Comment by Snild | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Snild | Hacker News Reader

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Nope. Here in Sweden, your employer reports your pay to the tax authorities, and deducts your tax from every paycheck. Banks report your capital gains and losses.

In March or April, everyone gets sent their pre-filled tax form for the previous year. You can change it as needed, for example adding income from a side hustle, or making deductions -- though those are fewer and less complicated than the US from what I understand. Many common deductions (e.g. for mortgage interest) will be pre-filled too.

Most people will not need to change anything, and so can approve the pre-filled form through text message or digital signature (or phone robot for old people iirc). If you do need to make changes, it can be (but doesn't have to be) done online without too much trouble. Don't get me wrong, it's not always trivial, but it seems significantly more pleasant than what I hear about the US system. And, again, the vast majority of people just have to send a text message some time in March or April.

" Nope. Here in Sweden, your employer reports your pay to the tax authorities, and deducts your tax from every paycheck. Banks report your capital gains and losses."

It's literally IDENTICAL in USA yet there's a hellscape come tax time. The IRS already has all th e info they need and know the amount. Lobbyists (intuit & H&R block) have made it worse for decades. Crazy isn't it?

Sweden has the mortgage interest deduction too? I wonder how wide spread that is. I thought that was a US financing lobby invention sold under the guise of the "American Dream of Home Ownership."

My understanding (based on no research at all) is that it was introduced here for a similar reason: "homeownership is good". And it probably is.

But I don't know if the deduction helps with that. People buy what they can afford, so the "discount" is probably consumed by higher interest rates and inflated prices. It can also be argued that it's a form of regressive taxation: the rich are eligible for bigger mortgages, and therefore have more to gain from the policy.

Personally, I would like to see it removed. Any serious attempt to do that it's probably political suicide, though, since it would have a noticeable impact on many people's finances. And who knows how it would affect the housing market. Maybe if it was done gradually over many years.

The Netherlands have been passing various restrictions on mortgage interest reductions over the past few years. Many are phased in over 30 years.

With the current interest rates it's an ideal time to pass any tax changes anyway - they won't hit new mortgages nearly as hard as 10 years ago, and the housing prices can use some downward pressure anyway.

Sounds like heaven compared to the expensive, overly-complex hell of the US system.

I mean, people still prefer to not have to interact with the tax authorities, so maybe heaven is a bit of an overstatement. And I have no personal experience with the US system. But yeah, I sure wouldn't want to switch. :)

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