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In 2019 I filed my (Dutch) taxes on my phone, while I was on a bus somewhere in the north of Argentina after previously having traveled for 20 something hours.

• onion2k 5y ago
  Here in the UK I don't need to file taxes at all as an employee.
  • consp 5y ago
    You employer doesn't know your deductibles in the Netherlands due to privacy concerns (and other rules as well), which you definitely want to file in most cases since you pay less money or get some back. You are also responsible for your taxes, if the employer screws up you should check it. This is probably different from the UK. It is not a "can't do" but more or less a "won't do". edit: so it's not that different, just a different method of doing so. Good to know.
    • wdb 5y ago
      I wouldn't know what I would be able to get tax relief for as an employee. What kind of deductibles? Guess, I could claim that £6 per week for Covid work from home stuff. Wish you could claim the cost of repairing your bike, or public transport costs.
      • maccard 5y ago
        Most of the big ones can be done without a self assessment. If you make a pension contribution for example, you can call hmrc and tell them and they'll adjust your tax code
        • RHSeeger 5y ago
          Doesn't that more or less equate to doing your taxes, just in little updates for each thing, rather than one big update at the end of the year?
          • maccard 5y ago
            Not at all. The list of things you can claim for is very limited, and the majority of them are automatically applied. Having to actually contact HMRC is a rarity. If you are salaried employee with no extra cash coming in, you don't need to do anything. Another example of how the system works - if you are working two jobs, both as a regular employee, HRMC will instruct your employer as to what your tax deduction should be for that paycheck to make sure that things are balanced. For <some large number>% of people, this will be correct, and if it's not, it will rectify itself over 2 or 3 pay periods. If that's _still_ not enough, a phone call to HMRC (usually taking less than 10 minuts for the two times in a decade I've had to do it) will resolve the issue in your next check.
      • ridiculous_fish 5y ago
        Charitable contributions? How are those treated?
        • joshuaissac 5y ago
          Those are claimed by the recipient under a programme called Gift Aid.
          • ridiculous_fish 5y ago
            Do I understand correctly that charities report contributions to the government, which then adjusts the taxes due from the donors? That seems like a good system.
            • deleted 5y ago
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            • joshuaissac 5y ago
              The tax relief goes to the charity itself, rather than the donor. They can claim a top-up of up to 25% of your donation from the government, as long as the total amount claimed by all donation recipients does not exceed the total annual income tax paid by the donor. So if you donate £100 and fill out a declaration saying that you 'Gift Aid' that donation, the charity can claim an additional £25 from the government, as long as you paid at least £25 in income taxes that financial year.
              • oarsinsync 5y ago
                Note that if you're paying in the 40% and/or 45% income tax brackets, the charity doesn't know about that, and still only gets the 25% topup (equivalent to the 20% income tax most people pay). You can either: * Gift that remaining amount to HMRC by doing nothing (it will not go to the charity) * Claim it back (I don't know any other way to do this other than filing a self assessment)
                • 5y ago
      • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        You can claim those, if you use the transport as part of your work but notably not for travelling to and from work, 20p per mile for the bike.
    • maccard 5y ago
      Your employer doesn't need to know what your deductibles are (also the deductibles are much more limited here). If you, for example, make a large one off pension contribution, HMRC will adjust your tax code, which your employer will just apply to your payroll.
    • philjohn 5y ago
      We can deduct far less than you can in the Netherlands - mortgage interest for example is deductible for you, but not in the UK. Someone on PAYE will have most of the deductibles handled by their employer (pension, any salary sacrifice schemes etc).
      • teh_klev 5y ago
        In the UK, deductibles on mortgage interest payments (known as MIRAS[0]) was abolished for private home owners in 2000. As a renter this kind of always stuck in my craw that homeowners got this preferential treatment and was quite glad it was abolished (even after becoming a "homeowner"). Oddly, buy-to-let landlords do retain this deductible, though HMRC have fiddled around with how this works over recent times[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_interest_relief_at_so... [1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-finan...
        • philjohn 5y ago
          Yes, the BTL sort of makes sense though if you view the mortgage as a business expense, but BTL has had a distorting effect on the UK housing market for too long - changes are desperately needed here, but with so many Tory donors being housing firms, it's unlikely to happen.
    • pmyteh 5y ago
      You tell the tax office of any unusual deductibles, and they give your employers a 'tax code' which tells them how much allowance to give you (but critically not why, to better protect your privacy). Even this isn't needed in most cases; things are either done employer side (paid from pre-tax income, like pensions) or directly by the government (basic rate tax is semi-automatically added to charitable donations, so only higher rate taxpayers need to declare it, and they all fill in a short return anyway).
  • oarsinsync 5y ago
    That's likely true because like the majority of people, you don't make enough money, or wont see enough benefit from the effort involved. Anyone earning over £100k a year is required to file a self assessment, and if you've reached that point, you also likely have a bunch of tax deductible expenses, that even if the £-value is low, you're going to include in your filing since you're doing it anyway.
  • thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
    You would need to if you earned 6 figures. So copying our system for the American posters here wouldn't solve their problem.
    • laurencerowe 5y ago
      You can file for self assessment online through HMRC’s website. It was substantially less complex than the online tax filing website I pay in the US.
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    This is only true for people earning below a threshold - most professionals in the UK will need to file taxes, but accountants are very cheap here.
    • onion2k 5y ago
      This is only true for people earning below a threshold - most professionals in the UK will need to file taxes That simply isn't true. An income of £80,000 puts you in the top 4% of adult earners. A salary of £100,000 is probably in the top 2 or 3%. This was discussed extensively at the last election when Labout proposed a new tax rate for people earning over £125k https://election2019.ifs.org.uk/article/labour-s-proposed-income-tax-rises-for-high-income-individuals https://election2019.ifs.org.uk/article/labour-s-proposed-in...
      • robertlagrant 5y ago
        Worth noting that if someone is a contractor they'll need to file taxes, even if they pay themselves a lower wage (and thus wouldn't show up in the high earners stats). If they're an NHS doctor/nurse who also does some private work, same. Or anyone who has more than one employer, or is in the gig economy. It's not vast swathes of people, but I think it'd be more than 2 or 3%.
        • tialaramex 5y ago
          No. I don't like paperwork. So, I don't do paperwork. It can be more tax efficient to file tax paperwork, but I don't want to do paperwork, so I just had an umbrella employ me when somebody insisted on hiring me as a "contractor" and the umbrella handled the paperwork for which of course they keep a fee. As far as the government is concerned I just had two PAYE employers, the umbrella and my "real" job. Having multiple employers also does not require filing taxes. One of the employers gets given a zero tax code and they tax all your pay at full rate, the other one gets a normal tax code which reflects your personal allowance and other considerations. My tax code was oscillating all over the place - but that's not a problem it's all automated. If you love paperwork you can choose to do all the paperwork. Or if you love money and don't hate paperwork maybe you can save a few hundred quid by filing and I hope it makes you happy. I hate paperwork, and I have plenty of money. So, no, despite earning a lot of money and having worked as a contractor I preferred to stick with PAYE.
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  With all the wrongs about Turbo Tax and monopolizing tax filing - criticisms are appropriate. That said, I much prefer the US system. The US IRS already knows what how much tax an indiviual owes just like the Dutch government. Having to manually file taxes is a feature, not a bug IMO. The only difference is that the US IRS assumes you'd want to itemize and customize your tax return by default whereas the Dutch government makes standard deductions the default. I wouldn't want the government to just send me a number of what I owe. Sure you can challenge it, but I prefer the default to be that the citizen files taxes and the government can tally up the proposed taxes against the data they have and either accept or challenge it. However, this Turbo Tax monopoly needs to go. There should be a free (OSS) software that can file the taxes.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • mnky9800n 5y ago
    In Norway the system is similar to the Netherlands. I think you are missing the part where it is mind numbingly easy to go in and add your own deductions. Also, you aren't challenging the amount you owe, you are simply adjusting it. Having filed taxes in America and Norway, the American system is designed to make you fail and to use paid for nonsense to do something that is incredibly easy.
    • laurencerowe 5y ago
      I spent a year working in Norway and forgot to tell the tax authorities to give me my return in English. Made do by typing stuff into Google translate. Still took less time than filing my US taxes does now.
  • sokoloff 5y ago
    > The US IRS already knows what how much tax an indiviual owes just like the Dutch government. Citation very much needed; that’s not true for anyone running a business (even a side business), for anyone with shares of stock purchased before Jan 1, 2011 or mutual funds before Jan 1, 2012, and many other not uncommon situations.
• deleted 5y ago
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• GuB-42 5y ago
  Same in France. But I am going to play devil's advocate here, did you get the "best deal"? It all comes down to deductibles. In France, the "one click taxes" option assumes 10% of your salary is deductible, which is often a good deal but sometimes, it may actually be more, especially if you have a long commute. The government app won't help you with that. It may not help you with incentives too. For example, you may get some tax rebates if you did some work to improve the energy efficiency of your house, what exactly you can declare? And charities, loans, etc... A good accountant may help you save a significant amount with all these details. Tax software are like a middle ground between simple, no brainer, government issued "one click" tax filling and hiring a professional accountant. Note that in France, most self-employed people hire an accountant, proper tax filling can be a minefield if you are not an employee. And by the way, that's Intuit's argument. That it is used to justify its evil deeds is a thing, but the argument itself is not without merit.
  • tinco 5y ago
    I'm Dutch as well. A couple of years ago my university fees were made tax deductible, I'm hazy on the details but basically I dropped out of my masters degree to work on a startup. Normally if you finish your degree some of your costs are relieved by the government with some loan forgiveness scheme. After 5 years or so they decided I definitely wasn't finishing that degree and all my university costs were suddenly tax deductible. Obviously I had no idea of this scheme, I have no accountant and my university fees of 5 years ago were far from my mind. Randomly got €6000 euros income tax back, very nice windfall courtesy of the Netherlands government.
    • EE84M3i 5y ago
      That seems like a surprisingly large amount of money. I thought university wasn't that expensive there (enough that the deduction of the income saved 6000 euros on taxes). Did you mean it became a tax credit and you just got all the money you paid in fees back?
      • tinco 5y ago
        Yeah it was all of it for three years, education costs are 100% deductible, so if it was 3 years at 2000/yr (standard university rate back then) it would be 6000 total. I forgot the exact amount because in that same year I also bought a house and there's a bunch of tax deductibles there as well, I think I got back over 8000 in total that year. Normally the final dues are a lot less, probably 0 for people who have no mutations and a regular job. I had to pay 300 euro this year because I did a single freelance gig on the side. edit: Note that this is probably a very exceptional situation. Normally college students don't make enough money to be paying taxes in the first place, I had the perfect storm of having all the deductibles being applicable in a single year, and making a good wage that year. I'm just telling this story because it's an example of the system randomly giving me the sort of tax benefit even a dedicated accountant might have missed, just because it system applied its rules to all the information it has about me.
• brezelnbitte 5y ago
  The reason your taxes are simpler though is because the Dutch government doesn’t use the tax system to implement policy like the US does. The US Congress uses the tax system to influence social policy as well as to deliver benefits for specific groups and industries. And over time all of these legislative additions have turned a simple revenue raising system into a complex mess of deductions and credits. Now I am not defending turbo tax’s predatory actions in the past but it’s not complicating the tax system just taking advantage of it being complicated.
  • mjburgess 5y ago
    To add to this even further: In europe we just directly regulate behaviour either by directly taxing it or making it illegal. In the US they set tax levels much higher and then offer breaks as incentives. The latter has the philosophical virtue of making behaviour "expensive but not illegal" (ie., in europe you cannot legally avoid the tax). However it dramatically complicates government and makes US citizens dramatically "overtaxed" absent these breaks. What we in europe often miss is that the US anti-tax lobby is reacting to a very different tax environment that is, on paper, very extreme.
  • guerrilla 5y ago
    Sweden uses tax policy to influence things and our taxes are just as easy. The state knows most stuff and then we just go in and adjust the default. So, no, the reason is that they have all the information already and for most people just need you to verify it. In the US, the tax companies are lobbying the government to keep it difficult. The subject has been covered on HN every year during tax season.
  • azemetre 5y ago
    Aren't like >70% of the populations taxes extremely simple tho? Most people are just taking the standard deduction and not much else. Most of the complications in tax policy are affecting a small minority of people and corporations.
    • aksss 5y ago
      Yeah if you work a W-2 job and the company is making tax deductions from your paycheck, your taxes are pretty simple. If you have a mortgage, you can deduct the interest. I think most people are in this category. Taxes just start getting complicated proportionate to the creative compensation some jobs offer - deferred stock purchase programs, etc., - or if you have some complicated deduction or third-party income sources.
• u678u 5y ago
  Its not the predatory companies that are the problem its the US tax system. If it was possible for people to "check the numbers from the government" on an app, it would happen here too.
  • jjoonathan 5y ago
    The companies spend an enormous amount of money lobbying to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen, so yeah, they're culpable.
  • mensetmanusman 5y ago
    It is somewhat known that these companies continue to lobby to keep it complicated enough to require their services.
  • warricksothr 5y ago
    It absolutely is a problem of predatory companies spending money on lobbying against simpler tax code. An equal share of the blame is on the politicians accepting these “legal” bribes against the interests of their constituents. Lobbyists were supposed to be for promoting the interests of small groups that might not have the representation among a politicians constituents to warrant paying attention to. Instead we have rampant and excessive spending by corporations that lobby to keep their monopolies over segments of the market that harm American citizens. - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-spend-millions-lobbying-us-keep-doing-n736386 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/taxes/turbotax-h-r-block-sp... - https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-free-simple-hr-block-intuit-lobbying-against-it# https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre... - https://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-lobbies-lawmakers-tax-code-complicated/story?id=18882377 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/turbotax-lobbies-lawmakers-t...
    • u678u 5y ago
      > In 2016 alone, Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, spent $2 million on lobbying, ProPublica reports. H&R Block spent $3 million, some of it on the same efforts. I'm not convinced $5m a year would make such a big impact.
• hereforphone 5y ago
  How complicated were your taxes? Did you work overseas for an extended period of time (outside of the EU)? Did you have special tax credits to claim, business profits to add, or anything else unusual? Simple taxes are relatively easy to file in America, too.
• kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Same in Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia I think. For most people there is nothing to do.
  • snorremd 5y ago
    Pretty much yeah. I guess there are some deductions which need to be filed manually as the government would have no way of knowing about them. Like if you have a really long commute to work you get to deduct a certain amount per KM from your taxes. But mostly these days, unless you run a company, you don't really have to change much about your pre-filled tax statement. Only once have I experienced that my housing association made addendums to the yearly tax report that needed to be changed in my tax statement. I also lost some money on micro loans last year that apparently I had to file deductions for myself, but it amounted to so little money that I just let the state keep that money.
• 4cidix 5y ago
  last I checked American's have a much more robust economy and get far less taxed than Europeans in general. As frustrating as the American system and the people in charge are, I would not trade it for European style government - which is unfortunately the direction we are headed in
• cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  US has twenty times more people than Netherlands. A fairer comparison would be with the tax system of a small US state or a large city in the US. Edit: Downvoted as it goes against the narrative, lol.
  • aksss 5y ago
    People always gloss over the massive scale differences when comparing the US to European countries, whether it’s prisons, taxes, healthcare, etc. It’s like, show me the system operating as well with 5x the population before even joking that it should work as efficiently at 10x, much less 20x. Call me when you’re filing EU taxes as individuals in addition to your nation-state taxes.
  • TheCoelacanth 5y ago
    That should just make it easier to afford an automated system because you can spread out the cost across more people.
• raptor99 5y ago
  That's awesome! In 2006 I did the same thing with Turbotax for free at my PC at my desk in 15 minutes. I'm sure I could have started doing it on my phone once I got a smartphone but opted not to.
• npteljes 5y ago
  Here in Hungary I filed my taxes with the government provided Java application, on my Linux computer. No problems whatsoever.