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Related fun (and sad) fact: In Norway, the tax submission forms are online and so user friendly that you don't need a tax filing program like this. Edit: Here i
by vages 6y ago
Related fun (and sad) fact: In Norway, the tax submission forms are online and so user friendly that you don't need a tax filing program like this. Edit: Here is a link to an explanation for the form, in English, which was revamped in 2020: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/taxes/tax-return/tax-return-person/new-tax-return/ https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/taxes/tax-return/tax-r...
The submission form is essentially a wizard that asks you questions related to your situation and your past year. Depending on your answers, it expands different parts of the form. Other parts, such as tax exempt donations are automatically filled out based on information that the recipients filled out for you.
I visited the UX department of the Norwegian equivalent to the IRS (Skatteetaten), and they had almost every device you could think of (eye-tracking being the most fun). No wonder they made good forms.
I understand that some people object politically to taxes, but as long as it's one of the certainties of life (death being the other), I cannot understand why filling out the submission seems so hard in most countries...
- m463 6y agothe good reason: some people are philosophically opposed to easy taxes - people should be painfully aware of the money they are giving to the government. (sort of like folks who have VAT complain about advertised US retail prices which don't include tax) The bad reason: Lobbying by intuit and parties to prevent easy tax preparation. Their ROI on regulatory capture is very very good.
- senux 6y agoThe "good reason" you provided, even if it were an actually thought out consequence of the US system, isn't really delivered. In reality, people are painfully aware of how annoying filing taxes is and hopeful that they will get some money back later. The system is so convoluted, most people pay someone else to take care of it for them. Not to mention, most people barely understand what's happening when they are filing their taxes.
- syshum 6y agoyea, I would much rather the IRS be mandated to send out a Yearly Statement itemizing every dollar spend by Category in the previous year by the US government, at minimum at the Broad Category level (i.e Social Programs, Military, Administration, etc)
- eyelidlessness 6y ago> the good reason: some people are philosophically opposed to easy taxes - people should be painfully aware of the money they are giving to the government. That’s only a good reason if you’re opposed to the actual programs and/or outcomes. If you favor those programs and outcomes, making people “painfully aware” of their cost almost certainly undermines them. Which... > The bad reason: Lobbying by intuit and parties to prevent easy tax preparation. Their ROI on regulatory capture is very very good. Tax prep companies certainly don’t have this kind of power, and only one of the parties has that platform. That’s who’s invested in making taxation feel painful. Not just in terms of awareness but in policy too.
- Matheus28 6y ago>Tax prep companies certainly don’t have this kind of power, and only one of the parties has that platform. That’s who’s invested in making taxation feel painful. Not just in terms of awareness but in policy too. You'd be surprised.
- zentiggr 6y agoI think you need to catch up with the investigative reporting on just how hard Intuit has lobbied to limit free filing, and how entrenched the deal is in IRS leadership.
- syshum 6y ago>>That’s only a good reason if you’re opposed to the actual programs and/or outcomes. If you favor those programs and outcomes Most of the people that philosophically opposed to easy taxes, are philosophically opposed to taxes in general and by extension most of the programs the taxes fund. I am one of those people, doubly so for income based taxation which IMO is unethical. I prefer a Henry George Style single tax system for public finance but that is beyond the scope of this thread
- rayiner 6y ago> That’s only a good reason if you’re opposed to the actual programs and/or outcomes. If you favor those programs and outcomes, making people “painfully aware” of their cost almost certainly undermines them. Not at all. I support bigger government providing more services. I’d happily pay a lot more taxes. But I also support forcing people to grapple with the cost of government once a year. They should be making the informed decision to pay more or less taxes, not acquiescing to it merely because the government automatically takes their money and makes it so they never have to think about how much. My brother in law, who is 20 and just starting to have to pay taxes, called my wife and I to complain. It’s an easy form for him to fill out, but he had to write a check because his employers didn’t withhold enough. I felt like it was an excellent learning experience.
- schoen 6y agoI think something that would help to make people much more aware of their tax rates is getting rid of automated W-2 deductions, so that virtually all taxpayers would individually have to pay money out of their own bank accounts. Having the filing process be complicated or tedious doesn't really do much to give people a more accurate perspective on the financial burden of taxation to them. If you could get your tax forms filled out automatically in 10 seconds but the result was "you have to send the IRS a check for $10,000", that would have a far greater awareness-building effect than having to spend 4-6 hours dealing with forms and paperwork only to conclude that "you don't owe any taxes" (because the money was already withheld as you earned it over the course of the year). Of course, this change would also cause a lot of hardship because quite a lot of people would find it difficult, for various reasons, to save up money to pay taxes if they weren't having someone else do it for them automatically. And I'd expect that this hardship would probably lead more in the direction of political pressure to reinstitute W-2 deductions rather than pressure to reduce or eliminate income taxes. Having worked on W-2 (salary with automatic deduction from each paycheck) for my whole life until last year, when I switched to 1099 (making quarterly estimated tax payments and sending the tax authorities a check), I really had the "wow, I never quite noticed how much I was paying in taxes before!" experience.
- vages 6y agoSame thing for me! "That's a third of my salary!"[1] But after getting a master's degree for free from the government and looking forward to free health care, kindergarten and cheap public transport for the rest of my life, I can't really complain. [1] Note that the Norwegian tax system is progressive, so median wage earners don't pay as much as that.
- rayiner 6y agoThe American tax system is much more progressive. Median wage earners in Norway don’t pay that much, but as I understand it the top tax bracket kicks in around 1.6 times the average income (under $100,000). In the US, the top tax bracket doesn’t kick in until $518,000 for single people.
- sokoloff 6y ago
- kuyan 6y ago> some people are philosophically opposed to easy taxes I listened to a couple of episodes of Planet Money a while back that others might find relevant. They address how some state / local governments raise money in regions where opposition to taxes is high. The Liberty City (https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771371881/episode-945-the-liberty-city https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771371881/episode-945-the-lib...) Fine and Punishment (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967260423/planet-money-fine-and-punishment https://www.npr.org/2021/02/12/967260423/planet-money-fine-a...) Essentially, the subjects of each episode use the justice system to raise funds from speeding tickets, court / prison fees, etc.
- refurb 6y agoIn Singapore income taxes aren’t taken off your paycheck. You’re expected to save enough to pay your taxes the following year. They do allow installments the following year, so you can replicate the monthly deductions, but it’s plainly apparent how much you’re paying since you need to pay it separately each month.
- llarsson 6y agoIn Sweden, the employers are responsible for reporting your income and banks your profits on sales of stocks, funds, and real estate. So "doing your taxes" is, for most people, just logging in and saying "yes" to the computed value. You can even just send a text to do so.
- matsemann 6y agoJust to make it clear: It's the same in Norway as well. All banks, employers, brokers, etc report everything. So most of the numbers are prefilled, and if everything looks right you don't really have to do anything. What you mainly have to fix sometimes are some deductions not being applied automatically. And that's when this form comes into play. It's just a simple wizard making it easy to add these things.
- hanche 6y agoThat is pretty much the case in Norway, too. You don’t even need to say yes. Silence is taken as assent. But if you do need to go beyond that, it is just like GP wrote.
- ac29 6y ago> In Sweden, the employers are responsible for reporting your income and banks your profits on sales of stocks, funds, and real estate. This is true in the US as well, but the tax authority (IRS) gives you nothing but blank forms to fill out yourself.
- harikb 6y agoNot just that it is blank, it is expected that certain things that you fill match what they already know. It is more like a test, where you get nothing if you answer correctly and penalty if you make a mistake. Note: IRS does provide a way to download what they know as a pdf (what banks reported, for example), so one can get some help with the "test"
- sargun 6y agoWhere can you download that?
- emptysongglass 6y agoIn Denmark I just call the tax authority and ask them to do my taxes for me. They're really friendly about it and it's done in five minutes.
- mads 6y agoI think the Danish tax authorities must have taken some sort of customer service course in recent years. They are always so friendly, when I call them, that I think there must be some scam going on.
- ollifi 6y agoFinnish tax administration has been getting into memeing lately. https://www.instagram.com/verohallinto/ https://www.instagram.com/verohallinto/
- benhurmarcel 6y agoYou'd be hard-pressed to find any other developed country than the US where it's not similar to that.
- vages 6y agoGreat! Do you have an example of a form from your home country (assuming you don't live in the US)?
- philjohn 6y agoUK here - the forms are here: https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-forms-and-helpsheets https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-forms-and-helpsheets Unless you have a very special circumstance (e.g. you're a Lloyds of London name) you can file online through the HMRC website which does all of the calculations for you and is mostly just a case of entering a few figures from your P60 and P11D for the vast majority of people.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoIn France for example, when it's time to declare your income you receive an email (or a letter if you prefer). You log in with your fiscal number and password, and get an online form where you can declare any type of income. For most people, the numbers are pre-filled (communicated by the employer). You can modify them, check your bank account IBAN for paying/refunds, and validate. In Spain it's the same, except unfortunately they don't notify you when it's time (although the whole country has a month to do it so you can't really miss it). Also their login system is a bit more complicated than a password, they have a special 2FA system you need to setup in person. There are no calculations to do, you just enter your incomes and deductions by type and it calculates your taxes for you. In both cases, you can also use a mobile app for all of that. And you can choose to do it on paper, by physical mail.
- vages 6y agoGood on you! That sounds surprisingly modern compared to what I've heard about for example online banking in France from people who were exchange students there. From what I've heard, you have to show up physically for most bank stuff. Is that true? Disclaimer: I was told this by people who were exchange students there at least two years ago. Things may have changed and/or be different (i.e. harder) for foreigners.
- melomal 6y ago> I cannot understand why filling out the submission seems so hard in most countries The fact that schools do not teach makes it crazy too. I imagine it has something to do with the fact that if you make it easy, mistakes cannot be made therefore you cannot exploit the few bucks here and there out of a large number of people who are not tuned to the tax filling process.
- japhyr 6y ago> The fact that schools do not teach makes it crazy too. I'm in the US, and I was a high school math teacher for 20 years. I tried teaching everyone how to do taxes, and people hated it because if you make people do fake taxes it's incredibly boring. Then I developed a "financial literacy" unit where students could choose a focus, such as analyzing investments, analyzing credit card policies, analyzing loans, or doing taxes. About half the class chose taxes each year; making things like this optional significantly increases engagement, because many people end up recognizing they really would like to understand how to do their own taxes. It was also eye-opening for many who were surprised what impact things like "tax brackets" would have on their income. It cut through so much propaganda that's shouted about taxes in the US.
- mattlondon 6y agoThe UK system is similar - a web-based form, starts off asking you some basic questions ("Did you give to charity?" "Are you a director of a company?" etc etc) then tailors it directly for your needs, with the "obvious" stuff being pre-filled from your usual employer-deducted taxes. The wording is clear and simple to understand (...most of the time - some of it is a bit "legalese" in places but it is getting better each year) Takes about 20 minutes to do it each year if you have all of your figures to hand... (if you are disorganised and have not been keeping track of any capital gains losses/gains etc throughout the year then it will take longer as you'll need to work those figures out first) My wife is dual-national US-UK, and she does her UK one herself without much fuss as well, but seems like she has to employ an accountant in the US to do her US return due to complexity and convolutedness.
- OJFord 6y agoProbably at least 80% of Britons don't even need to do it, it's only if you're self-employed, have capital gains over the allowance, extra pension contributions and you're a higher rate tax payer, etc. that you even need to self-assess.
- jessehattabaugh 6y agoTruth is taxes in the US are pretty easy too; you just have to find TurboTax's free version which they hide. It downloads info from your financial institutions and employers, and asks you all the relevant questions. It remembers your info from year to year, and sends you reminders. You just have to dodge a bunch of upsell offers. TurboTax lobbied the US government to prevent them from building a competing product, and in return they have to offer a free version. So in a way, TurboTax is our official state tax preparation system. Yay free-market?
- jpeeler 6y agoMy understanding of the TurboTax free edition is that it doesn't support anything beyond basic income received from an employer. For those that don't really know the tax rules (including myself), are not the higher editions practically a requirement given they cover investing scenarios, house sales, etc...?
- phjesusthatguy3 6y ago>My understanding of the TurboTax free edition is wrong. TurboTax has a product they will sell you when you search for "turbotax free edition". They will allow you to fill it out for free. They will hold your hand (for free) while you do it. What they won't do is file the return you filled out, until you give them money. For that, you need to go find the actual free tax return (start at https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/ https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/) and do it all over again, if you fell for the ads TurboTax bought. EDIT: The above is correct if you made over $72k in 2020. If you made under $72k but still have questions about your investment options and house sales, please don't give me financial advice.
- laurencerowe 6y agoWhen I worked in Norway I forgot to ask for my tax return to be produced in English (since I spoke no Norwegian.) It was still easier to complete than the US one.