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Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

• jkaljundi 10y ago
  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/04/jeb-bush/jeb-bush-says-estonians-can-file-their-taxes-five-/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/... http://www.businessinsider.com/estonia-efficient-tax-filing-system-world-2012-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/estonia-efficient-tax-filing-...
• ominous 10y ago
  offtopic: Is this a new thing? Double clicked a word to try and select it, and the text changes size. Windows 10, Firefox. Up there with "smooth scrolling", "clipboard hijack" and making me type something in the browser console so I can use javascript. Annoying.
  • geon 10y ago
    It's not doing it on Chrome/Mac. I guess it is about as annoying as menu elements changing size on hover.
• jschulenklopper 10y ago
  I don't know when the slogan of the Dutch tax authority, "We can’t make paying taxes pleasant, but at least we can make it simple" was introduced, but in my view it has been supported in three different ways: 1) a simplification of the tax rules - mainly by reducing the number of exceptions and tax deduction rules, 2) filing the tax forms digitally - they started with desktop applications, and now the main focus is on a web application, and 3) pre-entering the information the DTA already has on you, so you just need to correct and add missing information instead of entering everything from scratch - and they collect a lot of data of you yearly. This improvement happened over the last 15 years, and the time required to filing tax returns was reduced from many hours (mainly to gather all the information, and writing it on a paper form) to like 30 minutes. That is, if your administration is up to date. Filing the tax forms is my yearly reminder to update my administration... BTW, that slogan is stated more succinctly in Dutch: "Leuker kunnen we het niet maken. Wel makkelijker."
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    It is still no krentebol to work with taxes in NL. Better than most places but if you have a company it still is way too much red tape. I am very much for paying taxes and I would not even mind overpaying if it were a lot simpler. Here in Spain it is hell: I know why it is that but it makes not declaring far more attractive so we Dutch did something right. Still it is way too much hassle, especially for the small amounts.
    • WJW 10y ago
      I don't know about business taxes, but at least for a "simple" application like mine (fulltime employee, homeowner with mortgage) all the relevant information about income and wealth taxes was prefilled and correct. The only thing I had to enter were my "burgerservicenummer" and one deductible post (a university course). The whole thing took about 15 minutes, including digitally signing and submitting it.
    • jschulenklopper 10y ago
      My experience with business taxes is very limited (just simple revenue taxes), so that could be a lot more complicated in many cases indeed. There are still sufficient numbers of accountancy and tax firms in NL, so it can't be simple in all cases. I was referring to personal income and property taxes.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      The only hard ones are VAT and pension plans. Everything else is manageable.
  • jschulenklopper 10y ago
    Oh, and if you filed your tax forms before April 1st, you get the DTA's reply before July 1st, with the indication whether you need to pay additional taxes, or get some of it paid back. Their final decision on the yearly income taxes, so when they 'close' the case, can happen between months or years later.
    • 10y ago
• ekblom 10y ago
  This years it took me about three minutes: log in, scan throug the numbers, sign to accept. Then i went for a coffee. That how we do it in Sweden.
  • jamesblonde 10y ago
    I typically reply 'yes' to the sms to do my filing in Sweden.
    • reitanqild 10y ago
      Similarily simple in Norway. (But I have a small company so I will typically add revenue and expenses into it before confirming it.)
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      That sounds excellent.
  • geon 10y ago
    You bother to check the numbers?
    • andrewvijay 10y ago
      The numbers are gotten from the banks and employers so they are always right
    • ekblom 10y ago
      No, not really. It's more like "mhmm, a number, looks correct, on to bigger adventures!"
  • yxhuvud 10y ago
    It took me 10 minutes, but that was mostly because I own stocks in a small company.
  • BoorishBears 10y ago
    It took me about 10 minutes here in the US. Log into Turbo Tax, have it pull my last year's information, update the income fields and click through a wizard. It cost 30$, and I can see how you could argue the fact I paid a private company for a convience other countries get from their government for free is sad, but I'll take it since my quality of life would drop significantly at a comparable salary in Sweden due to the amount of taxation vs the ease of taxation. Relatives in Norway have expressed similar sentiments in reverse though, so I guess the grass is always greener on the other side?
• dagenleg 10y ago
  The beauty of free market is that it can create markets where there otherwise would be none. Once you normalize lobbying in your society, possibilities are virtually limitless.
  • oakesm9 10y ago
    Is it really a free market if you need to stop one party (the government) doing something to keep your market?
    • dagenleg 10y ago
      Why would you want to word it like that? Let's not call it 'stop' but rather 'financially discourage'.
      • oakesm9 10y ago
        I meant is it really a free market when Intuit needs to pay off the government through lobbying to stop them making tax filing simpler so they can keep their market.
        • PeterStuer 10y ago
          Yes. Others are 'free' to pay more to get candidates elected that would simplify the tax return. The 'beauty' of concentrated benefits and distributed pain is that the organization overhead combined with the real but sufficiently diluted pain for each individual sufferer sort of pre-empts this. This is why in these so called 'free' markets you end-up with all these complete absurd situations at the societal level.
        • bigtimeidiot 10y ago
          >I meant is it really a free market when Intuit needs to pay off the government through lobbying to stop them making tax filing simpler so they can keep their market. You make it sound as if the government is just dying to simplify this stuff, but Intuit won't let them. Intuit lobbies in its self interest. There is nothing wrong with that. The damage is done by the politicians who listen to the lobbying effort and play along.
• i_feel_great 10y ago
  In Australia, via the mygov tool, for a simple wage earner like me, 10 minutes. All the payroll taxes amounts are prefilled, maybe 10 questions in all. Got my refund in ~ 10 days. The Australian Tax Office has a fairly extensive developers program to encourage more/better tooling and compliance. Edit: The ATO developers programme: http://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/ http://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/
  • Sir_Substance 10y ago
    BTW, the refund is a super-cool thing about the Australian system that may not be super-widespread. The Icelandic system is a very similar pay-as-you-go tax system, so tax is predicted and withheld from your wages over the course of the year. But Iceland errs on the side of under-withholding, if they don't know what your income is going to be. As a result, come tax time, most people get a letter saying "you owe us 60,000isk"[1], and they pay it back as extra money garnished from their wages over the next year. The Australian government errs on the side of over-withholding, which sounds bad, but it's more like a mandatory saving scheme. Most people discover the tax office has over-charged them by at least $800 over the course of the year, and you get it paid to you in a lump sum after they process your tax return. After deductions are filed, it's not unheard of for people to get 4-6k back. As a result, for most people in Australia, tax season has a bit of a party atmosphere to it. You'll find people talking about what they're going to buy with their return, and there are sometimes tax season sales on things like TV's etc. It's a really great example of a small and seemingly unrelated implementation detail making or breaking the whole experience. [1] about $600, figure example only :P
    • CalRobert 10y ago
      The US is similar, and this is part of why few people know how much they pay in tax. Ask a person what their refund was, and they'll know, but total tax? Few do.
    • theandrewbailey 10y ago
      In the US, lots of stores have promotions specifically around tax returns.
• oakesm9 10y ago
  In the UK the majority of people do absolutely nothing. Your wage slip says how much tax you've paid each month (through the PAYE system) and then at the end of the tax year your company sends you a P60 form (https://www.gov.uk/paye-forms-p45-p60-p11d/p60 https://www.gov.uk/paye-forms-p45-p60-p11d/p60) which is simply a pre-filled summary of all the tax you paid that year. That's the case for anyone with the most common case of a single salaried job. If you have a more complex situation (dividends from company share, taxable investments, multiple jobs) then you need to fill in a self-assessment form. I did one last year and it was all done online and took about an hour in total.
• kartan 10y ago
  Today I filed taxes in Sweden for the first time. 1. Sign-in from Bank-id at Skatteverket 2. Review pre-populated amounts 3. Digitally sign acceptance filing with Bank-id If I just have one salary from one employer all year round, why should it be more complicated than this?
  • mstade 10y ago
    It shouldn't, and in Sweden it obviously isn't – I think it's great! But the moment you start doing things slightly out of this norm, maybe you rent out your apartment for some time, maybe you have capital gains, maybe you were paid dividend as a small business owner... it gets complex real fast. Skatteverket is a pretty knowledgeable organization though, and quite friendly when you have questions to ask so I recommend giving them a call if you need things clarified. They've helped me out a lot simply by educating me when I've called asking all sorts of dumb questions. As much as I dislike paying taxes, the process of doing so is anything but inconvenient in Sweden.
    • random_comment 10y ago
      Also, tax calculations in Sweden are easy. Q. How much money should I pay in tax? A. All of it. :-)
  • lolsal 10y ago
    It's not more complicated than this in the US, either.
• huffmsa 10y ago
  "Hey, we here at The Government would like to make your experience paying taxes less painful. Hence forth, we're just going to take whatever amount we think is accurate, and you don't have to do anything! Just trust us!" Politely sir, take one giant step back from that and your beachfront property in Arizona, and diddle your own face. Now, serious answer? Because EVERYTHING about the US Government is intentionally designed to be slow, cumbersome and painful, SPECIFICALLY to limit the amount of damage government institutions can cause to the country.
  • raverbashing 10y ago
    You're saying this like inefficient government institutions can't harm business
    • huffmsa 10y ago
      They can, but the goal is to make people hate said institutions so much that they elect people who limit the institutions power to the absolute minimum necessary. Inefficient institutions cause lots of small pains, extremely efficient, overly powerful ones nationalize your oil and gas industry because they can.
      • pjc50 10y ago
        Inefficiency and powerlessness are not at all the same thing, as the US's various police services demonstrate on an ongoing basis. The inefficiency of the court system also makes it more, not less, of an imposition.
      • IIIIIIIIIIII 10y ago
        Are... are you alright, sir?
  • fiblye 10y ago
    There's zero correlation between efficient taxing and corrupt governments. The "we want to break government so that people don't trust it" shit doesn't make sense. Why not opt for a good government that you can reasonably trust, and do away with the anxiety and potential harm a shitty government causes? It's like saying you don't wear your seatbelt because the fear of dying makes you drive more carefully.
• oblio 10y ago
  In Romania if you don't have any income except for your salary, you don't have to do anything. Yes, there are no tax exemptions or deductions, but on the other hand life is simple. How often are those exemptions or deductions worth it, especially when compared to the potential complexity and additional cost of a byzantine tax system?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • fierarul 10y ago
    > there are no tax exemptions or deductions, but on the other hand life is simple There is talk nowadays about changing this and bringing in deductions, just like in the US.
• shoshin23 10y ago
  In India, most people I know use ClearTax. It's freemium(the last 3 years I've only used the free version, that was enough.) and I spent only about 20 minutes or so every year filing my taxes. Everything becomes super simple with Form 16, given out by my employer. And apart from this the government has an e-filing system but I've never used it. ClearTax was enough.
• maccard 10y ago
  I'm in the UK. If you work as a regular employee, your tax gets automatically deducted and noted in your payslip. Each year you get a form posted out and if you disagree with the amount (I don't know anyone who ever has) you can contact HMRC to sort out the difference. If you work as a contractor/self employed, you have to fill in a self assessment form. I personally don't need to do one, but my partner did, and it took us about 30 minutes last year. It really doesn't need to be this complex.
  • reallydontask 10y ago
    HRMC will actually tell if your employer(s) have screwed up and you're due a refund. I imagine that they will also tell you if you need pay more for the same reason, but that's never happened to me.
    • mstade 10y ago
      They might tell, and if they do it's probably not something that's going to happen swiftly. I took a job with an employer in London who didn't get my taxes right, but I was none the wiser of course. A few months in, my tax increased by a significant amount from one paycheck to the next, and this tipped me off to something being wrong. I talked with my employer who looked in to it, but this kept on being the same for about three months. At this point, I'd been on the job for maybe 7 months or so. Finally I'm told I have to sort this out with HMRC myself, so I called them. They were very helpful and pleasant to deal with, and the person on the other end of the phone call very briefly looked over my account and determined I've been overpaying every single month – by a lot. They noted as well that HMRC had indeed changed my tax code to an "emergency rate" or some such about three months prior to the call, but failed to note the wrong tax code that was already there in the first place. This person did sort it all out however, and a couple of weeks later I got a check in the mail for over £6000. It did finally work out in the end, but I'm not sure I would've noticed if they hadn't hiked my tax so significantly, and I don't know what would've happened then since apparently they hadn't registered the error either. Moral of the story: HMRC are there to help, but you may want to be proactive and call them if you think anything might be wrong, or you want to double check something. Their phone service is very helpful, and usually not too busy.
• glenneroo 10y ago
  In Austria, we only have to file (online) every 5 years, and even that is somewhat optional. If you don't do your taxes, the only loser will be you, since you might lose out on getting some cash back.
• faebi 10y ago
  How much of those time savings and costs are beeing moved from the employee to the employer? How much simpler is it for the companies?
• markvdb 10y ago
  Belgium is interesting. The forms are really complicated, but luckily largely prefilled forms for most (salary and pension income, mortgage related deductions, ...). Apart from the complexity, the problem here is the extremely slow return of what the government owes you. For 2016 income: * filing between 20170426 - 20170630 * final calculation by post ~20171101 - ~20180401 * return of overpaid amount ~20180101 - ~20180601 The Belgian revenue service almost always overcharges on obligatory prepayments. Refunds happen only at the end of the process. That means an ordinary Belgian citizen gives a free loan to Belgian government for ~12-18 months.
  • mstade 10y ago
    In Sweden you used to earn interest on money in your tax account, but I think the current government removed that this year so now it's a free loan to the government. In some ways, the tax account was a better place to put money than a bank account. There have been periods where the interest on the tax account was competitive compared to banks, so some people would pay a years worth of taxes up front, and come tax season reap the benefits in terms of higher returns. Since they'd already paid all their dues, they'd pay nothing each month and the tax man would just reconcile things monthly as the tax comes due. This isn't as palatable today when there's no interest, but I know some people still do it because it means their take home pay each month is "higher" in the sense that taxes aren't deducted, because they've already been paid. I've considered doing it, since while it makes no difference in the amount I pay, it means I have more cash in hand at the end of each month, rather than having amortize the tax cost over the year. Obviously this only works if you put away that money elsewhere somehow, taxes still have to be paid after all. This also reminds me of a trick a buddy once pulled in the U.K. He paid all his taxes to the wrong account, but it was still in the hands of HMRC. Then when the tax man came knocking, he just showed his payment receipts and HMRC noted the error, fixed it up and apologized for he inconvenience. As well, he'd be paid back interest earned on this money, because the account he paid into had a higher interest than the one he should've paid to, which may have had no interest – I don't quite recall. I don't know if he still does this, but he did it by mistake one year, saw the benefits and figured it wasn't illegal so he just kept doing it. If there's anyone here that knows what I'm talking about I'd love to hear you thoughts!
• wobbleblob 10y ago
  “We can’t make paying taxes pleasant, but at least we can make it simple.” I actually don't mind paying taxes, because I can see around me every day that the money is mostly put to good use. I can imagine if I lived in a place where there were little or no public services, bad public schools, bad infrastructure, five digit annual college fees, polluted tap water, power with frequent blackouts or brownouts etc, I'd be pissed off with my tax bill too.
  • ajosh 10y ago
    It sounds like you are describing different communities with different problems (i.e. Flint, MI doesn't have problems with frequent Brown outside - that was California 15 years ago) as though they are the same one. Also, most of those examples are things from state governments rather than the federal government. Of course, people don't talk much about state tax reform. State tax revenue sources can vary from property taxes to income tax to sales tax. Some states don't have an income tax and reply mainly on sales tax.
  • jMyles 10y ago
    When it comes to philosophical objections to taxation, it's not the awful infrastructure around me that bothers me, it's the bombs dropped on other people's children and the bars that confine people for no morally justifiable reason. My heart goes out to the people held in torturous conditions in prison on my tax dollar. I hope that I someday have the strength to resist and refuse to pay for this.
• CalRobert 10y ago
  Just filed my FBAR and every year it feels like the requirements change so they have a reason to convict you of something. This year they just moved the due date up by a few months for no apparent reason. I'm simply lucky that I happened to do it now (I normally procrastinate until June); that's a good $10,000 fine if they believe it was accidental; $100,000 otherwise. I'm fine with taxes, but filing taxes in the US is utter bullshit. To give credit where it's due, though, the state of California has free online filing (Calfile) , which is nice.
• philsnow 10y ago
  pre-filled forms will probably help a largeish proportion of americans who have dead-simple taxes. once you start doing absolutely anything else (having a side job, renting out property, participating in the stock market, having income in multiple states, etc etc etc), you're in the byzantine territory of income/deductions/credits/AMT where nearly every line on every form involves reading the instructions for that line (and yes, nearly every line has its own instructions) and reflecting on your life to decide whether you think that purchase qualifies as a deduction, or what percent of your car's annual depreciation you can allocate as a business expense, or whether you need to declare your 2014 California refund as income on your 2015 Oregon taxes. Money ping-pongs around, getting taxed coming and going (you pay tax on your salary and tax again when you use that money to pay for gasoline (and a very few of these taxes are multiplicative instead of additive, so you can in fact pay tax _on the tax you're paying to buy gas_)). I'm really not doing justice to the intricacies of the tax system. I would really enjoy reading a James Mickens tribute to it. Pre-filled forms aren't going to help navigate the insanity, unless the governments (federal and all the states) have access to data about every transaction, every penny that flows through your household.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    Ok, but the vast majority of American households never have to worry about any of that.
  • gerbal 10y ago
    Most Americans have fairly simple single income taxes. Also all banks and investment services have to report your assets and income to the IRS. If your taxes are complicated enough to need an actual accountant (not a tax preparer) you'd still need an accountant. But the tax preparers that fill out forms for simple W2s and a couple 1099 forms would be out of business.
• wazoox 10y ago
  In France I only need to fill in charity donations opening tax reductions, and digitally sign the web form. Takes about 3 minutes.
• IkmoIkmo 10y ago
  Here in the Netherlands my employer's data is all pre-filled in. Just have to log in to a mobile app and sign with my citizen's digital ID. (just a login with 2FA). All of that takes about 3 minutes, and it's pretty much sufficient for like 80-90% of my peers (fresh out of college). But with more complex deductions, you need to use the 'full web app', which is also pre-filled but comes with tons of questions. They take me about 20-30 minutes, because I know how it all works nowadays. But the first time it took me 2 hours cause there's lots of definitions and words that aren't frequently used in the Dutch language.
  • golergka 10y ago
    Wait; employees have to fill taxes themselves? Why?
    • jschulenklopper 10y ago
      Employers withhold part of your salary - I think it's a fixed percentage based on the height of the salary - and pay that to the tax authority. Yearly, citizens file their taxes, giving information that the employer doesn't have or does not take into account (like gifts to charity, partner income, mortgage interest paid, health care related costs, tax paid on dividend, ...) that results in more or less taxes that should have been paid. After receiving that tax-related information, the DTA calculates what you should pay additionally, or whether you get some of the taxes paid back.
  • bostik 10y ago
    The Finnish system has improved to the point where I can finally say that filing tax returns is a pleasant experience. We get pre-filled tax forms which include salaries and all capital gains from dividends. If the figures are correct, you don't need to do anything: the return has been filed for you. If you need to change or update the information, then you can do it online. The only time an individual (like me) has to actually add to the pre-filled data is when they have additional income from properties or land. Back in 2013, when the online system first started to accept rental income, I would still need to fill in every freaking month. Separately. In 2014, I needed to provide the personal details of the tenants, but at least the rental income and expenses could be aggregated. For tax year 2016, I only needed to provide the aggregate income and expense for the properties in question. My tax returns used to be really complicated, and for nearly a decade the Finnish tax authorities tried to systematically tax me twice on the same income. I used to send documents and letters in every year. But that has changed. When I filed my taxes in March, it took me a grand total of 10 minutes. If I hadn't had the rental income to deal with, it would have been less than 5 minutes. So yes: it's finally a pleasant experience.
• patio11 10y ago
  The NTA (National Tax Authority, cited as the Kokuzeicho in the article) doesn't figure out your taxes for you. Your employer does, as one of the (many!) ways in which they exercise paternalistic control of your life. If you do not have an employer, you get to go through a process which is almost exactly as fun as it is in the US, modulo a modestly competent online filing application. I spent $3k this year on accountant time to file my personal taxes. The majority of the cost is driven by my various extracurricular activities. In the five years where I did my own taxes as a self-employed person, I generally lost between 2 and 5 working days a year to the effort, largely driven by the "calculate the income and expenses of your self-employed business" part of the return. A Japanese corporation with one employee is in for about ~$5k a year of professional services fees incident to managing payroll for that single employee, not counting the taxes themselves. (I personally can't wait until this space gets Gusto-ed here, and SmartHr and other companies are starting to get there.)
  • feld 10y ago
    $3k??! How is that possible? I get personal and business taxes done for $200
    • patio11 10y ago
      Well it could be that my accountants just totally lucked out and presented a proposal to someone whose motto is Charge More For Professional Services, but it's mostly "I have a number of factors which make writing my tax return complicated", many alluded to here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10810367
    • bemmu 10y ago
      As another data point, I also pay $2k - $3k / year for help to file taxes in Japan. But I also know many people who just do it themselves. My justifications for paying: - We've done the return ourselves once, but it was stressful to worry about not completely understanding everything and making some expensive mistake. - Service in English. - If tax officials ever wanted to ask me something, they would get responses in Japanese from a person who actually knows what they are talking about. - Nice for making sure I get every deduction. - Probably just doing the "blue form" return is already worth the expense because of deduction benefits. I probably wouldn't ever get around to figuring out how to do that. The process in Japan seems reasonable, but seems to me more convoluted than in Finland. I was particularly surprised how you have to pay many different fees which in Finland would have been bundled together. Namely having separate bills coming on varying payment schedules for income tax, municipal tax, entrepreneur tax (5%) and health insurance. This seems inefficient and confusing to me.
• known 10y ago
  Unlike US, Japan is a homogeneous society http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/t...
  • ue_ 10y ago
    Of what relevance is the ethnic or religious or hair colour or eye colour make up of a nation to the ease of filing taxes?
    • rsynnott 10y ago
      I think there are some people who just automatically respond with that to any criticism of US public services, even where it's nonsensical (if the point of comparison is a country with a larger percentage of people born elsewhere than the US, say).
    • jermspeaks 9y ago
      Couldn't agree more
• eloisant 10y ago
  It's a breeze in France too. Login to the government website, verify that everything preloaded is correct, add the few things they don't know about and you're done. It's a mess in the US because Turbotax and others make money on that complexity and do lobbying to keep it that way.
  • bigtimeidiot 10y ago
    >It's a mess in the US because Turbotax Which is odd, because I've used Turbotax (and others) in Canada and it's also been a breeze.
    • jeltz 10y ago
      I think you are missing the point. Companies like TurboTax clearly benefit from a complicated tax system and bad tax forms. Here on Sweden almost nobody uses third-party tax software for filing individual taxes. For most tax payers it is trivial to do your taxes on the government website. Almost only companies use third-party software here, so the market for tax software is much smaller.
  • yodsanklai 10y ago
    I did mine yesterday. It took me a few clicks and couple of minutes. Very pleasant indeed. I remember when I lived in the US a few years ago. Everybody told me that I had to go through a professional to fill my tax return as it was just too hard and error-prone. It sounded insane considering my situation was extremely simple. I was also surprised because I assumed the American tax system to be simpler than the French one. In the end, it wasn't that hard, but I did have to spend some time to find and read the proper documentations. I think in France people are more reluctant to spend money on things they can do themselves, where Americans are more willing to rely on service providers.
  • cjhanks 10y ago
    I am not sure I get it... it took me less than 2 hours to enter my W2's, import my brokerage liabilities, and insert my itemized deductions. All for about $60. You know what would be worse than that? A system which has absolutely no competition or financial incentive to improve....
• spangry 10y ago
  Does the US have a employer withholding system (i.e. if you get paid $1000 in a week, your employer withholds and remits whatever the pro rata amount is for $52,000 annual income to the Tax Office)? We have that in Australia, and it definitely simplifies the process for workers at the end of the year. Personally, I've always liked the idea of a 'standard deduction'. People with a steady paying job for the whole year, and simple tax affairs, don't have much of a reason to fill out a tax return given how much data our Tax Office pulls in from other sources (e.g. your bank interest gets pre-filled). The longest part of the whole exercise is claiming all those little work-related deductions here and there. For most people I don't think this ever exceeds $1000 total. So if the government just gave everyone a default $1000 deduction, combined with pre-filling, filing a tax return for most people would be a simple matter of looking at the summary and hitting 'agree'. You could even take it one step further: if you don't fill out a tax return the government assumes you agree that your default return is correct. We almost had this in Australia [0]. It was a measure in our 2010-11 Federal Budget [1], but we didn't go through with it for.... reasons... [0] And there's good reason to believe it would have radically simplified things. I recall 'tax agents' really hating the idea for some strange reason. [1] http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenue-06.htm http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/content/bp2/html/bp2_revenu...
  • newmanships 10y ago
    US companies do withhold money from each paycheck, but this varies not just by how much you make, but also by how many dependents you have and a few other things [0]. The US also has default deductions, or a person can choose to itemize. These vary if you are "head of household", single, married. However then there's all kinds of other deductions and things to complicate your tax return such as retirement accounts, mortgages, kids, side income, student loan interest, interest earned and on and on. Would be great if it was easier. :) [0] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf Edit: People who are contractors / not employees have to remember to set aside a portion of their income that the employer would take out automatically for them.
  • MaulingMonkey 10y ago
    Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional, this is not tax advice, and I'm not your lawyer either! > We have that [a employer withholding system] in Australia, and it definitely simplifies the process for workers at the end of the year. We have that in America too, only it complicates our tax forms. When filling out your Form 1040s, under "Payments" you fill field 64 "Federal income tax withheld from Forms W-2 and 1099" from your employer-provided W-2's field 2 "Federal income tax withheld" (ignoring fields 4 and 6, "Social security tax" and "Medicare tax" withheld.) And of course, any 1099-Rs with federal income tax withheld must also be attached to your tax return... You can ask your employer to adjust your withholding - if you owe too much money (more than $1000 and more than 10% of your total yearly taxes?) come tax time, you'll have to pay an additional penalty. If you paid too much already, the government can wire it back to you, or apply it to next year's taxes. > Personally, I've always liked the idea of a 'standard deduction' We have this in America, it's great - mine was "only" $6300 this year (single, no dependents). On the other hand, there are deductions for everything from mortgages to electric vehicles (expiring after this tax year), which can add up quick. Fortunately I'm not there... yet... I got lucky this year: Only 5-6 forms to mail.
• pharrlax 10y ago
  Overlooked in this article and comments is the influence of one man -- Grover Norquist. He runs an extremely influential organization that administers a sort of purity pledge that, for most Republican candidates for Congress, is necessary to sign in order to avoid being primaried. He has decided that making taxes easier to do would make people more okay with tax increases, and so he has decreed that support for the kind of systems other countries use is a violation of this pledge. His excuse is that such a system would effectively slightly increase taxation by preventing people from getting away with taking erroneous deductions. This excuse is obvious, total bullshit. Grover Norquist wants taxes to be painful because he wants people to dislike government and the concept of taxation in general. Thus, Republicans in Congress must take the same opinion or risk having their purity stamp revoked. Thus, no reforms get passed. Perhaps this is one area Trump can do some good; certainly he's much less beholden to the traditions that bind the old guard (for better or for worse).
  • narrowrail 10y ago
    Norquist started Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. taxpayer advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform Doesn't sound like you are describing Norquist's organization they way they do in their mission statement. Do you have any references?
    • lern_too_spel 10y ago
      https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax-fought-free-simple-tax-filing https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax... > In 2005, Norquist testified before the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform arguing against return-free filing. The next year, Norquist and others wrote in a letter to President Bush that getting an official-looking "bill" from the IRS could be "extremely intimidating, particularly for seniors, low-income and non-English speaking citizens."
    • talmand 10y ago
• ivan_gammel 10y ago
  Ex-Russian here: this year I had very pleasant experience with FNS to declare and pay income tax for some extra income (13% flat rate btw). 5 minutes on the web site just to declare the money they were not yet aware of, click submit and choose payment method (could be cash payment in any bank, credit card or via integration with lots of banking APIs - my choice). Few more minutes after I figured out there's a small old debt on property tax, that they never bothered to collect, to pay it too. They started with rather complex desktop app and continuously improved UX, so now it's really good. Worth to mention that they have 2FA option with security token.
• andrewvijay 10y ago
  US Opensource guys !! - Time for you to take up the problem and solve it with an opensource portal that is easy to use and puts intuit out of business
• FiatLuxDave 10y ago
  I've taken to referring to the time that I spend filling out US Government tax forms as the "Norquist tax". After all, it's hours of my time which I have to spend giving work to the government. Maybe if we all start calling it that, Americans for Tax Reform will realize that they are causing more harm than good by lobbying against a more efficient filing system. They may think that having us spend a bunch of time doing our taxes makes us better realize how much taxes we pay. In reality, it's just another form of government waste.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• inetknght 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13990391
• bogomipz 10y ago
  This is short and worth a listen, a Stanford Professor spent a year or so of his life piloting a program in California called "Ready Return", where the government filled out your taxes for you. Ultimately it was shot down by Intuit and H&R Block's lobbyists however. http://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-loses-political-battle-to-simplify-tax-filing-process http://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-l...
  • dingdongding 10y ago
    And Republican lobbyist also. Their reasoning was "We don't want to make filing taxes simple, because if they become so people will stop hating taxes"
    • thescriptkiddie 10y ago
      I honestly can't think of a better example of how broken American politics are.
• chadlavi 10y ago
  What I find truly amazing about the tax situation here in the US is the sheer unpredictability. You the employee are burdened with choosing the right formula to deduct taxes from your paychecks, but there is no ironclad way to ensure that you deduct only the exact right amount—or to check whether you've been deducting enough. For most people, tax time comes and either they get a bunch of money back (they deducted too much), or they owe a bunch of money (they deducted too little). I'd rather just have exactly the right amount deducted. Some people choose to not deduct any, and put a guesstimate of what their tax bill will be into savings, so that they can make some tiny amount of interest on it over the course of the year, then when tax time comes, pay just exactly what's owed. But this feels like playing with fire to me.
  • ghaff 10y ago
    If all you have is a W-2 and minimal deductions, in my experience it's pretty close unless you think +- $1K is "a bunch." Once you have dividends, stock sales, mortgages, other revenue, etc. your employer really has no way to know what the right amount to deduct is. If you're consistently over or under, you can change the number of allowances on a W-4 form. >Some people choose to not deduct any You can take a large number of allowances but I'm not sure you typically can just not take any deductions. If you significantly underpay you may get hit with a penalty and will have to make estimated tax payments the following year.
  • delecti 10y ago
    > Some people choose to not deduct any [...] this feels like playing with fire to me Well it should, because it's not really legal. If you aren't having taxes automatically deducted then you're expected to pay quarterly estimated taxes. And if you should have been having taxes automatically deducted and underpay by too much, then there's a fine associated with it.
    • monster_group 10y ago
      >And if you should have been having taxes automatically deducted and underpay by too much, then there's a fine associated with it. And interest!
• andrewla 10y ago
  Ah, this takes me back -- one of things that I really liked in Obama's 2008 campaign [1]: > Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees. [1] https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20080402203402/http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/ https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20080402203402/http://www.b...
  • zeveb 10y ago
    Pity that didn't work out. No doubt the tax industry's lobbyists earned their pay on that one …
• oarla 10y ago
  Isn't there FreeFile on IRS's website which allows someone with a simple return (no capital gains, only standard deductions etc) to file for free. It would be as simple as described in this article.
• juandazapata 10y ago
  Just one more proof that the U.S. Government is owned by corporations.
• danjoc 10y ago
  I'm the only American I know that does my own taxes. I've never paid anyone to do them. I've never use software to do it. I print the form, and fill it out with a pen. It only takes me a few minutes. I even filed my own C corporation taxes once long ago. I'm not a CPA or tax lawyer or in any line of work related to taxes.
  • alexbeloi 10y ago
    Is this facilitated by keeping good financial records throughout the year or do you not care about deducting everything you can?
    • danjoc 10y ago
      My standard deduction exceeds any itemizing I could do. I'm healthy and debt free.
  • kelnos 10y ago
    My handwriting is terrible; I'd at least want to use a form-fillable PDF, and having the ability to copy/paste figures between forms and a digital calculator would make me feel better about not making arithmetic or transcription errors. I used to use TaxAct to do my taxes, but unfortunately they aren't simple enough anymore that I even feel comfortable using that without making a mistake. I just got my completed return back from my CPA the other day, and there are (required) things he did on there that I definitely would not have known how to do, even with the prompts in tax-prep software. If I had to puzzle through IRS form instructions, it'd be even more of a mess. I actually did decide to look up one of the more confusing things my CPA did by reading some IRS form instructions, and it confused me beyond belief. I asked him about it and his explanation sounded reasonable, but there's no way I would have figured it out on my own. The US tax system is so messed up.
    • danjoc 10y ago
      >I'd at least want to use a form-fillable PDF I used to do those, but honestly, it's just easier to do it with pen and paper. Either there is automath in the form that screws up if you fill in a field out of order, or they make the form so it cannot be saved. PDF editing software sucks too. It's very unfriendly on Linux. I would suffer through it when I used OS X, because I worried about legibility in the small boxes. I'd never go back to that now. It's a huge pain. The pen is mightier than the keyboard with tax forms.
• Oletros 10y ago
  In Spain is a breeze, a web app prefilled with your financial data
• msound 10y ago
  On a related note, a Stanford tax law professor Joseph Bankman had run trials of pre-filled forms for a few California state taxpayers. Listen to his journey on Episode 760 of PlanetMoney podcast: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episo... TL;DR: * 99% of people liked the pre-filled forms * He took this idea to California state congress, but Congresspeople were "warned" about him by Intuit lobbyists * He hired his own lobbyist but lost by 1 vote in the Congress Edit: Grammar
  • nightski 10y ago
    ReadyReturn sounds like it only works if you have an extremely simple tax return. While that is great, I don't understand how the people with a simple W-2 are having such a painful time with taxes. It takes about 5-10 minutes to finish a simple return. What am I missing?
    • copperx 10y ago
      Me too. I don't get most of the posts in this thread.
    • kelnos 10y ago
      Assuming you're using tax prep software, you still have to click through all the stuff that doesn't apply to you, and it behooves you to at least skim the text to be sure that law changes haven't changed anything for you this year. Just the act of clicking "no" on everything will probably run you a good 20 minutes, with another 5-10 of actually entering your W-2 data and supplying payment information.
      • monster_group 10y ago
        You do not have to go through all the questions if you know your tax situation. It is only for people who are clueless about their tax situation that they have to go through all the questions. If you know you are going to take standard deduction there's no point in going through the entire list of itemized deductions only to find out what you already knew.
• warsharks 10y ago
  dont most places in the world have your employer deal with your tax contributions?
• hyperliner 10y ago
  US tax payer here. I'm going to stay away from discussing TurboTax from a political perspective. However, I have used TurboTax since the first year I had income. It's super easy. As my income has gotten complex over time (from simple, one employer tax return to multiple employers in a same year, real estate, investments, and office expenses), I have found TurboTax worth the $90 or $100 it costs to purchase the software every year. I always purchase the $40 "Audit Protection" and have never used it: not once I have been audited. It does take some investment of time. You need to read the questions, learn to figure out the forms that you get from banks, and be careful in inputing your data. But a lot of the sections are skipped anyway. I learned to stay away from buying stocks that are partnerships (pain the behind to do during TaxTime, not worth the hassle if you can find alternative stocks). TurboTax remembers my last year's numbers and that is also super easy. It helps me stay informed and keep responsibility for my tax situation and make my own decisions on what to do next year without "the government or the employer doing it for me." I have always had the temptation to go to a full service (H&R Block, or some of the higher end ones offered by my bank), with the idea of maybe discovering that I have been overpaying all these years! But I have never done it, mainly because of concerns on identity theft. Today, all my data is in my computer and the only time the data leaves my network is when I send it to TurboTax for e-filing. This could also be avoided if I printed it and mailed it, but I rather not take my chances with lost mail. I did have some large income a number of years back due to a sale of a company, and I was doubting myself about whether I was "paying too much." I simply asked folks around me, and they told me "nope, you are good" as the cash was distributed as regular income in my W2. All in all, TurboTax has served me well. My investment is a total of about 10 hours or so spread over a few months. Every time I get a new form, I go to TurboTax and input it. Sometime around March I wrap things up and file.
  • strictnein 10y ago
    I've had the same experience. I just collect the various forms I get mailed in a little bin next to my computer, and when I do my taxes it takes two hours max. And that's with a fair amount of deductions, IRA/retirement contributions, and a side consulting gig. Usually spend $100-$150 with them based on my needs that year, including the audit protection.
• coldcode 10y ago
  Perhaps it would be easier to have the government collect all of our income, subtract the taxes, and pay us the difference once a year. That would be even simpler.
  • lolsal 10y ago
    How would I take advantage of pre-tax money, like contributing to retirement accounts, HSA, ...?
    • sveiss 9y ago
      Here (UK) it's taken care of by the provider for most people. If you were to pay £80 into a personal pension (similar to an IRA), about a month later an additional £20 would be added. That's tax relief at the 20% basic rate. (Higher rate payers currently need to file to claim additional relief, but there's no reason that couldn't be automated too.) If you had a company pension instead (similar to a 401(k)), you can pay in through salary sacrifice, where the salary your tax is calculated on is reduced and the difference paid directly into the pension scheme. Whichever route is taken, the end result is the same: a £100 contribution cost you £100 in pre-tax money.
• Waterluvian 10y ago
  I don't have the most complex tax situation: a wife, child, income, capital gains. But it takes me maybe 15 minutes in Canada to do. I once screwed it up and they fixed it for me, yielding a larger return than I calculated (I accidentally zeroed the RRSP contribution carry over value). Thought maybe this would help give perspective of what can be.
  • sqeaky 10y ago
    Is there anything Canada isn't best at? I once heard a (bad) joke. If you are in Canada and hold the door for a group of 5 people you can expect 7 "thank you"s. Well that's just a joke I thought, there is no way people are polite anywhere. So I decided to act on this little limerick and compare it to Nebraska manners. At a few restaurants, in home town of Omaha, I tried holding the door for groups counting the "thank you"s. The first group of 5 gave me 6 "thank you"s. I thought that was actually pretty good, but it is not an experiment without a control. I had a friend going to Canada and asked him to try it. Sure enough the first group of 5 gave him 7 "thank you"s.
    • thro1237 9y ago
      Now, that is a good joke
      • sqeaky 9y ago
        Thank you, Thank you.
• alexmingoia 10y ago
  Because like healthcare Americans are governed by lobbyists and ideology. US tax law filing complexity is a flagrant violation of due process but the Supreme Court refuses to hear the many cases they've received.
• mbroncano 10y ago
  Sorry, but no: the US doesn't lead in this issue either. Filling in taxes here is worse that going to the dentist. It's embarrassing as well to witness so many Americans to dismiss what's obvious for anybody having lived abroad. The tax system here sucks donkey balls. Background: lived and worked in three different countries, filled in taxes everywhere by myself. Sometimes with a dictionary, and never was so bad as in the US, even with Turbo Tax. No, it's not only tax filling. No sir: immigration system, health care, education ... failing to admit the US lags far behind the (rest of the) civilized world is the surest recipe for worsening the situation. Get smart, America. You're for a big surprise when you wake up to a world that's surpassed you already in most issues.
• tantalor 10y ago
  I don't mind the idea of figuring my own taxes, after all I can lookup all the numbers pretty easily, but the main obstacle to that is the tax instructions are impossible to parse. We should require the IRS to release the tax forms in a machine-readable format, e.g., as open-source software. The human-readable instructions should merely be the spec. Other people can write nice interfaces on top of that. Then you can run the code on your phone to figure your taxes.
  • msound 10y ago
    In India, our income tax department accepts returns as an XML document, and tax prep software developers have built tools that basically help you generate the XML and upload it to the e-filing website. PDF Link: https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/eFiling/Portal/StaticPDF/Schema_Document.pdf https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/eFiling/Portal/StaticPD... Other than this, the government run e-filing website also has a nice interface to do your taxes. It's fairly simple. Just fill in numbers and click Next Next Next Submit, and you're done.
• partycoder 10y ago
  For income tax return, many countries offer the possibility of filing a tax return that is pre-filled with information available to the tax revenue service. For a person with simple reporting requirements, like only one source of income from a job, and no foreign income (99% of tax returns), the most likely required action is to just accept the proposal and file it... all done for free.
• strictnein 10y ago
  The reason American taxes are more complex is that both parties use the income tax system for social engineering. They want to encourage things like home ownership, attending college, having kids, donating to charity, etc, so they let you deduct related costs.
  • alkonaut 10y ago
    I have tons of deductions too, but the tax authority just assumes I want to do them (interest rate, pension savings, a deduction for home repair ...) so they are filled in so I just accept them. If there is a deduction the trick is to e sure the burden of reporting is placed on the receiver, so charities report donations etc. Because there are fewer charities than donors, that makes the total burden smaller. Taxes are always social engineering.
  • jmulho 10y ago
    Modifying the tax code is also the easiest way to accomplish redistribution of wealth (for better or for worse). This is at least in part because the complexity of the tax code obfuscates the cost of the program. For example, should we continue to fund the budget of the "Department of Benefits for People with Spouses Born Before January 2, 1952"? Who benefits (how many and by how much)? What does this program cost? Nobody knows. There is no such department. Instead there is a check box on line 39a of the 1040. Checking it might change the standard deduction, for people who take the standard deduction, if they checked some other boxes, "see instructions".
• Fej 10y ago
  I'm one of the somewhat lucky ones - I file a Form 1040EZ. It's pretty simple. Fill in the boxes, do a bit of really simple math, and sign on the dotted line. My state, New Jersey, does free online filing as well. There is a silver lining to everything. US tax filing isn't completely bad.
• alkonaut 10y ago
  I file mine by ticking a checkbox and signing with the normal national digital id app. This is Sweden. I do not understand how the hell this is still so complicated in the US. Just change it? My impression of politics and authorities is "if something is obviously broken then it's already worked on and probably fixed within a year or two". The reason crap isn't fixed in the US? Beats me - but I'll guess: because a lot of people don't want it fixed. And those people contribute money to politics. You have a political system where money can be used to campaign for political office. Fix that.
  • kspaans 10y ago
    To give you a small example: the deduction for moving expenses[0]. If you move for work (plus some other small conditions), you can deduct those expenses from your taxable income. This can't be claimed for you automatically, you have to ask for it. To automatically file your taxes would very likely mean you miss this deduction. It's the legions of (arguably) boutique tax credits like this that crank up the complexity of filling. Individually most of them are reasonable, but it would be hard to take them away because they are likely to be used by a lot of people (the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners, for example). 0 - https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc455.html https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc455.html
    • alkonaut 10y ago
      We have those - but the system is constructed to be simple. If a not insignificant part of the population is eligible for some deduction, then either a) ensure it's automatically registered or b) remove the deduction or raise tresholds until everyone can again file automatically. For example, interest rates, pensions, charities, home improvements etc are deductible and automatically deducted since e.g the bank or charity reports the interest cost or donation etc. Travel to work is deductible but the treshold for making the deduction is so high that few can claim it. The key is to design the tax system so that it is easy to file. A deduction no matter how fair and reasonable that would make thousands have to file paperwork doesn't make sense.
      • 10y ago
• mnm1 10y ago
  All other developed countries have no problem doing ________. Why can't the US do _________? Lobbying. Works for simple tax returns, healthcare, labor laws, unionizing, etc.
  • nebabyte 10y ago
    The only justification I've ever heard for why lobbyism should be legal is "lobbyists act as 'lawyers' to help the people be heard in the legislative sphere". If that were true, "if you cannot afford a lobbyist, one will be provided to you" would be a thing (and no, I'm not talking about crowd-funded 'patches' like the public funded NPOs/watchdogs protecting our rights). As far as I'm concerned it's functionally equivalent to straight-up bribery. Accomplishes the same ends for the same people, just sidesteps the definition.
    • elihu 9y ago
      It's hard to distinguish "lobbyists" from "a group of concerned citizen activists advocating for a cause they care about". Any rules imposed on the former would also affect the latter. More robust restrictions on the flow of money from lobbyists to campaigns and superPACs could be an effective deterrent on the worst influences of lobbyists, though.
  • raarts 10y ago
    Banking and payment systems are arcane too. Nobody uses checks any more except the US, and online banking is soooo complicated and confusing completed to other Western countries.
    • mnm1 9y ago
      Yup. Not only that, but checks are still the most secure, most convenient, easiest way to transfer money in the US despite things like ACH. Banks are still not required to implement proper online security by law and are generally the most insecure sites one visits on the web. Not all our problems are due to lobbying/legal corruption, but most are and therefore most have simple solutions. Sad.
• rayiner 10y ago
  I love paying my taxes, and I kinda like the baroque U.S. process. Every April, I spend a couple of weeks being salty that government is penalizing me for being married, penalizing me for not taking out a giant loan to buy a McMansion in the suburbs, taking my money and using it to bomb Syria instead of helping working class families, etc. If my taxes just got auto-paid, I don't think I would even think of these things, and I don't think that'd be a good thing.
  • actuallyalys 9y ago
    Did you learn about those problems from doing your taxes, or does doing your taxes just remind you? If it's the latter, a prefiling system would serve almost the same purpose.
• tbihl 10y ago
  Obligatory EconTalk for people who want to better understand US taxes and popular perception of them: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/04/vanessa_william.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/04/vanessa_william.htm...
• dfar1 10y ago
  lobbying lobbying lobbying.... tax companies drop millions of dollars to get whatever they want. It's american politics at it's best.
• monster_group 10y ago
  I hate doing tax paper work like everybody but I would rather do it myself than let government do it. When I do it myself I am very careful to make sure I have gotten every possible deduction. If I let the government do it, most likely I will wait until the last day to review it and then I would say 'yeah looks right' without doing due diligence. If the government makes mistake of omitting a deduction or two on people's tax return then people would complain how government is trying to rip them off by deliberately omitting deductions. I also hate the complicated tax code like everybody else but that is a necessary evil I believe. US has large variations in income/wealth and one size doesn't fit all. The fact that tax code is complicated is actually an indication that there are tax breaks available for most people in many forms. US taxes are much lower than European taxes. It is easy to simplify the tax code by taxing everybody 30-40% like European countries. I would rather have a complicated tax code that results in lower taxes than a simple tax code that results in higher taxes.
  • random_comment 10y ago
    The complexity of the tax code is completely unrelated to the cost of running your country, which is what taxes have to cover. Increased complexity doesn't mean lower taxes or higher taxes, in principle, it just means complex taxes. In practice, it actually leads to higher taxes to pay for an army of people to check the code is being applied correctly. In Taiwan they have a system where you can choose to do manual deductions (A), if you think that's in your interest. Or you can take (B) 'the average deduction+10%'. Then you have a 1-page declaration of your income, no deductions marked, but they calculate what the guys who use (A) get, take the average, add 10%, then knock that off your tax bill. No false claims, no evidence to supply, nothing to check, both sides win, each tax official can manage 100x as many Bs as As. It's a practical example of how simpler tax codes can result in lower taxes by reducing (needlessly) big government.
    • monster_group 10y ago
      You can do that in US too. You can take itemized deduction (similar to A you mention) or you can take standard deduction which is flat amount (similar to B). But the US government lets you apply many more deductions after taking either of these and that is where the complexity comes. You can choose to do just itemized or standard deductions in US and not bother about other ways of saving money and then your taxes will be simple like Taiwan. That's your decision.
• oppositelock 10y ago
  The tax code is too complex, which is why it takes so much work to correctly compute what you owe. It doesn't matter whether the tax payer does this, or someone does this on their behalf to make it "easy". Taxes should be simple to pay because they're simply structured. In the US, Congress derives much of its power from tweaking the tax code, it's how campaign contributions are rewarded. Do this for a hundred years, and you get a complex tax code. This is also why it's not going to be simplified anytime soon, since Congress will never vote to reduce its own power.
• basseq 10y ago
  I did some work for the IRS several years ago to explore the same idea. There are many benefits, including simplicity and accuracy of filing (closing the $500B tax gap), as well as better fraud protection (another $25B). Protectionism of the tax return industry is common, but not the primary reason. Instead, the biggest pushback is from taxpayer advocacy groups. The issue is this: for many Americans, particularly low income Americans, their tax refund is the largest check they receive all year. Delaying that refund in order to receive all tax information (e.g., from banks and employers) and pre-populate a tax return would push back initial refund checks by 1-2 months. This is tantamount to political suicide. More detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14004152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14004152
• mvidal01 10y ago
  This is a very interesting story about a Stanford professor that tried to get California to pass a law to make paying state taxes easier. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=521132960 http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story... More: https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-the-tax-lobby/ https://priceonomics.com/the-stanford-professor-who-fought-t...
• jaysoncena 9y ago
  I'm not sure how easy it is in Japan but in Singapore, It just took me 10-15 mins to file my tax. 1. Login to IRAS(tax bureau) portal using the national ID (for me as foreigner, I used my employment pass ID) 2. Open the page for filing income tax 3. I entered total annual salary and allowances 4. I have donated to a government-recognized charity and this is automatically reflected on the form. It seems that the charity uploads donation infos to IRAS 5. Check if the tax relief for having a child is there 6. Click submit 7. Review and re-submit You also have an option to do installment, deducting from your bank account monthly. I don't have any other source of income so it will be different for other people.