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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

My partner and I are both W2 earners and filing our taxes takes like under half an hour.

Are we doing something wrong? It seriously does not seem hard to file taxes.

It's not hard if you have simple incomes and deduction, it's just a bloated process that you have to pay to complete (if you make enough money) and you are at risk of penalty if you accidentally fat finger manually copying printed text into a computer since the IRS already knows all the values and will know if you submitted something wrong.

What would be better is if the IRS just sent you the stuff they know and you affirm that it's true. This prevents people from accidentally committing tax fraud and eliminates the need for middle income Americans to pay a yearly fee in order to be law abiding.

> eliminates the need for middle income Americans to pay a yearly fee in order to be law abiding.

Yearly fee? I had to pay for turbotax but I was under the impression that it was because my income is very high.

I don't know, it makes sense to me the way the IRS does it. If I get a massive windfall and the IRS didn't send me information about it, then I would be able to just not file it because I would know they don't know about it. Not so if I don't know what they know.

TurboTax doesn't charge for standard federal income filing, but they do charge for some forms of return, and for state taxes, and for audit protection.

Even with the "free" standard offering, it's been lucrative enough for them to lobby heavily to prevent taxes from being easier, just to funnel the majority of the country through their slow filing flow and try to upsell to all of them.

> I don't know, it makes sense to me the way the IRS does it. If I get a massive windfall and the IRS didn't send me information about it, then I would be able to just not file it because I would know they don't know about it. Not so if I don't know what they know.

Ideally the IRS would tell you what they think is accurate and you'd submit amendments for anything that's not accurate. That's no different than the current arrangement since you already need to report all income, it just eliminates the extra cost and effort for the majority of Americans that don't receive windfalls.

I used CashApp Taxes for three years now (was Credit Karma). It's free and has the same thing as TurboTax.

You can't accidentally commit tax fraud. Fraud requires intent. Errors on forms are not fraud.

Yes if your tax situation is simple, the IRS already knows everything. In many other cases (even something pretty common like self-employment income) they do not know, and you have to tell them.

No you’re doing everything right! The point is that you shouldn’t even need to do anything. The IRS already has your information. Unless youre changing something that they won’t know about (for example not using the standard deduction), then ideally you would get an automated return and possible refund without taking any action.

The point is that I might report something that they aren't aware of. It makes sense to me, the IRS does not know everything and strategically witholding what you know will lead people to report things that you don't know about.

In countries that don't force every citizen to file, you still can report things they aren't aware of and still can do your taxes manually if you choose.

The majority of the population doesn't know anything about their taxes that the IRS doesn't. Why force everybody through a song and dance that only is of service to the exceptions (and a couple very large tax filing corporations who lobby hard against automatic taxes)?

The tax industry goes out of their way to make it seem harder than it is to justify their existence. You can do the forms by hand (not even a calculator) faster than most tax software - most of that time is added delays to make it seem like the computer has to work hard to do something hard. Unfortunately if you do things by hand you will eventually make a trivial mistake and the IRS will get mad about that.

they really don't get too mad. I do it by hand, sometimes using a calculator, and they just send you a correction. mostly its been in my favor. California taxes are based off of federal, so CA used to get kind of pissy because eventually they would find out about the correction somehow. last year they send me a notice within a couple days of the IRS

> the IRS will get mad about that.

In my experience, the IRS won't get mad about that. They'll ask you to correct it, of course. What makes the IRS mad is if it looks like you're actively trying to illegally avoid taxes.

Also, in my experience, the IRS are generally decent to work with. My state revenue department, however, is the opposite of the IRS in every way. They're just mean and vindictive.

If you mess up you have to then correct the state.

Do you have investments or businesses of any type? Do you itemize your deductions?

My biggest time sink this year was sorting out how to file crypto gains/losses. After two hours of struggle, I found that I had to pay income tax on about 15 dollars of capital gains.

I just take the standard deduction.

Investments: Yes, I have to file a 1099. Business: no.

Crypto: I think your holdings have to be significant for it to matter whether you file this or not, maybe I broke a law here.

You broke the law if you sold crypto, regardless of amount.

Realistically what penalty do you think GP would face if they had failed to report those $15 in capital gains.

Sure, but that isn't what they are saying, they are saying that the tax code is that you report the gain.

I think most people don't report interest that is below the reporting threshold for the bank either. Doesn't change what the tax code says you are supposed to do.

The 2022 1040 has a line that says "At any time during 2022, did you: (a) receive (as a reward, award, or payment for property or services); or (b) sell, exchange, gift, or otherwise dispose of a digital asset (or a financial interest in a digital asset)?"

If the answer is yes, but you put no so that you didnt need to file any additional details, thats definitely illegal.

It isn't hard in the simple case. When you have kids and HSAs and education expenses and self-employment income and more complicated investments it gets more complicated.

You may have a simple tax situation, then.

There's a lot in this thread about standard vs. itemized deduction, but since Trump's tax reforms, the standard deduction has always vastly outweighed itemization for me, and I believe, most Americans.

The part that causes me the most grief nowadays is the 1099-B; there's a few of required tax inputs related to investments that just aren't captured on that form. (Although in recent years, I've started taking better notes, and now I can just refer to past years' resolutions for repeat scenarios.)

But even just punching in the requisite numbers I think takes me longer than 30 minutes…

Then there just seems to be an annual surprise per year. ESPP sales complicated one year; they're a weird mix of income and gains. I had a stock split occur one year, resulting in a fractional share that was liquidated for some really odd capital gains. Moving has complicated state taxes numerous times due to states with poor definition of what constitutes a "resident". I've been plagued by a number of errors on various forms (including twice on the W-2!).

But the upthread remark — that the IRS knows the answers — should apply to my situation. Basically everything tax-related about me, the IRS already knows. They can just send a bill; if I don't trust it, I can look it over for correctness & perhaps trigger some sort of correction process. (Presumably today, they'd just audit me if I was too far off their number.) About the only thing I think that might cause a discrepancy is charitable donations.

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