this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 159 points 2 months ago (10 children)

What a bizarre system. Tax should be taken from your payslip. There should be no need for the individual to figure out anything, unless they are self employed.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Income tax always struck me as a deliberate way to make your average joe hate taxes when they could, very easily, be calculated at time of payroll without you ever being shown the “pre tax” amount.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't care about seeing the amount or not. I care that I have to deliberately set up my withholdings incorrectly to hopefully not end up owing too much more at the end of the year. If I set it up accurately I would end up owing thousands more.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I'm not sure how withholdings works for your paycheque, but you request where the number is set.

If I set it up accurately

You define what's accurate for a percentage when you set it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Yeah, it's a shit show over here. You kinda guess at how much you will need to pay in taxes, hold back that amount in your paycheck, and hope for the best. And if your life situation changes or the incoming government fucks around with the tax codes, your estimating will be off. Getting it down to a very small refund is the optional solution, but it's not always as easy as you'd think.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It is taken from the payslip. But then they have us verify what they already know and if you make a mistake you're punished for it! It's bullshit.

I want so bad for the US to do it the way every sane country does it; they just send me a thing so I can make sure they're accurate and only need to take action if they fuck up.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

You can thank Intuit, the company behind TurboTax, for making taxes as difficult as possible. They spend a lot of money lobbying to make filing taxes more difficult.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

But what about the tax preparation industry? Won't anybody think of the shareholders? For shame.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's how it is here in France. It is calculated according to the previous year income, so if you get a raise you'll have to pay a little bit more at the end the following fiscal year, but that's often very little. Last time I got a 2500€ yearly raise, I had to align something like... 100€ 😆.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Why, though?

I'm in Germany and my employer kind of knows how much they pay me. So they can easily calculate the income tax correctly. It's just assumed that each month's salary is 1/12th of my yearly income and taxed appropriately.

You can literally live your entire life without "doing taxes" even once (though it's a good idea for your individual deductions).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

We are taxed on more than just wages. Additionally, the way tax law is structured here, because of S-corporations and partnerships (structures which own/run companies), these both flow through activity to the individual tax payer which is then taxed at that level.

If it's just wages, lots of Americans work 2, 3, or even more jobs (not just during the year, but at once). Our tax rate tables are set up so you calculate them based on you having one job, so when we start a job it's calculating it at only that one income.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It's the same in the UK - employer deducts the tax and National Insurance (which pays for health care, state pension etc), and most of the time it's correct.

This year I had to do my own tax calculation because of an inheritance, and it was such a pain! But I got some guidance from the HMRC phone line and filed the return online. It turned out I owed a lot less than I'd thought.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Taxes are taken from the payslip, but there's a bunch of other things that can affect your income taxes. For example, you need to pay income tax on bank interest and capital gains tax on investments you sold during the year. There's also a bunch of deductions that reduce your taxable income - for example, if you have a mortgage, you can deduct some of the interest.

Of course, the IRS should already know most of this stuff, so I'm not sure why they make us tell them again.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 months ago (17 children)

Taxes are not the problem. Billionaires grabbing the money on the other side are the problem.

Know the difference

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Don’t worry DOGE will fix that and every American will get a refund!

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yep, and this cartoon feels like America would keep voting for this stupid fascist stuff as long as they keep promising the Libertarian ideal of lower and lower taxes.

Americans trained to defund America, the enemy was inside all along.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Have you read A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear?

At the end of the libertarian experiment (which surprisingly ended in failure) they had almost no services in the town yet still paid as much taxes as the neighboring towns which had tons of fully funded services.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Know you're joking, but just think it's funny to point out that one of DOGE's first acts was to try to kill the direct file system the IRS maintains to make it easier for some people to file their taxes. I feel like that one didn't get a lot of coverage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

And they just fired a huge chunk of the IRS as well.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

... Right into Col. Musks bank account!

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's very hard to find the motivation to pay taxes to a federal government that doesn't represent me. "No taxation without representation" drove the revolution against our original king after all...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Now that it's clear the Federal government is just using tax money to give to billionaires, it's going to be extra painful this year. It genuinely just feels like a protection racket now. Pay money to the ruling class, or their enforcers will haul you away to prison.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In the country where you don't know what you ll end up paying unless you go to the counter, because the taxes are not included, its only "logical" to not have your taxes deducted from your payslio because reasons

I ll never understand this shit, smh

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (10 children)

I'm not sure what country you're talking about, but I assume the U.S. We do have taxes deducted from payroll, and you fill out a form telling the employer (and the IRS) what amount to deduct based on estimated income, family size, and a couple of other factors. Then in April we have to file our official tax form declaring actual income, and if we owe less than what was deducted from our paychecks we receive that back as a refund, but if we underestimated we have to pay whatever taxes are remaining. The reason that filing taxes is so complicated is the sheer volume of deductions, exemptions, credits, etc that have been piled on top of the tax code over the years (plus lobbying by the tax prep industry). It's a stupid system, but it's not as stupid as some people seem to be assuming in this thread. If you set up your withholding right, you shouldn't ever owe taxes when it's time to file.

Now, if you're self-employed or a contractor (and considered self-employed) the whole thing kind of falls apart and it's a lot easier to wind up owning a bunch of money. Like I said, it is a stupid system, just not quite as crazy as some people seem to be assuming.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

To add one thing to the only reasonable comment I've seen in this thread: if you're poorer, your taxes are probably easy and straightforward. If you have money and your taxes are more complicated, you can probably afford to have someone do them for you.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I ended up owning $38

fucking win! I'm not going look at the total paid in thought, it's much much more than $1.2k

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you live in the USA then the government didnt decide to keep making it worse, the people did.

GOP wrote the last tax plan and they're about to write the new one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This is why I don't blame the politicians. I blame the people

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Blame the people who pay off the politicias and put rightwing propaganda on almost all mainstream media. Common people have to spend a LOT of effort to get even a resemblance of agency.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Funny story, the people also chose not to pursue campaign finance laws. It's been an issue on the DNC platform for 25 years, they even successfully removed the vast majority of money from politics until the Citizens United SCOTUS decision undid their work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

The people are partially to blame, but let's be real, the voting system practically guarantees voter disenfranchisement.

It's how the US has ended up with the far right, and right-lite-maybe-a-little-good-stuff-but-mostly-capitalism-status-quo party duopoly.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Haha, my last tax filing I owed another $40k.

My own fault for not paying taxes during the year though.

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