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Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

nytimes.com

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Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#41

Post by CalRobert »

Just filed my FBAR and every year it feels like the requirements change so they have a reason to convict you of something. This year they just moved the due date up by a few months for no apparent reason. I'm simply lucky that I happened to do it now (I normally procrastinate until June); that's a good $10,000 fine if they believe it was accidental; $100,000 otherwise.

I'm fine with taxes, but filing taxes in the US is utter bullshit.

To give credit where it's due, though, the state of California has free online filing (Calfile) , which is nice.

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#42

Post by CalRobert »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #28
i_feel_great wrote: post #6

In Australia, via the mygov tool, for a simple wage earner like me, 10 minutes. All the payroll taxes amounts are prefilled, maybe 10 questions in all. Got my refund in ~ 10 days. The Australian Tax Office has a fairly extensive developers program to encourage more/better tooling and compliance. Edit: The ATO developers programme: http://softwaredevelopers.ato.gov.au/

BTW, the refund is a super-cool thing about the Australian system that may not be super-widespread. The Icelandic system is a very similar pay-as-you-go tax system, so tax is predicted and withheld from your wages over the course of the year. But Iceland errs on the side of under-withholding, if they don't know what your income is going to be. As a result, come tax time, most people get a letter saying "you owe us 60…

The US is similar, and this is part of why few people know how much they pay in tax.

Ask a person what their refund was, and they'll know, but total tax? Few do.

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#43

Post by philsnow »

pre-filled forms will probably help a largeish proportion of americans who have dead-simple taxes.

once you start doing absolutely anything else (having a side job, renting out property, participating in the stock market, having income in multiple states, etc etc etc), you're in the byzantine territory of income/deductions/credits/AMT where nearly every line on every form involves reading the instructions for that line (and yes, nearly every line has its own instructions) and reflecting on your life to decide whether you think that purchase qualifies as a deduction, or what percent of your car's annual depreciation you can allocate as a business expense, or whether you need to declare your 2014 California refund as income on your 2015 Oregon taxes. Money ping-pongs around, getting taxed coming and going (you pay tax on your salary and tax again when you use that money to pay for gasoline (and a very few of these taxes are multiplicative instead of additive, so you can in fact pay tax _on the tax you're paying to buy gas_)).

I'm really not doing justice to the intricacies of the tax system. I would really enjoy reading a James Mickens tribute to it.

Pre-filled forms aren't going to help navigate the insanity, unless the governments (federal and all the states) have access to data about every transaction, every penny that flows through your household.

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #18

In Romania if you don't have any income except for your salary, you don't have to do anything. Yes, there are no tax exemptions or deductions, but on the other hand life is simple. How often are those exemptions or deductions worth it, especially when compared to the potential complexity and additional cost of a byzantine tax system?

[deleted]

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#45

Post by emodendroket »

philsnow wrote: post #43

pre-filled forms will probably help a largeish proportion of americans who have dead-simple taxes. once you start doing absolutely anything else (having a side job, renting out property, participating in the stock market, having income in multiple states, etc etc etc), you're in the byzantine territory of income/deductions/credits/AMT where nearly every line on every form involves reading the instructions for that li…

Ok, but the vast majority of American households never have to worry about any of that.

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#47

Post by IkmoIkmo »

Here in the Netherlands my employer's data is all pre-filled in. Just have to log in to a mobile app and sign with my citizen's digital ID. (just a login with 2FA).

All of that takes about 3 minutes, and it's pretty much sufficient for like 80-90% of my peers (fresh out of college).

But with more complex deductions, you need to use the 'full web app', which is also pre-filled but comes with tons of questions. They take me about 20-30 minutes, because I know how it all works nowadays. But the first time it took me 2 hours cause there's lots of definitions and words that aren't frequently used in the Dutch language.

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#48

Post by golergka »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #47

Here in the Netherlands my employer's data is all pre-filled in. Just have to log in to a mobile app and sign with my citizen's digital ID. (just a login with 2FA). All of that takes about 3 minutes, and it's pretty much sufficient for like 80-90% of my peers (fresh out of college). But with more complex deductions, you need to use the 'full web app', which is also pre-filled but comes with tons of questions. They ta…

Wait; employees have to fill taxes themselves?

Why?

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#49

Post by lucaspiller »

jschulenklopper wrote: post #30
jschulenklopper wrote: post #11

I don't know when the slogan of the Dutch tax authority, "We can’t make paying taxes pleasant, but at least we can make it simple" was introduced, but in my view it has been supported in three different ways: 1) a simplification of the tax rules - mainly by reducing the number of exceptions and tax deduction rules, 2) filing the tax forms digitally - they started with desktop applications, and now the main focus is o…

Oh, and if you filed your tax forms before April 1st, you get the DTA's reply before July 1st, with the indication whether you need to pay additional taxes, or get some of it paid back. Their final decision on the yearly income taxes, so when they 'close' the case, can happen between months or years later.

In the UK the forms guide you through calculating how much tax you need to pay (or it's done automatically if you do it online).

Re: Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US?

#50

Post by patio11 »

The NTA (National Tax Authority, cited as the Kokuzeicho in the article) doesn't figure out your taxes for you. Your employer does, as one of the (many!) ways in which they exercise paternalistic control of your life. If you do not have an employer, you get to go through a process which is almost exactly as fun as it is in the US, modulo a modestly competent online filing application.

I spent $3k this year on accountant time to file my personal taxes. The majority of the cost is driven by my various extracurricular activities. In the five years where I did my own taxes as a self-employed person, I generally lost between 2 and 5 working days a year to the effort, largely driven by the "calculate the income and expenses of your self-employed business" part of the return.

A Japanese corporation with one employee is in for about ~$5k a year of professional services fees incident to managing payroll for that single employee, not counting the taxes themselves. (I personally can't wait until this space gets Gusto-ed here, and SmartHr and other companies are starting to get there.)

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