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CA State Offers To Prepare Simple Tax Returns
Makarand writes "California is ready to roll out a program for taxpayers where the
state will
offer to fill out their tax forms for them if they are simple enough. Taxpayers
will merely have to go online, download and review the completed forms prepared
for them and confirm their return. This program is supposed to save money
for the state, reduce tax related headaches for many and bring into the
tax system those who are not paying any taxes currently.
The state will take information it already receives on W-2 wage statements,
put it in the right boxes on the tax return, and do the math."
I think it would be great if this was national, I don't see any privacy issues since the gov't is the entity you are sending the info to anyway
1. How much money do you have?
2. Send check for amount specified in step #1.
3. You still owe, work harder next year.
Thank you,
Your Government
The tax system is too complicated... we need the Fair Tax.
Simply put, the FairTax replaces the way we're currently taxed - based on our annual income - with a tax on goods and services. The FairTax is a voluntary "consumption" tax: the more you buy, the more you pay in taxes, the less you buy, the less you pay in taxes.
It's simple.
Everyone pays their fair share of taxes, and with the FairTax rebate, spending up to the poverty level is tax free. The Federal government is fully funded, including Social Security and Medicare, and you don't need an expert to determine your Federal taxes.
It's simple.
Read the FAQs
The one thing I hate more than paying tax is working out my tax.
Last year I filled in my tax and missed out a bit of interest I had earned. It wasn't anything significant and the tax office sent me a nice letter saying that I'd missed out on a bit but that it wasn't a big problem etc etc.
But that left me thinking that if they already know how much interest I've earned (as it's all reported by the banks) then why the hell make me work it out myself. Just give me something filled in as much as possible and then let me check it for errors, fill in any gaps, and be done.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
What could possiblie go wrong?
(How about reducing spending so you don't need to collect as much income tax? They currently take FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS from me each month in state income taxes.)
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
This is somewhat similar to the UK self assessment system. No such thing as state taxes in the UK, so it's all just one system.
Many self employed people simply scribble in their earnings, their losses, and their profit.. and if they send it back by September (rather than January) the tax office will work out the tax on your behalf. If your profit is over a certain amount, you also have to fill out a few more boxes explaining what sorts of expenses you had, but it's pretty simple. You can even do it online.
How is it that every time I see some unique law or way of governing it's in California? I'm genuinely interested. Do they have a fundamentally different way of thinking? Can someone who lives there comment?
The tax code is simple enough in New Zealand that most people simply go with what IRD asseses, and that's usually right.
Aww c'mon, PornMaster. You gotta know this is just the first step. In a few years CA will come out and say, "Since you now trust our numbers we won't require you to check the website and give your approval. It'll be even more simple. We'll just figure out how much you owe us and send you the bill. If you want to dispute it after the fact we'll have another website you can go to."
That's step #2. The IRS is pretty firm when you goof? We'll see how easy it is to get money back when they goof.
At least you can finally marry your sister legally.
I'm not sure about the crime rate, but the public schools are VASTLY influenced by where you live. Georgia is rated one of the worst in the country mainly because of PSAT scores. It's average score is vastly reduced due to the percentage of kids who take it. Almost all students in the state take it, compared to most other states which have very low percentages due to the Georgia government paying for the PSATs for their students.
I agree 100% that the tax code needs to be simplified. Off the top of my head I can think of three problems, though I'm sure there are many more.
1) What about Roth IRAs, savings accounts, investments, etc where the money has already been taxed? I already paid income taxes on the money in my bank account, if we switch over then I'll be taxed again.
2) Tax deductions. I know you want to get rid of them to simplify the code, but it's not realistic to do away with the housing interest tax deduction, for example. 70% of American families own their home, so this would be political suicide.
3) This would create a huge black market for tax-free goods. People would be forming fake small businesses and then apply for resale permits to buy their goods tax-free. What about goods sold online? They will have to be taxed. Will you go after every last person on Ebay?
I think we're pretty much stuck with the system we have.
Fair tax isn't regressive at all.
A flat sales tax is neither regressive nor progressive.
I don't read AC A human right
In Japan, if you're employed with a salary under 20 million yen (~$180k) and you don't have any other significant income--which covers a pretty large fraction of taxpayers--you don't even have to send in a tax return in the first place; your employer does it for you and you see the result on your December or January paycheck (we call it nenmatsu-chousei, end-of-year adjustment).
Good or bad? I dunno, but it's sure less of a pain than writing up a 1040 every year that says I don't owe the IRS any money because I earned it all abroad.
In sweden I have been doing tax returns via internet since 2003 or 2004. You just log in on the swedish IRS webpage, using the national internet-id system "bankID" (its platform indepedent). When you are logged in you find a bunch of html forms (income, profit on capital, etc) prefilled with numbers, just as the ordinary tax return. You also see how much return on tax you get or if you must pay more tax.
If everything is ok, you just click "send in", if you think something is wrong, you just change the numbers, give a motivation, and then click "send in". Just like with the normal declaration.
Also one can do the tax return via SMS; if everything looks good, you can SMS a code to a certain number, and voila, done. However, this sms-tax-return does not allow for altering of the declaration. But most people does not need to anyway.
There is also lots of other stuff to do on the swedish IRS webpage using BankID, such as checking the "tax-account" (its like a bank account, but on this only tax gets in and out) to see if the return of tax has come yet. Normally amounts above 100 SEK is automatically transferred to ones normal bank account (this is also configured via the webb).
It works really good. "E-government", as it is called here, is a good idea.
Let's say I want to do activity A, like go to the strip club. And she wants to do Activiy B, like anything other than go to the strip club.
I will say 'Hey, we should go to the strip club. Do you want to go?'
Of course, we all know the answer is No. But there's no way she's going to just say 'No, I don't want to go to the strip club', because she's female, and that would violate the laws of physics. Instead, she'll say "It's Sunday. The strippers on Sunday are ugly."
And I'm supposed to pretend that the reason we're not going to the strip club is that the strippers are ugly on Sunday, not that I'm dating a jealous, selfish prude.
Actually, maybe H&R Block isn't like my girlfriend. If you let someone else do your taxes for you this time, you can still pay H&R block to do it next time.
paintball