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Comment by cuuupid | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article but it sounds like all the author had to do was schedule an appointment and wait 30min.

Also the conclusion is discouraging: rather than make self payment easier, the IRS easily has the information available to estimate and deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an easy online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this for good reason, because with TurboTax you still have to input information and calculate taxes whereas with the IRS they have the data available already.

The conclusion I drew from this article is the most annoying and tedious part of this process was manually calculating taxes well in advance, which I’d be willing to bet took significantly longer than the commute to the IRS office + 30 minute wait.

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The article mentions that they were "lucky" because in many places throughout the country, the physical location they would have needed to visit would have no available appointments until after taxes were due. Further, it wasn't a 30 minute appointment, it was a 30 minute appointment made well in advance, after which they (illegally?) _refused refused cash payment_, followed by another 30 minute appointment a week later. Except it wasn't timeboxed to 30 minutes because they didn't bother to tell them (or didn't know) how long it would take to make this simple transaction. Notice your options are to 1) have a bank or 2) use non-traditional digital means which all charge some form of "convenience fee" or 3) suffer major hassle to pay cash without surcharge.

Conversely, in many locations throughout the country (Fargo, ND being one of them), you can walk into the IRS building without an appointment and converse directly with an agent who will happily take cash, almost every day. They didn't want to go somewhere else, so if cost them just over a week in process. There are costs to living in bureaucratic hotspots.

It's not illegal to travel large distances within the USA while carrying large amounts of cash. But it is extremely risky to do so because it can be seized by any number of law enforcement agencies and will leave you with little to no recourse on getting it back.

Somehow, law enforcement seems to be aware of when a large cash withdraw was made recently. The only time I was ever asked during a traffic stop, "are you carrying with you a large amount of cash" was about a week after I withdrew $12k from my bank account (and signed a buttload of forms for the privilege).

Fargo ND may be one of the least accessible cities in the continental US relative to where people actually live. I assume they at least have an airport but it’s still going to be an all day trip, probably overnight, from where I live.

Remote areas don’t get a lot of foot traffic isn’t very helpful.

Well, unless you live in Fargo or Moorehead, Minnesota. Anyway, I presume that the IRS office is staffed in proportion to the local population.

With multiyear budget shortfalls and high costs of living in major bureaucratic hotspots? I doubt this very much. That might be a goal, but probably not one that is regularly achieved.

You will notice that much of the de-facto mission of government for the past ~50 years has been to replace a given institutional function, for which there is a clear and attainable path to effective implementation for the good of the public, with a private middleman who may or may not be friends with/former colleagues of/funding the election campaign of an interested politician or bureaucrat (or to prevent the reversion thereof). You may argue that this is somehow more cost-effective or efficient, but it's happening all the same. So much energy is invested in the great battles involved in this mission that we have no time or funding to address the new and pressing dilemmas which as-of-yet have no solutions, public or private.

You think making it convenient to pay the IRS in cash would cost society less than the transaction fees from banks or money orders or whatever?

I sure don't.

Making the calculation part tedious is as shifty as it can be. The cash part might be a tad more reasonable though.

For context, other countries are also progressively nudging people away from cash, or any in person payment means really. France gov will straight refuse any payment above 300E at the tax office, be it by cash, check or credit card. The goal I assume is straight up to simplify their operation, as there's no middle-men, and they otherwise do serious efforts to make it easy for the tax payer.

Just want to reinforce, probably the euro does not, but all US currency contains the phrase "this note legal tender for all debts, public and private" which indicates that the IRS must accept cash, they can't refuse it.

The “private” part of that is not enforceable. Though I’d personally love if it was so I could buy a cup of coffee at an airport in 2023 without using an app or credit card.

yes, the private part of that is enforceable, but it says "debt". So, a retailer can say "no cash" but if you somehow are in debt to a retailer (say for example that you already ate the meal at the restaurant), you are allowed to settle your debt with cash, all debts, public and private. If they try take you to court or try to press charges, if you're waving cash, they are out of luck.

I don’t think buying a cup of coffee counts as paying a debt. Could a private debt collector legally refuse cash? (I’ve always presumed they couldn’t)

The debt is created when you order the coffee and they confirm your order.

No. You don’t owe anything until the coffee is in your hand.

Or until they cancel the transaction.

If you order the coffee, they say “okay that’ll be $2.87”, and you try to pay with cash, they can cancel the order. Poof, no debt.

Now if they drop the check at your table after you’ve enjoyed the cup of coffee, it’s different IMO.

But if they made it clear at the time of ordering that they didn’t accept cash, then a customer who orders knowing that’s the only payment medium they have would presumably be the one breaching the contract when they weren’t able to pay? I guess the remedy to that would be to create a debt, but I’d also presume that could also include any other damages incurred by the coffee vendor for facilitating the cash payment.

The debt doesn't vanish, you've just transferred it back to the company. They aren't making coffee without cost.

They're free to waive your debt rather than accept payment.

No, the debt is still there as they've paid for the beans, staff, processing etc.

They'd temporarily moved their debt onto you and now had to accept it back again. But it hasn't gone away.

Yes it is gone, it's considered a loss.

Aren't there safeguards around that notion ?

For instance, someone should probably be barred from paying a personal debt of 1000 dollars in 1 cent coins. I couldn't google my way through the US code, for illustration this is the Singapore limits:

https://www.mas.gov.sg/currency/circulation-currency/accepti...

Unsurprisingly France also has rules on what limits can be set on accepting cash:

https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10999#...).

I have a family member that works for a county court and they've had court ordered payments paid with a wheelbarrow of pennies before. Made the person count out the entire thing before accepting it.

Hmm. It is pretty easy to file for an extension, which would I guess put you past the busy time for the office. Although I guess one would want to double check and make sure they don’t end up with some penalties.

Even with a filing extension, you still have to pay what you owe on time or face penalties and interest.

Do you technically need a bank? You should be able to head to the post office or Walmart and pay with a money order.

Money orders are $1000 maximum, and they have fee of $2.40, so you might need to pay couple of dollars extra depending on how much you owe.

You can pay for things with multiple money orders. I used to pay my rent this way.

Tangentially, if you use USPS money orders, it has a fun side effect of making any fraud carried out with money orders, i.e. buying something on Craigslist, into a federal crime. Which is investigated by USPIS (United states postal inspection service).

He didn’t tell us how much he spent on parking and gas to go to the IRS office twice.

The downtown Boston tax office is 2.5 miles from the author's workplace. He could have walked, biked, or taken the MTA, which would be free if it already had a monthly pass. The MTA planner says it takes 21 min at the fastest.

So for him, it's likely the transit cost was $0.

Having a monthly pass is not free.

By "free" I mean there was no additional cost over already-budgeted use.

Shoes are not free. Bikes are not free. Food is not free.

Estimate, but not calculate exactly. If you're deducting say, taxes for employment throughout the year, and then I carry out some trades that result in capital gains or losses that change me to a different tax bracket, the amount you deducted is now too much or too little, meaning someone's got to pay something at the end.

We DO have withholding measures in place to minimize payment necessary at the end -- but the idea that this can be done as we go fails to take into consideration factors that simply can't be foreseen with certainty.

Never mind the fact that while many people are happy to give up time value in favor of convenience, paying your taxes early means not having that money working for you, in, say, money market funds, or treasury bills, or some other such safe place where it can be held until it is due. Especially with interest rates on the rise, it's not clear that everyone would be particularly thrilled to give up this time value.

W2 withholding is set at a fixed rate at the beginning of the year. If you get a raise mid year, that typically isn't adjusted to zero out at the end of the year and you end up overpaying. Add in all the potential deductions the IRS can't anticipate and isn't really possible to make tax payments exact.

> withholding is set at a fixed rate at the beginning of the year

This is not correct. It's calculated per pay period. Please see IRS Publication 15 and 15-T.

This is the painful part about working jobs where you receive the bulk of your income in relatively few paychecks. You end up grossly overpaying on your taxes because they are essentially assuming that's the amount you receive every paycheck and withhold taxes accordingly. So if you work a boat load of OT every other pay period, and receive like $3k for the first half of a month, and $7k the next pay period, those $7k paychecks are taxed assuming you make $7k * 24 =168k each year, when, in reality you make $120k a year.

There's no good way around this either (to my knowledge). Other than maybe jacking up the number of dependents you have.

Yes, the standard withholding methods produce poor results when pay does not arrive evenly through the whole year.

It is possible for employers to use alternative methods. IRS Pub. 15-T sec. 6 has details on common alternatives and constraints.

I have no idea to what extent employers support any of these alternative methods. I imagine it's limited to employers where much of their workforce is overwithheld using the standard methods. One example might be a school district where teachers are only paid when in session.

There is an easy way - reduce your withholding and then pay your taxes in a timely manner in the new year to avoid the underpayment penalty.

Overpaying: so the IRS issues a refund. That's part of the process.

Deductions: 86% of tax returns use the standard deduction. It's OK for the IRS to assume that the standard deduction will be used unless the taxpayer tells them that they want to itemize.

> Overpaying: so the IRS issues a refund. That's part of the process.

Isn't this a 1 way street where the IRS wins?

For example, if you underpay don't you have to pay interest at a set rate for the whole year you underpaid where as if you over pay you'll get interest from April 15th until the time it takes to receive your refund which might be a few days or a couple of weeks?

If you file on time but underpaid estimated taxes, you only get a penalty if it’s more than than the greater of $1000 or 10%, and a variety of other conditions don’t apply (not tax advice, see Form 2210 for the gory details).

For the average citizen, a little bit of opportunity cost is much less important than the costs of getting hit by a surprise bill, so it makes sense to err a little bit on the side of overpayment when filling out your W-4.

If you overpaid, why would you wait until April 15 to ask for your money back if your biggest concern is not giving them an interest free loan? I filed in February and had my refund in about a week.

> why would you wait until April 15 to ask for your money back if your biggest concern is not giving them an interest free loan?

It's not always possible to file accurately that early.

A number of investment related tax documents don't come until March 15th at the earliest. Then you probably need to wait for your accountant to prepare everything, you review everything and finally you officially file it. For me personally this usually happens near the end of March. Realistically it can't be any earlier.

Also, if you're self employed chances are you're paying quarterly estimated taxes to avoid penalties. You're giving them money as early as a few months into the tax year. You also need to make sure you don't underpay or you can get penalties and you also owe interest. You either give the IRS an interest free loan by overpaying throughout the year or risk losing money.

It’s a perpetual 0% loan.

You can update your W-4 any time you want.

It even notes on the form that you should update it if your financial situation changes.

You mention W-2, so I'm assuming the US.

The W-4 asks about things that change income like 401k contributions. If you think you'll itemize taxes (keeping in mind that the vast majority of people don't), there's also a space to put that amount so that you're withheld correctly.

My Canadian tax app has an AutoFill button that does 90% of my taxes for me by getting all the data from the government servers.

The other 10% is just inputting donations I made, and making decisions about various things.

I’d say it saves me 10 mins of data entry and is super convenient.

Here in NZ it's as easy, except you can put your donations in ahead of time (as you make them) and get the donation tax refund right then, not wait for the end of the year

In the US that's not possible because you only deduct charitable gifts if you itemize, and you decide that after the tax year when you file. Your employer can reduce your pay and give a gift on your behalf, which is essentially the same thing.

Although usually the best thing is to donate stock with high gains to avoid future capital gains tax, but you have to understand a lot of tax rules to realize that's a good idea, and there are plenty of extra forms to file at tax time.

In NZ we generally don't have ANY deductions (nor a tax on capital gains) - this makes filing tax easy - if you have one employer chances are they got your tax exactly right - most people don't even need to file - and certainly none of that fluffing around telling your employer how many 'deductions' you want them to fudge your PAYE with. As an employer it's equally simple, I do my payroll with a simple line in a spreadsheet.

NZ doesn't have a separate capital gains rate like the US, but capital gains are still taxed as income, so donating stocks might actually be more worthwhile there unless there is some special tax treatment. Obviously simplified filing is nice.

> Interesting article but it sounds like all the author had to do was schedule an appointment and wait 30min.

Two appointments. They stood him up during the first one, and wouldn't take his money.

It's also interesting how much effort they put into dissuading, people to pay in cash to the point of encouraging actions that would waste money on all kinds of fees:

> For people without bank accounts, their only option for paying taxes shouldn’t require paying fees to credit card processors or retailers—especially since they are likely among the poorest taxpayers.

> IRS easily has the information available to estimate and deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an easy online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this for good reason

It's funny how people accept this lowered quality of life despite it being common knowledge that the IRS is purposely worsened to benefit private corporations.

>It's funny how people accept this lowered quality of life despite it being common knowledge that the IRS is purposely worsened to benefit private corporations.

You can apply that to education, healthcare, public transport, security.

Virtually every aspect of life in the US right now is made worse than it would otherwise be so that private corporations can extract profit.

"Whimsical" now means "making pointless work for yourself and everyone else" and seems rather close to "speed-running" ("slow-running"?) a bureaucracy for social media clout. Really, really pitiful social media clout.

Filing taxes in the UK literally takes 20 minutes online and requires no special software, and like 95% of people will never have to do it.

It seems they already calculate your taxes, but they require you to file them anyway.

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