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.
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.
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.
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.
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€ 😆.
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).
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.
I agree that the employer part should be more automatic, but don’t forget it may not the the only income. You can have properties, you can have share and dividends. All that do not happen all at the same time, so it is far easier to calculate on an earlier snapshot than continuously recalculate every time something changes.
Even in Germany you typically get a little money back if you do your taxes as a regular employee. Though that’s far, far better than owing the state money at the of the year.
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.
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.
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.
They already do that tho, payroll tax is paid by the employer without the employee every seeing it.
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.
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.
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€ 😆.
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).
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.
I agree that the employer part should be more automatic, but don’t forget it may not the the only income. You can have properties, you can have share and dividends. All that do not happen all at the same time, so it is far easier to calculate on an earlier snapshot than continuously recalculate every time something changes.
Even in Germany you typically get a little money back if you do your taxes as a regular employee. Though that’s far, far better than owing the state money at the of the year.
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.