I thought you guys were supposed to be tech pioneers or something.
https://www.gov.uk/income-tax/how-you-pay-income-tax
When I was self-employed for a shortish period, I went for an assessment interview. The HMRC bod spent most of the 20 minutes trying to find expenses I could claim tax relief on. There wasn't much (working at home, using my own laptop, writing teaching materials based on existing knowledge &c).
Trump and Republicans actually simplified it a lot with their temporary tax changes that boosted up the "standard deduction" that everyone can take at the cost of nerfing a bunch of "itemized deductions" that are more likely to apply to people in blue states (state tax deductions, property tax deductions) with the sneaky provision that the boost to the standard deduction would expire when he was no longer in office in order to make the bill "tax neutral" and let them pass it through budget reconciliation.
Which is nuts, but has actually made filing taxes much simpler and closer to what it should be for some time.
The US is stuck in time somewhere along the 70-90s.
Don't be too sad. The 90's were a great time. I wish I could go back.
Like, Intuit and Turbotax contribute to GDP but their existence, at least at the size they are and in some of their roles, is purely a drag on QOL.
(of course, the biggest part of this is the healthcare system, which is great at making sick people and their families, not to mention HR folks and such, waste tens to hundreds of hours on things that aren't about healthcare itself at all, while also costing far more than it ought to—but there are lots of other things like this, see also the tipping-culture thread today, it's all part of that, little bits of bullshit that make life worse)
In the USA if you have a small business, with a few shareholders, it's an absolute nightmare.
The US has been boosting its GDP to the benefit of the rich while not improving a damn thing for regular people.
Lol thank you for the laugh