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Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

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Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#171

Post by scarface74 »

Joeri wrote: post #142
scarface74 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine... There is no guarantee that a speed limit will have any effect on driving behaviors. The fact is, when driving, most motorists choose a speed in which they personally feel both comfortable and safe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds on a free-flowing section in 1992, the recorded average speed was 132 km/h (82 mph) with 51% of drivers exceeding the recommended speed. The autobahn has a long history proving that people feel comfortable and safe at excessive velocities.

The autobahn is different. The people who drive on the autobahn self select because they want to drive fast and they have a disproportionate number of cars that can handle the speed. I doubt I would have been driving my first car - a Mercury Tracer - on the autobahn.

But 80 miles per hour is not an abnormal speed on the highway.

The posted speed limit is so rarely enforced, that it still isn’t a deterrent. For instance, the speed limit on GA 400 is 70. But you’d better be in the slow lane if you only go 70mph.

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond...

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#172

Post by dionidium »

ryanianian wrote: post #162
dionidium wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not..entirely true. Obviously. You should read categorical statements like this one as, "The IRS [often and in many of the most common cases] have all the data." That's a generally-applicable, useful, mental substitution that saves us from unnecessary and constant waffling and equivocation in everyday conversation.

You missed the conclusion/point of the reply. It's that I (personally) don't trust the government and banks/agencies enough to actually make this a trustworthy proposition, and I have data-points to back up my intuition.

I didn't miss the point, because the point only applies if you're itemizing in the first place and, as pratheekrebala mentions, we're talking about the vast majority of folks who don't.

And, in any case, the question isn't, "Will the IRS ever make a mistake?" Obviously they will. The question is, "Will the IRS make fewer mistakes than the mass of folks who don't itemize and who have simple tax situations?"

I think that's clearly true.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#173

Post by dragonwriter »

chatmasta wrote: post #6

“Your taxes” is such an overloaded term that it’s almost comical to refer to it as if it means the same thing for everyone. There is basically one straight-forward case where the IRS preparing taxes makes sense: that of full time employees whose only income is from their job which issues W2s. For everyone else — which includes: - People working multiple part time jobs - People with non-standard investment portfolios…

> People working multiple part time jobs

Multiple part-time jobs makes setting withholding allowances properly tricky, but doesn't substantially complicated year-end taxes, so, no, this isn't a valid point.

> People with non-standard investment portfolios or real estate holdings

People who derive income in a particular way from these Ina given year that isn't trivially applied given documents that are already required to be filed with the IRS would, yes, need to do some kind of filing addendum/adjustment. These are probably a very small share of returns each year.

> Contractors, with or without an LLC

Yes, anyone who has business income on their personal taxes rather than in a non-passthrough entity is going to have to do some kind of business addendum to an IRS-prepared personal return.

> Dual residents

Sure, these (or anyone with foreign tax to report) are going to need something on top of the base IRS return.

> Small retail businesses; Small internet businesses; Megacorps

This whole idea applies only to personal taxes; so many of these are out of scope ab initio. As far as small businesses that would be reported as personal income, that's already addressed.

With IRS-prepared returns, everyone would have substantially less to do, and the vast majority of individual returns would be just review and approve.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#174

Post by sokoloff »

baddox wrote: post #96
ritchiea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that, anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist has outsized interest on the right and he gets republicans to sign a pledge to not raise taxes, and if they violate the pledge Norquist raises money and campaigns against them. The problem is, the pledge also requires signees also do not support legislation to make paying taxes easier. The radical anti-tax groups are so anti-tax that they see making it easier to pay…

> The radical anti-tax groups are so anti-tax that they see making it easier to pay taxes as support for taxes. So they want it to be difficult to pay taxes to make it easier for them to argue against taxes entirely. I don't know if getting rid of taxes entirely is really a goal for many of these people, but what you describe doesn't sound that unreasonable. Making paying taxes easier does sound like support for taxe…

I’d love to see the end of payroll deductions and to make annual taxes due the Monday before Election Day.

Doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have taxes, but we’d have a tight temporal and psychological link between what we pay and the selections we make at the ballot box.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#175

Post by gamblor956 »

Xixi wrote: post #170
gamblor956 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, that 30% tax is on your gross income without deductions, and doesn't include a number of other taxes on your income that were already taken out as payroll taxes, usually about 10-20% of your wage income. In the US, you face a 24% or 25% tax on your gross income after deductions, not including additional credits that may also apply. Payroll tax deductions are also much smaller in the US. Not aware of any st…

"Charges salariales" + "Charges patronales": it's way more than 10-20%. It's around 28% for a minimum wage worker, and around 45% for a software engineer making 45k "brut" / year.

Yes, there are a number of other items also taken out of French payrolls...

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#176

Post by dontparticipate »

jonny_eh wrote: post #153
volkk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.

Cops don't set speed limits.

Sure, but the people that are responsible for their revenue do. There is an incentive by both parties to keep the speed limits lower than they need to be as long as that means the police department doesn't need to fund its operations through regular taxation. Police chiefs often have easier access to city councils and they pretty clearly aren't lobbying for increased speed limits.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#177

Post by Avamander »

fimdomeio wrote: post #104
Ftuuky wrote: post #32

In my country (Portugal) they do prepare my taxes and so far I can't complain. Even if something wrong happens you can file for appropriate compensation. Any payment is concluded in less than 2 weeks.

Last year the state introduces fully automated tax filling. It's beautiful. It took me 2 minutes. On the other hand, if I remember correctly its still a java app running on the browser where you have to accept an unsigned certificate and doesn't run on my mac. :/

Estonia's tax system sounds like a heaven now. It took me from start to finish 2 minutes (including software installation add 1min) and can be done on Mac, Linux and Windows, with Mobile-ID (requires special SIM card) the support extends to Android, iOS.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#178

Post by mikestew »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #92
volkk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.

>Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. I doubt people really speed because the limits have been set too low and the people know better what is an ideal speed limit. I think people_think_ they know better what the speed limit is, and/or reason "well if 60mph is okay, 75 mph can't be that bad, I'm barely speeding and I'm in a rush". At least, that's the attitud…

If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead.

This is easily tested in the western U. S., where there exist states with speed limits of 75mph or higher. There's a point at which I quit getting passed, and start being the one doing most of the passing. That point is just a bit north of 80mph. Anecdotally, same point it was when speed limits were lower. IOW, when I'd ride the interstates of AZ or WY twenty years ago, my ratio of passed/passing at 90mph was about the same as it is now.

But surely someone has done an actual study on this.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#179

Post by [deleted] »

volkk wrote: post #56
stephengillie wrote: post #3

I'm annoyed that there is no simple system for the IRS to tell me what I owe, and let me pay or dispute. Instead, we play this game where the IRS provides a bunch of complicated documents, I guess which ones to fill out and submit, then wait 3 years to see if I was randomly chosen to see if I was correct. So it's very easy to make a mistake for dozens of years, then suddenly be penalized at random. It's the worst kin…

> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.

[deleted]

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

#180

Post by gamblor956 »

Assadi wrote: post #159
gamblor956 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In France, that 30% tax is on your gross income without deductions, and doesn't include a number of other taxes on your income that were already taken out as payroll taxes, usually about 10-20% of your wage income. In the US, you face a 24% or 25% tax on your gross income after deductions, not including additional credits that may also apply. Payroll tax deductions are also much smaller in the US. Not aware of any st…

>Not aware of any state which has a 10% property tax and an income tax. I am aware of some states having high property taxes but no income taxes... California's can be as high as 13 something percent, I believe (though, I think with the kind of numbers the other guy was talking about, it'd probably be like 6-7%). But, you're right that the property tax is a serious exaggeration. Like, expensive places like Austin are…

California's property tax can't reach 13%. It's been capped at 1% since 1978, and the assessed value can only increase by 2% each year, or when a property is sold. But the tax itself remains 1%...
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