alt Hacker NewsTaxes in the US are unnecessarily stressful. I remember going to H&R Block and being sent home to find some piece of supporting documentation because it was “really important”. I turned the whole apartment upside down but wasn’t able to find it. Went back to the tax preparer in a state of high anxiety. When I asked what would happen if I couldn’t find the document and was told the impact on the final assessment could be as high as $80. Would have gladly spent 10x that to avoid the stress.
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It's to H&R Block's benefit to make you feel that taxes are stressful and you need 3rd party help, though. That you were stressed out about this interaction is H&R's fault; not the law or the IRS.
H&R Block isn’t exactly the top tier accounting option. Not sure what you were expecting. It’s like going to McDonald’s and being disappointed at the food quality.
Dare one ask where all of the AI proponents are when the subjects of public budgeting and taxation arise?
> the impact on the final assessment could be as high as $80
That's the financial impact. Depending on what you're missing, the nonfinancial might be opening yourself to perjury, because you're knowingly claiming a falsehood as a fact on a tax return (even if it's financially in the government's benefit)... never mind potentially screwing up future tax returns in the process.
IRS should create a spreadsheet with irs forms so the user types in their numbers and the calculations are automatic.
An intern or 2 could do this for the entire nation to benefit!
This is the result of decades of Republican lobbying, legislation and outright sabotage. The philosophy, openly advertised by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, goes like this: nobody likes taxes. So if people find the filing process difficult and stressful every year, they will be constantly reminded of this fact. This will in turn make them more open to suggestions and propaganda along the lines of taxes being something that must be fought tooth and nail at every turn, because let's face it, who wants the tax code to become even more complex?
In contrast, if the process is streamlined every year, most people won't even pay attention to how much they pay in taxes - which isn't great if your ultimate goal is to keep government as small as possible.
This is by design. Income tax filing is a long-solved problem in much of the first world.
One of the easiest ways to convince the public that the government is inept and wasteful is to make it as difficult to do the necessary as possible. If politicians cared, this wouldn’t be an issue.