Hacker News Reader

Ah yes. Good to know that it’s not just the TSA i should dislike. I’m reminded of the line Logan Roy uses on Succession, something along the lines of “when i arrived in America there was nothing these people couldn’t do. Now they’ve pissed it all away”. Feels like it’ll be hard to see the US continue to be a major player unless it can get out of its own away at some point.

Can you name some countries you think are "major players" if the US isn't or won't be?

>it’s not just the TSA i should dislike.

You should try interacting with Australian or Canadian border forces if you want to see a true organization you should dislike. Hard to see Australia or Canada being even minor players if they can't deal with that dysfunction.

UK, China, Canada…uh there’s lots?

I’m both Australian and Canadian, so maybe I’m bias but comparing them to the TSA is a stretch imo.

Linguists might study that intro to see how much passive aggression you can fit in one sentence...

I think when being passive aggressive starts to harm readability, maybe you should just say what you're trying to say.

I was a US person with an ITIN and have become a naturalized citizen. ITINs are very different to SSN. Honestly I've found the USA very easy to deal with compared to the UK, France of South Africa where I've lived.

The challenge with an ITIN is it blurs into immigration, visa status, whether you are violating visa terms, whether your ITIN - which you can get on a tourist visa - is an indication that you're trying to build a life here when you're just supposed to be a tourist, and so on. That doesn't even get into property ownership, or being a director or shareholder in a US corporation with an ITIN and various visa types.

Sorry, I'm not blurring my ITIN with immigration status or whatever. I have not visited the US since 2004, I have no desire to return, and I have not done any business there since 2002.

I just want an ITIN that is, like, actually in my name. Plus the IRS to agree that I do not owe any taxes in the 20-or-so ITINs that they have issued in various misspelled variations of my name.

But yeah, to get any clarity, I apparently need to go to Austin, Texas, in 2020.

And time machines are "easy to deal with", apparently?

As someone who uses his middle name, I've experienced only the tiniest bit of what you've gone through, but I can imagine your annoyance.

It's amazing how massive systems often have no viable process for "As an end user, some of the data in the system is incorrect, and I would like to get it corrected."

Once it's in the system via the setup process, it's there. And most people down the line working with it don't even know what system it's originally coming from.

Edit: F.ex. if someone lied about their age when getting their Social Security # (this before issue-at-birth, so it had to be applied for in person), so as to be considered old enough to work, and then decades later wanted to set the record straight to avoid collecting benefits at too young an actual age, they would probably be told by a Social Security employee that doing so was more trouble than it was worth. ... Hypothetically speaking.

Sounds like there’s a lot more to your story than you’ve shared here.

Thanks for the passive-aggressive accusation there!

So, what more is there, exactly, to my story? My name is pretty simple, but, like many European names, has 3 parts, as well as some 'unexpected' letter combinations.

As far as I know, you can only request an ITIN by phone. Possibly, this can also be done online now, but that wasn't the case in the 1999-2009 period that I'm talking about here.

Also, the person that answers the phone... how do I say this? Is not exactly fluent in English... Or Spanish (which I can at least spell my name in as well)... Or any human language?

So, you get a new ITIN, with a random ASCII string as a name. And, to file a valid tax form, your ITIN needs to match your name... Which you provide in a PDF.

See where the problem lies here? You want me to upload a few scans of US government letters/forms with my actual name horribly misspellt? You want to see my attorney invoices? Certified PDFs only, I assume?

What, exactly, is the burden of proof you place upon me here?

> Honestly I've found the USA very easy to deal with compared to the UK, France of South Africa where I've lived.

???

France as a foreigner:

You arrive in the country, your employer already declares all taxes for you. While you may not have a tax ID to log in to impots.gouv.fr yet, everything is already registered in your name (because you gave either your SSN, or your visa number, or anything else). You send a letter to ask for a username/password to use to log in on the website, which arrives about two weeks later.

Your taxes are collected monthly, and at the end of the year you pay the leftover/get paid what you overpaid. You can tell the state at any point how much you think you will earn, and it gets reevaluated. Your yearly tax filing is prefilled, and there's no need for any software.

As an employer, the URSSAF website is, while hell to navigate, very clear in how much you owe. Give out your SIRET/SIREN, your tax report, and your taxes are done.

To be fair, there are some small hurdles - you get issued a temporary SSN quickly, but it might take some time and documents ( like an original of your birth certificate less than 6 months old in French, or translated in France by an authorised translator which is a retarded thing to ask for and for which I've had to explain many obvious things to many French officials - they simply do not have the right to ask for that, any EU country's translation is acceptable by law), but it's fine. You don't even need the regular SSN for taxes or healthcare, actually.

Ah yes, the birth certificate thing is... impressive. Especially when it's being asked for someone coming from a country where you simply cannot update your birth certificate. France and inflexibility, especially in small mayor's offices are just standard.

And yeah, the SSN isn't necessary. It is however usable for SSO through ameli.fr, for your taxes and many other services.

The fundamental issue here is that there is no meaningful voice of expats in the US, so any attempt to fight a system which wants your money, no matter where you are and make them, in the world, is prone to failure. The only real option is to renounce citizenship.

> The IRS system is, by far, the worst I've ever had to deal with

That's by design

> That's by design

It actually is, too. There are two large, influential groups of stakeholders who purposefully lobby for a painful user experience.

The first, of course, is the tax-prep industry (e.g. Intuit/TurboTax and H&R Block). They make more money when people get fed up with bullshit and pay someone else to deal with it.

The second is the anti-tax activists. If taxes exist, they want the process of taxation to be painful. Not just in terms of the dollar amount. They want people to have an active and visceral reaction to taxes. As such, they lobby against anything streamlining taxes and push for the process to be as high-friction and frustrating as possible.

I used TurboTax for the first time recently so I could file taxes to get my ACP discount for cheap Internet for poor people. I needed to file a $0 tax return, but where I received stimulus payments. Their system just got stuck in a horrible loop because I was in some weird edge case. Their first "expert" was terribly rude to me. Luckily the second guy was super nice and we hacked away at the UI until we found a way out. tl;dr: TurboTax is as clunky as the IRS

The byzantine rules exist to create deductions and loopholes for different interest groups. Raising the standard deduction was actually a good move, as it simplified my tax filing for sure (I don't bother to itemize now) -- but I imagine the tax preparation industry (amongst others) was not pleased.

Yes, but WHY?

I mean, I'm happy to pay my US taxes. Heck, I'm even happy to pay someone to pay my US taxes. But... neither of those options seem to work?

I mean, just to back to Rwanda: it's an east-African country that is pretty much a dictatorship and had a real-life genocide less than 20 years ago.

Yet, in Rwanda, I can just use my native cell phone number as my tax identifier, pay then what I need to pay, and be done with it.

In the US, I am probably known under a dozen ITINs, and literally none of that is my fault: it's just that the IRS agents that created those ITINs were unaware of, like, any spelling alphabet ever. Even ITINs created using a fax (that's a TIFF-over-POTS, for you millennials) got completely misspelled.

And now I'm supposed to spend tens of thousands of dollars to prove I've paid my taxes?

OK, now I now the answer to my initial question...

There are some groups who oppose effectively all taxes and seek to make paying tax as hard as possible so that other people will agree with them that taxes are a pain. For example see Americans for Tax Reform working to torpedo California’s push to simplify state taxes a few years back.

You also have corporate interests that profit from convoluted tax filing and lobby the government to keep it confusing so individuals continue to use their products.

OK, I understand that some/many Americans dislike paying taxes. I do not exactly like it either.

But, it seem like a particular US infliction to make paying taxes as hard as possible? Plus, they sanction you in extreme ways if you don't manage to jump through all the hoops?

I pay taxes in many jurisdictions. Here is my experience: Netherlands (my home country): the tax authorities send me a proposal about payable taxes. This includes income from my business, my partner's job, our common investments, and some investments/business interests that are exclusive to me. I correct whatever is required (with the deadline being April 1st), and I'll get my final settlement sometime in June/July.

Germany/France: I provide the tax authorities with my Dutch tax identification number, and they confirm they're fine with that in 3-4 months time. Rwanda, Nigeria and Zimbabwe: I also provide my native tax details (sometimes using my mobile number, sometimes using my NL 'SSN'), and they're fine with that, sometimes after billing me a small percentage over some income.

US: I honestly have non idea where I stand. The IRS refuses to talk to me, yet summons me to physical meetings in the past that I cannot legally attend. I have hired several attorneys, none of which seem to be able to help.

I probably owe several HUNDREDS of dollars in US tax. I've not visited the US since 2004, and have not done any business there since 2002.

Yet... I'm apparently a much-wanted tax fugitive in the US. Does that count on a FAANG-inbound resume?

Is it possible to sue for conspiring to make life purposely difficult? For example if I interfere with someone's lawful use / enjoinment of their property it is a low level criminal offence. Should not that be the same for making / conspiring the life difficult for the purpose of extorting money?

At this point the IRS is completely confusing as to understanding whether they've received things. I've seen a non-profit where the IRS was sending them a request for what the letter said was an unfiled annual return, while at the same time, the IRS had the processed annual return they were requesting publicly available on their own website. This is without identifying number confusion. I can't imagine what it would be like with that.

I have to assume that they have some serious database problems that they are completely unable to handle, likely because of staffing and budget cuts that appear to have been intended to cripple them.