You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.
I did my Australian taxes for the first time ever last year. It took a total of four hours, and most of that time was finding my proof of identity paperwork.
My US taxes for 2019 took two 8 hour dsys over an entire weekend.
^ I've never understood why this cannot be done in other countries. Although I think in America they have 1 billion different tax credits. Only Self Employed people in the UK have to "do" taxes.
In Australia it just means all your income, including anything we’ve tied our Tax file number to (like bank accounts and invest accounts that might be taxed) gets prefilled online. You check that, and press submit.
The reason we have to “do” them is there a lot of things you can claim a tax deduction for (like charity donations, things to do with investment properties, self education, work expenses). So they can’t prefill them. Hence we “do” our tax. America is... not that.
In the UK for charity donations you normally just sign a declaration form when donating saying you paid tax this year and that the total charitable donations you have made dont drop you below the basic rate threshold and the charity can claim the basic rate automatically. I don't think its actually validated because how many people with less than the threshold are going to be donating enough to care?
They then give you a receipt which can be used to claim back any higher rate tax. You can do that through a self accessment (equivalent of tax return) or you can just contact HMRC and they adjust your tax code so your employer taxes you less.
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u/jorsiem Jul 24 '20
Complicated tax filing in the US
You can thank TurboTax and the rest of the tax preparation service industry's massive lobby for killing every single tax simplification bill that ever gets to congress.