15 ms·

I'm annoyed that there is no simple system for the IRS to tell me what I owe, and let me pay or dispute. Instead, we play this game where the IRS provides a bu

I'm annoyed that there is no simple system for the IRS to tell me what I owe, and let me pay or dispute. Instead, we play this game where the IRS provides a bunch of complicated documents, I guess which ones to fill out and submit, then wait 3 years to see if I was randomly chosen to see if I was correct. So it's very easy to make a mistake for dozens of years, then suddenly be penalized at random. It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. And this is to help H&R Block and others sell "tax insurance", just in case you're randomly selected for audit and H&R Block was also wrong about which tax documents to submit. The IRS have all the data - from employers, banks, Social Security, unemployment, and other government services. I might have most or all of the data, and could verify or contest items they have on file. Edit: So the IRS may not always have all of the data, and would still need a way for us to submit documents in some edge cases.

slededit 8y ago
Canada sends you an assessment after you file letting you know their initial thoughts on how much you owe. You can still get audited to see if there were any omissions or factual errors - e.g. Your home office isn't really an office.
- gruez 8y ago
  but don't you still have to fill out a tax form? in that case, isn't that the same as in US?.
  - slededit 8y ago
    Yes, but you have a much better idea of whether it was actually done correctly and matches CRA's information. I don't claim its better in every way, just this one specific issue has a solution.
  - tobib 8y ago
    You're actually able to electronically fetch all the data that the various companies (employer, broker, bank, etc) report to the CRA anyway. All you have to do is check it and send.
volkk 8y ago
> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.
- Coding_Cat 8y ago
  >Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. I doubt people really speed because the limits have been set too low and the people know better what is an ideal speed limit. I think people_think_ they know better what the speed limit is, and/or reason "well if 60mph is okay, 75 mph can't be that bad, I'm barely speeding and I'm in a rush". At least, that's the attitude I've seen with people who regularly speed. If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explained-engineer http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine... There is no guarantee that a speed limit will have any effect on driving behaviors. The fact is, when driving, most motorists choose a speed in which they personally feel both comfortable and safe.
    - Joeri 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds on a free-flowing section in 1992, the recorded average speed was 132 km/h (82 mph) with 51% of drivers exceeding the recommended speed. The autobahn has a long history proving that people feel comfortable and safe at excessive velocities.
      - scarface74 8y ago
        The autobahn is different. The people who drive on the autobahn self select because they want to drive fast and they have a disproportionate number of cars that can handle the speed. I doubt I would have been driving my first car - a Mercury Tracer - on the autobahn. But 80 miles per hour is not an abnormal speed on the highway. The posted speed limit is so rarely enforced, that it still isn’t a deterrent. For instance, the speed limit on GA 400 is 70. But you’d better be in the slow lane if you only go 70mph. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond-to-sheriffs-hilarious-and-true-ga-400-speeding-post/85-540154004 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond...
icedchai 8y ago
This would be nice, but they may not actually have all of the data: itemized deductions being one major missing piece.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Doesn't the bank send the same tax documents to the IRS as they send to you? (Mortgage interest is a commonly itemized deduction.) Itemized deductions could be a "dispute" item, where you would login, switch from Standard to Itemized, then itemize your deductions. It could possibly recall this setting, and even the deductions, from the previous year's input.
  - icedchai 8y ago
    For some, yes. However, in some cases, no. For example, I have a sole proprietor with a lot of 'business expenses' (web hosting, software licenses, etc.) Those get deducted. It would be nice to get this streamlined! taxes are such a chore. Too bad there's a multi billion dollar industry - tax preparation and accounting - supported by taxes. It will never happen.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      It wouldn’t be meant to cover every case. But most people have simple taxes - they receive an income from a job and investments that are already reported and thier only deductions are charity, home mortgage, state taxes and dependent (or did that change this year?)
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        Cost basis accounting/tracking for investments was only required for covered securities starting in 2010 to 2013, depending on the type of security involved.
- oriolid 8y ago
  In the countries where the system is place, you get to check the pre-made filing and add missing deductions.
gamblor956 8y ago
The IRS has actually run trials like this in the past. Very successful, at least for simply W2-based returns, since most people's taxable transactions get reported by companies anyway (i.e., mortgages/interest, other income, etc.) and most people use the standardized deduction. Inuit and Quicken subsequently lobbied to end those programs and even bar the IRS from running similar programs...
- Someguywhatever 8y ago
  >Inuit and Quicken subsequently lobbied to end those programs and even bar the IRS from running similar programs... They did the same thing in Canada too btw.
- el_benhameen 8y ago
  While I'm sure that most tax prep companies have lobbied similarly, this is why I don't use TurboTax and other Intuit products.
- curiousgeorgio 8y ago
  Nearly everyone I've talked to (on both sides of the political spectrum) agrees on this issue; if the IRS has the means to verify and audit the data, they might as well prepare the forms and just get authorization (+ any additional info they might be lacking) before tax returns are submitted. So how is it that lobbying alone is enough to persuade lawmakers to take the side of Intuit et al.? And which lawmakers are so easily "bought" at the detriment of the public? I'm just as pessimistic as anyone when it comes to the corruption of our government, but this seems like a pretty black and white issue. There must be more to it...
  - MaysonL 8y ago
    Lobbying + campaign contributions. + the knowledge that as long as they don't change the situation, they'll be able to expect future campaign contributions.
    - curiousgeorgio 8y ago
ryanianian 8y ago
> The IRS have all the data Not..entirely true. My 2016 taxes were professionally done, but we somehow forgot to include one of the something-something-1099 forms from a brokerage firm. The brokerage reported some RSU stock-sells to the IRS but didn't report the cost-basis, and so the IRS assumed the cost-basis was $0 and thus taxed the full sale as income (effectively double-taxing all the RSUs). They just sent a tax bill for something like $20k plus a bunch of fees and interest. It's an accounting-error so we won't owe much, but I doubt we would have seen this mistake if the IRS had just told us a total amount to pay. We have two tech-job incomes both of which are highly-dependent on equity, so we'd almost certainly end up getting a CPA to run all the numbers again anyway. I'm a fan of reducing bureaucracy of double-reporting tax info, but I'm personally unwilling to trust that the IRS and various banks / brokerage systems are up to the task of generating trustworthy data (and/or erring on the side of the taxpayer in situations like this).
- pratheekrebala 8y ago
  I don't think this would prevent you from using a CPA or Itemizing your return. However, this system could be very beneficial for the 68.5% of the population that doesn't itemize[1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/who-itemizes-deductions/ https://taxfoundation.org/who-itemizes-deductions/
  - ryanianian 8y ago
    I think it would still happen with standard/non-itemized deductions. This particular case was mis-reported income. But agreed that my case (and really any cases that involve capital-gains) are probably in the vast minority.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Lots of people receive RSU's, and the cost basis issue is extremely common.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
    I never itemized and I’m pretty sure the IRS could never do my tax forms while I was in China...heck, they never even asked for anything like a W2 since my income was all foreign.
zebraflask 8y ago
Their problem, not mine.
- masklinn 8y ago
  It's really your problem not theirs. It would cost very little for the IRS to do this and — if you're in the simple case where the IRS already has all your info — make filling your taxes as complicated as clicking "OK" on the IRS's website. And even if you're not in the trivial case where that suffices, it would save the aggregated taxpayers ungodly amounts of time and frustration. That's basically how it works in many european countries. Filling is finding 10mn to log in the tax service's website, verifying that nothing looks out of whack and validating.
sf_rob 8y ago
>then wait 3 years to see if I was randomly chosen to see if I was correct. My CPA friend told me that Money Magazine used to send fairly complex personal income tax packets to 50 different tax preparers annually (grain of salt: I haven't been able to find the article). She recalled that the best year had about 4 preparers get the same calculation as the plurality.
hnarn 8y ago
>I'm annoyed that there is no simple system for the IRS to tell me what I owe, and let me pay or dispute. How weird is it that this is not the norm? In Sweden, this is exactly the way it works. You get a piece of paper every year saying "according to what your employer and other instances have reported, here's what we think you owe". You can dispute it, but best of all: if you have nothing to dispute, you can OK it cryptographically (look up "bank-id"), or even OK it via SMS, by sending a pre-generated code given to you on paper. If you do, you get your payout (if any) just a month or two later.
- tyldum 8y ago
  Norway has gone even further. Unless you object, it's automatically accepted!
ransom1538 8y ago
It is a straightforward answer: This is because the IRS would make less money. It is like a poker game. Their number can only be smaller than yours. If you go under their number they penalize you. If you go over their number they keep the difference.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > It is a straightforward answer: It's also patent nonsense.
  - ransom1538 8y ago
    I am not agreeing with it just stating the fact.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      If it's actually a fact, then you don't get to agree or disagree with it.
      - mmirate 8y ago
        I believe he/she was using "agree with it" as shorthand for "judge that it is a good thing".
    - masklinn 8y ago
      You are not stating "the fact" you are stating patent nonsense.
      - dang 8y ago
        Maybe so, but you've crossed into attacking and name-calling, which is a violation of the site guidelines no matter how right you are. Moreover it's unsubstantive to just declare "nonsense" without explaining anything to the reader. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
13415 8y ago
Arguably it's not really comparable because of country size etc. but I really love the Portuguese IRS system. You log in from your PC, press a button (if you want), and the system auto-fills all of your tax data for you. You can then check that everything is in order, add deductions and proofs if you like or need. Press simulate to check what tax returns you will get. You may save and print everything. There is a help system built-in that explains every form. When you're finished with your review, press send, and the system will validate your forms and send them to the IRS. Usually everything is filled-in correctly anyway. Takes 5 minutes for ordinary tax payers like me.
anonymous5133 8y ago
The reason it is like that is because the IRS does NOT have all the data. They want to make sure you are reporting everything as you should be.
dfjliasjg 8y ago
Absolutely its complete BS. All companies use ERP systems like SAP and PeopleSoft which already calculate all of the complicated rules, so any changes to tax law are vetted (hopefully) by tax professionals and software engineers before release. Compare this with the average tax filer (or HR Block employee), who has no fucking idea what they're supposed to do.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > All companies use ERP systems like SAP and PeopleSoft No, not all companies do that. Maybe “most very large companies”, but that's a different thing altogether.
gst 8y ago
I'm citizen of Austria and resident of the United States. Austrian tax returns are much simpler because in the majority of cases they don't exist: Your employer and your banks automatically withhold the correct amount of taxes (capital gains are taxed at a flat rate and don't influence regular income taxes). Marriage status doesn't matter for income tax as the same tax brackets apply to everyone. Deductions are much less common but if you have any deductions you can let the government know and they'll automatically refund your tax within a week or so. One reason why Austrian taxes are so much simpler is because there are much fewer special cases: The US has all those different credits and deductions that lower the taxes in certain situations, e.g., the "First-time homebuyer credit repayment". Meanwhile in Austria all those subsidies for, e.g., lower income people aren't included in the tax system, but are available via completely separate programs (e.g., if your income is very low the government pays parts of your rent and helps you with heating costs in the winter, but you have to submit a separate application for that). Not sure which system is better. One thing I noticed is that in Austria I never applied for any subsidies even while being a low-income student (why would I apply for social services if I don't really need them?). Meanwhile in the US my tax advisor makes sure that I get all the credits and deductions that I'm eligible for.
- softgrow 8y ago
  Australian here (we speak English and have kangaroos, not in the towns to be clear but they do outnumber the people). Australian personal tax returns are getting easier and easier with the move to electronic filing combined with pre-filling of income from employers and financial institutions. Log onto MyGov, check the pre-filled information which is about 90% of what you need then figure out the remaining special cases such as charitable donations, work related expenses and you are done. Accountants and tax filing firms are nervous and a bit worried but not showing that publicly or apparently lobbying.
  - Aramgutang 8y ago
    As another Australian, can confirm. This year's tax return was as easy as logging into MyGov, verifying my contact details, confirming that the wage payments report from my employer was accurate, entering a previously-calculated number into the "capital gains" field, and pressing "submit". Took less than 10 minutes. The only non-trivial bits are things like capital gains, work expenses, donations, but these are all things that you should be tracking in a spreadsheet as they occur through the year, and you'll have a number at the bottom of that spreadsheet that you can just copy over to your return (like I did with my capital gains, for example). Even as a contractor in the past (keep in mind, in Australia, a contractor is a sole proprietor business), filing my return was as easy as copying income/expense totals from my invoice/receipt tracking spreadsheets into the return, adding any new depreciating assets to the list (that persists on their servers and gets recalculated each year) and submitting. I don't have any interest accounts or private health insurance, but these would be some of the other things that get automatically pre-filled. And it's been this way for well over a decade now.
gwbas1c 8y ago
The system would be much easier if my tax software could download what the IRS has. This way it could either do most of the data entry for me; or if I had a dispute, I'd know about the problem immediately.
jrockway 8y ago
So... I apparently messed up my 2016 taxes, and the IRS sent me a letter entitled "suggested tax correction" or something to that effect. They attached the data that they claimed I omitted (indeed, Turbotax silently discarded that data), and how much I owed. I then paid them online. I think the IRS is super paranoid about people hiding information from them, and then never being liable for the taxes. Right now, if they miss some income, you might report it to them on your return, and they get money they didn't know they were entitled to. I thought the letter with "pay us this amount of money" was great, though. Wish they just sent that at the end of the tax year.
- grkvlt 8y ago
  > I think the IRS is super paranoid about people hiding information from them, and then never being liable for the taxes Yeah, why do people pay out all that stupid money, when its as simple as just not telling the taxman? Really, if it was like that then tax evasion would be pretty simple...
  - jrockway 8y ago
    Your sarcasm, I think, is unwarranted. I'm saying that's the IRS's fear, not that the fear is well-founded or that you should attempt to evade taxes.
hulton 8y ago
The IRS administers and enforces the income tax laws beyond the parameters of the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President as well as beyond the parameters laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover, the IRS’s own internal procedures, manuals and literature itself indicate the IRS knowingly deceives the American public about the scope of its true income tax authority.
vagab0nd 8y ago
The biggest problem for me is the delay between when the tax is incurred and when it is filed. As a home owner, for instance, every year I have to remember how much I paid for property tax, mortgage interests, etc (or at least save the receipts). If the IRS can provide some kind of API that allows me to file each item as it appears, that would be much better.

slededit 8y ago

Canada sends you an assessment after you file letting you know their initial thoughts on how much you owe. You can still get audited to see if there were any omissions or factual errors - e.g. Your home office isn't really an office.

gruez 8y ago
but don't you still have to fill out a tax form? in that case, isn't that the same as in US?.
- slededit 8y ago
  Yes, but you have a much better idea of whether it was actually done correctly and matches CRA's information. I don't claim its better in every way, just this one specific issue has a solution.
- tobib 8y ago
  You're actually able to electronically fetch all the data that the various companies (employer, broker, bank, etc) report to the CRA anyway. All you have to do is check it and send.

volkk 8y ago

> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.

Coding_Cat 8y ago
>Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. I doubt people really speed because the limits have been set too low and the people know better what is an ideal speed limit. I think people_think_ they know better what the speed limit is, and/or reason "well if 60mph is okay, 75 mph can't be that bad, I'm barely speeding and I'm in a rush". At least, that's the attitude I've seen with people who regularly speed. If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead.
- scarface74 8y ago
  http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explained-engineer http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine... There is no guarantee that a speed limit will have any effect on driving behaviors. The fact is, when driving, most motorists choose a speed in which they personally feel both comfortable and safe.
  - Joeri 8y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds on a free-flowing section in 1992, the recorded average speed was 132 km/h (82 mph) with 51% of drivers exceeding the recommended speed. The autobahn has a long history proving that people feel comfortable and safe at excessive velocities.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      The autobahn is different. The people who drive on the autobahn self select because they want to drive fast and they have a disproportionate number of cars that can handle the speed. I doubt I would have been driving my first car - a Mercury Tracer - on the autobahn. But 80 miles per hour is not an abnormal speed on the highway. The posted speed limit is so rarely enforced, that it still isn’t a deterrent. For instance, the speed limit on GA 400 is 70. But you’d better be in the slow lane if you only go 70mph. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond-to-sheriffs-hilarious-and-true-ga-400-speeding-post/85-540154004 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond...

icedchai 8y ago

This would be nice, but they may not actually have all of the data: itemized deductions being one major missing piece.

stephengillie 8y ago
Doesn't the bank send the same tax documents to the IRS as they send to you? (Mortgage interest is a commonly itemized deduction.) Itemized deductions could be a "dispute" item, where you would login, switch from Standard to Itemized, then itemize your deductions. It could possibly recall this setting, and even the deductions, from the previous year's input.
- icedchai 8y ago
  For some, yes. However, in some cases, no. For example, I have a sole proprietor with a lot of 'business expenses' (web hosting, software licenses, etc.) Those get deducted. It would be nice to get this streamlined! taxes are such a chore. Too bad there's a multi billion dollar industry - tax preparation and accounting - supported by taxes. It will never happen.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    It wouldn’t be meant to cover every case. But most people have simple taxes - they receive an income from a job and investments that are already reported and thier only deductions are charity, home mortgage, state taxes and dependent (or did that change this year?)
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      Cost basis accounting/tracking for investments was only required for covered securities starting in 2010 to 2013, depending on the type of security involved.
oriolid 8y ago
In the countries where the system is place, you get to check the pre-made filing and add missing deductions.

gamblor956 8y ago

The IRS has actually run trials like this in the past. Very successful, at least for simply W2-based returns, since most people's taxable transactions get reported by companies anyway (i.e., mortgages/interest, other income, etc.) and most people use the standardized deduction. Inuit and Quicken subsequently lobbied to end those programs and even bar the IRS from running similar programs...

Someguywhatever 8y ago
>Inuit and Quicken subsequently lobbied to end those programs and even bar the IRS from running similar programs... They did the same thing in Canada too btw.
el_benhameen 8y ago
While I'm sure that most tax prep companies have lobbied similarly, this is why I don't use TurboTax and other Intuit products.
curiousgeorgio 8y ago
Nearly everyone I've talked to (on both sides of the political spectrum) agrees on this issue; if the IRS has the means to verify and audit the data, they might as well prepare the forms and just get authorization (+ any additional info they might be lacking) before tax returns are submitted. So how is it that lobbying alone is enough to persuade lawmakers to take the side of Intuit et al.? And which lawmakers are so easily "bought" at the detriment of the public? I'm just as pessimistic as anyone when it comes to the corruption of our government, but this seems like a pretty black and white issue. There must be more to it...
- MaysonL 8y ago
  Lobbying + campaign contributions. + the knowledge that as long as they don't change the situation, they'll be able to expect future campaign contributions.
  - curiousgeorgio 8y ago

ryanianian 8y ago

> The IRS have all the data Not..entirely true. My 2016 taxes were professionally done, but we somehow forgot to include one of the something-something-1099 forms from a brokerage firm. The brokerage reported some RSU stock-sells to the IRS but didn't report the cost-basis, and so the IRS assumed the cost-basis was $0 and thus taxed the full sale as income (effectively double-taxing all the RSUs). They just sent a tax bill for something like $20k plus a bunch of fees and interest. It's an accounting-error so we won't owe much, but I doubt we would have seen this mistake if the IRS had just told us a total amount to pay. We have two tech-job incomes both of which are highly-dependent on equity, so we'd almost certainly end up getting a CPA to run all the numbers again anyway. I'm a fan of reducing bureaucracy of double-reporting tax info, but I'm personally unwilling to trust that the IRS and various banks / brokerage systems are up to the task of generating trustworthy data (and/or erring on the side of the taxpayer in situations like this).

pratheekrebala 8y ago
I don't think this would prevent you from using a CPA or Itemizing your return. However, this system could be very beneficial for the 68.5% of the population that doesn't itemize[1]. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/who-itemizes-deductions/ https://taxfoundation.org/who-itemizes-deductions/
- ryanianian 8y ago
  I think it would still happen with standard/non-itemized deductions. This particular case was mis-reported income. But agreed that my case (and really any cases that involve capital-gains) are probably in the vast minority.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Lots of people receive RSU's, and the cost basis issue is extremely common.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  I never itemized and I’m pretty sure the IRS could never do my tax forms while I was in China...heck, they never even asked for anything like a W2 since my income was all foreign.

zebraflask 8y ago

Their problem, not mine.

masklinn 8y ago
It's really your problem not theirs. It would cost very little for the IRS to do this and — if you're in the simple case where the IRS already has all your info — make filling your taxes as complicated as clicking "OK" on the IRS's website. And even if you're not in the trivial case where that suffices, it would save the aggregated taxpayers ungodly amounts of time and frustration. That's basically how it works in many european countries. Filling is finding 10mn to log in the tax service's website, verifying that nothing looks out of whack and validating.

sf_rob 8y ago

>then wait 3 years to see if I was randomly chosen to see if I was correct. My CPA friend told me that Money Magazine used to send fairly complex personal income tax packets to 50 different tax preparers annually (grain of salt: I haven't been able to find the article). She recalled that the best year had about 4 preparers get the same calculation as the plurality.

hnarn 8y ago

>I'm annoyed that there is no simple system for the IRS to tell me what I owe, and let me pay or dispute. How weird is it that this is not the norm? In Sweden, this is exactly the way it works. You get a piece of paper every year saying "according to what your employer and other instances have reported, here's what we think you owe". You can dispute it, but best of all: if you have nothing to dispute, you can OK it cryptographically (look up "bank-id"), or even OK it via SMS, by sending a pre-generated code given to you on paper. If you do, you get your payout (if any) just a month or two later.

tyldum 8y ago
Norway has gone even further. Unless you object, it's automatically accepted!

ransom1538 8y ago

It is a straightforward answer: This is because the IRS would make less money. It is like a poker game. Their number can only be smaller than yours. If you go under their number they penalize you. If you go over their number they keep the difference.

masklinn 8y ago
> It is a straightforward answer: It's also patent nonsense.
- ransom1538 8y ago
  I am not agreeing with it just stating the fact.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    If it's actually a fact, then you don't get to agree or disagree with it.
    - mmirate 8y ago
      I believe he/she was using "agree with it" as shorthand for "judge that it is a good thing".
  - masklinn 8y ago
    You are not stating "the fact" you are stating patent nonsense.
    - dang 8y ago
      Maybe so, but you've crossed into attacking and name-calling, which is a violation of the site guidelines no matter how right you are. Moreover it's unsubstantive to just declare "nonsense" without explaining anything to the reader. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

13415 8y ago

Arguably it's not really comparable because of country size etc. but I really love the Portuguese IRS system. You log in from your PC, press a button (if you want), and the system auto-fills all of your tax data for you. You can then check that everything is in order, add deductions and proofs if you like or need. Press simulate to check what tax returns you will get. You may save and print everything. There is a help system built-in that explains every form. When you're finished with your review, press send, and the system will validate your forms and send them to the IRS. Usually everything is filled-in correctly anyway. Takes 5 minutes for ordinary tax payers like me.

anonymous5133 8y ago

The reason it is like that is because the IRS does NOT have all the data. They want to make sure you are reporting everything as you should be.

dfjliasjg 8y ago

Absolutely its complete BS. All companies use ERP systems like SAP and PeopleSoft which already calculate all of the complicated rules, so any changes to tax law are vetted (hopefully) by tax professionals and software engineers before release. Compare this with the average tax filer (or HR Block employee), who has no fucking idea what they're supposed to do.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> All companies use ERP systems like SAP and PeopleSoft No, not all companies do that. Maybe “most very large companies”, but that's a different thing altogether.

gst 8y ago

I'm citizen of Austria and resident of the United States. Austrian tax returns are much simpler because in the majority of cases they don't exist: Your employer and your banks automatically withhold the correct amount of taxes (capital gains are taxed at a flat rate and don't influence regular income taxes). Marriage status doesn't matter for income tax as the same tax brackets apply to everyone. Deductions are much less common but if you have any deductions you can let the government know and they'll automatically refund your tax within a week or so. One reason why Austrian taxes are so much simpler is because there are much fewer special cases: The US has all those different credits and deductions that lower the taxes in certain situations, e.g., the "First-time homebuyer credit repayment". Meanwhile in Austria all those subsidies for, e.g., lower income people aren't included in the tax system, but are available via completely separate programs (e.g., if your income is very low the government pays parts of your rent and helps you with heating costs in the winter, but you have to submit a separate application for that). Not sure which system is better. One thing I noticed is that in Austria I never applied for any subsidies even while being a low-income student (why would I apply for social services if I don't really need them?). Meanwhile in the US my tax advisor makes sure that I get all the credits and deductions that I'm eligible for.

softgrow 8y ago
Australian here (we speak English and have kangaroos, not in the towns to be clear but they do outnumber the people). Australian personal tax returns are getting easier and easier with the move to electronic filing combined with pre-filling of income from employers and financial institutions. Log onto MyGov, check the pre-filled information which is about 90% of what you need then figure out the remaining special cases such as charitable donations, work related expenses and you are done. Accountants and tax filing firms are nervous and a bit worried but not showing that publicly or apparently lobbying.
- Aramgutang 8y ago
  As another Australian, can confirm. This year's tax return was as easy as logging into MyGov, verifying my contact details, confirming that the wage payments report from my employer was accurate, entering a previously-calculated number into the "capital gains" field, and pressing "submit". Took less than 10 minutes. The only non-trivial bits are things like capital gains, work expenses, donations, but these are all things that you should be tracking in a spreadsheet as they occur through the year, and you'll have a number at the bottom of that spreadsheet that you can just copy over to your return (like I did with my capital gains, for example). Even as a contractor in the past (keep in mind, in Australia, a contractor is a sole proprietor business), filing my return was as easy as copying income/expense totals from my invoice/receipt tracking spreadsheets into the return, adding any new depreciating assets to the list (that persists on their servers and gets recalculated each year) and submitting. I don't have any interest accounts or private health insurance, but these would be some of the other things that get automatically pre-filled. And it's been this way for well over a decade now.

gwbas1c 8y ago

The system would be much easier if my tax software could download what the IRS has. This way it could either do most of the data entry for me; or if I had a dispute, I'd know about the problem immediately.

jrockway 8y ago

So... I apparently messed up my 2016 taxes, and the IRS sent me a letter entitled "suggested tax correction" or something to that effect. They attached the data that they claimed I omitted (indeed, Turbotax silently discarded that data), and how much I owed. I then paid them online. I think the IRS is super paranoid about people hiding information from them, and then never being liable for the taxes. Right now, if they miss some income, you might report it to them on your return, and they get money they didn't know they were entitled to. I thought the letter with "pay us this amount of money" was great, though. Wish they just sent that at the end of the tax year.

grkvlt 8y ago
> I think the IRS is super paranoid about people hiding information from them, and then never being liable for the taxes Yeah, why do people pay out all that stupid money, when its as simple as just not telling the taxman? Really, if it was like that then tax evasion would be pretty simple...
- jrockway 8y ago
  Your sarcasm, I think, is unwarranted. I'm saying that's the IRS's fear, not that the fear is well-founded or that you should attempt to evade taxes.

hulton 8y ago

The IRS administers and enforces the income tax laws beyond the parameters of the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President as well as beyond the parameters laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover, the IRS’s own internal procedures, manuals and literature itself indicate the IRS knowingly deceives the American public about the scope of its true income tax authority.

vagab0nd 8y ago

The biggest problem for me is the delay between when the tax is incurred and when it is filed. As a home owner, for instance, every year I have to remember how much I paid for property tax, mortgage interests, etc (or at least save the receipts). If the IRS can provide some kind of API that allows me to file each item as it appears, that would be much better.