Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexTWithBeard | Hacker News Reader

Well, the easy part of tax filing is easy: yes, it's a bit tedious in a sense that you have to copy some stuff from your W2 to 1040, but that's it.

Calculating part time rental property depreciation is complicated, but that's because it IS complicated.

View on HN

Exactly. The ordinary earned income portion of our income is 80% or more of our income and 1-2% of the tax filing burden/complexity.

The imbalance is that it's more like 2% of tax complexity but 80% (made up numbers) of time spent.

Assuming no submission is equivalent to a submission with earned income only (standard in Europe) would save an incredible amount of time.

I think ordinary income is < 5% of the burden (not just complexity). Think about where the time is spent on your own return: it’s not copying 10 numbers from your W-2 or counting your kids, but rather figuring your investment gains/losses, K-1s, Schedule C for your side work or app.

People with only earned income already have a very easy time of it here as well.

The W-2 case with maybe a 1099 and standard deduction is pretty simple. And should probably be even simpler by autofilling a "Here's what we think you owe/are owed" return. But you get into complex returns pretty quickly for the reasons you describe. I don't even have that complex a return and what I got from my accountant was probably a 1/2 inch thick last year.

This isn't true. Lower income people are more likely to work more than one job simultaneously, or to do casual work or a string of jobs, or be 'contractors' than have a single W2 with accurate numbers. Only 20% of taxpayers who qualify for free direct filing use it - mostly because they don't even know it exists. Many Americans are challenged by even the process of completing the form.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com