alt Hacker NewsHow does Norway handle self-employment? There are a lot of people with self-employment income in the USA, including a lot of tradespeople, freelancers, and contractors. The IRS knows nothing about this until you tell them.
In the simple case of working for one employer all year, no complicated investments or other income, standard deductions, your tax filing in the USA is equally simple and you can complete it in 15 minutes on paper for the cost of a postage stamp.
There are many reasons the US tax situation is complicated. Among them are that it's used to incentivize behavior (tax credits or deductions for various things), there are people invested in it being complicated (tax prep industry), but a big one is that if your situation is complicated, the IRS simply does not have the information it needs until you report it.
A Norwegian "ENK" ("enkeltmannsforetak"; self-employment) deals with a more integrated state reporting environment, stricter cash-sale controls, more emphasis on formal bookkeeping and VAT/cash-register infrastructure, and a more pre-filled tax ecosystem.
You can get a long way cheating the system if you deal with cash only, as banks etc. are required to report everything about everyone to the government, but these days it can only take you so far.
My understand is that the US is much more depending on self-reporting.
But given that the US has its own industry involving tax reporting, and having lived there myself, I don't believe you when you say it's "simple." ;)