Lol the forms are prefilled when I log in, I can make adjustments as needed, but for someone simply earning a salary, they’re usually good to go as-is. Investments and other non-employment taxable income and deductions (like education, even drivers ed) are what would need manual input for an example.
I don’t know if I’d ever want to live in a counter where this is not the case.
It’s broken on purpose because the lobby for tax filing software bribes politicians. We even got as far as successfully building the while system that worked as you described and the bribers forced the government to shut it down and delete it, after all the work had been finished and paid for.
It’s really annoying. Basically, you get a W-2, which is a record from your employer about how much you earned, how much in taxes you’ve paid, etc. You load that into some software, and it walks you through the rest. The whole process takes like 30-45 min, and many software programs charge (FreeTaxUSA doesn’t, so that’s nice). And right when you think you’re done, you have to do your state tax return, which is simple, but still asks you questions.
It’s unnecessarily complicated. Here’s what my income looks like:
regular job income
bank account interest
Roth conversions - basically make pretax retirement funds into posttax retirement funds
That’s it. All three report to the government, so they have all the info. The only time I’d had something the government doesn’t is if I sold something via classifieds or started a lemonade stand with my kids or something.
Lol the forms are prefilled when I log in, I can make adjustments as needed, but for someone simply earning a salary, they’re usually good to go as-is. Investments and other non-employment taxable income and deductions (like education, even drivers ed) are what would need manual input for an example.
I don’t know if I’d ever want to live in a counter where this is not the case.
It’s broken on purpose because the lobby for tax filing software bribes politicians. We even got as far as successfully building the while system that worked as you described and the bribers forced the government to shut it down and delete it, after all the work had been finished and paid for.
It’s really annoying. Basically, you get a W-2, which is a record from your employer about how much you earned, how much in taxes you’ve paid, etc. You load that into some software, and it walks you through the rest. The whole process takes like 30-45 min, and many software programs charge (FreeTaxUSA doesn’t, so that’s nice). And right when you think you’re done, you have to do your state tax return, which is simple, but still asks you questions.
It’s unnecessarily complicated. Here’s what my income looks like:
That’s it. All three report to the government, so they have all the info. The only time I’d had something the government doesn’t is if I sold something via classifieds or started a lemonade stand with my kids or something.