- Taxes in the US are unnecessarily stressful. I remember going to H&R Block and being sent home to find some piece of supporting documentation because it was “really important”. I turned the whole apartment upside down but wasn’t able to find it. Went back to the tax preparer in a state of high anxiety. When I asked what would happen if I couldn’t find the document and was told the impact on the final assessment could be as high as $80. Would have gladly spent 10x that to avoid the stress.
- Is this law... necessary?
Are people going to jail for a math error?
I've had the IRS reach out to me several times, each time it's a letter explaining their position and I responded and we went back and forth a few times and it was over.
No police showed up...
- This is insane to me. Not only is the US tax code so complex you need a specialist to help you fill in the tax return but those specialists apparently also have a justified expectation of income and thus can’t be replaced by a freaking web app. Let alone a pre-filled one. I spend 15-20 minutes on my tax return in Estonia and only take that long, because I have some savings in places that do not do the reporting for me. The refund appears on my bank account usually within a few days. We are not the most capable country nor have the best engineers (hello, I’m the former CIO of Estonian Tax and Customs). We don’t have mountains of money either. And yet, here is a solution (and has been for 20+ years by now), that’s two orders of magnitude better, than the solution used by the leading country of the free world. Just why?
- California sent me a notice I screwed up and owed an extra $100 or so. Didn't really explain it, but I paid and they never bothered me again.
I paid on the actual official website, did not get scammed BTW...
by toomuchtodo
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- H.R.998 - Internal Revenue Service Math and Taxpayer Help Act - https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/998
by LorenPechtel
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- Sounds like a very good idea. I never got a math error notice but I've gotten a few that were fundamentally a case of transposed digits--and it was not one bit clear. You didn't report interest from ABC--but looking at my return it clearly shows interest from ABC. It would have been much easier if they said their files show more interest from ABC than you are reporting.
- I guess we're pigeonholing the end of direct file already in less than a year. The article doesn't even mention it.
Having seen their work before, wakeuptopolitics is a sort of fetishist for appearing unbiased or centrist so they won't bother calling out "one side" in order to appear to be enlightened and above the fray at the expense of the truth. While Democrats also get money from turbo tax et al., it was Trump who ended it likely just to spite Joe Biden, in his usual manner.
by entropoem
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- Tax should be something that must be standard, simple, educated from a young age. But somehow miraculously it still becomes full of pressure in any country.
by whycombinetor
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- Pedantry: the article claims "Paying taxes is a universal experience", but only 60.4% (2024) of American households pay income tax.
by syntaxing
3 subcomments
- I like one of the memes online that describe filing tax as you’re taking a test that the government knows the answer to, and if answer the questions wrong, you go to jail.
by Titan2189
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- > Those other countries have much simpler tax codes than we do
All German readers spew out their drink in disbelief - Pardon what?
by temptemptemp111
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- [dead]
- > to accurately prepopulate tax returns for around 45% of Americans. (Those other countries have much simpler tax codes than we do.)
One should note that the cited study quotes the 45% from a 1992 study. These days, with gig economy and quasi-self-employment, that number is probably higher since you don't have an employer who reports your income for you.
Still, here in Australia, where we have the return-free tax system, adding what you earned from your various gig jobs isn't too hard: you add that as items to the web form: 'I made 15,123 from Uber Eats'. That just gets added to your overall return. I don't see how that's so hard compared to the US?
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