Most Americans don’t do their own taxes. They go to H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt, and if your family makes under $60k you are almost certainly paying no income taxes and are receiving a refund via the EITC, getting a check back. So people think tax preparers are voodoo priests that do their incantations to get free money because the average person can’t understand the jargon, can’t handle forms, and the whole endeavor…
Just a minor comment, but: why does EITC exist? Just a hidden welfare payment? That out if the way, I agree with the earlier comment: why does the government automatically know all your financial details? Where is the privacy? Where is the requirement for a warrant, to access your private information?
Hilarious that the government makes some of us think that portion of someone's money returned to that person is a "welfare payment"
I did my Canadian taxes for me and my spouse on a free filing site last night, in less than two hours, for $0. Everything was prefilled; practically the only thing I had to fix was to convert an imported investment statement from USD to CAD, and double check that everything was accurate. I welcome the Americans to the delightful convenience of hassle-free taxes!
So this free site was not run by the government of Canada. Are you concerned that you just gave all of your personal and financial data to a third party site? If you’re not paying anything they’re likely data mining your data and selling it. And we haven’t even talked about the security implications of trusting your data to these companies.
Secret ballot was introduced 1866 in Sweden. I think we were the third country in the world to do so.
Sweden has never had secret ballot. The “Valmyndigheten” election authority themselves have criticized the lack of secrecy and general chaos with Sweden’s ballots. But what do they know? They only administer the elections. Swedes have a highly developed superiority complex and ability to perform mental gymnastics about the flaws of their country and ways of doing things. No sane person from any other country in the w…
Can't you just pick ballots for more than one party before going into the "secret" booth?
It's not just withholding. Cost basis info on all stock market transactions are also provided to the IRS by your brokerage...
What about expenses for those that are self employed? What about rental income? What about expenses related to rental properties? Lots of things the government doesn’t know…
This is solved by:
- IRS pre-fills all it knows about you
- you log into to IRS web site to check if everything is correct, and provide additional data or correct invalid data
- submit
Oh look. By implementing this you may join Sweden and a bunch of other countries in the 21st century.
I used this for taxes this year. It spotted three errors, fairly complex errors actually, and spit it back for me to fix. After the third submission, it was error free and my return was accepted. I found it pretty amazing that it caught all of that and so, so, so, happy I gave no money to the tax industrial complex for a change. The IRS should definitely continue this as a thing.
It’s worse than that. For example we were also supposed to withhold 50% of the social security tax that the employee is responsible for, or if we pay the full amount for them (which we did because we didn’t know we were supposed to withold that), then we have to declare that as additional income for the employee, and more I’m sure I’m forgetting because I started to lose it at that point.
You don't have to do any of that. Its their job to report income and pay taxes. Withholdings are a "convenience" not a requirement. Furthermore you weren't their employer, they provided a service to you.
The IRS seems to think a babysitter is a household employee [1], which makes mkrisc a household employer and subject to various requirements. Withholding for federal income tax is voluntary, but employment tax isn't assuming the total pay is over the thresholds.
Sweden has never had secret ballot. The “Valmyndigheten” election authority themselves have criticized the lack of secrecy and general chaos with Sweden’s ballots. But what do they know? They only administer the elections. Swedes have a highly developed superiority complex and ability to perform mental gymnastics about the flaws of their country and ways of doing things. No sane person from any other country in the w…
Can't you just pick ballots for more than one party before going into the "secret" booth?
This is the most common counter, but it doesn’t change the fact that the ballot is not secret. Again, you’re picking ballots in public and under the active scrutiny of other voters and election officials, and there is a strong and palpable disincentive to pick ballots from the “wrong” parties, and a strong and palpable incentive for showing your neighbors and friends you pick only the correct ballots before going into the booth. Smaller parties have to come up with nationwide ballots themselves, which is often impossible. People can and do also vandalize, hide, throw away and illegally modify the ballots such that voters who show up can not vote according to their wishes. I have personally experienced TWICE having to ask the election officials out loud to restock the ballots for the party I intended to vote for, and so have countless others. I could go on. These are all known problems that the election authority themselves have pointed out should be rectified, but they never will be, because the system is working as intended. (discouraging votes for the wrong parties)
> It’s amazing that 54% of adults in the United States have a literacy below 6th grade level, AFAICT this is a mis-interpretation. IIUC the actual study says "54% of adults in the United States have a literacy IN ENGLISH below 6th grade level". They might be highly literate in some other language but that wasn't tested.
Only 14% of the US is foreign born according to the last census so that’s not enough to make up the difference. The functional literacy statistics are bad no matter how you dice them.
Someone can be US born but still have a higher fluency in another language.
Many on the US/Mexico border fall into this category where they were born here but speak Spanish better than English.
Well, as a non-citizen US resident, having to do my own taxes definitely makes me think "They can't even build a tax filing system? What the fuck are they doing with all that money?" I guess the difference is that my mind immediately goes to "Who are those people who think government not doing its job properly is a Good Thing(TM), and why do Americans keep electing them?" It's as if a wannabe entrepreneur claiming "C…
> They can't even build a tax filing system? What the fuck are they doing with all that money?
More like “They can’t even solve poverty? What are they doing with 2/3rd of my income?” France here. Cities have to build 40% of poverty housing, by law, because, well, we’ve determined that 40% people are poor.
The benefit of not declaring income is not only taxes, but lower-rent housing as well.
Uh plenty of Sweden see that as a huge invasion of privacy Sweden also doesn’t have secret ballot In Sweden, anyone can look up your address, phone number, social security number, your car registration etc etc This is not cool or desirable
Party affiliation, which is mandatory in some U.S. states for voters (e.g. Oregon) is available to anyone who wants to access the registration dataset from the Secretary of State.
I assume you can also be independent though maybe there are implication for voting in primaries. At least in MA being on voting lists puts your address in the available registration dataset.
It takes very little to deanonymize things like healthcare records with this information as was demonstrated going back to the 1990s.