Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by kahnpro 2990 days ago
There's no reason why they can't. If you're an employee and/or a student then everything you do should be reported to the government, taxes should have automatically been withheld, and the government should be able to figure out everything on their own. They always double-check your calculations anyway.

Only if you're self-employed or have special situations should you need to file anything, and even then, many of these situations can be something where you tick a box or submit a document and then they still do everything automatically.

The situation in the US and Canada is ridiculous.
2 comments
LorenPechtel 2990 days ago
Disagree. For such people the government will generally have everything on the income side. They won't necessarily have everything on the deduction side.

However, even partial data like that would be very useful. The IRS sends you pre-filled forms. You can change anything that's wrong, add anything that's missing. Do your taxes, or just submit the changes and let them deal with the rest of it and send you a bill if need be.

link
kahnpro 2990 days ago
If you have things on the deduction side that the government doesn't already know about, you can submit a self-assessment or an amendment. Deductions themselves should be simplified.

You bring deductions up as if it's a problem but many other countries, like the UK, do it this way without problems.

Most people here do not submit tax returns.

link
eh78ssxv2f 2990 days ago
> If you're an employee and/or a student then everything you do should be reported to the government, taxes should have automatically been withheld, and the government should be able to figure out everything on their own.

In such cases, isn't it already super straightforward to file taxes? Just copy-paste information from W2 to 1040ez, and you are done?

link
PeterisP 2990 days ago
The point is that a hundred million people could well do with not spending the time and effort to copy-paste that information and figure out if they're doing that correctly, and there also would be a hundred million less declarations for IRS to review.

That's how it works in quite many other countries; if you don't have anything peculiar, then you simply don't do anything at all, the appropriate taxes were already withheld by the employer and that's it. You file a declaration if you're running a business, are renting property as a landlord, or something like that, but the vast majority of "normal people" do not need to care how the tax declaration process works.

link