this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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How taxes are dealt with in North America. Just send me how much I owe. Don't have me go through a service to figure it out
Exactly
Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don't make me jump through hoops when I'm already destitute, come on.
This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.
And save trillions of dollars, especially if we extended this to Medicare for all
But using resources efficiently isnβt the goal, suffering is!
If Democrats actually wanted to win every election from now until forever, this would do it for them. Imagine worrying how you're going to feed your kids and then the mail arrives "BTW you've qualified for food stamps for the last 18 months, here they are" instant loyal voter.
But they won't
Materially improving people's lives is authoritarianism sweaty it needs to be balanced against legalizing violence against marginalized people
You largely have intuit/turbotax/quickbooks/mailchimp/whatever other name they use for that process. Or at least the paying for it part
Intuit is the sole reason our taxes are so obtuse. They lobby for it to be this way.
Not the sole reason. They play a part, same with H&R Block, but it's more the people working for the ultra-wealthy who keep bribing politicians to create laws that allow their clients to avoid paying taxes. The companies that have tax software for the small people benefit from the tax system getting more complex, but they don't directly lobby for those rules, they just want any kind of complexity. Their big fight is against any kind of free tax preparation for the poor and middle class.
It's pretty disgusting what they do though. They make say $20 from someone filing their taxes. They take say $3 from that $20 and spend it to ensure that their customers are never offered a free alternative. They're basically making their customers pay to lobby the government to keep taxes so complex that the customer has no choice but to use them again next year.
That's absolutely not the case. They lobby to prevent the IRS making their own version of TurboTax, not lobbying to make the tax code more complex. Taxes are complex because we have little real oversight but a lot of deductions and credits. The IRS literally cannot track everything they offer deductions for, so it goes largely on the honor system until something seems fishy.
If you have a house, you have deductions. If you added solar to your house, you have deductions. If you bought an electric car or a hybrid, you had deductions for a while there. If you rent you have deductions in some states. You have to list your dependents for credits.
The IRS is incapable of tracking all of this.
But like I feel like this system of deduction taxes is more difficult than any other country and it reinforces the need for americans to use software or an accountant. Am I wrong? Are other countries putting up with this shit? The biden admin is the first in my lifetime to give us credits rather than a rebate or deductible.
That's... Not at all true. There has been a child tax credit for decades. EV credits have existed for quite some time.
And yeah, other countries have some, but iirc they do it because they already track everything for VAT purposes, so it's just an extension of that.
I should have used more precise language. There's so much jargon! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_tax_credit_(United_States) To my understanding this is the first time it's ever been paid directly "in advance" rather than served as a credit against your tax payments, awarding money at the end of the year - or even worse when it was non-refundable. This in advance, far higher amount, fully refundable child tax credit is fucking radical compared to what we had and what we're going back to.
But that's only really makes sense in like the simplest of cases. The government doesn't know if you had a kid this year, or maybe you bought an EV, or maybe you started renting out a room in your home.
If all you have is a single W2 income; then by all means go to your local library, grab a 1040-EZ form, fill it out, and drop it in the mail. Will probably only take you 10 minutes or less.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid. That being said, most things they have a pretty good idea about (or could) and they could easily adopt the system that they do in a lot of other countries where the government sends to a tax form all filled out that says, βwe think you owe this much.β Then you just provide the exemptions you listed.
This would save a considerable amount of time when I file my taxes by just being able to double check they got cost basis correct on stocks sold and applied appropriate credits for mortgage interest and what not.
How would the IRS know that? The only way I could think of would be the Social Security department sharing the information with the IRS; and are they legally allowed to do that? But let's even say that's true; if the parents aren't married and filing jointly, who gets to claim the child as a dependent? That's a decision made by the parents (or local courts in case of custody battles), so not something the IRS would decide.
Basically what it seems to boil down to is that filing taxes is complicated because the tax law is complicated.
I was assuming social security could share that information since now thereβs a new taxable citizen. The IRS could easily prepare tax amounts assuming married filing jointly, married filing separately, and single. You would just choose one. And like it currently is, if both people attempt to claim dependency, someone gets slapped with a fine.
Tax law is absolutely complicated, and I definitely wonβt deny that, but the IRS can make things easier and could do the basic filings.
They don't share that information unless absolutely necessary. All government agencies hold their cards pretty close to themselves for legal and liability reasons. The IRS will complain that you've both claimed a dependent because you have to include that dependent's information and they can tell when you both try to claim the same one
HAHAHA yah, they donβt know those things about youβ¦..sureβ¦β¦
You seem to have a very optimistic view of the efficiency of governments. I mean the IRS is basically running on a budget of table scraps after being defunded for decades.
It's not "governments", it's the "US government". Here in Europe, it just works.
It was more a statement about data mining. Itβs cheap and easy and the government 100% does it
Maybe, and I really do mean maybe someone has a record somewhere that you have a child. That doesn't mean it is shared with the IRS.
That's my thinking.
Every large organization, private or public, that I've interacted has been basically just a bunch of different people in many different silos. I'm surprised to see so many people have this "well oiled machine" perspective of the government where apparently it is all seeing and all knowing.
So offer it for simple cases. If you don't like the way it's done, you can always go and do the simple process you're describing
Sure, that would be simple enough for them to mail you a letter with like "we're aware of these incomes from these employers" and any failure to file additional income on your part makes you liable. And of course not filing to claim any credits/deductions on your part just screws your out of your own money.
But then that also assumes the IRS knows your address. Does your employer even report your address when your taxes are withheld from your paycheck? And what if you move in the time between then?
I would be very surprised if they didn't know the address of every taxpayer, and I do believe it's reported by the companies you work for. If you move, you can fill out a change of address form with the postal service today, which makes the new address generally available. If they really don't have any way of knowing currently, it would be worth every penny of my taxes to just make an online portal available where you can enter that information yourself.
Pretty sure it was sarcasm.
They didn't have my new address until I filed my taxes with my new address.
Yes they do. See, scandinavian countries.
Okay but RIGHT NOW they don't know. Sure it's possible for them to track it, but they do not, and the infrastructure isn't set up to do that.
Okay. I concede to your point, Ithink you're more correct than I was.