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On your own. (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Source - Design Thinking! Comic

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

If the USA didn’t have such a complicated tax system

For 95% of the public, its not complicated. Its just getting all the independent pieces of information from different private agencies.

W2 from employer
1098 from your mortgage company
1099 from your retirement account firm
Prove you have health insurance
Prove you have student debts
Prove you have a small business and you've tracked your receipts
Prove you have children
Prove you paid taxes to your state

Once you have all the numbers lined up, its simple arithmetic. Easy for a computer to do.

But knowing who to ask for all the individual chunks of data is an obnoxious chore that only one organization does particularly well. And that organization - the IRS - won't tell you the information they have. They want you to guess and tell them what you have, so they can tell you if you got it right or not.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And that organization - the IRS - won’t tell you the information they have. They want you to guess and tell them what you have, so they can tell you if you got it right or not.

This really needs to be fixed.

In Australia, the stuff the government knows about you gets prefilled in the tax return form. Not as good as other countries where the entire thing is completed for you, but better than the USA. The form is significantly shorter than the US one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

but better than the USA

When the bar is "You get nothing. Zero. Goose-egg." its fairly easy to clear.

The form is significantly shorter than the US one.

A big part of the US tax game is giving you a relatively high base rate and then sending you hunting for deductions and credits. One of the upshots of the Trump Tax Cut has been to raise the standard deduction so high that most of those deductions and credits are worthless. So the form is deceptively long. It's almost impossible to use your Schedule A for anything anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

In the USA, you can download your tax transcript at will from the IRS, and it includes all information they have. Commenter you’re replying to is underinformed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just reading that gave me a headache. In Latvia, heres how the system works.

If you have no deductible spending (medical, education, donations).:

Log into the govt system.
Press a button to generate tax form.
Press verify and submit.
Pay what you owe or wait for the tax return.

If you have deductible info

As before but also scan your receipts, and add the info on each receipt to the form. Can done easily via an app, which handily (sometimes correctly) can autofill the needed info. You can do this at any point in time, so you can do it whenever you get a deductible receipt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

As before but also scan your receipts, and add the info on each receipt to the form. Can done easily via an app, which handily (sometimes correctly) can autofill the needed info. You can do this at any point in time, so you can do it whenever you get a deductible receipt.

I'm so envious!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

they will definitely tell you, just go online and download your tax transcript – it contains all reported information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Its not quite that simple, because you need to know what a "tax transcript" is and also set yourself up with a new kind of ID that I'd never heard of before today.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript

Not exactly front-facing on the website, which is itself not exactly easy to navigate.