In my country I just open the government website, quickly glance if they got my income for my job correct, and click "submit".
Itemizing is a totally waste of your time. Just take the standard deduction.
And that hamster bit me, so stab away, I'll feel nothing but schadenfreude.
As funny as this is, I really think an entire year if not a core course on taxes, tax law, rights, law, etc. would have really fucking helped life.
A whole year? The vast majority of people do not need to do much more than take the standard deduction and input their work income. The IRS offers free fillable forms with clear instructions.
Anyone who believes this either has a very complex tax situation or has just never actually tried to do more than let TurboTax scam them.
never actually tried to do more than let TurboTax scam them
Filling your returns by hand is obnoxious by design. Importing your data digitally saves a ton of time and wrist strain.
It sucks that TurboTax has a functional monopoly on the IRS API, but you're really trading time (and annoyance) for money. Most people justifiably bite the bullet and file electronically.
Freetaxusa is free federal and cheaper state. They still try to upsell you (but not as aggressively), but the most I ever paid for standard deductions and nothing crazy is $15 for the state.
And the experience is the same as the other ones. Pretty simple
Freetaxusa is free federal and cheaper state.
Haven't tried it in a minute, but I've got a Schedule B and D to file. It wasn't helpful for that.
Most people don't need an education on how to do their taxes. They simply need maths and reading comprehension. It's not that hard.
I had to learn all these things in school. They were actually covered in both junior high and then again when I was in high school. Also how to do job applications and interviews, budgeting, bank accounts, loans, interest, stocks, all that stuff. We even spent weeks doing a fake stock market where we "invested" and tracked the stocks we picked to see how we did.
Damn, which school did you attend?
Regular old public school.
Which state & city? Because I guarantee you most regular old public schools do not provide education to the extent you described. In which state & city did you attend a regular old public school?
I'll say it was a small town in the midwest. Not getting more specific than that.
If we get to wish for a public policy to change, then I'd rather we get 100% of our taxes from the rich, calculated by the government. Henry George was right.
I'll say it as much as I can. Tax business, on profit not individuals on their salary. Salary comes from a business paying you, they have accountants, they can pay taxes.
And when you tax profits, they have the incentive to reinvest in the company, either by hiring more people, or building things, or spending money on research. Instead of giving record profits to shareholders.
Of course you can have small businesses below certain employee numbers exempt or something like that to help new businesses.
This of course means you can't hand out "government help" by just taking less taxes from people already making money, and have to install give real help to people in need irrespective of their salary.
And of course there might be some details that should be added to make it good.
in HS I took a class for small business. we learned things like how to use spreadsheets(the paper kind) as well as balancing accounts. we had a whole section based on pricing with supply and demand.
I think we even covered things like different investment options for money.
out of all my friends in my youth, I was the only one who knew how to create a budget and balance my accounts.
wealth intelligence is important to ensure you can not only grow your savings, but protect it as well.
most people don't even know what a fiduciary is and why it's important, let alone why a CD might be better than a savings account.
A lot of schools do teach laws, rights and the like to students now.
Taxes, not so useful when filing laws regularly change.
I am confused many people feel filing tax is a useful skill, I have never once used itemized deduction.
The only way tax law has meaningfully changed in the last 30 years for most Americans is the brackets.
us is no the whole world
These are precisely the things our government does not want you to know.
Incorrect. TurboTax and H&R Block don't want you to know these things. And they lobby to keep the IRS crippled.
This life lesson definitely does come in handy the older you get. Nothing like receiving complicated tax forms that have to processed for your dead relative / spouse / or child to remind you of how cruel the world is.
The debt your grandmother had is now yours! If you don't resolve it she will haunt you.
Sorry for your loss!!!!!
Now fuck you pay me.
As I understand it, even in third world shitholes like the US, debt itself doesn't transfer... but you do have to deduct debt from inheritance before you get anything.
Lol, go fuck yourself, bill collector! You get nothing! You lose! God day sir!
I had some slimeball try that shit with me after my mother died. I told him to take it to the courts so he can get laughed out of the room and pay court costs cuz my mother died pennyless and I'm not making that my problem.
And then I’ll remind you that it’s well within most governments’ capabilities to do their citizens taxes for them. Also any for-profit service you use to do your taxes uses the money you give them to lobby the government to keep the tax system this way. Also your taxes are getting used for unfathomable crimes, and there’s no paper trail or audit done to them to prove your tax dollars are going where you’d like them to.
In the UK, unless you're self-employed, taxes are just kind of automatic. It just gets handled by your employer.
If you're self-employed, and especially so if you're VAT-registered, it can be a bit fiddly. For most people, however, it's just handled invisibly.
Fun fact: if you're self employed in the UK, you've been able to do your taxes online via a simple (ish) form on the HMRC website, but they're in the process of phasing it out in favour of third-party proprietary software, so some people aren't allowed to use the free web form anymore, and within two or three years, it'll become totally unavailable. Everyone always loves it when the government finds things that Americans complain about and copies it here so we get to complain about it, too.
Jesus Christ why

Paying for a CPA to do your taxes (a person, not HR block) usually works out to a net positive financially
Easier than trying to learn the tax code yourself and they can usually maximize your return or minimize your amount owed
Edit; I can do nothing to help the hamster
If they know how much I owe, why don't they send me a bill?
In USA they tax toilet paper and water, you can't even shit for free.
Also, our labor party is anti-labor, and our smaller government party is pro big government.
Why do we even bother with words? Just do what you want you win
If they know how much I owe, why don't they send me a bill?
Because TurboTax and HR Block lobbied to make it like that
This week we will be learning how to apply for a marriage certificate, how to find reputable marriage counselling, how to file for divorce, how to pay alimony, and how to skip bail and move to Venezuela
and how to skip bail and move to Venezuela
First lesson: don't become president of Venezuela
Oh, goddamn it, now you tell me!

What a concerning meme from a concerning username.
Atleast the username checks out.

I like your name
It's a little ambiguous
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