3 ms·

Simplified tax form: 1. How much money did you make last year? ______ 2. Send it all in.

• olliej 4y ago
  I mean that's basically what it's doing: giving an accurate answer as a single value here requires you go through the same work. A lot of the extra is classifying what type of "earn" you did to reduce the tax burden. Simpler tax systems tend to basically reduce the options for you futzing with what "type" of income it is. For example, the US apparently includes deductions to compensate for money spent on special classes of medication (based on comments in these threads), but in countries with functional healthcare systems that's handled by virtue of you paying a discounted price for the state funded meds (or nothing at all). My very vague impression is that a lot of the tax differences are because rather than simply subsidizing some things, or paying for them directly, the US gov lets you reduce your taxes at the end of year instead. There are many problems with this (and this policy is applied to things other than just medication) approach where "make this manageable" is wrapped up into tax returns rather than just being handled at PoS. But to be clear this is a very general impression I've developed, and it's certainly not something I'd be willing to say "this is absolutely there state of the world" about, as I left NZ before I really had professional (e.g. not near zero :D) income and I've not personally had any medication, treatment, etc the the US gov has carve outs for.