this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
305 points (96.9% liked)

Asklemmy

44152 readers
1402 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 212 points 1 year ago (5 children)

How taxes are dealt with in North America. Just send me how much I owe. Don't have me go through a service to figure it out

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don't make me jump through hoops when I'm already destitute, come on.

This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And save trillions of dollars, especially if we extended this to Medicare for all

But using resources efficiently isn’t the goal, suffering is!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If Democrats actually wanted to win every election from now until forever, this would do it for them. Imagine worrying how you're going to feed your kids and then the mail arrives "BTW you've qualified for food stamps for the last 18 months, here they are" instant loyal voter.

But they won't

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Materially improving people's lives is authoritarianism sweaty it needs to be balanced against legalizing violence against marginalized people

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You largely have intuit/turbotax/quickbooks/mailchimp/whatever other name they use for that process. Or at least the paying for it part

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Intuit is the sole reason our taxes are so obtuse. They lobby for it to be this way.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Not the sole reason. They play a part, same with H&R Block, but it's more the people working for the ultra-wealthy who keep bribing politicians to create laws that allow their clients to avoid paying taxes. The companies that have tax software for the small people benefit from the tax system getting more complex, but they don't directly lobby for those rules, they just want any kind of complexity. Their big fight is against any kind of free tax preparation for the poor and middle class.

It's pretty disgusting what they do though. They make say $20 from someone filing their taxes. They take say $3 from that $20 and spend it to ensure that their customers are never offered a free alternative. They're basically making their customers pay to lobby the government to keep taxes so complex that the customer has no choice but to use them again next year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's absolutely not the case. They lobby to prevent the IRS making their own version of TurboTax, not lobbying to make the tax code more complex. Taxes are complex because we have little real oversight but a lot of deductions and credits. The IRS literally cannot track everything they offer deductions for, so it goes largely on the honor system until something seems fishy.

If you have a house, you have deductions. If you added solar to your house, you have deductions. If you bought an electric car or a hybrid, you had deductions for a while there. If you rent you have deductions in some states. You have to list your dependents for credits.

The IRS is incapable of tracking all of this.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But like I feel like this system of deduction taxes is more difficult than any other country and it reinforces the need for americans to use software or an accountant. Am I wrong? Are other countries putting up with this shit? The biden admin is the first in my lifetime to give us credits rather than a rebate or deductible.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's... Not at all true. There has been a child tax credit for decades. EV credits have existed for quite some time.

And yeah, other countries have some, but iirc they do it because they already track everything for VAT purposes, so it's just an extension of that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I should have used more precise language. There's so much jargon! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_tax_credit_(United_States) To my understanding this is the first time it's ever been paid directly "in advance" rather than served as a credit against your tax payments, awarding money at the end of the year - or even worse when it was non-refundable. This in advance, far higher amount, fully refundable child tax credit is fucking radical compared to what we had and what we're going back to.