6 ms·

Whether you like them or not, a lot of thought went into designing tax forms. It's a marvel of form design that any intelligent person with a pocket calculator

by kijin 15y ago

Whether you like them or not, a lot of thought went into designing tax forms. It's a marvel of form design that any intelligent person with a pocket calculator can fill them out by following simple directions. It could have been much much worse, considering how complicated tax codes tend to be! Of course, things get complicated when you have different kinds of incomes with different rates and all sorts of deductions with different rules that Congress cooks up every year. But that's what computer programs are for. I hope they'll make bug-free and intuitive tax programs some day. In the meantime, I like Canadian tax forms better. Federal and provincial forms come in different colours, and the boxes seem to be more clearly labeled.

sausagefeet 15y ago
In Sweden you can pay your taxes with an SMS. Basically, from what I understand, the taxes are so simple and the infrastructure already there for the govt to know your income that unless you are doing something funky you just confirm you taxes by sending a text. Quite nice.
- qw 15y ago
  In Norway you don't need to confirm the taxes at all. You get a simple tax form on a web page and if the information is correct you don't need to do anything. If you need to correct it you just update the form online.
  - kijin 15y ago
    That approach might have disadvantages, especially with senior citizens and poor people who might not have ready access to the Internet. They are the ones who usually miss out when essential services go online-only. But then again, we're talking about Scandinavia here, so the size of the affected population and the severity of the problem would be a lot less than in the U.S.
    - sausagefeet 15y ago
      Poor people in Norway? Surely you jest!
    - jlouis 15y ago
      It doesn't really. If you are not able to access the internet you can go to the government office and get it done, I guess. At least that is what we do in Denmark. Or we send out a person with a laptop to the home of the old person so they can be guided if needed. That said, it is rather few where this is needed. Most old people over here are intelligent enough to learn IT-stuff.
    - Tloewald 15y ago
      Um. Public libraries. The US is an outlier in developed nations in lacking basic social amenities.
  - Ironballs 15y ago
    Same thing in Finland, except you can do it by mail or online. The tax form arrives by mail, which you can then either mail back after filling it out or just go online and do the same thing.
    - dalke 15y ago
      No need for the "except." My Swedish tax form came, and provided the information about how to confirm/pay, with online, post, and SMS options.
      - jsnell 15y ago
        The "except" compared to Sweden is that if the information is correct, you don't need to do anything. The default on no action is to confirm it.
        dalke 15y ago
        Ahh, thanks. Which reminds me, I need to tell the Swedish government that the form they sent me is correct.
    - lobster_johnson 15y ago
      Same in Norway. They still permit submitting your tax forms by regular mail.
- Tloewald 15y ago
  Sweden also has a codified legal system that fits into a single book iirc.
- draven 15y ago
  Here in France you get a pre-filled form by regular mail. You can correct it if there's something wrong and then send it, or do those steps online.
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  If that's the case, why don't they just take your money? It's not like you have a choice.
pmjordan 15y ago
I wish the Austrian tax forms were designed so that any intelligent person could fill them out. Most of the labels are unintelligible legalese gibberish plus a reference to the relevant paragraph(s) in the tax code. Which of course is also legalese gibberish, just longer. Some of it you can just skip based on cursory scanning ("This seems to be about vehicles. I'm not trying to claim any vehicle-based expenses -> ignore). Some of it is not so easy. My first tax return took days, though at the time I wouldn't have had the money to pay an accountant, so it had to be done. Now I just fill in the same fields as the previous year, so there's not much point to hire one. They do change the forms in subtle ways to keep you on your toes but as a software developer you're pretty much off the radar of legislators in this country. I even bought an introductory book on this stuff, but that too assumes you have an accountant and fluffs over the actual mechanics of filing. Grr! One positive: at least you can do all of it online and the tax code is available as PDFs (thousands upon thousands of pages of course). It also checks simple invariants (e.g. it yells at you if fields A + B must be the same as fields C + D - E and they don't match) and calculates the total amount due. Edit: Google Translate is trained using EU legal texts, so it does a good job on these forms. This is a translation of part of the VAT (sales tax) form you need to fill out once a quarter or once a month (depending on revenues) as a corporation or self-employed person: http://imgur.com/a/V6LI1 http://imgur.com/a/V6LI1 (no, it doesn't make any more sense in German, unless you're a lawyer or accountant, presumably) Trivia: "young wood" in the second screenshot is an attempted translation of the town "Jungholz", an exclave joined to the rest of the country by a quadripoint[1], which gets the same sales tax rate as Germany, along with Mittelberg, which is not an exclave but only reachable by road via Germany. They apparently even used German currency before introduction of the Euro[2]. The stuff you learn when filing taxes! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelberg
jpdoctor 15y ago
> It's a marvel of form design that any intelligent person with a pocket calculator can fill them out by following simple directions. I'm gonna bet that you don't file 1120S.
billybob 15y ago
Complication in taxes is a pet peeve of mine. It's incredible how much money it wastes. There is an entire industry dedicated to figuring out what you owe in taxes. Everyone working in that industry is fixing broken windows that get broken again every year. What a waste of productivity. If I were King of America, I would mandate that the entire tax code fit on a single typewritten page with specified font and margin. Each year, a group of 3rd-graders would be asked to complete the tax form given all the necessary information. If they couldn't, the tax code would be considered invalid.
- bsimpson 15y ago
  billybob for King!
- kooshball 15y ago
  >There is an entire industry dedicated to figuring out what you owe in taxes. Everyone working in that industry is fixing broken windows that get broken again every year. What a waste of productivity. Its actually worse than that. Those in the tax prep industry actually lobby against major tax reforms. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/business/24digi.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/business/24digi.html Its similar to where the AV companies complain when Microsoft release the free version of their own AV software. Ultimately its about protecting your own profits and not about the users.
- icegreentea 15y ago
  You know that Herman Cain was widely ridiculed for exactly this line of thought? The tax code is certainly too complicated, but why should it be simple? It should be complicated to reflect the complications and nuances of our societies. Enough of us obviously think that there should be special cases for certain situations that special cases will arise. And democracy will see to that. Which I guess is why you'd have to be King to make it stick. But even then And why set the threshold to 3rd graders? They aren't the ones filling out taxes. Maybe high school seniors would be a more nonsensical threshold.
  - mikeash 15y ago
underwater 15y ago
I have to disagree on the simple aspect. It feels like they've been designed by someone who feels American tax payers are too stupid to understand the tax system and are only capable of following simple instructions like an eight-year old. Because of my immigration status I paid an accountant to prepare my forms and was a little surprised to find out I owed the IRS. I tried to work backwards to figure out why but this was all but impossible. Few of the values are labelled and all are interdependent on each other. To figure out what a single value I had to work backwards through multiple branches until I reached the root input. I'm convinced the forms were designed by writing someone in the IRS taking the code for their tax calculators, removing the identifiers and converting it into English text. I have no idea what each variable represents so am unable to be sure the totals are correct. I got the impression that an error early in the process could easily carry through without me noticing. The whole process is opaque and doesn't make me feel like I can trust the IRS or the process to produce an accurate result. By contrast the Australian eTax application asks me a series of yes/no questions, used that to calculate my deductions and income and showed breakdowns for each. For anything non-standard they ask you to use online calculators and provide or retain your documentation. The UK system was even easier and seemed to be calculated based on data supplied directly by employers. My wife was able to get a tax return without submitting any paperwork (there may have been a single form, I can't really remember).
- lallysingh 15y ago
  I think you're massively overestimating the quality of education in the U.S. Simple arithmetic of two digit numbers is already in the 90% mark for adults. Branching logic is completely, completely out of scope for >2 branches. It's funny you said eight year old; the US average adult reading level is 8th grade. That's a skill most use to some degree every day, just for reading signs, billboards, and text on TV. Can you imagine how rusty arithmetic must be? Completely made up, but probably generous.

by kijin 15y ago

sausagefeet 15y ago

In Sweden you can pay your taxes with an SMS. Basically, from what I understand, the taxes are so simple and the infrastructure already there for the govt to know your income that unless you are doing something funky you just confirm you taxes by sending a text. Quite nice.

qw 15y ago
In Norway you don't need to confirm the taxes at all. You get a simple tax form on a web page and if the information is correct you don't need to do anything. If you need to correct it you just update the form online.
- kijin 15y ago
  That approach might have disadvantages, especially with senior citizens and poor people who might not have ready access to the Internet. They are the ones who usually miss out when essential services go online-only. But then again, we're talking about Scandinavia here, so the size of the affected population and the severity of the problem would be a lot less than in the U.S.
  - sausagefeet 15y ago
    Poor people in Norway? Surely you jest!
  - jlouis 15y ago
    It doesn't really. If you are not able to access the internet you can go to the government office and get it done, I guess. At least that is what we do in Denmark. Or we send out a person with a laptop to the home of the old person so they can be guided if needed. That said, it is rather few where this is needed. Most old people over here are intelligent enough to learn IT-stuff.
  - Tloewald 15y ago
    Um. Public libraries. The US is an outlier in developed nations in lacking basic social amenities.
- Ironballs 15y ago
  Same thing in Finland, except you can do it by mail or online. The tax form arrives by mail, which you can then either mail back after filling it out or just go online and do the same thing.
  - dalke 15y ago
    No need for the "except." My Swedish tax form came, and provided the information about how to confirm/pay, with online, post, and SMS options.
    - jsnell 15y ago
      The "except" compared to Sweden is that if the information is correct, you don't need to do anything. The default on no action is to confirm it.
      - dalke 15y ago
        Ahh, thanks. Which reminds me, I need to tell the Swedish government that the form they sent me is correct.
  - lobster_johnson 15y ago
    Same in Norway. They still permit submitting your tax forms by regular mail.
Tloewald 15y ago
Sweden also has a codified legal system that fits into a single book iirc.
draven 15y ago
Here in France you get a pre-filled form by regular mail. You can correct it if there's something wrong and then send it, or do those steps online.
paulhauggis 15y ago
If that's the case, why don't they just take your money? It's not like you have a choice.

pmjordan 15y ago

I wish the Austrian tax forms were designed so that any intelligent person could fill them out. Most of the labels are unintelligible legalese gibberish plus a reference to the relevant paragraph(s) in the tax code. Which of course is also legalese gibberish, just longer. Some of it you can just skip based on cursory scanning ("This seems to be about vehicles. I'm not trying to claim any vehicle-based expenses -> ignore). Some of it is not so easy. My first tax return took days, though at the time I wouldn't have had the money to pay an accountant, so it had to be done. Now I just fill in the same fields as the previous year, so there's not much point to hire one. They do change the forms in subtle ways to keep you on your toes but as a software developer you're pretty much off the radar of legislators in this country. I even bought an introductory book on this stuff, but that too assumes you have an accountant and fluffs over the actual mechanics of filing. Grr! One positive: at least you can do all of it online and the tax code is available as PDFs (thousands upon thousands of pages of course). It also checks simple invariants (e.g. it yells at you if fields A + B must be the same as fields C + D - E and they don't match) and calculates the total amount due. Edit: Google Translate is trained using EU legal texts, so it does a good job on these forms. This is a translation of part of the VAT (sales tax) form you need to fill out once a quarter or once a month (depending on revenues) as a corporation or self-employed person: http://imgur.com/a/V6LI1 http://imgur.com/a/V6LI1 (no, it doesn't make any more sense in German, unless you're a lawyer or accountant, presumably) Trivia: "young wood" in the second screenshot is an attempted translation of the town "Jungholz", an exclave joined to the rest of the country by a quadripoint[1], which gets the same sales tax rate as Germany, along with Mittelberg, which is not an exclave but only reachable by road via Germany. They apparently even used German currency before introduction of the Euro[2]. The stuff you learn when filing taxes! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungholz [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelberg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mittelberg

jpdoctor 15y ago

> It's a marvel of form design that any intelligent person with a pocket calculator can fill them out by following simple directions. I'm gonna bet that you don't file 1120S.

billybob 15y ago

Complication in taxes is a pet peeve of mine. It's incredible how much money it wastes. There is an entire industry dedicated to figuring out what you owe in taxes. Everyone working in that industry is fixing broken windows that get broken again every year. What a waste of productivity. If I were King of America, I would mandate that the entire tax code fit on a single typewritten page with specified font and margin. Each year, a group of 3rd-graders would be asked to complete the tax form given all the necessary information. If they couldn't, the tax code would be considered invalid.

bsimpson 15y ago
billybob for King!
kooshball 15y ago
>There is an entire industry dedicated to figuring out what you owe in taxes. Everyone working in that industry is fixing broken windows that get broken again every year. What a waste of productivity. Its actually worse than that. Those in the tax prep industry actually lobby against major tax reforms. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/business/24digi.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/business/24digi.html Its similar to where the AV companies complain when Microsoft release the free version of their own AV software. Ultimately its about protecting your own profits and not about the users.
icegreentea 15y ago
You know that Herman Cain was widely ridiculed for exactly this line of thought? The tax code is certainly too complicated, but why should it be simple? It should be complicated to reflect the complications and nuances of our societies. Enough of us obviously think that there should be special cases for certain situations that special cases will arise. And democracy will see to that. Which I guess is why you'd have to be King to make it stick. But even then And why set the threshold to 3rd graders? They aren't the ones filling out taxes. Maybe high school seniors would be a more nonsensical threshold.
- mikeash 15y ago

underwater 15y ago

I have to disagree on the simple aspect. It feels like they've been designed by someone who feels American tax payers are too stupid to understand the tax system and are only capable of following simple instructions like an eight-year old. Because of my immigration status I paid an accountant to prepare my forms and was a little surprised to find out I owed the IRS. I tried to work backwards to figure out why but this was all but impossible. Few of the values are labelled and all are interdependent on each other. To figure out what a single value I had to work backwards through multiple branches until I reached the root input. I'm convinced the forms were designed by writing someone in the IRS taking the code for their tax calculators, removing the identifiers and converting it into English text. I have no idea what each variable represents so am unable to be sure the totals are correct. I got the impression that an error early in the process could easily carry through without me noticing. The whole process is opaque and doesn't make me feel like I can trust the IRS or the process to produce an accurate result. By contrast the Australian eTax application asks me a series of yes/no questions, used that to calculate my deductions and income and showed breakdowns for each. For anything non-standard they ask you to use online calculators and provide or retain your documentation. The UK system was even easier and seemed to be calculated based on data supplied directly by employers. My wife was able to get a tax return without submitting any paperwork (there may have been a single form, I can't really remember).

lallysingh 15y ago
I think you're massively overestimating the quality of education in the U.S. Simple arithmetic of two digit numbers is already in the 90% mark for adults. Branching logic is completely, completely out of scope for >2 branches. It's funny you said eight year old; the US average adult reading level is 8th grade. That's a skill most use to some degree every day, just for reading signs, billboards, and text on TV. Can you imagine how rusty arithmetic must be? Completely made up, but probably generous.