this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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For many Americans it’s actually pretty simple as long as they’re working with a standard W-2 (form you get from your employer with the year’s wages and taxes and stuff filled out). Many tax prep services will even import these numbers automatically and all you have to do is click through the questions and optional things like if you want to donate your returns to anything or pay estimated taxes for the next year - mostly stuff that most people aren’t concerned with anyway.
Taxes here start getting complicated when you are an independent contractor (you’re responsible for holding out taxes from your income since you don’t have an employer to do it for you) and/or have non-standard sources of income like stocks, shares, real estate holdings, etc. which the IRS may or may not have information on, thus why you need to provide the info.
Most of what has made calculating taxes and paying/getting returns a pain in the ass is tax prep companies like TurboTax lobbying to make and keep the tax filing process a confusing one, with the goal of steering you into paying for the non-free filing options.
I was shocked how easy it was to do my taxes when I was poor (back before the online services even). Just went to the library and spent half an hour filling out a 1040EZ form and dropping it in a mailbox.
It's harder now that I actually have contributions to retirement, back when I owned a house, make considerably more, have two kids and a wife that's going to school, etc. But still took me less than an hour.
And I would argue that if it takes you more than an hour to do taxes, you both should and can afford someone to do taxes for you.
Oh interesting yeah, so doesn't actually sound too complex for most people then.
I'm a little confused about the last part, what are the main differences between paid and free services if it's as simple as you describe with the W-2 form?
The legal requirement for tax prep services like turbo tax to offer free filling is, in true capitalist style, a qualified one. All they’re really required to offer for free is the basic tax return form - Form 1040. Even with a typical W-2 job, you may have additional non-standard forms to fill out, particularly relating to healthcare coverage since here in America, of course that’s tied to your employment.
When you start getting those non-standard forms, tax prep services can start charging you to upgrade to the premium tier that handles those forms for you - your alternative being to file online what you can for free and doing the rest by hand, but being non-standard forms they of course read like stereo instructions so good luck with that.
At first it doesn’t seem that bad - you sigh and say, “Fine, it’s only $32.” But then you get to the last page and find out it’s $32 for each return filed - most Americans file at least 2, federal and state. So now it’s $64. And say you’re in my situation where you live in a city that straddles a state line - many here work in one state but live in another, so that a federal and two state returns. Now we’re up to $96. You want your returns direct deposited to your bank instead of a paper check? Another fee, because fuck trees. So by the time it’s over you’re paying over $100 in essentially convenience fees for the very companies that make tax prep miserable to do it all for you. To make you feel better about it the services will say you’re also getting stuff like audit protection and various other fluff, nothing that really costs them anything to provide.
"Who's doing the audit?"
"You wouldn't believe it"
Yea most of those services are a sham. I use freetaxusa I think it was like 23 bucks to file my state ones and the fed ones are free. They seem to have all the stuff you need for more complicated filings but I have the basic bare minimum.
I used CashApp’s new tax service to file this year. Federal and State were free, took all but a few minutes to complete. Being a new service, they still have filing situations that aren’t covered though - for example, the non-resident status that I mentioned above where you work and live in different states.
The actually free services are out there, they just don’t have the advertising budgets that TurboTax and H&R Block have.
Even then buying and selling stocks, having a 401k, IRA, etc. doesn't even make it complicated. You just have to fill out a 1099-B/DIV/INT and then list your contributions to your retirement accounts.
I don't know why people pretend it's so hard. You spend 30 minutes every year answering a few questions and punching numbers into boxes from a few documents that are sent to you by your broker/bank/employer. It's also only $15 at FreeTaxUSA.
Opening the accounts you report to the IRS is arguably more difficult than filing them on your taxes.
The main point I think is that American taxes aren’t typically difficult, but rather inconvenient - by design of the tax prep companies lobbying to keep it that way.