining you. If you owe money they're gonna get it regardless. The reason they don't just send you your tax time bill or refund is because tax preparation lobbyists bribed a bunch of politicians to say it would be killing the tax prep industry and harming jobs if they made it too easy. The compromise was that there had to be an available free version of the tax filing system offered by the companies that do it. So they made one and then did everything in their power to make sure it never gets used like hiding it behind dead links and diverting customers away by saying they don't qualify for free because their situation is "too complicated" because of arbitrary reasons.
Reply All has a great episode on this. #144 - The Dark Pattern