Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it.
> Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it.
There are so many duplicate fields and redundant parts in Elster and the pre-fill function is a joke.
In the UK it's a bunch of nicely designed web forms with clear worded explanations what they expect you to fill in the fields.
In Germany it's ... well you can be masochistic and try to use ELSTER webapp which runs only on certain browsers. With explanations like "fill in here any amount if you fall under §223 EKST, 4 II".
So you either get a paid 3rd party software which still isn't the quality of the official UK filling service (somehow Germans have a love for their cryptic explanations directly referencing laws - god forbid someone would use simple and clear explanations) or you pay a professional to do your taxes. Which is what most people do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sca...
I did have to go correct my tax information for 2023. For some reason my work-from-home tax deduction was set manually to 900€ instead of the full 920€ that I'm allowed. Hopefully now my 2023 tax filings will be correct.
It is as if the EU wanted to regulate mobile phone roaming charges by offering a tax rebate on your phone bill, which it then used to calculate a penalty that is added to the phone companies corporation tax bills. There is no federal EU tax bill passed on to citizens of course but if there were you might continue to have your payroll taxes go to your country’s government but you could then submit your phone bills to the federal EU government to get money back from any tax they levy on you. They’d have to levy it in the first place but to avoid unfairness they offset it against anything your state takes, first.
At the other end of the spectrum, some city funding is done via income taxes. That seems a lot more equitable than, say, the UK where you pay a rate based on the value of the building your landlord bought. Because it’s an income tax though, and because double taxation is anathema to any voter, it too must be used to offset state and federal income tax.
In a way it would be a lot easier if each entity could just stick to one kind of tax. Maybe city funding via property tax, state funding via income tax, and federal funding via corporation tax. The power of federal government is restricted via the tenth amendment, so it’s always going to try to end run states rights via the only means it has — your tax form. That seems unlikely to change. Also I’m not sure my off-the-cuff idea of having the federal government answer only to corporations (via corporation tax) is a very good one, but it is a good example at least of how the machinations of taxation, if not the politics, might be easier if things were picked apart.
To give some idea for our not-American friends, here's a very general, far too simplified gist of how the tax system is laid out:
* Federal taxes, overseen by the IRS.
* State taxes, separate and independent from Federal taxes and overseen by the governments of each State.
* County taxes, mostly separate and independent from State taxes and overseen by each county's government.
* Municipal taxes, mostly separate and independent from County taxes and overseen by each municipality.
Taxpayers need to file their taxes with the IRS (Federal), their State, their County, and if applicable their Municipality. No, these taxes are not handled together in the bureaucratic machine (for good reason; individual rights and all that).
The reasons for the complexity are rooted in how the United States is structured politically, where having certain rights and freedoms at each level of governance is a very big deal.
All of the various tax collection agencies already manage to do all the work necessary to determine my tax bill. They do it every year.
As far as income taxes, the state income taxes have always been pretty simple for me. City even simpler, and I've lived place with and without them. Most of the complexity is federal (although in part because state and city take the income from the federal as their starting point). But that's enough! And sure, adding more on top doesn't help.
The federal taxes keep adding complexity, even for people with relatively simple situations. It's true for low-wage earners who don't have many assets, federal taxes can be... relatively simple. Maybe as simple as European ones. I dunno, it's a mess.
Consider a scenario where I have £100 and decide to start a business as a self-employed individual. I invest £100 in inventory, but only manage to sell it for £100, resulting in zero profit. Under your hypothetical tax system, the tax authority would demand (let's say) 20% of my revenue, which amounts to £20. However, I don't have £20 to pay since I made no profit. Consequently, I am now £20 in debt to the state and essentially penalized for trying.
For a self-employed person, or a company, profit is analogous to an employed person's salary. Both represent the net flow of money or disposable income resulting from business activities or employment. This is why self-employed individuals and companies are taxed based on their profit, while employed persons are taxed on their salary.
Moreover, your use of the term "subsidy" is incorrect. A subsidy implies that the government provides financial support. In the case of a loss, the government does not send money to the individual or company. Instead, they simply refrain from taxing them, which is not a subsidy.
Note also in this example that in investing my £100, I likely generated tax revenue for the government through taxes on sales, salary, and profits on those who I bought from. So even though I paid no income tax, my activity still resulted in positive tax flows.
Finally let's imagine another example - simplified but makes a point. A grocery shop receives $1000 from customers selling bread. It bought the bread for $900 from a baker. The baker paid $850 for the flour from a mill. The mill paid $800 for the corn from a farmer. The farmer paid $750 for fertilier. In this example each entity recieves revenue, but a large portion of that money is passed on to the next entity where it is taxed again. By taxing the same money again and again even when it has already been taxed in a previous stage, the cumulative tax burden becomes higher and higher the longer the supply chain. With a long supply chain it could even exceed the total money in circulation. Mathematically, taxing revenue just doesn't make sense.
Then you wait for your updated tax return later in the year, which would automatically combine self-employed earnings, wages, investments, debts, tax deductions due to paying for childcare, etc... I normally have to spend 10-15 minutes to correct that if something like a travel calculation for my employer is wrong.
The US was a weird model where they ask you to resubmit the same information they already have in hope you will declare more income than they know about.
In part, because the US taxes you on your global income, not only your US income, which means that there will be income they won't know about unless you declare it.
For the majority of people that only have income from salary, it's an unreasonable burden and Intuit has lobbied the government so that it continues to be a burden.
I would prefer that they quietly recognize that their time is up and die with whatever dignity they might have left.
Sooo... the IRS knows that you installed solar panels last year and will be taking an energy credit for them? They know how much bitcoin you sold? How much mortgage interest you'll be deducting? The strike price of the stock options you exercised in your private company, and their current fair market value?
There's a bajillion variables that go into filing a tax return, and only you are the one that knows all of them, and sometimes not even then! This idea that the government "already knows" how much you owe in taxes is a complete fiction.
The US already has pre-filled forms, the interface for the "pre fill" button is just a bit convoluted.
It is a strong incentive to not lie on your taxes
This is a remarkably consistent topic that most of the populace agrees on, and is only at all difficult because of this lobbying.