If you screw up you actually probably aren’t going to jail. If you make a mistake there’s a period where you can notify them and fix it, and even if you get audited, (I’ve heard) they tend to try to work with you on it. The worst thing most people can reasonably expect is a fine. You only really go to jail if you’ve committed fraud, and usually not even then, especially if you’re rich.
Once I got a check from the IRS in October for around $1000, saying I had overpaid. I put it in the bank and that was that. About a month later they sent me a bill for $1000 in unpaid taxes plus interest going back to April 15, as if I had never paid it. This was a crock since they’d had the money almost the entire time, but the interest was only like $80, which I didn’t think was worth the trouble of disputing. Weird mistake though. Apparently they audit themselves.
Scottish here. Apart from a brief time being self employed I have never needed to look at how much I have paid in taxes, it all gets done automatically by my employer and I get a yearly update through them.
No idea how you all do them.
It’s incredibly stressful. I get about 3-4 months to do them, depending on how quickly I get all the necessary forms. If I don’t pay in time the IRS fines me 25% of my taxes as a late payment.
Figure I typically put in about 40 hours per year to do my taxes, AND I HAVE TAX SOFTWARE!
Wow, your situation must be complicated. With TurboTax or FreeTax it doesn’t take me more than a couple hours - and I’ve never used the short form.
It’s done automatically in the US too, as far as it can be. Income tax is withheld from our paychecks based on a form we fill out, where we say if we’re single or married and how many dependents we have. But the formula used to figure out how much to withhold for tax can’t anticipate things we do during the year that change our taxes - for example, charity donations, investment income, or using our own cars for work purposes. So we have to do a final figuring.
We even have this in Ukraine. I guess our quality of life is still higher than the US.
What we generally do is pay for other people or programs to do it for us.
Not to mention that in any serious democracy you get the taxes calculated and sent to you for verification. As it should be. Ask your oligarchs why they don’t want you to have this.
Intuit and H&R Block.
And the problem is that it is not trivial at all to calculate the right number. I think it is wrong for the government to force such a hard problem on all of their citizens, including the ones with low education.
It is so screwed up that in the past I got a letter from the IRS saying my accountant made a mistake on my stock sales and I owed several thousand dollars. My accountant made the calculations again and showed that the IRS actually owed me $60. I never heard from them after that.
Yeah, I agree with you that the general population shouldn’t have to do their own taxes with the technology that basically everyone now has.
The only 2 reasons I can think of to keep it this way are 1) people doing their own taxes results in at least some of them reporting random self-income and results in a non-trivial amount of extra tax dollars, or 2) tax preparation companies have captured legislators’ votes and the tax prep companies would lose shitloads of money if tax prep was a government responsibility.
¯\(ツ)/¯
It’s (2), and (1) is just a bonus for them.
It’s number 2.
Finland: "Oh hey so your employer already handed us an estimated portion of your income for taxation using a percentage based on your income from last year. Now that the year is over and we could calculate your final tax rate for this year, here’s your tax return back, with interest.
Just let us know if we missed anything, like a deductible or something."
australia too… go into the tax office app at tax time, next next next agree done
Don’t forget your deductions.
Tax offices are for rich people, I can’t afford their rates!
tax office in this context refers to the australian taxation office - ie the australian version of the IRS
This is also somewhat how it works in america if you make under a certain amount minus the interest and you also still have to do the guessing game.
(meme only applicable for the U.S, non-collapsed countries don’t have systems this bad)
As a Canadian, I’m offended
Or you get less money than you should.
Funny because it’s haha funny. Funny also with a laugh that includes tears acknowledging how messed up at all is.
Taxes can be simplified for all. Taxes can be fair. Taxes can benefit the multitude.
And for reasons that seems very intentional, no matter how much politicians talk about reform, the system continues to favor the rich and privileged. Those that need help the most continue to get ignored.
So much could be fixed.
So much could be better.
In the Netherlands taxes take about 15 minutes each year. Everything is already calculated, you just have to check if the numbers on your paychecks and mortgage match.
Even better, if you’ve never did your taxes, you won’t have to. But you usually get money back if you do, so there’s no reason not to sit down for 15 minutes once a year for a nice chunk of money back.
Mine take about a week. And last time the tax software and IRS instructions conflicted. I ended up reading about 300 pages from the IRS website and eventually gave up.
Yes, I’ve heard much about such systems. Can’t say I haven’t envied it from time to time. 😊
“TAX TIME!”
“Uh… How much do I owe?”
“Just guess.”
“300?”
“Jail. ☺️”
Not quite how it works. But yeah they should just tell you the number.
The IRS does not know how much you owe. They can figure it out. This is what an audit is. They assume most people are honest and most people are. They use statistics to decide who to audit.
Do not get me wrong it is a stupid system. But there is no need to exaggerate how stupid it is.
The IRS does not know how much you owe.
Why don’t they?
It’s underfunded. That’s why they also don’t audit rich people as much, because they can’t afford to.
Lots of income can be under the table and aren’t on the books. It’s up to you to come clean.
They do know how much you owe, or can at least figure it out if you only work for one employer (who pays taxes) and you don’t own any property. The tax setup is different if you’re self-employed (there is no tax withheld automatically if your income is from your customers), or if you’re self-employed AND work for one or more employers, or own properties (and what you do with those properties), or any combination of those things.
You can see how many possible scenarios there can be, so there’s not really a one-size-fits-all solution. They can’t possibly keep track of all of everyone’s income streams and properties and all the other rules they have created, so they have to rely on individuals to self-report.
