Filing taxes in the US is a cruel and byzantine process. It’s fucked that the government has the resources and really the infrastructure to know what people owe, and will go through with finding out from time to time to determine if people are cheating, but all but requires them to use a private service to figure out what they owe first.
If all your income is from wages (like most people) the IRS already knows what you made cause your employer had to file w2 forms and withhold taxes. You just have to fill out a bunch of forms and hope youre right! Sometimes they fuck over waiters and stuff cause they get a lot of tips and don’t always claim their tips, which is just so shitty.
That’s a weird take indeed. In Belgium, and a lot of other countries, you file your income and file what you think is deductable drop your income as costs or benefits and then the government calculates what you owe.
Last few years they had it all figured out and the only thing I had to do was check if the figure they had were correct and sign. Filing taxes took me less than 10 minutes. On the other hand, we are paying more taxes than most of the countries in the world.
Filing taxes in the US is a cruel and byzantine process. It’s fucked that the government has the resources and really the infrastructure to know what people owe, and will go through with finding out from time to time to determine if people are cheating, but all but requires them to use a private service to figure out what they owe first.
If all your income is from wages (like most people) the IRS already knows what you made cause your employer had to file w2 forms and withhold taxes. You just have to fill out a bunch of forms and hope youre right! Sometimes they fuck over waiters and stuff cause they get a lot of tips and don’t always claim their tips, which is just so shitty.
blame turbotax and their peers. we should have had an electronic filing system a decade ago. but special interests said naw, fuck that.
That’s a weird take indeed. In Belgium, and a lot of other countries, you file your income and file what you think is deductable drop your income as costs or benefits and then the government calculates what you owe. Last few years they had it all figured out and the only thing I had to do was check if the figure they had were correct and sign. Filing taxes took me less than 10 minutes. On the other hand, we are paying more taxes than most of the countries in the world.