291–300 of 454 posts
Massachusetts had free tax filing, but got rid of it this year. It was really great and fastest refund I ever received.
I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all…
It's almost that simple in the US if your situation is that simple. What happens in NZ if you make $400 selling vintage cabbage patch dolls on eBay? What if you earned $1k in returns on your investment account? What if you are renting your place out on Airbnb? If all you have is a simple income in the US, then the 1040ez is a single page and you can file it for free online if you make under a certain amount. You can…
Also we have no capital gains tax (a mistake IMHO). Tax on interest, (and a second income) is withheld by banks at our nominal marginal rate.
In practice if the govt doesn't care about the tax on your cabbage patch doll, unless you are selling thousands of them it costs more to collect that tax than they would receive
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The United States has a complicated tax code because it attempts to make things more "fair" for some people. Some of these are things people like, such as deductions for people with children, paying mortage, etc. Some are more dubious.
Why is it fair to give a deduction for mortgage? Buying a home instead of renting is just choosing to invest in real estate instead of anything else you might invest in. Why artificially subsidize one extremely illiquid and volatile type of investment?
In the US, you get a deduction for interest on your primary residence. In Australia, you cannot do that, but instead, you get to make a deduction of interest in any investment property you own against your personal income! Plus investment properties have a lower capital gains tax rate than other asset classes.
The tax laws in this country are fucked.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people from countries with free education and health care are ok with taxes. Me included.
What country on earth has these 100% free things?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm an immigrant. I consider it robbery to be intimidated by force into paying taxes.
Not to be rude but why'd you immigrate then? It's not like taxes just started happening recently.
A tangential issue: It seems almost impossible to me that the systems of tax preparation services, whether cloud-based, local software, or offline, are secure. The standard of security is, make the target more expensive to breach than it's worth to the attacker. How much would it be worth to have access to the tax returns of large swaths of the population? I don't know the answer, but I'm guessing it's easily worth b…
My solution was to keep all financial data on the server encrypted. The server is unable to decrypt any financial data because the crypto key is either (a) derived from the user's password; or (b) located on an offline device to allow customer support staff to reset passwords.
This means that even an attacker who gains root access to our online servers would be unable to access users financial data. (In fact the cloud version is probably more secure than our old desktop-only version because it encrypts all financial data when cached on the end-user's hard drive)
I'm actually considering adding a full end-to-end encryption option, but it would mean that users who enabled this feature would lose their data if they forgot their password. So I suspect that few users would want enable end-to-end encryption in their accounting software. What do HN users think? Is there a market for 'cloud accounting software with end-to-end encryption'?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What country on earth has these 100% free things?
Sweden. Free university, no fee healthcare for kids, a few dollars for adults. But it's a sketchy country... be careful if you go there. #lastnightinsweeden
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>if you make $400 selling vintage cabbage patch dolls on eBay? This hurts my head to think about. According to CNN, 20% of large corporations pay almost nothing in corporate taxes.[1] 1 - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/13/pf/taxes/gao-corporate-taxes...
And if you incorporated your ebay business, it would likely pay very little in taxes too. But then you'd take the same income as wages and pay the same income taxes you did before you had a legal title on your business.