The commonsense utility of the IRS supplying you with prepopulated returns is so obvious that the tax-prep industry has had to really work to hold it at bay. In reality, the campaign to defund the IRS isn't – and will never be – about helping "the little guy." As Propublica's IRS Files demonstrate, the defunded, shriveled IRS is a billionaire's plaything, which is why America's top 400 earners pay less tax than you do: The point of getting the IRS to send you pre-populated tax returns isn't to deny you the opportunity to pay excellent, knowledgeable tax-prep specialists if you need them – it's to spare most of us from the needless expense of paying Intuit and HR Block to perform the rote form-filling by which they rake in billions in profits. Some people do have complicated taxes – as a writer with income from all over the world, I'm one of them – but most people don't. These extremists are joined by many independent tax-prep specialists, who are seemingly convinced that every taxpayer has 11 dependents, four different kinds of pension savings, and six all-cash side-hustles, two of them international. The tax-prep industry couldn't have done this on their own – their astroturf campaigns were joined by a grassroots of useful idiots, bedwetters like Grover Norquist and his acolytes, who openly demand that tax preparation be as difficult and painful as possible, to drum up support for their campaign to "get the US government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." It's a no-brainer, or it would be – if it wasn't for decades of lobbying by the massively concentrated tax-prep industry – wildly profitable corporate giants like HR Block and Intuit, the parent company of Turbotax, who spent 20 years lobbying congress, spending millions to ensure that Americans would have to pay the Turbotax tax in order to pay their income tax. Sure, the IRS might make mistakes, and if you're worried about that, you can either manually review the precompleted return or pay someone to do it. Even in a world where many of us are being "casualized" and have income coming in as independent contractors, the IRS knows about it, thanks to the 1099 form. For the minority who don't fit the standard form, the system works like it does in the US – you either tackle it alone, or do it with professional help. If they missed some information, or if your tax status has changed, or if you've got new deductions, you can amend this return – or throw it away and start over by yourself or with a tax professional.įor the vast majority of Britons, filing their tax returns takes a few minutes once a year, and it's free. The tax authority uses this information to fill in a tax return for you and they mail it to you. The tax authority also knows about your major deductions, like your kids or other dependents. That puts tax preparation in the same bucket as other forms of weird American exceptionalism – like the belief that we're too untrustworthy to have universal healthcare, or that we're so violent that we must all have assault rifles to protect ourselves from one another.įor those of you who aren't familiar with how they do it in, say, the UK, here's how it works: your employer submits all of your paystubs to the tax authorities likewise the custodians of your pension and other people who send you money. Despite the fact that most other rich countries have a far more efficient process, many Americans believe that adopting this process here is either impossible, immoral, or both. Turbotax is blitzing Congress for the right to tax YOU ( )Įvery year, Americans spend billions on tax prep services, paying a heavily concentrated industry of giant, wildly profitable firms to send the IRS information it already has.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |