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Damn y'all Americans really do taxes weird
It's because our country is a corporate oligarchy.
Sounds cooler than it is
And it doesn't even sound cool...
Sounds uncool as hell
Not if you're an oligarch.
Americans as a whole are very stupid and don't realize that the overwhelming majority of them can file for free. In fact, 100% of Americans can self-file (for free) if they can handle about an hour of basic paperwork, but for 70% of Americans, you can file taxes for free in less than twenty minutes. It's not hard at all.
But most people would rather Google "how to file taxes," click on the first sponsored link they see, and buy something before they ever actually try to do even a minute of research.
Tbf as a Swede I just log in, glance at the forms, sign and log out. That's what easy is.
I'm not saying that filing in the US takes zero effort whatsoever, but you have some deeper problems if you don't think five questions like "What does Box A on your paper form say?" isn't just as easy.
You're saying, "My car has 500 horsepower. That's what fast is" to a guy with a 499hp car.
It's more like comparing an automatic gearbox to a manual IMO
When I'm crippled by power harassment at the last 5 jobs, 2 of which are current, I just want to sign in and click okay and be done. Or click no and do paperwork, but only if the initial suggestion was incorrect.
if they can handle about an hour of basic paperwork,
People make it out like tax filing is like travelling to Ry'leh and transcribing eldritch runes, but it's made pretty dead simple. Put the number from one box in piece of paper A into the corresponding box in piece of paper B. If it has you do a math, you can just... Do a math. Pull out your calculator and subtract the amount you've paid so far from the amount you owe. Is the result a negative number? Congratulations! You're getting a return! Is the number positive? Oh no! That's how much you need to pay the IRS!
I get that for some people it is significantly more complicated than that, but if you work one job where you make some number of dollars per hour and you don't invest in the stock market or cryptocurrency, it's virtually idiotproof.
People are afraid of trying and making mistakes because the consequences may be severe. When you get into stocks, crypto, homeownership, etc, the forma start piling up. I had a company mess up our taxes one year and correcting it, with a tax professional, took hours.
Canada does this too. Do other countries just tell you? That'd be nice.
My country just tells you.
Yeah. Basically, we get a pre-filled form with most of what can automatically filled in, already filled in. Of course some stuff like donations (which are deductible) and other stuff that are not automatically linked to you have to be added by hand, but for a vast majority of people there is no such thing.
So basically, open the pre-filled form, check that the incomes and your current situation is correct, send it back, then you basically get the amount (which can be either automatically collected through direct debit at a given date, split monthly, or paid manually).
We usually argue about why and how much tax we pay, but I never had any heated discussion about the tax system itself.