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Citation needed. In Germany tax-prep industry is huge, there is a huge network of tax consultants plus paid online services like taxfix and smartsteuer. The o
by ernst_klim 1y ago
Citation needed.
In Germany tax-prep industry is huge, there is a huge network of tax consultants plus paid online services like taxfix and smartsteuer.
The only countries I lived which didn't require you to declare the taxes were Russia and Georgia, mostly because 13% and 20% flat tax rate respectively.
Any country which does have complicated progressive tax system would require you to declare taxes at least at some cases.
- rcbdev 1y agoGermany, as a de-facto vassal state of the US, is the exception that confirms the rule. This is an observation that comes from almost a lifetime of living in this region of our world.
- 256orbs 1y agoGermany has ELSTER, which is a free government provided online service. I use it every year to fill in my tax declaration. It's not perfect but it works pretty good. Not so friendly for expats since it doesn't have internationalisation, so you need to know a bit of german (I use G translate).
- tirant 1y agoELSTER is available but it is extremely complicated to use. Not even my Tax advisor uses it directly. You must be the first person I’ve heard that uses it directly. For me not worth to use it having extremely good tools like the offering from WISO. In my opinion a complicated tax law is a direct attack from the State against low and middle income population. If you have low income and poor education you will not be able to make use of the tax law to increase your available income, something that high income citizens do daily. In this case we have to thank the free market to provide really easy tools for less than €30 so middle and low income citizens can start at least to take advantage of the tax law. I’ve lived in multiple countries and always did my tax report myself. And the German situation is so blatantly designed, compared to other countries, to benefit only a very small portion of the population. Not only that, If the amount of man/hours that the whole country of Germany spends doing taxes would be spent on productivity gains or just normal work, the country would become immediately the richest country in the world. Instead, it’s just wasted effort and work.
- barbazoo 1y agoI’ve used Elster to file my German taxes until I left the country. Very common to use that software directly. Probably not much fun though if one’s situation isn’t straight forward.
- 256orbs 1y agoWhat does your Tax advisor use, post mail? "extremely complicated to use" well, that is something that you hear often from Tax advisors or tools for less than €30. Same FUD tactics.
- sofixa 1y agoThere is a world of difference between not having to declare taxes, and having an industry of tax filers. In France you have to declare taxes, but everything known to the tax authorities is pre-filled, leaving you to add any special incomes/deductions that didn't come trough regular channels that get automatically reported. You still have tax consultants to help you optimise if there are higher revenues, but it's a very niche service.
- MikeNotThePope 1y agoThe IRS actually knows everything, too. They just make you tell them what they already know.
- adestefan 1y agoThey helpfully send you letter when you screwed up, too.
- MikeNotThePope 1y agoAt least they don't make you pay for the postage!
- wredcoll 1y agoThere's a group of republicans who prevent them from doing anything else.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]