I tell you how it works in my shitty eastern european country:
- I get an email that my report is ready, I have to go to a website where I can see it.
- After logging in I can see a list, where I worked last year, how much was paid, if I should pay anything more or I can get back something.
- If everything is alright I can hit OK. If something is not right I can open an issue on the same website, but I never had to do that ever.
That’s all. Usually takes less than 5 minutes for the whole process.
This is a joke btw
The most communist part is that the whole process is fully managed by the government tax office, not some 3rd party private company.
The not communist part is that it takes unbelievable amount of corruption to program and maintain these services under the hood. They figured out that it’s hard to measure how much human work needed to develop such a thing, so they can just invoice whatever unbelievable amount they want. American companies help with that as well. Windows and Office license for state offices 3-4 times higher than the normal price for consumers, because for some reason they can’t buy it directly from Microsoft, they have to buy from local appointed dealers… Actually MS was fined for this for USD 8.7 Million, the local party in one of this deal was promoted to higher government position afterwards.
So actually this doesn’t exist for making the peasant’s life easier, just to have jobs to steal from… It’s just accidental that our small life becomes a bit less miserable during the process.
I thought it was crazy that the report had entry on how much money I lost with my investments and that was deducted in my taxes. I’ve never told them that I’ve traded stocks and still the tax man knows my money shit better than I do.
In the US, brokerage companies legally have to send you a Form 1099 which covers all investment income over the year. You then include this when submitting your taxes. They probably send a similar report to your government instead.
Finland is basically “File a report if your income changes enough to affect your tax bracket. You’ll be issued a new taxation statement. Send it to the employer. (If unemployed, don’t bother, the agency who pays you already knows.) Your employer/the agency will send the taxes owed to us. You’ll be sent an annual tax proposal - If you have no deductions, you don’t need to do anything, if you do, then it gets mildly interesting. If you get tax returns, you don’t need to do anything if we have your bank details. If you owe us, oh boy, we’ll let you know, don’t worry.”
Love the meme but JFC I wish they would just send us a simple invoice (or refund) every year. You know, the way adult nations do things.
It’s insanity. I’m sure there’s some rationale for it, but it seems like it could be so much simpler.
I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is there is a “tax accounting lobby” that works hard to prevent any measures to simplify it, because they would go out of business. Intuit and others.
Last April, I asked the tax man how much I owed, and he said $350. Then I said, “you ain’t no tax man! You the loch ness monster!”
IRS:
You gotta do a bunch of math, and if you fuck it up, you go to jail
Two dollars?
jail :(
gaol
What if I only made 2 dollars?
Then maybe somebody only makes a dime and has every right using your companys toilet to do his business.
I love how you presented the IRS as the good guys here
