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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?

#141

Post by blizkreeg »

feld wrote: post #62
patio11 wrote: post #50

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 account…

$3k??! How is that possible? I get personal and business taxes done for $200

combined $200?? Who's your tax guy? :) I'm being quoted $1K+ for my Corporation taxes.

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

#142

Post by dasil003 »

feld wrote: post #62
patio11 wrote: post #50

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 account…

$3k??! How is that possible? I get personal and business taxes done for $200

I paid $2k for US/UK taxes when I moved to London. I had always done it myself up to that point, including freelance Schedule C work, I definitely knew my way around the US tax code.

But then I move to the UK which has a different tax year, with a lot of subtleties over where my money was physically located, and what kind of expenses I could claim, and it got crazy complicated crazy fast. Paying $2k probably saved me $10k/year.

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

#143

Post by mbroncano »

Sorry, but no: the US doesn't lead in this issue either. Filling in taxes here is worse that going to the dentist.

It's embarrassing as well to witness so many Americans to dismiss what's obvious for anybody having lived abroad. The tax system here sucks donkey balls. Background: lived and worked in three different countries, filled in taxes everywhere by myself. Sometimes with a dictionary, and never was so bad as in the US, even with Turbo Tax.

No, it's not only tax filling. No sir: immigration system, health care, education ... failing to admit the US lags far behind the (rest of the) civilized world is the surest recipe for worsening the situation.

Get smart, America. You're for a big surprise when you wake up to a world that's surpassed you already in most issues.

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

#144

Post by obstinate »

csomar wrote: post #107
patio11 wrote: post #50

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 account…

yeah I was not too convinced when I read the article. The government can easily figure out the taxes for your wage (which your employer did actually figure out) but they can't figure out the taxes on your real estate revenue, and maybe other activities (traded cryptocurrency? freelanced on the side? Airbnb"ing" some of your estate)

I am not able to find a citation for this, but I would be surprised if more than a small fraction of Americans had significant non-wage, non-financial institution investment income to report. A solution doesn't have to solve a problem for everyone to be useful.

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

#145

Post by cmdrfred »

sidlls wrote: post #116
caseysoftware wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's good evidence for this. That was part of the reason the Feds pushed employers to do withholding "on our behalf" during the 1930s. Prior to that, taxes were filed quarterly and then only a small % of people. But people actually saw how much they paid. Withholding was a clever and subtle way for us to never see part of our paycheck so then any tax return we get feels like a bonus when it was actually just an in…

How can one not know what they make post-tax, at least well enough to not be off by a few dollars? That is, after all, what one has to actually pay bills with. I know what my net earnings after taxes, retirement, etc. are to the nearest dollar, every paycheck. When I was substantially poorer (in academia, and prior to that school) I knew down to the penny (as a function of hours worked, even, when I worked hourly pay…

I think the point is they don't want Americans doing the math of taking their gross earnings and subtracting a percentage of it and being reminded of the specific percentage of tax paid and gross taxation every quarter. Taking it from each paycheck quietly is a softer blow than all at once.

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

#146

Post by smacktoward »

narrowrail wrote: post #72
pharrlax wrote: post #65

Overlooked in this article and comments is the influence of one man -- Grover Norquist. He runs an extremely influential organization that administers a sort of purity pledge that, for most Republican candidates for Congress, is necessary to sign in order to avoid being primaried. He has decided that making taxes easier to do would make people more okay with tax increases, and so he has decreed that support for the k…

Norquist started Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. taxpayer advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform Doesn't sound like you are describing Norquist's organization they way they do in their mission statement. Do you have any references?

Are you seriously proposing that a group that decided it was in their interest to lobby for confusing, painful taxes would say so in plain language on their Web site?

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

#147

Post by tantalor »

I don't mind the idea of figuring my own taxes, after all I can lookup all the numbers pretty easily, but the main obstacle to that is the tax instructions are impossible to parse.

We should require the IRS to release the tax forms in a machine-readable format, e.g., as open-source software. The human-readable instructions should merely be the spec. Other people can write nice interfaces on top of that. Then you can run the code on your phone to figure your taxes.

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

#148

Post by eitally »

BoorishBears wrote: post #90
ekblom wrote: post #4

This years it took me about three minutes: log in, scan throug the numbers, sign to accept. Then i went for a coffee. That how we do it in Sweden.

It took me about 10 minutes here in the US. Log into Turbo Tax, have it pull my last year's information, update the income fields and click through a wizard. It cost 30$, and I can see how you could argue the fact I paid a private company for a convience other countries get from their government for free is sad, but I'll take it since my quality of life would drop significantly at a comparable salary in Sweden due to…

It's only 10min [using Turbo Tax | Tax Act | Whatever] if you have a simple 1040/1040EZ. Even simple things like 1099-DIV or 1099-INT, capital gains & losses on investments (including employee stock purchase or options programs), and charitable donations can add many hours, especially if the software doesn't have an automated interface to your various financial accounts. I typically use Turbo Tax, too, and even pulling in the previous year's filing it still takes 1-2 full days to get everything roughly correct & complete.

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

#149

Post by smacktoward »

jeltz wrote: post #103
crisdux wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why other people in this thread think this is crazy. This is actually a widely held belief by Republicans. Many of them want paying taxes to be hard so people will be conscious of government burden. They believe making tax filing simple is a risk to our liberties.

I have read about this before, but it still sounds totally crazy to me. There have been plenty of inefficient and corrupt governments which still have managed to impose police states. To me it seems like a cult of personality for the leader is a greater threat to your liberty than efficient bureaucracy.

You're assuming that people won't include something in their ideology just because it is crazy.

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

#150

Post by huac »

csomar wrote: post #107
patio11 wrote: post #50

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 account…

yeah I was not too convinced when I read the article. The government can easily figure out the taxes for your wage (which your employer did actually figure out) but they can't figure out the taxes on your real estate revenue, and maybe other activities (traded cryptocurrency? freelanced on the side? Airbnb"ing" some of your estate)

How else are we gonna catch Capone?
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