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

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

#21

Post by huffmsa »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
huffmsa wrote: post #16

"Hey, we here at The Government would like to make your experience paying taxes less painful. Hence forth, we're just going to take whatever amount we think is accurate, and you don't have to do anything! Just trust us!" Politely sir, take one giant step back from that and your beachfront property in Arizona, and diddle your own face. Now, serious answer? Because EVERYTHING about the US Government is intentionally de…

You're saying this like inefficient government institutions can't harm business

They can, but the goal is to make people hate said institutions so much that they elect people who limit the institutions power to the absolute minimum necessary.

Inefficient institutions cause lots of small pains, extremely efficient, overly powerful ones nationalize your oil and gas industry because they can.

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

#22

Post by tluyben2 »

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…

It is still no krentebol to work with taxes in NL. Better than most places but if you have a company it still is way too much red tape. I am very much for paying taxes and I would not even mind overpaying if it were a lot simpler. Here in Spain it is hell: I know why it is that but it makes not declaring far more attractive so we Dutch did something right. Still it is way too much hassle, especially for the small amounts.

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

#24

Post by tluyben2 »

jamesblonde wrote: post #7
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.

I typically reply 'yes' to the sms to do my filing in Sweden.

That sounds excellent.

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

#25

Post by shoshin23 »

In India, most people I know use ClearTax. It's freemium(the last 3 years I've only used the free version, that was enough.) and I spent only about 20 minutes or so every year filing my taxes. Everything becomes super simple with Form 16, given out by my employer. And apart from this the government has an e-filing system but I've never used it. ClearTax was enough.

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

#26

Post by maccard »

I'm in the UK. If you work as a regular employee, your tax gets automatically deducted and noted in your payslip. Each year you get a form posted out and if you disagree with the amount (I don't know anyone who ever has) you can contact HMRC to sort out the difference.

If you work as a contractor/self employed, you have to fill in a self assessment form. I personally don't need to do one, but my partner did, and it took us about 30 minutes last year.

It really doesn't need to be this complex.

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

#28

Post by Sir_Substance »

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 60,000isk"[1], and they pay it back as extra money garnished from their wages over the next year.

The Australian government errs on the side of over-withholding, which sounds bad, but it's more like a mandatory saving scheme. Most people discover the tax office has over-charged them by at least $800 over the course of the year, and you get it paid to you in a lump sum after they process your tax return. After deductions are filed, it's not unheard of for people to get 4-6k back.

As a result, for most people in Australia, tax season has a bit of a party atmosphere to it. You'll find people talking about what they're going to buy with their return, and there are sometimes tax season sales on things like TV's etc.

It's a really great example of a small and seemingly unrelated implementation detail making or breaking the whole experience.

[1] about $600, figure example only :P

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

#29

Post by WJW »

tluyben2 wrote: post #22
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…

It is still no krentebol to work with taxes in NL. Better than most places but if you have a company it still is way too much red tape. I am very much for paying taxes and I would not even mind overpaying if it were a lot simpler. Here in Spain it is hell: I know why it is that but it makes not declaring far more attractive so we Dutch did something right. Still it is way too much hassle, especially for the small amo…

I don't know about business taxes, but at least for a "simple" application like mine (fulltime employee, homeowner with mortgage) all the relevant information about income and wealth taxes was prefilled and correct. The only thing I had to enter were my "burgerservicenummer" and one deductible post (a university course).

The whole thing took about 15 minutes, including digitally signing and submitting it.

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

#30

Post by jschulenklopper »

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.
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