8 ms·

We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. They certainly have enough information from employers, banks, esti

We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. They certainly have enough information from employers, banks, estimated payments from contractors, etc. Otherwise, how would they decide who to audit? How would they know to mail you an adjusted return for a past year? It feels completely ridiculous that we need to calculate these things ourselves, only to be bugged by the agency for entering the wrong numbers. Just tell us what you think the bill is, and let us make a counter-claim if we think you're wrong! But this has been true for years, decades. I'm not holding my breath.

ashtonkem 5y ago
This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. It’s incredibly obnoxious, but the amount of money made is so obscene that it makes bribing[0] Congress people trivial. 0 - Yes, I know it’s technically a donation. But if it walks like a bribe and it quacks like a bribe, I see no reason to arbitrarily let them off the hook.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  It walks like a bribe, it talks like a bribe, it quacks like a bribe, it flaps like a bribe, it lies like a bribe, it hides like a bribe, it looks like a bribe, it feels like a bribe, it smells like a bribe, what is it? Lobbying, duh. Definitely not a bribe. It's pretty wild that legal lobbying + the realities of campaign finance effectively mean that our government has instituted a policy of mandatory bribery. I mean, democracy is always going to have warts, but this one is really special.
  - duped 5y ago
    You're 100% right except for one thing - you're describing campaign finance, not lobbying.
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      Totally not a duck! (quack) Seriously, though, go on. I'm dying to hear how you've got a definition of "lobbying" that cleverly gerrymanders around all the corrupt dealmaking and only includes purely informational communication. I can't wait to hear why we should confuse this definition -- which seems precision-engineered to deflect blame away from certain shortfalls in our political apparatus -- with the common usage of the term, which frequently refers to real life events and therefore inevitably includes a great many situations where the thing going "quack" is, in fact, a duck.
      - duped 5y ago
        Lobbying is advocacy. If you call your congressperson you're lobbying. If the ACLU files an amicus brief in a SCOTUS case that's lobbying. When the NRA hosts events for their members to speak to congresspeople that's lobbying. Registered lobbyists work for interest groups to have their voices heard. It's not always innocent, but it is not the same problem as campaign financing. Money is not changing hands.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. Its sticky because that's not the only purposes; GOP politicians who want to campaign against taxes to push serial tax cuts weighted to the rich as the solution to every problem also want to preserve the current filing system as a source of leverage because it makes the perceived burden of taxes higher, though some of them (e.g., flat taxers) are willing to trade it off in exchange for a permanent massive downward redistribution of tax burden.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    Each party has their own exemptions they push. Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption - complete nonsense.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Each party has their own exemptions they push. I'm not talking about pushing “exemptions”, I’m talking about motivation for specifically not allowing the IRS to prepare and provide taxpayers with a baseline calculation based on information they have as a complete return for the common simple cases requiring supplemental filing for compelx cases. > Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption Both Democrats and Republicans support the State and Local Tax Deduction; the GOP supports a dollar cap so as to increase pressure for low-tax state policies (more than would exist without the deduction at all or with an ubcapped deduction), Democrats prefer it be untaxed which leaves the federal hand off state tax policy.
- awillen 5y ago
  I'm generally less anti-lobbying than most - I think there's value in corporations being able to express their desires to elected officials - but this is the case that just completely destroys the validity of it. It's just unjustifiable that we have the current system in place. There is not one single, rational argument to be made that US citizens are better off having to file their taxes every year. A system in which people get a tax bill from the government with an explanation of how it's calculate, then they can file their own tax return if they disagree, is just clearly better in every single way. I think Intuit is a company that makes a lot of really useful products, but I can't look at them as anything except just utterly unethical because of their lobbying on this topic.
economusty 5y ago
What you describe is only half the process, they don't know about your expenses and deductions, which is where most of the work is when preparing the tax return. Do you file your own taxes and do you itemize? It's not something I want the government to do for me.
- yardie 5y ago
  Here we go again. Expenses and deductions don't apply to most tax filers. There is no reason to keep a broken system in place for the benefit of 10%. If there are deductions to be made we can do the same as other modern countries, have the taxpayer fill in an amendment and recalculate the proper amount.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Exactly. The standard deduction in the US recently doubled in size. That covers a lot of people. We could cover even more if the IRS sent you an email in January and said, "We expect your refund to be $X. If you think you have more than $12k in deductible expenses, click here to tell us about them." People for whom that's not enough can still go through the whole ritual.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dls2016 5y ago
  In 2019, 87% of people took the standard deduction.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Then do it yourself. Most people, however, don't game the system and would benefit from removing rent-seeking barnacles from the "no games" path.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    TBF, deductions aren't "gaming the system", but rather a very limited form of what companies get to do for all of their expenses. I agree they're a pain in the ass and much nicer to not do personally, but I don't see much of an alternative (besides not itemizing). But really if you want to make the tax code more fair, the restrictions on individual deductions for transportation, housing, food, etc should be eliminated. Those expenses are in fact required for you to earn your income.
EMM_386 5y ago
> We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. Some in congress are working for this: https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1214310004804792320 https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1214310004804792320 https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1416088088934338562 https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1416088088934338562
- revscat 5y ago
  This is America. Nothing good ever happens legislatively, only things that benefit large capitalist institutions.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    Social security was a good thing, and it happened. Medicare was a good thing and it happened. Even Obamacare had lots of good things, and it happened. So did the child tax credit. And the endangered species act. The establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Our air, btw, has a lot less smog and small particles than it did in the 80s. Cynicism like you expressed may earn likes in some contexts, but it isn't accurate, and it isn't helpful.
    - revscat 5y ago
      Nothing has happened in my lifetime that has made my life better compared to my parents. The ACA mandated I buy private insurance, and that hasn’t really helped me at all. I still got charged almost $1000 for an ambulance ride last year, one that I didn’t really have a choice on. So no, I don’t think anything good happens in America. Maybe it did at one point, but I’ve never seen it. What I see instead are trillion dollar bailouts for banks, airlines, and auto manufacturers. Student loans, though? Yeah, get fucked. Qualified immunity? Yeah, get murdered.
  - bequanna 5y ago
    Every system will offer some disproportionate rewards to the groups that are able to exert some control over it. In our system it seems that large business interests, wealthy individuals and the politicians themselves are the ones able to cash in somewhat on this control. In general, I think most people living in the real world accept this as human nature and we collectively try to minimize this corruption. I’m aware of many systems where this disproportionate distribution of benefits to certain groups is much worse. But in theory, it would be utopia! Which countries do you feel operate in a “better” or less corrupt way? Note that I wouldn’t consider “in theory” responses valid answers to that question.
anonymousiam 5y ago
You cannot depend upon the IRS to send you an accurate bill. Anyone who has ever dealt with IRS will know that they seem to arbitrarily inflate the amounts they ask for. When this happens, you need a tax attorney to point out to them that they got it wrong. Rinse and repeat a few times and they will eventually get it right after several years and many iterations.
- ncallaway 5y ago
  Every proposed legislation I’ve ever seen on this would let the individual tax payer still fill out a Form 1040 and send it in, if they disagree with the IRS prepared numbers. So this would still be an option.
  - andrewflnr 5y ago
    No, if taxes are actually going to be non citizen-hostile, the IRS needs to get it right the first time. If everyone knows you need to find an appeal to get the real tax rate, you haven't made any progress, just moved the annoyance to the appeal stage.
    - acdha 5y ago
      You need to ask why it wasn’t right. It’s not that their computers can’t do basic math - usually it comes down to incorrect data in (e.g. your payroll processor or broker listed something incorrectly) or missing data. In most cases, supplying the complete records will solve that problem.
    - ncallaway 5y ago
      But it’s not an appeal. It would be the exact same process as if you filed your taxes for the first time. And for most people the tax bill that arrives would be correct. The parts that wouldn’t be correct would be if there are deductions you’re eligible for, that the IRS may not have any documentation of.
  - throwaway413 5y ago
    Same thing as we do now, with 2 extra steps.
staticman2 5y ago
This wouldn't be possible unless we had government surveillance of everyone. If I sell junk in my house for a profit there is no IRS record nor is there a government record for selling Bitcoin for cash or a million other possible transactions. The IRS could make things easier to fill out but they can't just send you a bill.
- dqv 5y ago
  What do you mean? It's already possible in countries that use the push-tax-bill system. If you're a small business, you self-report. It will be literally the same situation for any small business under a push or pull system - they either choose to self-report or not self-report. No government surveillance required. The whole point of the push system is to make it easier for anyone who has a simple tax setup. That is, they work for an employer who is continuously reporting on pay checks to the IRS and state revenue departments.
- forbiddenvoid 5y ago
  > This wouldn't be possible unless we had government surveillance of everyone. What do you think W-2s and 1099s are?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > If I sell junk in my house for a profit there is no IRS record nor is there a government record for selling Bitcoin for cash or a million other possible transactions. Yes, but most people do very few of the possible transactions that don't create records, at least so as to incur income tax liability. Requiring supplemental filing only where actually necessary would vastly reduce the burden on most taxpayers, and sending a baseline bill with notice of the need and conditions for supplemental filing would be a viable alternative to the current system.
- Dayshine 5y ago
  The easy solution that the UK takes is to have £1000 of untaxed casual income. If you sell things at home for profit and make less than £1000 a year (which is most people), then you don't have to do anything.
- 5y ago
throwawaycities 5y ago
> We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. The truth is the IRS bill would be wrong and the IRS would have countless challenges and no practical ability to review any in-house type of challenge and all cases would needlessly result in court. I had a horror story that took 2-3 years to resolve went all the way to tax court for a fraudulent 1099 in the amount of $75k presumably so the company could take a deduction and the IRS was seeking about 30k in taxes/fees/interest. Tax court require an agreement on the facts and issues before trial which the IRS dragged its feet until about 1 week before the agreed order was due when the conceded I was right and owed $0 taxes. To even get to that point there were about 1/2 dozen phone calls with the IRS which took hours and always resulted in the employee confirming the believe me and I won’t owe anything. There were about 3 formal written responses I provided but IRS kept giving me standard boilerplate letters that I hadn’t proved I wasn’t paid the 1099 income reported and escalating the matter until finally they adjusted my return and forced my hand into filing a petition for tax court. Once in tax court their is supposed to be a stay on the matter until resolved by the court, but the IRS put me in collections, so I filed a motion which the Judge granted in chamber without a hearing to remove me from collections, this was after multiple conversations with the IRS attorney who never did anything but laugh when I called it a IRS automated track of hell and otherwise did nothing to looking into what I felt should have been pretty obvious case of fraud by the company that falsely reported the 1099 income. This took hundreds of hours and the only way possible I got through it is that I happen to be an attorney.
- civilized 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with the IRS sending automated bills. It's not like they would have not pursued you if you'd chosen not to report the fraudulent 1099. This is an entirely separate problem.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I'm sorry about your horror story, but if the bill they sent were wrong, ideally you could just file as you do now.
- darkerside 5y ago
bob1029 5y ago
I file my taxes as if all of this is true. For me, cost/time savings of paying a few hundred in fees is cheaper than a CPA (or spending an entire weekend doing it myself). I never protest what they send back - either some check or a bill. I just take care of it and don't ask any questions. If the IRS doesnt think I am paying them enough money, they can feel free to send me a bigger bill or assess greater fines. I may get audited but I just don't give a shit about this broken mess anymore. I don't have anything to hide, and I would happily pay whatever shortfall is calculated just to get them out of my life again. I am fairly confident that as long as you are paying your taxes and not giving the IRS a hard time (i.e. WRT overseas tax haven shenanigans and insane corporate structures), they will not fuck with your life.
- eropple 5y ago
  A quality tax preparer is no more than "a few hundred bucks". It is a more direct and quicker route than this faintly dramatic treatment, TBH. You're right in that the IRS will treat people operating in good faith just fine, but a decent preparer makes it so much easier. My guy just asks me for my stuff in January and does his thing.
  - Redoubts 5y ago
    Where do you find good people for this?
    - eropple 5y ago
      I asked friends and got recommendations from solid people I trust, like I do most things.
  - bob1029 5y ago
    > A quality tax preparer is no more than "a few hundred bucks". I do not want to continue to contribute to the tax preparation ecosystem any more than absolutely necessary. Paying a CPA to file my taxes is no different than paying intuit for a new copy of turbotax every year. I don't see a distinction in principle. They probably use the same software internally.
salawat 5y ago
The IRS only gets your employer's contribution to taxable revenue. They don't have a way of knowing what you do with that income, which may be taxable. That's what you're supposed to do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
walkedaway 5y ago
Can people in the EU chime in on this? My understanding is that is how France does it (just go to a website, pay what the gov't says you owe because the gov't has all the details). > I'm not holding my breath. Yeah I assumed back in the 80s this was a no brainer. Edit: I see below that many from Sweden, UK, Germany have chimed in and basically said only the US is this stupid when it comes to federal and state income taxes. Thanks for the info.
- snorremd 5y ago
  Norway is technically not in the EU, just the EEA (European Economic Access) zone. But we do it the same way. Our tax authorities get all information they need from employers, banks, stock brokers, etc. Each citizen then get a tax settlement report and can submit a pre-filled tax statement online. You make any adjustments to taxable income or tax deductions that might be missing, and then you are done. Pretty simple.
guerby 5y ago
The french equivalent of IRS provides citizens with a pre-filled tax return form with information from employers, banks, etc... You can fix it on the web, add stuff not known by IRS, simulate tax level, and then validate it on the web. You can explain in text boxes if you have a doubt about something (which I did for the first time this year since I did contract some home exterior insulation work but it was done in more than one fiscal year and the subsidy rules for such work changed between the two years). https://www.impots.gouv.fr https://www.impots.gouv.fr
seanhunter 5y ago
Something approaching this is certainly possible and is the status quo in other countries. I remember a Swedish colleague demonstrating their tax system by filling out his return on his mobile phone live in front of an audience about 5 or 6 years ago. It involved literally no typing - all the numbers were already there, he just had to check them and hit "accept" or challenge anything that was wrong. At the end it told him how much he still owed/was owed. In the UK a very substantial portion of my tax return is trivial to fill out, and filing online doesn't require any kind of software - the uk hmrc website does all the calculations for you. I was absolutely flabberghasted when I had to complete a US tax return a few years back at how incredibly archaic and byzantine the process was. It could certainly be a lot simpler which would save time and money for both the citizens and the IRS themselves.
unsignedchar 5y ago
That’s a pretty old idea, but Intuit and H & R Block have spent substantial money blocking that legislation
S5yDyAk3XoQH5 5y ago
IRS has tried to do this for decades, which is one reason why the free file program exists. Intuit is the #1 company lobbying against the IRS giving out a paper that says the number you owe.

ashtonkem 5y ago

This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. It’s incredibly obnoxious, but the amount of money made is so obscene that it makes bribing[0] Congress people trivial. 0 - Yes, I know it’s technically a donation. But if it walks like a bribe and it quacks like a bribe, I see no reason to arbitrarily let them off the hook.

jjoonathan 5y ago
It walks like a bribe, it talks like a bribe, it quacks like a bribe, it flaps like a bribe, it lies like a bribe, it hides like a bribe, it looks like a bribe, it feels like a bribe, it smells like a bribe, what is it? Lobbying, duh. Definitely not a bribe. It's pretty wild that legal lobbying + the realities of campaign finance effectively mean that our government has instituted a policy of mandatory bribery. I mean, democracy is always going to have warts, but this one is really special.
- duped 5y ago
  You're 100% right except for one thing - you're describing campaign finance, not lobbying.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Totally not a duck! (quack) Seriously, though, go on. I'm dying to hear how you've got a definition of "lobbying" that cleverly gerrymanders around all the corrupt dealmaking and only includes purely informational communication. I can't wait to hear why we should confuse this definition -- which seems precision-engineered to deflect blame away from certain shortfalls in our political apparatus -- with the common usage of the term, which frequently refers to real life events and therefore inevitably includes a great many situations where the thing going "quack" is, in fact, a duck.
    - duped 5y ago
      Lobbying is advocacy. If you call your congressperson you're lobbying. If the ACLU files an amicus brief in a SCOTUS case that's lobbying. When the NRA hosts events for their members to speak to congresspeople that's lobbying. Registered lobbyists work for interest groups to have their voices heard. It's not always innocent, but it is not the same problem as campaign financing. Money is not changing hands.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. Its sticky because that's not the only purposes; GOP politicians who want to campaign against taxes to push serial tax cuts weighted to the rich as the solution to every problem also want to preserve the current filing system as a source of leverage because it makes the perceived burden of taxes higher, though some of them (e.g., flat taxers) are willing to trade it off in exchange for a permanent massive downward redistribution of tax burden.
- dantheman 5y ago
  Each party has their own exemptions they push. Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption - complete nonsense.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Each party has their own exemptions they push. I'm not talking about pushing “exemptions”, I’m talking about motivation for specifically not allowing the IRS to prepare and provide taxpayers with a baseline calculation based on information they have as a complete return for the common simple cases requiring supplemental filing for compelx cases. > Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption Both Democrats and Republicans support the State and Local Tax Deduction; the GOP supports a dollar cap so as to increase pressure for low-tax state policies (more than would exist without the deduction at all or with an ubcapped deduction), Democrats prefer it be untaxed which leaves the federal hand off state tax policy.
awillen 5y ago
I'm generally less anti-lobbying than most - I think there's value in corporations being able to express their desires to elected officials - but this is the case that just completely destroys the validity of it. It's just unjustifiable that we have the current system in place. There is not one single, rational argument to be made that US citizens are better off having to file their taxes every year. A system in which people get a tax bill from the government with an explanation of how it's calculate, then they can file their own tax return if they disagree, is just clearly better in every single way. I think Intuit is a company that makes a lot of really useful products, but I can't look at them as anything except just utterly unethical because of their lobbying on this topic.

economusty 5y ago

What you describe is only half the process, they don't know about your expenses and deductions, which is where most of the work is when preparing the tax return. Do you file your own taxes and do you itemize? It's not something I want the government to do for me.

yardie 5y ago
Here we go again. Expenses and deductions don't apply to most tax filers. There is no reason to keep a broken system in place for the benefit of 10%. If there are deductions to be made we can do the same as other modern countries, have the taxpayer fill in an amendment and recalculate the proper amount.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Exactly. The standard deduction in the US recently doubled in size. That covers a lot of people. We could cover even more if the IRS sent you an email in January and said, "We expect your refund to be $X. If you think you have more than $12k in deductible expenses, click here to tell us about them." People for whom that's not enough can still go through the whole ritual.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dls2016 5y ago
In 2019, 87% of people took the standard deduction.
jjoonathan 5y ago
Then do it yourself. Most people, however, don't game the system and would benefit from removing rent-seeking barnacles from the "no games" path.
- mindslight 5y ago
  TBF, deductions aren't "gaming the system", but rather a very limited form of what companies get to do for all of their expenses. I agree they're a pain in the ass and much nicer to not do personally, but I don't see much of an alternative (besides not itemizing). But really if you want to make the tax code more fair, the restrictions on individual deductions for transportation, housing, food, etc should be eliminated. Those expenses are in fact required for you to earn your income.

EMM_386 5y ago

> We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. Some in congress are working for this: https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1214310004804792320 https://twitter.com/senwarren/status/1214310004804792320 https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1416088088934338562 https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1416088088934338562

revscat 5y ago
This is America. Nothing good ever happens legislatively, only things that benefit large capitalist institutions.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Social security was a good thing, and it happened. Medicare was a good thing and it happened. Even Obamacare had lots of good things, and it happened. So did the child tax credit. And the endangered species act. The establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. Our air, btw, has a lot less smog and small particles than it did in the 80s. Cynicism like you expressed may earn likes in some contexts, but it isn't accurate, and it isn't helpful.
  - revscat 5y ago
    Nothing has happened in my lifetime that has made my life better compared to my parents. The ACA mandated I buy private insurance, and that hasn’t really helped me at all. I still got charged almost $1000 for an ambulance ride last year, one that I didn’t really have a choice on. So no, I don’t think anything good happens in America. Maybe it did at one point, but I’ve never seen it. What I see instead are trillion dollar bailouts for banks, airlines, and auto manufacturers. Student loans, though? Yeah, get fucked. Qualified immunity? Yeah, get murdered.
- bequanna 5y ago
  Every system will offer some disproportionate rewards to the groups that are able to exert some control over it. In our system it seems that large business interests, wealthy individuals and the politicians themselves are the ones able to cash in somewhat on this control. In general, I think most people living in the real world accept this as human nature and we collectively try to minimize this corruption. I’m aware of many systems where this disproportionate distribution of benefits to certain groups is much worse. But in theory, it would be utopia! Which countries do you feel operate in a “better” or less corrupt way? Note that I wouldn’t consider “in theory” responses valid answers to that question.

anonymousiam 5y ago

You cannot depend upon the IRS to send you an accurate bill. Anyone who has ever dealt with IRS will know that they seem to arbitrarily inflate the amounts they ask for. When this happens, you need a tax attorney to point out to them that they got it wrong. Rinse and repeat a few times and they will eventually get it right after several years and many iterations.

ncallaway 5y ago
Every proposed legislation I’ve ever seen on this would let the individual tax payer still fill out a Form 1040 and send it in, if they disagree with the IRS prepared numbers. So this would still be an option.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  No, if taxes are actually going to be non citizen-hostile, the IRS needs to get it right the first time. If everyone knows you need to find an appeal to get the real tax rate, you haven't made any progress, just moved the annoyance to the appeal stage.
  - acdha 5y ago
    You need to ask why it wasn’t right. It’s not that their computers can’t do basic math - usually it comes down to incorrect data in (e.g. your payroll processor or broker listed something incorrectly) or missing data. In most cases, supplying the complete records will solve that problem.
  - ncallaway 5y ago
    But it’s not an appeal. It would be the exact same process as if you filed your taxes for the first time. And for most people the tax bill that arrives would be correct. The parts that wouldn’t be correct would be if there are deductions you’re eligible for, that the IRS may not have any documentation of.
- throwaway413 5y ago
  Same thing as we do now, with 2 extra steps.

staticman2 5y ago

This wouldn't be possible unless we had government surveillance of everyone. If I sell junk in my house for a profit there is no IRS record nor is there a government record for selling Bitcoin for cash or a million other possible transactions. The IRS could make things easier to fill out but they can't just send you a bill.

dqv 5y ago
What do you mean? It's already possible in countries that use the push-tax-bill system. If you're a small business, you self-report. It will be literally the same situation for any small business under a push or pull system - they either choose to self-report or not self-report. No government surveillance required. The whole point of the push system is to make it easier for anyone who has a simple tax setup. That is, they work for an employer who is continuously reporting on pay checks to the IRS and state revenue departments.
forbiddenvoid 5y ago
> This wouldn't be possible unless we had government surveillance of everyone. What do you think W-2s and 1099s are?
dragonwriter 5y ago
> If I sell junk in my house for a profit there is no IRS record nor is there a government record for selling Bitcoin for cash or a million other possible transactions. Yes, but most people do very few of the possible transactions that don't create records, at least so as to incur income tax liability. Requiring supplemental filing only where actually necessary would vastly reduce the burden on most taxpayers, and sending a baseline bill with notice of the need and conditions for supplemental filing would be a viable alternative to the current system.
Dayshine 5y ago
The easy solution that the UK takes is to have £1000 of untaxed casual income. If you sell things at home for profit and make less than £1000 a year (which is most people), then you don't have to do anything.
5y ago

throwawaycities 5y ago

> We badly need legislation to force the IRS to send every taxpayer a bill which they can pay. The truth is the IRS bill would be wrong and the IRS would have countless challenges and no practical ability to review any in-house type of challenge and all cases would needlessly result in court. I had a horror story that took 2-3 years to resolve went all the way to tax court for a fraudulent 1099 in the amount of $75k presumably so the company could take a deduction and the IRS was seeking about 30k in taxes/fees/interest. Tax court require an agreement on the facts and issues before trial which the IRS dragged its feet until about 1 week before the agreed order was due when the conceded I was right and owed $0 taxes. To even get to that point there were about 1/2 dozen phone calls with the IRS which took hours and always resulted in the employee confirming the believe me and I won’t owe anything. There were about 3 formal written responses I provided but IRS kept giving me standard boilerplate letters that I hadn’t proved I wasn’t paid the 1099 income reported and escalating the matter until finally they adjusted my return and forced my hand into filing a petition for tax court. Once in tax court their is supposed to be a stay on the matter until resolved by the court, but the IRS put me in collections, so I filed a motion which the Judge granted in chamber without a hearing to remove me from collections, this was after multiple conversations with the IRS attorney who never did anything but laugh when I called it a IRS automated track of hell and otherwise did nothing to looking into what I felt should have been pretty obvious case of fraud by the company that falsely reported the 1099 income. This took hundreds of hours and the only way possible I got through it is that I happen to be an attorney.

civilized 5y ago
This has nothing to do with the IRS sending automated bills. It's not like they would have not pursued you if you'd chosen not to report the fraudulent 1099. This is an entirely separate problem.
pessimizer 5y ago
I'm sorry about your horror story, but if the bill they sent were wrong, ideally you could just file as you do now.
darkerside 5y ago

bob1029 5y ago

I file my taxes as if all of this is true. For me, cost/time savings of paying a few hundred in fees is cheaper than a CPA (or spending an entire weekend doing it myself). I never protest what they send back - either some check or a bill. I just take care of it and don't ask any questions. If the IRS doesnt think I am paying them enough money, they can feel free to send me a bigger bill or assess greater fines. I may get audited but I just don't give a shit about this broken mess anymore. I don't have anything to hide, and I would happily pay whatever shortfall is calculated just to get them out of my life again. I am fairly confident that as long as you are paying your taxes and not giving the IRS a hard time (i.e. WRT overseas tax haven shenanigans and insane corporate structures), they will not fuck with your life.

eropple 5y ago
A quality tax preparer is no more than "a few hundred bucks". It is a more direct and quicker route than this faintly dramatic treatment, TBH. You're right in that the IRS will treat people operating in good faith just fine, but a decent preparer makes it so much easier. My guy just asks me for my stuff in January and does his thing.
- Redoubts 5y ago
  Where do you find good people for this?
  - eropple 5y ago
    I asked friends and got recommendations from solid people I trust, like I do most things.
- bob1029 5y ago
  > A quality tax preparer is no more than "a few hundred bucks". I do not want to continue to contribute to the tax preparation ecosystem any more than absolutely necessary. Paying a CPA to file my taxes is no different than paying intuit for a new copy of turbotax every year. I don't see a distinction in principle. They probably use the same software internally.

salawat 5y ago

The IRS only gets your employer's contribution to taxable revenue. They don't have a way of knowing what you do with that income, which may be taxable. That's what you're supposed to do.

deleted 5y ago
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walkedaway 5y ago

Can people in the EU chime in on this? My understanding is that is how France does it (just go to a website, pay what the gov't says you owe because the gov't has all the details). > I'm not holding my breath. Yeah I assumed back in the 80s this was a no brainer. Edit: I see below that many from Sweden, UK, Germany have chimed in and basically said only the US is this stupid when it comes to federal and state income taxes. Thanks for the info.

snorremd 5y ago
Norway is technically not in the EU, just the EEA (European Economic Access) zone. But we do it the same way. Our tax authorities get all information they need from employers, banks, stock brokers, etc. Each citizen then get a tax settlement report and can submit a pre-filled tax statement online. You make any adjustments to taxable income or tax deductions that might be missing, and then you are done. Pretty simple.

guerby 5y ago

The french equivalent of IRS provides citizens with a pre-filled tax return form with information from employers, banks, etc... You can fix it on the web, add stuff not known by IRS, simulate tax level, and then validate it on the web. You can explain in text boxes if you have a doubt about something (which I did for the first time this year since I did contract some home exterior insulation work but it was done in more than one fiscal year and the subsidy rules for such work changed between the two years). https://www.impots.gouv.fr https://www.impots.gouv.fr

seanhunter 5y ago

Something approaching this is certainly possible and is the status quo in other countries. I remember a Swedish colleague demonstrating their tax system by filling out his return on his mobile phone live in front of an audience about 5 or 6 years ago. It involved literally no typing - all the numbers were already there, he just had to check them and hit "accept" or challenge anything that was wrong. At the end it told him how much he still owed/was owed. In the UK a very substantial portion of my tax return is trivial to fill out, and filing online doesn't require any kind of software - the uk hmrc website does all the calculations for you. I was absolutely flabberghasted when I had to complete a US tax return a few years back at how incredibly archaic and byzantine the process was. It could certainly be a lot simpler which would save time and money for both the citizens and the IRS themselves.

unsignedchar 5y ago

That’s a pretty old idea, but Intuit and H & R Block have spent substantial money blocking that legislation

S5yDyAk3XoQH5 5y ago

IRS has tried to do this for decades, which is one reason why the free file program exists. Intuit is the #1 company lobbying against the IRS giving out a paper that says the number you owe.