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.
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.
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.
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.
Taxes are not the problem. Billionaires grabbing the money on the other side are the problem.
Know the difference
The people most capable of carrying the tax burden are the people most likely to cheat their way out of paying taxes.
Lol yeah because taxes are the problem. It’s supposed to be more tax for rich less for poor. You have literally done a 360 reverse Robin Hood no scope self own with the taxes. Because they are the problem. They would change everything if a normal person would tax the demonic corporate entities and stop taxing and punishing your own veteran old people but nah, it’s only a problem when it affects billionaires
Just look at high tax countries, like Sweden, Finland, Norway. They are pretty functional, although not perfect, with pretty well-working social systems. Look at countries that are all about avoiding taxes like… the US. Look at the UK, and what Thatcherism did to it. Social services are falling apart, if still existing at all.
Whoever says taxes are a problem, implicitly says schools, streets, firefighters, … should be privately owned. And guess who would be the private owners and what they are going to do with prices :)
Exactly. There’s fact and there’s fiction. It’s to me no doubt that privatisation breeds enshittification
Taxes are also the problem in countries like the US and China wherein income tax only exists to remove currency from circulation. There’s plenty of other ways to do that in a digital world.
The rich would just use crypto
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…
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.
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
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.
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.
If you set up your withholding right, you shouldn’t ever owe taxes when it’s time to file.
Thing is, here in Germany you don’t even get to make the mistake of setting up your withholdings wrong if you’re a regular employee. I don’t think it’s even possible to end up owing the state money if you’re not self-employed or have considerable capital investments (which is rare for regular employees, which is probably its own issue …).
Oh for sure, I’m not trying to defend the American tax system as being good by any means - it’s most definitely not. But for most people it’s not as bad as some folks seem to believe.
Yeah I’ve heard of so many content creators that stream for a living that gets absolutely screwed over at the end of the year because since they own their own business they have all of the business tax and they hadn’t been putting in throughout the year so for them tax time always hurts
I can’t agree with this enough, though I think part of the problem is that it isn’t what’s easy to complete your W-4 accurately, there is an entire worksheet to use if you file jointly that is sorta difficult to do well, especially if both people make fairly different amounts. If you just choose the basic withholding it’s very likely the bigger breadwinner isn’t withholding enough and you’ll end up owing about what the comic shows (at least that is my experience, as well as some friends).
I think the real problem in the US is that everyone is left to do their tax paperwork from scratch every year when the IRS could send you a personalized return prefilled that you then claim the deductions and credits you’re due and account for any descrpenices (which sure, is what your W-2 is supposed to be, but it isn’t really that, you still need to use the worksheets on the 1040 or pay someone/some software to do it for you; a prefilled 1040 would be a way better system).
It also doesn’t account for the huge variations in state taxes. Many states have income taxes, some are reciprocal with nearby states and others aren’t, the deductions and credits and even what is taxable is all different. The whole thing is a mess. Then lord help you if you live in a state with local income taxes or one where your local taxes are different than school taxes(like PA) and the whole thing is a half day exercise in frustration to complete and you’re still left wondering if you did it right.
Yeah, I’m not by any means trying to say that the American system is the best way of doing things. It’s definitely not, and to be honest I’ve never quite managed to get my state withholding right - I almost always owe a little bit (usually a hundred dollars or so). But some folks seem to have gotten some strange ideas about how bad it actually is.
Yeah, we almost always owe a tiny bit (usually less than $100, often less than $50) to the state. I don’t really understand how I can get so close but still miss it every year but overpay federal taxes when it’s all based on the same W-4 I give to my employer.
School taxes? What is that?
The school districts get part of our local income taxes which is separate from what municipalities get (technically municipalities run wholly on property taxes, and the schools get a portion of that plus a portion of local income taxes that are split with the county. It’s convoluted IMO). It depends on where you are employed and where you live, since your employer remits taxes to the municipality you work in and that municipality remits taxes to school districts based on where each employee lives (at least that’s how I understand it, it all is mostly transparent other than needing to include various location codes on forms for your employer and for your local tax return).
I look like that mouth-hanging-open emoji right now. Convoluted for sure!
Our municipal taxes are paid directly to the local council. Education is funded by central government.
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.
This is why I don’t blame the politicians. I blame the people
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.
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.
Democracy is dead in the digital age. It’s a non-functional and corrupt system incapable of representing or addressing the majority’s actual needs properly. The US has fallen before many European democracies, but they will crumble under the weight of AI-powered digital disinformation and manipulation too.
Haha, my last tax filing I owed another $40k.
My own fault for not paying taxes during the year though.
This government doesn’t deserve our tax dollars. Theyve made it clear they’re funneling as much as possible straight to the billionaires.
Just don’t pay.
Boy they are not funneling shit it already all goes to them openly for years. You are feeling the aftershock. And many people have told you that your working class is being robbed blind. But you did nothing but fuel the fire. You protested then you said cringe to yourself about the process and the oligarchy laughs every time
I’m getting a $10,000 refund for federal income tax (overestimated when paying my estimated taxes), but I owe $9,500 for Californian income tax. <_<
Taxation is theft
Before the feds went fascist, this was hyperbole. Now it’s simply the truth, for federal, anyway. At least my state taxes are still being used for public benefit.
Two thefts make a restitution
