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In a lot of countries, paying taxes is truly trivial. Where I live (Norway), it goes like this - at the most basic level: (1) Annually, the gov. issues me a t
by TrackerFF 6y ago
In a lot of countries, paying taxes is truly trivial.
Where I live (Norway), it goes like this - at the most basic level:
(1) Annually, the gov. issues me a tax "card", which basically just contains some tax-information about me - like what rate I should be paying. This is based on my previous year of income, or I set one myself, based on what income I believe I will have this year.
(2) My employer requests that card/information from the gov., and will deduct the taxes I owe on my salary. My employer then pays in those taxes, to our tax agency.
(3) Once a year, I will receive a document that shows my income, how much I've paid, and what my balance is. If it looks good, I don't need to do anything. If I want to add certain deductions, external/unreported salaries, or what not, I'll have to fill them inn on that document.
That's it. If my balance ends up negative, I have to pay back taxes. If it's close to zero, I nor get or pay anything back. If it's positive, I get back the difference.
Sure - it can become complicated if you have a ton of investments, companies, deductions, and what not - but for regular people? It's a breeze. For most, actually, the only active thing you have to do, is to check that your tax rate looks OK, and that takes you under 5 minutes. Once a year.
- aaron-santos 6y agoRather than getting a tax card, those in the US get Free File. Free file is deal Intuit and others made with the US government in 2001 to "improve ... Government to Citizen electronic capabilities". Filing companies offer a free filing option an in exchange the IRS does not develop their own. 70% of filers are supposed to be able to free file, however in practice ~2% actually do so. Since then Intuit and others have been a powerful lobbying force against filing simplification for obvious reasons. In fact they are incentivized to make free filing as impractical as possible. The path to free filing is best described as an anti-funnel. Online tax filing systems are a field guide to dark patterns aimed against finding their way toward free filing. And why not? Tricking millions into paying for something that is ostensibly free is a great business tactic. What we actually get is a resulting tax system which is purposely confusing to get people to pay for something they should be able to get for free already and which funds lobbyists to fight against changing it. Good for us. Edit: found this funny. Turbo Tax's Encroachment strat https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-TurboTax-2014-15-Encroachment-Strategy.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6483061-Intuit-Turbo...
- klipt 6y ago> in exchange the IRS does not develop their own Would you really want to file on a website controlled by the IRS? Imagine an auditor calling you to say "we noticed you entered a big number in this field and later edited it to a smaller number, can you explain why?"
- aaron-santos 6y agoI guess I'm interested in fixing actual problems rather than invented ones.
- klipt 6y agoI'm just saying the incentives are different. A company acting as your accountant has incentive to represent your interests. The IRS has incentive to use all data at its disposal to detect potential tax fraud. It's like the difference between talking to a lawyer and talking directly to the police.
- aaron-santos 6y agoWe already have companies who participate in Free File and it's already not working so I don't really see how the incentive to represent my interests thing is working out.
- _qulr 6y agoRight. The financial incentive of the for-profit tax preparation companies is to lobby the politicians to make the tax code so complicated that people need to pay tax preparation companies. If the tax code was simple, then these companies would cease to exist. The IRS itself is mainly just following the directions of the politicians. These directions may or may not include looking for fraud, depending on who is currently in power.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI would absolutely prefer to file directly with the IRS.
- GhostVII 6y agoFor people in the US though it is also super easy if you don't have investments or deductions. A 1040 is 40 lines of basic math, or if that is too much work there is tonnes of free tax software that does it for you.