I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is there is a “tax accounting lobby” that works hard to prevent any measures to simplify it, because they would go out of business. Intuit and others.
In Germany they just keep the money they think you owe them up front. If you think you owe less you have to send in a report proving it. If you owe more (e.g. from cash income) and they find out, you’re punished.
Same for Russia. Your employer do taxes on income you receive and send them themselves, your seller shows a price already including taxes - and you aren’t involved at all. Property taxes are paid by individuals tho, but you’d get a bill according to what the state thinks you owe once a year. It kinda works.
On the other hand, it makes people even less aware where government gets it’s money and less interested in what then it spends them on.
You earn just 100-x% off your paycheck, every end product is x% more expensive in a store, and it’s production and delivery also add x% each time money are transferred between two parties in the process, with special taxes and conditions applied if relevant.
It’s another brick for a mindset perceiving the government as some divine power that delivers and demands, that we don’t usually question, even if it funds a war with another country when it can’t win a war against it’s own shitty roads, poverty, corruption and so on - we don’t see bad roads as a direct misuse of our own money, but some ill-doing of individual beaurocrats or contractors that we can’t affect, it just happens.
There, the comfort of easy taxes, put onto monetary illiteracy, plays it’s role in supporting an authoritarian mythology.
That’s just for free tax filling software, i.e. a government sponsored TurboTax alternative. And that was definitely needed.
What they’re talking about is not having to actually do the filling at all, or at least only having to file in certain cases. The government pays for employees that look at your stuff, says “that’s the amount”, and asks you to confirm.
Granted, with the way tax filing software has advanced, and how simple the vast majority of people’s filings are going to be, the difference is not very substantial anymore. The majority of people just need to click through the screens and answer the questions, so it takes a little time but it’s hardly a true hassle.
The reason it’s been like this in the US for so long is because of the heavy lobbying to keep software like that proprietary and the system complicated enough that people need to use it.
But it’s also been because of decades of conservative bullshit refusing to fund the IRS to the degree that they could provide the services that other countries get. IRS literally could not and cannot afford the manpower to handle the taxes of every American for us. Software lets them circumvent that.
Love the meme but JFC I wish they would just send us a simple invoice (or refund) every year. You know, the way adult nations do things.
It’s insanity. I’m sure there’s some rationale for it, but it seems like it could be so much simpler.
The rationale is the tax companies want it this way, and pay politicians a lot of money to keep it this way
I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is there is a “tax accounting lobby” that works hard to prevent any measures to simplify it, because they would go out of business. Intuit and others.
In Germany they just keep the money they think you owe them up front. If you think you owe less you have to send in a report proving it. If you owe more (e.g. from cash income) and they find out, you’re punished.
Same for Russia. Your employer do taxes on income you receive and send them themselves, your seller shows a price already including taxes - and you aren’t involved at all. Property taxes are paid by individuals tho, but you’d get a bill according to what the state thinks you owe once a year. It kinda works.
On the other hand, it makes people even less aware where government gets it’s money and less interested in what then it spends them on.
You earn just 100-x% off your paycheck, every end product is x% more expensive in a store, and it’s production and delivery also add x% each time money are transferred between two parties in the process, with special taxes and conditions applied if relevant.
It’s another brick for a mindset perceiving the government as some divine power that delivers and demands, that we don’t usually question, even if it funds a war with another country when it can’t win a war against it’s own shitty roads, poverty, corruption and so on - we don’t see bad roads as a direct misuse of our own money, but some ill-doing of individual beaurocrats or contractors that we can’t affect, it just happens.
There, the comfort of easy taxes, put onto monetary illiteracy, plays it’s role in supporting an authoritarian mythology.
They’re working on it. They had a pilot program in several states this year.
That’s just for free tax filling software, i.e. a government sponsored TurboTax alternative. And that was definitely needed.
What they’re talking about is not having to actually do the filling at all, or at least only having to file in certain cases. The government pays for employees that look at your stuff, says “that’s the amount”, and asks you to confirm.
Granted, with the way tax filing software has advanced, and how simple the vast majority of people’s filings are going to be, the difference is not very substantial anymore. The majority of people just need to click through the screens and answer the questions, so it takes a little time but it’s hardly a true hassle.
The reason it’s been like this in the US for so long is because of the heavy lobbying to keep software like that proprietary and the system complicated enough that people need to use it.
But it’s also been because of decades of conservative bullshit refusing to fund the IRS to the degree that they could provide the services that other countries get. IRS literally could not and cannot afford the manpower to handle the taxes of every American for us. Software lets them circumvent that.