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In practice, many Americans don’t have to do much more work than that. If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often

by gok 9y ago

In practice, many Americans don’t have to do much more work than that. If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The big problems with US tax preparation seem truly hard to solve. A huge number of Americans take deductions which are fundamentally hard to automatically report. It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Another trouble is that tax laws at federal, state and local levels are weirdly different and sometimes incompatible. The latest federal tax law eliminates the use of itemized deductions for about 90% of tax payers, however. This may nudge us closer to prefiled taxes.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
> If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The only tax preparers that do this charge quite a bit if your AGI is above a certain amount. The others make you do manual data entry. If you have a brokerage account with a lot of trades, it's over — you pretty much need to use a tax preparer that can import that information. This is true even though the government already has that information from your employer and your brokerage. In GP's country, he doesn't have to do anything at all in these cases.
jessaustin 9y ago
It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Every payer files 1099s and sends the payee a copy. It would be no hardship for charities to file analogous forms and send analogous copies to donors, although I suppose the chance of false filing would increase. To prevent that, just issue charities some secret identifier they write on the form that goes to IRS and don't write on the copy they send to the payer.

by gok 9y ago

lern_too_spel 9y ago

> If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The only tax preparers that do this charge quite a bit if your AGI is above a certain amount. The others make you do manual data entry. If you have a brokerage account with a lot of trades, it's over — you pretty much need to use a tax preparer that can import that information. This is true even though the government already has that information from your employer and your brokerage. In GP's country, he doesn't have to do anything at all in these cases.

jessaustin 9y ago

It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Every payer files 1099s and sends the payee a copy. It would be no hardship for charities to file analogous forms and send analogous copies to donors, although I suppose the chance of false filing would increase. To prevent that, just issue charities some secret identifier they write on the form that goes to IRS and don't write on the copy they send to the payer.