Taxes!

oh, I read your post quite thoroughly -- generally people who complain about the tax code being too complicated are conservative republicans, like Ryan, who would prefer to eliminate the significant complexities, which often benefit the working classes, because they address social issues like: the cost of child care for working parents, college and professional education, encouraging low-income people to save for retirement, the high cost of health care, the untaxed transfer of wealth from parents to future generations, and tax evasion practices generally practiced by the wealthy.

xp

the complexity of the tax code, for the most part, is good, in that economics and issues are complex, and it should reflect that.

"The tax code" covers a lot of ground. I was speaking directly to the slice of the tax code that covers personal income taxes. Within the larger tax code, personal income is not "the most part", but a very specific piece of it, which ordinary citizens are expected to understand and comply with. Corporations and the wealthy have accountants who deal with the intricacies of the corporate tax code, and this is where complexity is required to deal with the complexity of the economy you cited.

1. That's normal.

This is not an argument in favor. Normal is not 'good' or 'bad', but simply a statistical observation. Back when something less complex was the norm, that was normal.

2. Use a software program

Data doesn't acquire itself or enter itself. The time savings created by software is not primary to the task.

I was speaking directly to the slice of the tax code that covers personal income taxes.

As was I!

Data doesn't acquire itself or enter itself. The time savings created by software is not primary to the task.

Actually, it can pretty much do so at this point.

Unless you're talking about things like calculating the square footage of a home office, that you will probably want to measure.

there are even apps that track and calculate your mileage.

I'd love to hear how my financial data can be accumulated, analyzed and correctly transferred into tax forms, accurately, safely and with minimal effort on my part. Of course, completely changing how I currently operate my personal finances would not qualify as "minimal effort".

It seems like almost every bank or credit card provider, even some credit unions, can provide you a categorized list of your transactions in csv format, (a lot of their default categorizations of things are kinda worthless).

I'd love to hear how my financial data can be accumulated, analyzed and correctly transferred into tax forms, accurately, safely and with minimal effort on my part.

https://www.intuit.com/

Do any of those banking institutions assume liability for incorrectly categorizing transactions for tax purposes?

I'm sorry, but, considering how much time you spend posting on an internet message board, I don't see why you have any right to complain about having to make a spreadsheet and type numbers into a computer program, that will ask you basic questions and requires little outside knowledge.

Have you ever figured out how much time you've spent interacting with all those apps, banking sites, csv files, bookkeeping software and tax software annually in order to achieve the final results?

I have my doubts about the ease you are promising me, and suspect that it is more a matter of a thousand brief tasks performed throughout the course of a year, each of which seems small in itself, but when collected together add up to a considerable outlay of time and effort.

how much time you spend posting on an internet message board, I don't see why you have any right to complain about having to make a spreadsheet

Sorry. This is not a very persuasive argument. I enjoy time posting on ilx. It is recreational for me. It is hardly comparable to working on taxes.

Have you ever figured out how much time you've spent interacting with all those apps, banking sites, csv files, bookkeeping software and tax software annually in order to achieve the final results?

Yes, I have clients I bill by the hour to do these things for them, so I regularly calculate this. Personally, over half of my income is from self-employment, so the time spent actually translates into dollars saved.

I have my doubts about the ease you are promising me, and suspect that it is more a matter of a thousand brief tasks performed throughout the course of a year, each of which seems small in itself, but when collected together add up to a considerable outlay of time and effort.

Doing it on a regular basis over the course of the year makes it easier. If you have no need or desire to track your income and spending -- most people I know, may not have a desire to track their spending, but they seriously need to -- well, that's very nice for you.

New exemptions or credits seem to appear every year and each one is heavily qualified, requiring its own set of special calculations. I must calculate each one, and find we qualify for perhaps one in ten of them.

Practical tip -- you're probably better off getting software, doing the "user-friendly" interview, and then seeing if you need to do any calculations. Re-reading your post, it sounds like you are making wayyyy more work for yourself than necessary.

What do I need to do other peoples’ taxes? A CPA? I could do this for other people and make money.

you don't need an accounting degree. some states require passing a qualifying exam, and continuing education each year, and having a professional bond -- California and Oregon do, but others uh ... don't. The IRS tried to create a licensing system that had an education component but that got quashed for "states rights" issues. So, depending on where you live, you could just buy pro software and uh, profit.

oh, you would need to get a PTIN, and if you do 10 or more tax returns a year for money, you will need to get an e-file number (EFIN).

I remember learning about the professional bond stuff when I first started working with my tax guy, though it's just an extra form to fill out on my end. Still, interesting to see the bureaucracy at work.

it's cheaper than the insurance a lot of other professions are required to have.

I must calculate each one, and find we qualify for perhaps one in ten of them.

How about figuring out if you qualify and then doing no calculations for the ones you don't qualify for?!?

my (canadian) taxes are extremely simple. i have one employer. they give me a form. i fill the details from that form in on a website that is free. i hit submit. i get a cheque for $7.78 6 weeks later.

I mean I am sure this is just an attempt to use "calculate" as a synonym for pondering, but during a process with actual calculations I think I'd be a little more tight with the terminology.

I have no kids nor significant deductions, but I do own a house and refinanced a mortgage last year. The turbotax site (good ol' intuit corp) took maybe... fifteen minutes this year? To be fair, I have all my tax documents in one pile (bank interest statement, mortgage interest statement, employer tax form, etc) and I'm basically clicking through the same workflow year to year.

It's just a series of "did you do any of the following this year" question lists, followed by a quick data entry question for anything where you answered in the affirmative.

I think the government could easily have a TurboTax-style thing themselves but some lobbying keeps it a private industry.

sorry, that was an xp over jim's description of sublime simplicity

I think the government could easily have a TurboTax-style thing themselves but some lobbying keeps it a private industry.

― mh, Tuesday, March 13, 2018 1:58 PM (one minute ago)

"easily" is questionable. They do subsidize private industry software fees for low-income people with simple returns through the free file program. Should they expand on that? I forget which situations/forms Turbo Tax doesn't cover/exceeds the abilities of the software. I'm sure they increase what it can do each year.

Some background on how Intuit lobbies against tax prep simplification:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/03/22/521132960/episode-760-tax-hero

well, not "easily" without completely fucking up the current competitive landscape for tax software

they could just nationalize intuit :)

"Easily" in terms of contracting/bidding, determining the parameters,(does it cover everything, how many different languages should it be in, etc.), the user interface, the actual programming is probably pretty simple.

HAHAHAHA

xp - Intuit is not alone -- H&R Block lobbies just as hard for that.

sorry, spent the afternoon reading about business process management tools and the idea that the if/then logic of the tax code is simple to implement blows my mind

tbh the *code* part could be, but only if you used an off the shelf decision engine. the *configuration* would require a staff of full-time business process management advisors, easily

as someone who has paid taxes in four countries, i feel pretty confident in saying that anyone defending the US way of doing it has a kind of sickness

so, uh, that part would also not be easy, either? AHAHAHAH

Is the complexity coming from the interview-based interface of a consumer program like TurboTax? The tax prep chains (Block, Jackson Hewitt, et al) have similar interfaces for their software. Professional programs don't have that.

xp - how do businesses pay taxes in other countries?

the interface probably has its own complexity but I don't really do that kind of stuff

so you *could* use an off the shelf process management engine, but then you have this entire layer of analysis: how do we define eligibility for a specific deduction or exemption? it could be age, income, location, or a weird combination of those things. are they all the same type of qualifiers, or do we have a bunch of different types to define? do deductions interact with each other, and do they do so in a specific way?

there are just a million small process pieces that the IRS has probably modeled out as well, but having all of this as some software-defined state machine is a hell of a lot of analysis and configuration

the process to submit to individual states alone is probably a nightmare

I have a coworker whose partner works in a part of the company that handles employee data, as a software developer, and someone dropped the ball when it came to documenting and handing off the tax return process. She got called in to work on that and did something like a 72 hour week just to get it up and running. Every single state had a different way of submitting the employee income tax file for businesses, and several didn't work.

no idea about business taxation. speaking solely about personal tax here.

seriously, the complexity of the tax code, for the most part, is good, in that economics and issues are complex, and it should reflect that.

lol the complexity of the tax code and its practical implementation in the US is not "good". it is madness and this is stockholm syndrome.

the tax code is not the right place to implement granular redistribution of wealth or personal incentives. if you do you end up with the insanity we have here.

do what the rest of the world does and have like 4ish income tax brackets and handle the rest with cash benefits (that can be means-tested, if you insist or are a tory).

no you have to do all of the things in one place, and that place is a long-form questionnaire

it's just the right way

my family's joint tax return including worksheets is 90 pages this year btw

we'd offer you citizenship to make it easier but we don't really do that these days

working on that, but i wrote diane feinstein a strongly worded email today that ended "i hope i become a citizen so i can vote before you retire", so i may not get it now.

when i permanently move out of the usa, i can't wait til a man wearing a fedora and holding a briefcase hunts me down at my workplace to inform me i need to submit my usa tax form(s)

xp although my tax life will not get any simpler. non-resident visas are different, but h1bs etc. and green card holders are all "US persons" for tax purposes.

no idea about business taxation. speaking solely about personal tax here.

many self-employed people pay their business taxes through the personal tax system. Individuals that are landlords with rental income (and expenses) also pay/report that income through the personal tax system. A lot of the complexities are a result of those things. The purely personal part is fairly simple for most people.

do what the rest of the world does and have like 4ish income tax brackets and handle the rest with cash benefits (that can be means-tested, if you insist or are a tory).

and presumably there are a variety of government departments that handle the different cash benefits?

yes the government handles it

and presumably you are paying more in taxes for the government to handle these things, rather than having a system where the individual has to do a modicum of work on their own behalf?

... or pay a person or company of their choice to do that work?

that seems counter to self-interest, at least for me. For me, it's like arguing that people shouldn't have to cook their own meals, meals should be provided by the government at the prices restaurants charge, no matter if that's significantly more expensive than making your own food, or if they make mistakes.

making tax relief to those who need it dependent on their ability to correctly file their taxes seems kind of cruel and unusual tbh

especially when a lot of those situations involve people who are disabled, poorly-educated, or elderly

my understanding is there was a cabal of evil tax prep companies who successfully lobbied against the IRS (already having most of the documentation needed) providing the option of doing your taxes for you, the resulting cost to the gov't being negligible since they'd have to process your taxes anyway.

xp I think it's more like saying "this is an affirmative government program to make sure these groups get resources" as opposed to "you can keep some of your money if you navigate the system properly and possibly pay a third party to do the paperwork for you (we do not reimburse for the latter)"

lmao yes a 90 page document is a "modicum of work". very good. this is insane.

what costs the economy more: having a not-for-profit centralized shared resource handle something with the economies of scale and fairness that implies, or having every tax payer resolve a complex problem/pay rent-taking for-profit businesses to solve it?

also btw benefits are better than deductions because you can pay them to people who don't pay tax such as poor people.