The most communist part is that the whole process is fully managed by the government tax office, not some 3rd party private company.
The not communist part is that it takes unbelievable amount of corruption to program and maintain these services under the hood. They figured out that it’s hard to measure how much human work needed to develop such a thing, so they can just invoice whatever unbelievable amount they want. American companies help with that as well. Windows and Office license for state offices 3-4 times higher than the normal price for consumers, because for some reason they can’t buy it directly from Microsoft, they have to buy from local appointed dealers… Actually MS was fined for this for USD 8.7 Million, the local party in one of this deal was promoted to higher government position afterwards.
So actually this doesn’t exist for making the peasant’s life easier, just to have jobs to steal from… It’s just accidental that our small life becomes a bit less miserable during the process.
Strictly speaking, tax filling software, even the free ones, have simplified it all so much that for people who have a single source of income from work and not a lot of tax forms to collect (most Americans), it’s pretty trivial. Maybe 30-60 minutes, once a year.
Less than ideal but far from the grueling, soul sucking work I was told would plague my adult life when I was a kid.
That’s why the IRS is finally doing their own online filling system. No more making Americans shell out for software, so everyone gets a nice, simple tax season.
Yeah it’s an unpleasant afternoon the majority of which is from the gathering of financial documents not from the math and filling it out. But if you don’t have government form literacy or basic arithmetic skills I imagine the 1040ez still can be rough. My issue with being expected to fill it out is much more connected to the fact that it just sucks to have to do than the fact that it’s difficult. Though also sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass to get your tax statements from a job you quit like a year prior and moved.
I thought it was crazy that the report had entry on how much money I lost with my investments and that was deducted in my taxes. I’ve never told them that I’ve traded stocks and still the tax man knows my money shit better than I do.
In the US, brokerage companies legally have to send you a Form 1099 which covers all investment income over the year. You then include this when submitting your taxes. They probably send a similar report to your government instead.
Finland is basically “File a report if your income changes enough to affect your tax bracket. You’ll be issued a new taxation statement. Send it to the employer. (If unemployed, don’t bother, the agency who pays you already knows.) Your employer/the agency will send the taxes owed to us. You’ll be sent an annual tax proposal - If you have no deductions, you don’t need to do anything, if you do, then it gets mildly interesting. If you get tax returns, you don’t need to do anything if we have your bank details. If you owe us, oh boy, we’ll let you know, don’t worry.”
I tell you how it works in my shitty eastern european country:
That’s all. Usually takes less than 5 minutes for the whole process.
This is a joke btw
The most communist part is that the whole process is fully managed by the government tax office, not some 3rd party private company.
The not communist part is that it takes unbelievable amount of corruption to program and maintain these services under the hood. They figured out that it’s hard to measure how much human work needed to develop such a thing, so they can just invoice whatever unbelievable amount they want. American companies help with that as well. Windows and Office license for state offices 3-4 times higher than the normal price for consumers, because for some reason they can’t buy it directly from Microsoft, they have to buy from local appointed dealers… Actually MS was fined for this for USD 8.7 Million, the local party in one of this deal was promoted to higher government position afterwards.
So actually this doesn’t exist for making the peasant’s life easier, just to have jobs to steal from… It’s just accidental that our small life becomes a bit less miserable during the process.
In my shit “third world” country (Brasil) you only need to log in the gov site
Strictly speaking, tax filling software, even the free ones, have simplified it all so much that for people who have a single source of income from work and not a lot of tax forms to collect (most Americans), it’s pretty trivial. Maybe 30-60 minutes, once a year.
Less than ideal but far from the grueling, soul sucking work I was told would plague my adult life when I was a kid.
That’s why the IRS is finally doing their own online filling system. No more making Americans shell out for software, so everyone gets a nice, simple tax season.
Yeah it’s an unpleasant afternoon the majority of which is from the gathering of financial documents not from the math and filling it out. But if you don’t have government form literacy or basic arithmetic skills I imagine the 1040ez still can be rough. My issue with being expected to fill it out is much more connected to the fact that it just sucks to have to do than the fact that it’s difficult. Though also sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass to get your tax statements from a job you quit like a year prior and moved.
I thought it was crazy that the report had entry on how much money I lost with my investments and that was deducted in my taxes. I’ve never told them that I’ve traded stocks and still the tax man knows my money shit better than I do.
In the US, brokerage companies legally have to send you a Form 1099 which covers all investment income over the year. You then include this when submitting your taxes. They probably send a similar report to your government instead.
Finland is basically “File a report if your income changes enough to affect your tax bracket. You’ll be issued a new taxation statement. Send it to the employer. (If unemployed, don’t bother, the agency who pays you already knows.) Your employer/the agency will send the taxes owed to us. You’ll be sent an annual tax proposal - If you have no deductions, you don’t need to do anything, if you do, then it gets mildly interesting. If you get tax returns, you don’t need to do anything if we have your bank details. If you owe us, oh boy, we’ll let you know, don’t worry.”
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