Likewise in the UK for standard wage workers. Only gets more complicated if you have investments outside and ISA or multiple sources of non-labour income.
Knowing the correct solution and knowing whether or not a solution is correct are not the same thing. Doesn’t really apply here, but it’s important to remember.
I never understood why there wasn’t a federal web site where you input your gross based on W2. Then check off boxes for special deductions like kids. And wamo here’s what you owe. But if our tax system was simple and stupid than thousands of people at IRS wouldn’t have jobs. Too bad. Let them find other jobs.
Literally one of two things (second was infrastructure) hoped Trump would actually do was simplify taxes. Probably would’ve secured him a second term if he had done it.
I knew he wouldn’t do it, let’s be clear. But a small part of me was like “man if that bull breaks one or two correct pieces of china at least that’s something out of all this horror”
The IRS is (supposedly) under funded. That’s (supposedly) why they can’t actually go after the rich people and business. They can’t afford the legal fees.
The reason there’s no federals site is corporate lobbying. You see if there was federal site, business like Turbo Tax and HR Block would fail. They convinced the government “let us take care of the online platform”, the gov said “okay, but as long as you make a free service for low income people”.
Then the corps branded the free version a different name, burried it and advertised the paid one. Then they filled the service with all kinds of dark patterns to get people to pay for crap they don’t need. Government hasn’t done anything about it.
All employers report income and deduct taxes from paychecks directly, so the government knows how much you have paid.
What they don’t know is if you’ve won a lottery, sold a service or have someone bunking at your place paying rent. This you need to declare yourself.
In the UK the rule is: we will assume you have nothing else, please let us know if you have additional income
In the US (and Canada) the rule is: we will assume you have a lot of shit, please let us know even if you don’t have additional income.
The US system stems from Conservatives having nothing other to run on than “people are going to grift and if you’re an honest employed american you have nothing to worry about”. Which is a measure that mostly affects the poor and those who don’t know the law.
The same reason healthcare was tied to employers. They convince people nothing could go wrong because only those working should have healthcare. Which we can all see is insane but looks good on paper.
Not if you take any form of assistance, make any purchases for a business/education, get income from multiple places, work in multiple states, have health insurance, or even received tax credit from a previous year where the government took too much.
Oh yea, it comes with a 14 page PDF in small print that tells you what each field contains using the most obtuse verbiage. Then with a simple click of a button it does simple arithmetic to calculate all the numbers you plug in. But you don’t have any help on deductions. Is a thrift savings plan a Roth? Depends on when the savings plan gets taxed. Is it taxed? When i put money in or pull money out, but before or after i turn retirement age, which goes up every few years. Input all the taxes you didn’t pay by buying things online. Does livelihood depend on tips for some ungodly reason? Hope you did well because the government kinda just averages a guess how much you should be tipped. For the love of god don’t add BA though BH unless something you would know when if so. And that’s the 1040ez
… sort of … we can do it for free now instead of having to pay a tax preparer but there’s still the matter of having to fill out all the paperwork – we haven’t reached the stage of the rest of the world of just signing the pre-filled tax bill
It’s a little more complicated because of itemization.
The standard deduction should be pretty simple. For people that give a bunch of money to accountants … you’re probably better off just taking the standard deduction anyways. But eh maybe not.
In theory itemization is a good option, it does save me some money, and there’s very little way for the government to know that I e.g. donated to X and that reduces my tax burden by Z. My neighbor tells me back in the day you could itemize a lot more stuff, but those days are gone.
Definitely support the IRS providing some free tax filling software at the very least. There’s really no reason electronically filing should cost all the money it does to go through e.g. TurboTax and scare you with the up selling to protect you from audits or XYZ thing.
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