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It doesn't fill tax forms, but it's a set of simulations and a framework to write more models and generate UIs automatically.
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In Sweden, the employers are responsible for reporting your income and banks your profits on sales of stocks, funds, and real estate. So "doing your taxes" is, for most people, just logging in and saying "yes" to the computed value. You can even just send a text to do so.
> In Sweden, the employers are responsible for reporting your income and banks your profits on sales of stocks, funds, and real estate. This is true in the US as well, but the tax authority (IRS) gives you nothing but blank forms to fill out yourself.
Suggestion: Add support for Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. If the trend is remote work, focus on the remote workers who would prefer not to pay income taxes.
In theory I'd love a tool that could save me wasting my life on this every year. However, would I trust it? Not from a malicious standpoint but it seems there's been lots of changes over the last few years and I'd need to know the tool had been properly updated. To do that I'd have to go and read all the updates/instructions each year (just like I do now) and then also check the tool was correct. I'm not convinced a (free?) non-accountant DIY method helps when the monetary cost of it being outdated/bugged could be significant.
I guess you could argue that this is no different from any other open-source software and it's my choice to either personally audit it or assume someone else already has - including all the schedules I use. I'm struggling to understand why I have more of a concern with this compared to, for example, my web browser. Perhaps I am just especially (and irrationally??) fearful of the IRS and the consequence of getting taxes wrong.
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My understanding is income tax and income is public in many of these countries.
You've got to be kidding me. Like if I have somebody's name I can just call up their government and ask what their salary is? I find that hard to believe. Please name these countries.
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Great! Do you have an example of a form from your home country (assuming you don't live in the US)?
Most UK citizens never fill in a tax form. VAT is handled by shops for you. Council tax (local tax based on property value) you are sent a bill based on the value of your property. There are various exemptions and deductions for exceptional cases, but otherwise you just pay the amount. Income taxes are deducted by your employer from your paycheck under a system called PAYE (pay as you earn). It works basically perfec…
The 25% off for single occupancy is very common rather than being an exceptional case, but yes applying for it is very easy via an online form (if you are organised and apply as soon as it becomes relevant) or a visit or phone call to the local council office.
Also applies to multiple occupancy if all or all but one of the occupants are full time students.
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> In Sweden, the employers are responsible for reporting your income and banks your profits on sales of stocks, funds, and real estate. This is true in the US as well, but the tax authority (IRS) gives you nothing but blank forms to fill out yourself.
Not just that it is blank, it is expected that certain things that you fill match what they already know. It is more like a test, where you get nothing if you answer correctly and penalty if you make a mistake. Note: IRS does provide a way to download what they know as a pdf (what banks reported, for example), so one can get some help with the "test"
The IRS does not have the resources to manually verify all of everyone's income, so instead they use a process of flags which trigger audits of varying depth. Flags include things such as certain reported amounts/types of values. Shallow audits review some submitted records, and the deepest ones are detailed, extensively scrutinizing all aspects of all records by a forensic accountant in an attempt to identify some criminal behavior.
But I have no idea how much of this is true as I think about it. It's just some things I've intuited/reasoned out over time.
Related fun (and sad) fact: In Norway, the tax submission forms are online and so user friendly that you don't need a tax filing program like this. Edit: Here is a link to an explanation for the form, in English, which was revamped in 2020: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/person/taxes/tax-return/tax-r... The submission form is essentially a wizard that asks you questions related to your situation and your past year. D…
Takes about 20 minutes to do it each year if you have all of your figures to hand... (if you are disorganised and have not been keeping track of any capital gains losses/gains etc throughout the year then it will take longer as you'll need to work those figures out first)
My wife is dual-national US-UK, and she does her UK one herself without much fuss as well, but seems like she has to employ an accountant in the US to do her US return due to complexity and convolutedness.