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I.R.S. to Begin Trial of Its Own Free Tax-Filing System (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by HeartyBeast@kbin.social to c/news@beehaw.org

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Residents of 12 states are eligible to participate if they meet certain criteria. But the agency’s plans have already met resistance from tax preparation companies.

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[–] Auzy@beehaw.org 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Here in Australia, you can literally file your tax now for free in a few clicks using the government website. If you wait a few weeks, everything for most people is prefilled except deductions

It's absolutely awesome

[–] frog@beehaw.org 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much the same in the UK. Most people don't have to file their tax at all (it's automatically deducted from wages for most people), but for those that do, you can do it for free on the government's website, which is largely a matter of saying how much you earned, and any relevant deductions. The government then calculates what tax you have to pay. If your tax affairs are more complicated than that, you're earning enough that you're in the "having an accountant is mandatory" territory anyway.

[–] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

...and the UK online form is really good, in my opinion.

[–] frog@beehaw.org 6 points 10 months ago

Yeah, it's not flawless, but it's straightforward to use, which really is the thing you need for this kind of service, since it's intended to be used by normal people rather than experts. The one and only thing that our glorious Conservative overlords have done well in the last 13 years is modernising a lot of official administrative processes like this so they can be done digitally and without a load of needless complexity.

[–] library_napper@monyet.cc 14 points 10 months ago

I think in most countries you dont have to file anything because it happens automatically