|
SlothfulCobra posted:I suppose the corollary the that is the fact that if America was doing anything much much better than the rest of the world, everywhere else in the world has had at least 50 years hearing what was so great about it to catch up and surpass us, so we're no longer the gold standard, we're at best the average. Yeah spoilers there's very little you ever did that was great to begin with.
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 18:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 11:21 |
|
|
IRQ posted:I disagree with your premise. If he's filing a 1040EZ I can buy that timeline since that literally just 1. finding the number "income - standard deduction" on a chart and fill in the corresponding tax due on line 10 2. Subtract tax you already paid 3. Pay or receive the difference
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:25
|
|
|
I had 20k in income supposedly and $35 in stock dividends and literally no other complications. Despite that my taxes took me one whole day, including starting at irs.gov and reading a bunch and eventually deciding the only way I was going to finish in one day is if I just do turbotax again and let it guide me. Sucks, because I planned to quit them due to ~100 pieces of loud obnoxious spam reminding me to use them every year, and the knowledge that they are the ones lobbying for the system to suck. But afterwards their interface was beautiful, seamless, easy to use, and perfectly planned out, I gotta hand them that. For all their evil they do make sure you're ok if you cave to them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:37
|
|
|
No offense, but how? A 1040ez literally takes like an hour tops if you’ve never done it. It has EZ in the title.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:41
|
|
|
Dumb Lowtax posted:I had 20k in income supposedly and $35 in stock dividends and literally no other complications. I think I so much as looked at the actual forms the first time I filed taxes and went "LOL NOPE" after about an hour. I've only ever had one W2 and student loan interest deductions Hey what if public schools taught this thing that nearly everyone will have to deal with? Oh wait silly me, then I wouldn't have to cough up for Turbotax every year.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:43
|
|
|
Invalid Validation posted:No offense, but how? A 1040ez literally takes like an hour tops if you’ve never done it. It has EZ in the title. That $35 in dividends probably means he can't EZ
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 19:43
|
|
|
IRQ posted:I think I so much as looked at the actual forms the first time I filed taxes and went "LOL NOPE" after about an hour. I've only ever had one W2 and student loan interest deductions Public education in the US is just a whole pile of hosed and I wouldn't be surprised to see it come up on the show eventually. I know he's already done a few bits related to it like segregated schools and standardized testing but I'm not sure if he's ever really touched on "schools are not teaching people what they actually need to know" yet. The lack of media literacy education seems especially relevant to the current political atmosphere.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 20:02
|
|
|
TheCenturion posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Joe Q. American who can do his taxes in 30 minutes with pencil and paper does so, and comes to a different answer than Uncle Sugar, doesn't Uncle Sugar's answer win? The answer is... probably. I actually made a mistake on my taxes once. I transposed a couple of numbers. It ended up meaning I got, like, $30 less on my return check. What happened was I got a letter, then I made a call, an IRS guy told me what the IRS thought, I looked at what I'd done, and I agreed that it was a mistake. They made the correction, told me how it changed the outcome, and I went on with my life. However, there are times when your situation is less clear than mine was, and there are processes in place to deal with disagreements. In the end, the IRS has the backing of the law, so they could theoretically simply impose their will on the taxpayer. But there are avenues to deal with this if they've done this improperly, made a mistake themselves, etc. So, Joe Q. American could actually beat the IRS. But most of the time that won't happen, because Joe Q. American almost certainly made a mistake or got caught cheating. TheCenturion posted:I'm not sure what it has to do with 'trusting the government' when 'the government' is the one with the authority here, anyway. Americans tend to be mistrustful of bureaucracy, even to a sometimes hilarious and occasionally hypocritical level. The idea that BIG BROTHER knows how much tax you should pay, and BIG BROTHER will tell you, and you have no say and can't check their work easily scares some folks. "Oh, yeah, suuuuuuuure, I'll let you figure out how much I owe you!" they say sarcastically. It's not so much that many people want to do their taxes themselves, it's more like they don't trust Uncle Sam (BTW, it's "Uncle Sam," not Uncle Sugar. Uncle Sam is an icon of the American government. Uncle Sugar is that one brother of your mom's that bad-touched you and got caught by your dad who never trusted his brother-in-law in the first place and was always suspicious about why he was so keen to babysit you. Just remember: it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.). And, the mistrust of Uncle Sam to figure out your taxes has a few understandable sources: 1) people who don't make all of their money from W2-type jobs and don't have the luxury of assuming that the government knows how much money they make, and 2) propaganda from Big Accountancy and Big Tax Preparers. quote:And again, the point is that even that half hour with a pencil and paper is still a half hour duplicating work that Uncle Sugar has already done on your behalf. ... Yeah, for some people that's true. I don't know; maybe self-employment is more common in the US than in other places. For a lot of people, there's no reason to expect that the government already knows how much you made, and thus how much you owe in taxes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 20:20
|
|
|
Yeah the IRS sometimes does make some mistakes. While I was in my installment agreement someone with a very similar social security number made an estimated tax payment and they accidentally attributed it to my account instead of his. They applied that money to the years I had been paying in the installment agreement which ended up fully paying off a couple of them so the agreement moved on to covering the next year's balance. When the IRS realized their mistake they took the money back but instead of reapplying the negative balance to the years that had been paid off by the mistake they applied that negative balance to my current year and Installment agreements are contingent on you staying positive with tax years not covered by the agreement. The IRS terminated my agreement and sent me a letter asking for the entire balance in full. It took a couple of months of calling back and forth to finally narrow down what happened and they were eventually able to correct it so all of the years had their proper balances again and the agreement was reinstated.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 20:36
|
|
|
TurboTax was free for both federal and state when I filed this year  they just tried to upsell the plan with audit support and poo poo
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:02
|
|
|
Every other year, taxes have been a breeze for my wife and I, but this past calendar year was a weird one. Half the year, my wife was unemployed as she was a full time student (went back to school at age 30 because after doing a stint as a volunteer EMT, she wanted to make a career out of it and is now an RN-exempt paramedic) and passed her boards in June and went right to work. We both had health insurance through the ACA Exchange (Thanks, Obama!) as it was way cheaper than insurance through a local broker. She put in our combined income (roughly $45,000 per year at the time - again, she's unemployed/full time student) and we were paying about $400 a month for our health insurance. Note: my employer does not offer insurance, and her program required she was insured, so our options were Obamacare Exchanges, or buying it through a third-party broker. Once she got hired at her current position, we both got insured through her employer and dropped our ACA insurance that we got a bit of a subsidy on. It didn't even cross my mind that just because we qualified for a subsidy from January-June and stopped after we no longer qualified for it that the IRS would want to claw back the whole amount because of the June-December income. It seems counter intuitive to thump someone for using a program when they qualified for it and stopped when they didn't, but they did ask for our estimated 2017 income, not income for the time you're planning on using this program in this calendar year. So now we owe the feds a couple grand. We're in a much better position than we were financially before, and paying taxes doesn't bother me at all since I'm generally a pretty pro-civilization and services kind of guy, but I thought I'd share my bit last year with the non-Americans how weird we like to keep things were in the US.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:08
|
|
|
Fellatio del Toro posted:TurboTax was free for both federal and state when I filed this year This is only the case for some states. For whatever inexplicable reason, it is not free here in Maryland. tarlibone posted:... Yeah, for some people that's true. I don't know; maybe self-employment is more common in the US than in other places. For a lot of people, there's no reason to expect that the government already knows how much you made, and thus how much you owe in taxes. Dicking over your employees by calling them "independent contractors" to gently caress them out of benefits is a lot more common in the US, sure.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:08
|
|
|
I've never spent more than 20 minutes filing taxes but every year my parents' kitchen table is covered in a giant pile of receipts and bills for like a month and I honestly have no idea what the gently caress they're even doing with all of that
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:14
|
|
|
Does anyone doing anything other than 1040EZ do taxes without the use of some software? Like simplifying the tax code isn't really necessary if you are just answering some questions and letting a computer do all the real work.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:21
|
|
|
swickles posted:Does anyone doing anything other than 1040EZ do taxes without the use of some software? Like simplifying the tax code isn't really necessary if you are just answering some questions and letting a computer do all the real work. Doing taxes if you're doing anything with stock sales is a nightmare, software or not
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 21:23
|
|
|
MikeJF posted:And a huge part of the tax resentment of the US is partly because it's so visible and such a huge task, I suspect. The hands-off tax system of in most developed countries means that it's more accepted as just something that happens. I’m willing to bet if research was done on the legislation that started these practices, you’d find Koch influence some way or another. Their specific brand of “libertarian” bullshit reeks through.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2018 23:12
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Not that Corporations routinely not paying taxes isn't a big deal, it's just that everybody should already know about it at this point. You don't really need 16 minutes and a potato to explain the concept, and they didn't even get into the interesting parts of all of this, like how the loopholes that allow this to happen weren't accidents, they were actively lobbied for and legislated, or how all countries are trying to make sweetheart deals with their tax laws to draw in business that never physically comes in a ludicrous massive prisoners' dilemma.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 01:29
|
|
|
Corporate taxes are bad and dumb though but whatever. At the end of the day governments will figure out how to make money that's why there was use tax and then when they figured out getting out how to get around those by buying online they came up with economic Nexus. It's a deep hole so any explanation is good
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 01:36
|
|
|
Veskit posted:At the end of the day governments will figure out how to make money This seems oddly confident when the all-but-stated goal of the majority party is to cut taxes on corporations and the rich, increase defense spending, and eliminate excellent programs that benefit the common good and barely cost anything. I think they've made it pretty clear that they're fine maxing out the credit card as long as they benefit.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 02:04
|
|
|
You can file on turbo tax for free and if you’re of average intelligence you should be able to accomplish filling everything out in an hour or less. You should be using taxact instead but yeah. If it takes you a full day to fill out a 1040ez are you also the people who spend 10 minutes at the ATM even though there’s only 3 options?
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 04:10
|
|
|
TheBizzness posted:You can file on turbo tax for free and if you’re of average intelligence you should be able to accomplish filling everything out in an hour or less. I think the people spending more than 10 minutes might be doing things that way because they don't qualify for the EZ.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:23
|
|
|
The number of people in this thread defending America's lovely tax filing system is a bit depressing
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:47
|
|
|
Rarity posted:The number of people in this thread defending America's lovely tax filing system is a bit depressing "It's really not that bad, he only hits me when I gently caress up. It's really *my* fault for not knowing him as well as I should."
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 05:54
|
|
|
Baronash posted:This seems oddly confident when the all-but-stated goal of the majority party is to cut taxes on corporations and the rich, increase defense spending, and eliminate excellent programs that benefit the common good and barely cost anything. I think they've made it pretty clear that they're fine maxing out the credit card as long as they benefit. Borrowing money is raising capital you're making my point. MAKE MONEY LIKE MAKE IT. you can make it like print it or you can extract it through a tax. Either way they'll make the money one way or another. Also I'm talking from fed to local municipality not just the fed
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 06:11
|
|
|
Rarity posted:The number of people in this thread defending America's lovely tax filing system is a bit depressing The discussion started so hopeful too, with some Americans realizing that "wow, poo poo's pretty hosed here" but then took a straight turn into "well it's not that bad plus it's for good reason couldn't really have it any other way". It's pretty america.txt.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 07:44
|
|
|
Veskit posted:Corporate taxes are bad and dumb though but whatever. At the end of the day governments will figure out how to make money that's why there was use tax and then when they figured out getting out how to get around those by buying online they came up with economic Nexus.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 08:05
|
|
|
Veskit posted:Borrowing money is raising capital you're making my point. I don't think the Feds would take kindly to anybody else printing The Dollar. Also not matter what country or who you are you cannot just print money or borrow forever, reality will ensure. America's love of digging it's own grave isn't funny anymore and the only saving grace is China's economy is another level of horror. The next thing you're going to advocate for is the return of company scrip.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 08:40
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:The discussion started so hopeful too, with some Americans realizing that "wow, poo poo's pretty hosed here" but then took a straight turn into "well it's not that bad plus it's for good reason couldn't really have it any other way". America is full of people who are willing to accept that things are broken, and we've been brow-beaten over time to accept that the game is rigged. In regards to something like health care, some of us have even come to see something as vital as proper health insurance with a non-ludicrous deductible as a basic evidence of affluence - a sign that we're 'better off' than others who have to accept the type of plans that are little better than giving someone the *ability* to say that they *have* health insurance. You can still have good ideas in America. We're still pretty good at ideas. But we've gotten remarkably lovely when it comes to follow-through, mostly because there will *always* be a large collection of people who will stop at nothing to halt, pervert, or *steal* those good ideas, especially if they are threatening to someone's status quo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 09:06
|
|
|
For the record, I'm not defending our tax system, or the fact that everyone has to file their own taxes, no matter how simple their income is to deal with. I don't like how complex it can be, and most ideas I hear about simplifying it involve a "flat tax" scenario that would be much, much worse for too many reasons to list. I would personally like to have my taxes prepared for me, sent to me for approval, and then I could acknowledge the whole mess with a return envelope, a phone call, or an online service. My point is that it's not nearly as hard for the average American to file his taxes as the media sometimes makes it out to be, and when the media is pushing the idea of this type of tax reform, they really go overboard and make the tax filing problems of a handful of people look like they're things we all have to deal with. In my humble opinion, if you want to start a conversation about how messed up something is, it helps to be honest about how messed up it actually is for most people. So... yeah, it's lovely. But it's not drowning-in-a-septic-tank lovely for the majority of Americans. It's merely dog-turd-on-the-sidewalk lovely. It is still lovely, and you'd think that the dog owner could pick up his dog's poo poo because it's the loving law and whoever it is sure as gently caress knows that their dog took a poo poo right there on the sidewalk, but at the end of the day, the people who bitch about it the most are comedians. The rest of us sigh and step around it, and it's just not too big of a deal.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 13:34
|
|
|
Josh Lyman posted:Actually corporations are the biggest users of what America provides including infrastructure, defense, and social safety nets so they definitely should be contributing to funding all that. There are many ways to make a corporation pay taxes without directly taxing the corporation is what I'm saying. Direct taxes against the corporation are perverse and unfair to many corportations. A perfect example is that ok average utilities companies pay 10% effective tax rate while retail pays a lol most 30% that is broken. Vat tax would fix that poo poo in a heartbeat oohhboy posted:I don't think the Feds would take kindly to anybody else printing The Dollar. Also not matter what country or who you are you cannot just print money or borrow forever, reality will ensure. America's love of digging it's own grave isn't funny anymore and the only saving grace is China's economy is another level of horror. While the UK was a true empire they ran a gdp to debt ratio of over 200% and they were a ok from it if not flourishing. Taking it a zero % loan is great Veskit fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Apr 20, 2018 |
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 15:58
|
|
|
Veskit posted:While the UK was a true empire they ran a gdp to debt ratio of over 200% and they were a ok from it if not flourishing. Taking it a zero % loan is great Despite what you think the US pays a very substantial amount servicing their debts and the interest rate is not 0%. In real terms to the depositor is negative but the US still has to service which is a real cost especially with social security. Imagine what you could do with $500 billion dollars per year not going to debt servicing. With the infinite war, economic bubbles made worse by the over inflated supply of money and grinding down of your tax base something has to give. Seriously, just start pushing corporate scrip already, you know you want to.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 18:55
|
|
|
oohhboy posted:Seriously, just start pushing corporate scrip already, you know you want to. Renraku wishes to thank you for loyal citizenship, employee, and reminds you that your Renraku Corporate Scrip(tm) can be spent at any of the fine stores in our Arcology. Attempting to remove RCS(tm) from the Arcology or other Renraku holdings, or attempt to spend RCS(tm) at non-Renraku holdings is a capital offense. Or, as another classic put it: Buy, American!
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 19:19
|
|
|
oohhboy posted:It fell over when the Empire couldn't extract anymore value from their holdings and ran out of money. They had used up all that slack or room to manoeuvre when a crisis came knocking. You're arguing we m the wrong opportunity cost
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2018 19:33
|
|
|
I am not meaning to defend America’s lovely tax filing system. I was just trying to say if all you have to do is fill out the EZ it’s free and easy as heck. Most people have to do more than that, and that’s (part of) what makes it lovely. Just seemed like some were being disingenuous.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 01:42
|
|
|
BIG HEADLINE posted:America is full of people who are willing to accept that things are broken, and we've been brow-beaten over time to accept that the game is rigged. In regards to something like health care, some of us have even come to see something as vital as proper health insurance with a non-ludicrous deductible as a basic evidence of affluence - a sign that we're 'better off' than others who have to accept the type of plans that are little better than giving someone the *ability* to say that they *have* health insurance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 03:07
|
|
|
BIG HEADLINE posted:"It's really not that bad, he only hits me when I gently caress up. It's really *my* fault for not knowing him as well as I should." This describes pretty much everything to do with America from what I can tell from an outsiders perspective.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 03:27
|
|
|
I mean let's be fair here, it's not a solely American problem that people feel that it's not worth trying to make things better. Getting people to accept that things aren't that bad, they have everything to lose and nothing to gain, why bother? is basically dictatorship 101.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 03:29
|
|
|
Tornhelm posted:This describes pretty much everything to do with America from what I can tell from an outsiders perspective. Every action taken by the republican party can most likely be found somewhere in a textbook about abuse. Every RWM article is dripping with bullying tactics, gaslighting, Stockholm syndrome, projection, dehumanization, every single ill that you can read about psychopaths inflicting on people.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2018 03:36
|
|
|
That all-orange podcast logo reminded me of a certain other podcast John's been on... That was a funny commercial too. Anything to take the edge off of the idea of the deal sinking, along with what's left of America's credibility and all the chickenhawks getting an excuse to circle the jingoism wagons like they did back in 2001.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2018 18:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 11:21 |
|
|
Here's another thing Americans find astonishing when its generally quite normal outside of the US. Stop making things hard for yourselves. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43876772 quote:The calm actions of a police officer who arrested the Toronto van suspect without firing a shot have prompted praise and, in some quarters, astonishment. Policing in the US is another feedback loop where the harder they try, the more dangerous everything is to everyone. Holy poo poo this "Professor". More blood for the blood god? It doesn't occur to him that there are far better ways to police than the American style. Good job rationalising a broken system. quote:However, Michael Lyman, professor of Criminal Justice Administration at Columbia College of Missouri, told the BBC that the officer may have had a "duty" to kill the suspect.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2018 18:25
|
|