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by rogerrogerr 320 days ago
It’s pretty dang simple today. If you’re a usual W-2 employee, anyone who can read and follow simple instructions can file without paying any preparer a dime.

For those of us trying to collect all the weird tax situations: https://freetaxusa.com.
3 comments
the-smug-one 320 days ago
In Sweden and Denmark the tax service prepares a tax statement for you. In Sweden, if everything looks OK, you press a button. In Denmark, if everything looks OK, you don't even have to press a button.
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arghwhat 319 days ago
But note that for Denmark, it's only correct by default in simple employment cases without notable investment, retirement, transport/house/mortgage related deductibles, etc.

And it's not at all simple once you have to actually check or change details. It's so complicated that the online UI will only show you a fraction of the available fields by default, and they often reset year-by-year, or get weird values. And then there's the whole real estate taxation scandal...

And more importantly than fixing the statement, you have to actually understand the whole taxation situation to make financial decisions throughout the year. How a mortgage partially interacts with capital gains taxation, dividend and income interact with progressive taxation, how your different investments are spread across a number of different taxation types and intervals, how your spouse's tax situation affects yours, etc. etc.

If you don't pay attention to that, you'll end up missing out on the deductibles the politicians promised you but intentionally handicapped to death by making it yet another obscure tax exception stacking on top of the rest. >:(

I'd gladly pay a bit more tax if I could just get it to be ONE flippin' rate.

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realusername 319 days ago
Same in France, I even get tax exempts from retirement plans and taxes from stock market holdings automatically.
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johnisgood 319 days ago
I assume it is the same in Hungary, it definitely was the case a few years back, so I assume the same system is in place. It might not be rolled out for everyone, however. Probably not for companies, or in complex cases.
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ijk 319 days ago
You mean that Americans used to be able to do that. Last year. For this coming year, it's over.

Article: https://www.theverge.com/news/717308/irs-direct-file-gone-bi... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757262

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bigstrat2003 319 days ago
No, Americans can still do that. You can get the forms to file your taxes from many public places (e.g. the library), and filling out a 1040 is dead easy if you are just bringing in wages from your job. The instructions are very clear and will walk you through the whole process.

I agree that we should have a government-provided e-file option in the modern age, but it is not true to say that Americans have no way to file taxes for free.

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cortesoft 319 days ago
It could be way easier. Many countries send everything filled out and you just verify.

They already know all my income, my dividends, everything that is sent to the government already… why can’t they give me it all auto filled? They are pretty good at finding out if you left something off, so they could do that before hand.

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