Isn't it actually better to owe rather than have a refund? Because if they owe you, then that means they over-withheld from you paychecks throughout the year and its essentially the government borrowing money from you without any interest.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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How fucked are you if you don’t file?
I didn’t file last year, because I’ve been in a clusterfuck of borderline homelessness and odd jobs for the past two years. Idk if I am even able to file this year if I didn’t last?
Taxes are not the problem. Billionaires grabbing the money on the other side are the problem.
Know the difference
Taxes are also the problem in countries like the US and China wherein income tax only exists to remove currency from circulation. There's plenty of other ways to do that in a digital world.
Lol, when I was in China, I never saw the taxes, so I'm assuming they just tax the corporations who pass down the costs by raising prices.
Like there is literally no "sales tax" in PRC, at least when I left around 2010. I also never heard my parents ever paying any "income tax". So its probably all pre-deducted before you even get paid. When we first arrived in the US, my mom was so "frugal" that she whenever she see the "sales tax" she have like a mini existential crisis or something. 🤣
(This is in Guangzhou btw, just in case y'all are wondering)
Haha, my last tax filing I owed another $40k.
My own fault for not paying taxes during the year though.
What a bizarre system. Tax should be taken from your payslip. There should be no need for the individual to figure out anything, unless they are self employed.
When I was in China as a kid I never saw any visible form of "taxes". I also never heard of any income taxes. I have no idea how the tax thing works, but I'm assuming they just tax the corporations, which solves both the sales tax and the income tax at once.
(Guangzhou, PRC. Other cities might work differently I have no idea tho)
It is taken from the payslip. But then they have us verify what they already know and if you make a mistake you're punished for it! It's bullshit.
I want so bad for the US to do it the way every sane country does it; they just send me a thing so I can make sure they're accurate and only need to take action if they fuck up.
Income tax always struck me as a deliberate way to make your average joe hate taxes when they could, very easily, be calculated at time of payroll without you ever being shown the “pre tax” amount.
They already do that tho, payroll tax is paid by the employer without the employee every seeing it.
I don't care about seeing the amount or not. I care that I have to deliberately set up my withholdings incorrectly to hopefully not end up owing too much more at the end of the year. If I set it up accurately I would end up owing thousands more.
I'm not sure how withholdings works for your paycheque, but you request where the number is set.
If I set it up accurately
You define what's accurate for a percentage when you set it.
Yeah, it's a shit show over here. You kinda guess at how much you will need to pay in taxes, hold back that amount in your paycheck, and hope for the best. And if your life situation changes or the incoming government fucks around with the tax codes, your estimating will be off. Getting it down to a very small refund is the optional solution, but it's not always as easy as you'd think.
And if your life situation changes or the incoming government fucks around with the tax codes, your estimating will be off.
That's kinda what quarterly estimated taxes are for. At the end of every quarter, if things aren't lining up and your estimates were too low, you can pay extra tax to bring things in line.
The estimate doesn't have to be too precise though. At long as you pay at least 90% of what you owe this year or 100% of what you owed last year (whichever is smaller), you'll be fine. Any less than that and you'll be hit with an underpayment penalty.
It's better to owe money rather than get a refund, as long as you pay enough to avoid the underpayment penalty.
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But what about the tax preparation industry? Won't anybody think of the shareholders? For shame.
That's how it is here in France. It is calculated according to the previous year income, so if you get a raise you'll have to pay a little bit more at the end the following fiscal year, but that's often very little. Last time I got a 2500€ yearly raise, I had to align something like... 100€ 😆.
Why, though?
I'm in Germany and my employer kind of knows how much they pay me. So they can easily calculate the income tax correctly. It's just assumed that each month's salary is 1/12th of my yearly income and taxed appropriately.
You can literally live your entire life without "doing taxes" even once (though it's a good idea for your individual deductions).
It's the same in the UK - employer deducts the tax and National Insurance (which pays for health care, state pension etc), and most of the time it's correct.
This year I had to do my own tax calculation because of an inheritance, and it was such a pain! But I got some guidance from the HMRC phone line and filed the return online. It turned out I owed a lot less than I'd thought.
We are taxed on more than just wages. Additionally, the way tax law is structured here, because of S-corporations and partnerships (structures which own/run companies), these both flow through activity to the individual tax payer which is then taxed at that level.
If it's just wages, lots of Americans work 2, 3, or even more jobs (not just during the year, but at once). Our tax rate tables are set up so you calculate them based on you having one job, so when we start a job it's calculating it at only that one income.
Even in Germany you typically get a little money back if you do your taxes as a regular employee. Though that's far, far better than owing the state money at the of the year.
Might be because of tax brackets and not knowing ahead of time if you're getting a raise. E.g. maybe you are the top of some bracket for most of the year, and youre on track for not surpassing it by the end of the year. Then you get a raise near the end and it bumps you over.
Should they take a huge amount off your last couple payslips? Or just let you pay it in taxes later?
Might be better for some people to pay via taxes instead of automatically losing the money for that month.
Just a guess though.
That's a solved problem, though (and I described it in my comment). If you always assume the current month's payment is 1/12th of your yearly salary, you already pay according to the tax bracket relevant to you. You might overpay a bit, but most people don't double their income within a year, so the refund is typically not that much.
I agree that the employer part should be more automatic, but don't forget it may not the the only income. You can have properties, you can have share and dividends. All that do not happen all at the same time, so it is far easier to calculate on an earlier snapshot than continuously recalculate every time something changes.
Yuuuuuuup.
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Don’t worry DOGE will fix that and every American will get a refund!
Know you're joking, but just think it's funny to point out that one of DOGE's first acts was to try to kill the direct file system the IRS maintains to make it easier for some people to file their taxes. I feel like that one didn't get a lot of coverage.
Yep, and this cartoon feels like America would keep voting for this stupid fascist stuff as long as they keep promising the Libertarian ideal of lower and lower taxes.
Americans trained to defund America, the enemy was inside all along.
Have you read A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear?
At the end of the libertarian experiment (which surprisingly ended in failure) they had almost no services in the town yet still paid as much taxes as the neighboring towns which had tons of fully funded services.
... Right into Col. Musks bank account!
Colonel Musktard?
If you live in the USA then the government didnt decide to keep making it worse, the people did.
GOP wrote the last tax plan and they're about to write the new one.
This is why I don't blame the politicians. I blame the people
Blame the people who pay off the politicias and put rightwing propaganda on almost all mainstream media. Common people have to spend a LOT of effort to get even a resemblance of agency.
Funny story, the people also chose not to pursue campaign finance laws. It's been an issue on the DNC platform for 25 years, they even successfully removed the vast majority of money from politics until the Citizens United SCOTUS decision undid their work.
In the country where you don't know what you ll end up paying unless you go to the counter, because the taxes are not included, its only "logical" to not have your taxes deducted from your payslio because reasons
I ll never understand this shit, smh
I'm not sure what country you're talking about, but I assume the U.S. We do have taxes deducted from payroll, and you fill out a form telling the employer (and the IRS) what amount to deduct based on estimated income, family size, and a couple of other factors. Then in April we have to file our official tax form declaring actual income, and if we owe less than what was deducted from our paychecks we receive that back as a refund, but if we underestimated we have to pay whatever taxes are remaining. The reason that filing taxes is so complicated is the sheer volume of deductions, exemptions, credits, etc that have been piled on top of the tax code over the years (plus lobbying by the tax prep industry). It's a stupid system, but it's not as stupid as some people seem to be assuming in this thread. If you set up your withholding right, you shouldn't ever owe taxes when it's time to file.
Now, if you're self-employed or a contractor (and considered self-employed) the whole thing kind of falls apart and it's a lot easier to wind up owning a bunch of money. Like I said, it is a stupid system, just not quite as crazy as some people seem to be assuming.
To add one thing to the only reasonable comment I've seen in this thread: if you're poorer, your taxes are probably easy and straightforward. If you have money and your taxes are more complicated, you can probably afford to have someone do them for you.
I can't agree with this enough, though I think part of the problem is that it isn't what's easy to complete your W-4 accurately, there is an entire worksheet to use if you file jointly that is sorta difficult to do well, especially if both people make fairly different amounts. If you just choose the basic withholding it's very likely the bigger breadwinner isn't withholding enough and you'll end up owing about what the comic shows (at least that is my experience, as well as some friends).
I think the real problem in the US is that everyone is left to do their tax paperwork from scratch every year when the IRS could send you a personalized return prefilled that you then claim the deductions and credits you're due and account for any descrpenices (which sure, is what your W-2 is supposed to be, but it isn't really that, you still need to use the worksheets on the 1040 or pay someone/some software to do it for you; a prefilled 1040 would be a way better system).
It also doesn't account for the huge variations in state taxes. Many states have income taxes, some are reciprocal with nearby states and others aren't, the deductions and credits and even what is taxable is all different. The whole thing is a mess. Then lord help you if you live in a state with local income taxes or one where your local taxes are different than school taxes(like PA) and the whole thing is a half day exercise in frustration to complete and you're still left wondering if you did it right.
School taxes? What is that?
The school districts get part of our local income taxes which is separate from what municipalities get (technically municipalities run wholly on property taxes, and the schools get a portion of that plus a portion of local income taxes that are split with the county. It's convoluted IMO). It depends on where you are employed and where you live, since your employer remits taxes to the municipality you work in and that municipality remits taxes to school districts based on where each employee lives (at least that's how I understand it, it all is mostly transparent other than needing to include various location codes on forms for your employer and for your local tax return).
Yeah, I'm not by any means trying to say that the American system is the best way of doing things. It's definitely not, and to be honest I've never quite managed to get my state withholding right - I almost always owe a little bit (usually a hundred dollars or so). But some folks seem to have gotten some strange ideas about how bad it actually is.
Yeah, we almost always owe a tiny bit (usually less than $100, often less than $50) to the state. I don't really understand how I can get so close but still miss it every year but overpay federal taxes when it's all based on the same W-4 I give to my employer.
If you set up your withholding right, you shouldn’t ever owe taxes when it’s time to file.
Thing is, here in Germany you don't even get to make the mistake of setting up your withholdings wrong if you're a regular employee. I don't think it's even possible to end up owing the state money if you're not self-employed or have considerable capital investments (which is rare for regular employees, which is probably its own issue ...).
Oh for sure, I'm not trying to defend the American tax system as being good by any means - it's most definitely not. But for most people it's not as bad as some folks seem to believe.
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