this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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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.
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."
This is how it works for me. In january the process starts but companies don't have to send you stuff till the end of febuary. In march you can start and look to see if any options are available to do it for free. there are tons but at some point in the process which they often won't auto get things it says woops this piece of paper means not free. Eventually give up and use spreadsheet. Places have to send you paperwork but electronically they can just send you a note saying get it yourself. After filling in the various forms oh and I mean forms because even an ira contribution (thats the conribution you make to live off of in future since the government just does a token thing) can cause you to need to do a schedule even if you are not itemizing (which you need to do if you have a mortgage). Once you have managed to fill it all out and pray you did not miss anything and if you have unfortunately not killed yourself you can send it. If they owe you money you will get it in a month or few or more and if anything is wrong you will find out with a letter that says you know owe all sorts of fees and interest because you did it wrong.
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.
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.
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