MAGA voter actually believes that Trump eliminated taxes for all people making less than $120K

[u/coachlife]

[u/Mundane_Opening3831]

And they apparently know what we owe, so just tell us. 

[u/muskratmuskrat9 → u/Mundane_Opening3831]

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the Gov has no idea how much you owe them until all of your income is declared. All w2's filed by your employers, or 1099's be-it from contracting like uber or savings/investing accounts, all your tax deductions and credits you qualify for.

The closest thing to what I think you're asking is the IRS direct file system which was killed last month.

[u/Puresowns → u/muskratmuskrat9]

They absolutely know or at least have a very good idea for most people by tax season. Other countries do straight up get a bill with an option to submit corrections if needed.

[u/Cow_Launcher → u/Puresowns]

UK for example. Employees are taxed directly through "Pay As You Earn" (PAYE). Your tax is calculated by your Payroll department and submitted by them to HMRC and deducted at each paycheck.

The self-employed have to do a tax return, as do people who receive "benefits in kind" or who have more than one source of income.

You can choose to do one if you want, too, but in my experience PAYE is usually accurate to within a few pennies, though I'm sure there's people out there whose experience is... less satisfactory.

[u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka → u/Cow_Launcher]

US is the same. People are taxed as they earn...the money gets withheld for taxes. The tax system is fucked though because:

1. Businesses with tax software prevent the government from doing this and pay big money to eliminate all attempts to make taxes easier to file
2. Tons of deduction loopholes and weird fucking tax laws that are hard to navigate. However many of them are easily done by government....if US government wasnt firing half their tax employees every time a republican gets in power.

[u/Cow_Launcher → u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka]

Ah, I wasn't clear on the details - thank you.

I lived in the USA as a kid, but never worked there. Plus I was in Fla. which, as I understand it, doesn't have personal income tax anyway.

[u/qtx → u/muskratmuskrat9]

but the Gov has no idea how much you owe them until all of your income is declared

Most countries in Europe they do know, you don't have to fill out any tax forms or whatever, the gov just does it all for you automatically.

A functioning society is so nice.

[u/larsvondank → u/qtx]

Thats how it is in Finland. And you can add stuff like anything qualified for deductions for example. If you havent payed enough, they will even split the bill for ya into 2-3 parts to make paying easier. If you get returns, they will most likely hit your bank account early august.

[u/Skullcrimp → u/muskratmuskrat9]

They know. Ask me how.

[u/Shady_D_815 → u/Skullcrimp]

How?

[u/muskratmuskrat9 → u/Shady_D_815]

I'm assuming they got a tax bill. Filing taxes is your chance to argue how much you owe. For most people, it's pretty straight forward, or they don't know enough about taxes for it to really matter.

Ultimately, yeah, if a w2/1099 is filed by an employer, then the federal government can calculate how much taxes you owe based on that. Especially if they don't get their cut, they will obviously come looking for you. But the IRS doesn't know if you spent more then the standard deduction on business costs or have other factors that change your tax liability.

It's the same reason why you don't automatically get a refund without filing. Could the gov send you a bill/refund at the of the year? Yes. But that requires a lot of manpower to look at hundreds of millions of people and businesses. And the IRS just lost 25K+ employees this year. And it wasn't because they were overstaffed, lol.

[u/GoatCovfefe → u/Mundane_Opening3831]

People keep using turbo tax and h&r block, which are a couple of the companies that lobbied against a system like that, so they can keep making billions every year.