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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Why do I even have to do anything? Just take it from my paycheck directly

The IRS is not actually a godly being that has omniscient knowledge of every transaction that ever goes on and in the future.

How is the IRS supposed to figure out how much money to take away from your W2 when you could get a billion dollar windfall at the end of the year and massively change tax bracket?

By following the model that Spain and other countries follow: take the information they know (which is basically everything since anything meaningful is reported), calculate it, send you what they think you owe, and you either pay it as is or you file taxes manually.

If you have a standard 1 job W2, that is... literally what already happens, except even with less steps, since they already took the money out of my paycheck.

The 1 job W2 literally takes 15 minutes to fill out if so, and it is pretty much signing off that you didn't make a million dollars on the side that the IRS doesn't know about.

Except in the US you still have to file your taxes. They might be the simplest to do, but you still have to. Which typically means people end up using turbotax etc, and paying for the product.

Spain's equivalent is basically 'we know you have a kid and this income so here you so. just sign on the dotted line'

In the US you do not need to file if you are confident you don’t owe the IRS money, or if they owe you money and you don’t want the hassle to get it back. If you are able to setup withholdings to exactly match what you owe there is no reason to file. I have skipped filing a few times.

You are still supposed to file if you make over a certain (low) amount of money.

The US federal government (and particularly the IRS) doesn't know what kids you do or don't have.

Millions of American kids vanished when the IRS decided that to claim a kid you must provide a valid SSN. [1]

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/declaration-of-non-depende....

Considering they basically do this for the simplest tax forms: why are we supposed to assume Spain has a better system again? Is this just the typical “European = better” stance so prevalent online?

> Is this just the typical “European = better” stance so prevalent online?

Yes and is often the case, fully justified.

When it's the time to file taxes, you go to a government website that tells you all it knows about you - inheritances, donations, salaries, etc etc. You can add stuff if you want (e.g. special deductions), but for most people it's a matter of next next OK Finished. On a government website everyone knows (that send you a letter/email to remind you it's time), for free, and works for everyone regardless of complexity. Contrast that with the US where tou have to provide all the information yourself, but first you have to find filing software that you sometimes have to pay for (either because of your situation or because you were tricked by dark patterns).

It's honestly weird. Nobody likes taxes, that's why they should be as easy as possible to file and pay. The American model of adding middlemen for their benefit is going directly against that for no good reason.

While tax filing in the US might be more Byzantine, I’m happy with the trade off of paying lower taxes, relative to most countries with such streamlined taxes.

Put differently, if I’m paying very high tax rates, of course I’ll be doubly pissed off if it is also arduous to file.

The tax rates are comparable between the US and many EU countries, all things included. Yes, your sales tax is much lower than the usual 20% (for some things, often lower for essentials) VAT; your income tax might be lower in some cases, but when most people in the EU talk about "taxes" and "tax rates", healthcare plan costs are included in that, as well as pensions. When Americans talk about "taxes" and "tax rates", your premiums, deductibles and etc. aren't, and it's up to each individual to save money for retirement. According to some online sources the median tax rate is comparable between the the US and the OECD median for Europe.

And you also have non-insignificant property taxes.

You’re one of the people happy with no universal healthcare as well I bet

Except that’s not “the trade off.” As been discussed many a time on HN, companies like Intuit lobby the government to keep it full of friction.

I mean, Europe is indeed better for so many things, maybe you should travel a little?

You can do it with the IRS if you want.

I had a friend who barely filled out a 1040, sent it in and the IRS sent back a “corrected” 1040.

Of course I wouldn’t trust the IRSs numbers but if you pay it, you’re done.

> The IRS is not actually a godly being that has omniscient knowledge of every transaction that ever goes on and in the future.

For the majority of people they have complete knowledge of everything you are going to report. If you don't believe this its easy to test: file your taxes with omissions and see how quickly they contact you to let you know you messed up.

There should absolutely be an option where you just tell the IRS to figure it out based on electronic reports that are already being reported to them from your employer's payroll system and other sources and have it just show you a summary that you checkmark (or override if you're one of the minority that has an exceptional case).

This is basically what things like TurboTax do for most people, most users rarely enter much of anything, the data is pulled from databases that have the same data that was already forwarded to the IRS. But of course there's a fairly substantial price for this 'convenience' when it should be built into the federal tax system and free for everyone to use as it is in some other countries.

What's stopping this from being the norm isn't the small percentage of exceptional cases but rather lobbying from Intuit, etc.

I put in my social security number upon accepting that windfall, and the lottery forwards it to the IRS?

Now you need to convince Americans to hand out their SSN.

A windfall doesn't change the tax brackets for what you made in your W2 though. Each bracket is fixed for various ranges of your income. The windfall in your example would be in it's own tax bracket unaffecting everything before it. And I'm pretty sure the windfall would be reported to them too. So yeah, they would already know. Your example isn't accurate.

When I lived in the UK and in France I never had to fill anything.

They do, but then this is an annual reconciliation in case you had other income, or things changed, etc.

Not every source of income for folks is from a W2 payroll. Lots of 1099 stuff out there and other complexities people can get involved in. It’s interesting the complexity of the tax law imposes that complexity on everyone just about.

Jobs. With all the extra paperwork, we can create "jobs" and pay ourselves on the back. I agree, i've already paid my taxes why am I spending time/money to get my own money back?

This is how it works in most countries across the pond...

Only works in the UK this way if you earn less than £100k.

Canada forces most people to file a return too. Though it’s simpler than a US return.

There’s no limits on the UK tax system. It’s always automatic and free as long as you aren’t self employed.

> You’ll also need to do a Self Assessment tax return.

https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates/income-over-100000

> Only works in the UK this way if you earn less than £100k.

I mean that puts you in the top 1% here...

Agreed, but people won't hate paying their taxes if it isn't a tortuous process.

Considering the IRS doesn't even have access to things like cost-basis for capital gains, no way I'd trust them to complete it correctly. They'll likely just assume best case scenario for them (and worst for you).

That hasn't been the case for me. I end up owing come tax time every year, and yet every time, after having paid what is owed, months later they give me a small refund anyways. Now I know where I can save money on my taxes, and I've done it before, but it's the savings are so small that it's not even worth the time doing. Yet, it's about what they give me in the refund. Why didn't they just keep it, especially given it's such a small amount?

How do you know the IRS is calculating it right?

It doesn't matter, as it's not evidence for them choosing the "best case scenario" for themselves. The best case would of been them just keeping an overpayment, and never refunding me anything. And besides, I have double checked the calculations before, and it's basically what they gave me (minus rounding cents to nearest dollar in each calculation).

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