Yes, you can download the form 1040 and fill it by yourself, you'd need a few Schedules attached. They all have instructions available online, your work has to send you a copy of everything they paid you and into the IRS (regular jobs always err on the side of overpaying), and while it is not hard, it definitely looks intimidating and takes time to understand, especially the deductions.
You can also just not file your taxes, if you don't owe anything (and as I said, jobs always err on the side of overpaying) they won't bother you, but most people end up eligible for the tax refund, so it is more beneficial to pay for that service.
Sad part is, when I started working, this was normal. My father showed me how to do it. I did it for a few years and then TurboTax came along and I used that for free. Then they rug pulled me into a deluxe one year because I had 1099 income and ever since I’ve been jailed into paying if I want to use them. 1099 or not.
I used to do that every year. It wasn't hard. However one year I forgot to copy line 12b from form 9876 to line 34c of form 5432 and when the IRS caught that I had a big mess to clean up (since state taxes copy federal taxes so I had to refile state with the corrected numbers...). Now I just pay a small fee to FreeTaxUSA (I figure they deserve some money for their efforts in creating software).
One thing I can say for sure: doing taxes with a computer takes me longer than filling out the paper forms by hand! There are so many delays while "calculated" (as if a ghz computer can't add numbers fast), and loading question pages that I can obviously skip (I never worked for the rail road, I'm not blind...) but take extra time because of how they setup the UI.
Besides the point. The point I was making is that because I had one year of 1099 income in the past, I was paywalled into paying. I no longer use TurboTax as my tax needs have changed. Thanks though but I wasn’t soliciting for alternatives.
That's what I do. It's really not very difficult if you don't have a complicated income situation. Even with some self-employment I found it straightforward. Once you've done one year, subsequent years are very similar (but read the bulletins that talk about "what's new this year" because there are always differences.
The spreadsheet downloadable at https://sites.google.com/view/incometaxspreadsheet/home (no affiliation) is helpful to avoid math errors and get the entries from the various schedules into the proper place on the main forms.
I have done this a few times, but for me it takes several hours and I always am worried I have made a mistake. If you have simple investments you can still run into confusing things that are very hard to follow.
> You can also just not file your taxes, if you don't owe anything (and as I said, jobs always err on the side of overpaying) they won't bother you
From the IRS website:
>Who must file
>Most U.S. citizens or permanent residents who work in the U.S. have to file a tax return.
>Generally, you need to file if:
> Your income is over the filing requirement
> You have over $400 in net earnings from self-employment (side jobs or other independent work)
> You had other situations that require you to file
Not sure if your intent was to discourage filing, but it read that way to me.
IRS says you are “required to file”, but in reality the only penalties for non-filing are as a percentage of the amount of tax owed. If no tax is owed (and in fact you are owed a refund), then there are no penalties for not filing.
OTOH it would be a pretty dumb move since the chances that the amount taken out of your checks was exactly right is very small, and you’d be leaving hundreds or thousands of dollars in refunds unclaimed.
Most people with a job have to file. If you're due a refund and don't file to claim it, probably they won't bother you but technically you could be penalized for failure to file on time.
>and while it is not hard, it definitely looks intimidating and takes time to understand, especially the deductions.
Even this is overselling it.
Most people have ZERO deductions to deal with. You put in your W2 pay, you take the standard deduction, and you file and get your money back.
Next time you use something like turbotax, download the forms it generates and look at them. There's zero complexity. Turbotax doesn't do anything. It's literally filling in 14 rows of numbers that come directly from your W2.
Hell, turbotax purposely runs fake animations and makes you waste a ton of time saying "Oh we are looking for all these deductions" but it's all a lie. None of the animations actually do anything. Most of the deductions it is supposedly checking for would Never apply to someone with a normal job. They want you to think it's complicated. They will ask you questions they know the answer to just to waste your time. Every single year, TurboTax asks me if I'm eligible for the earned income tax credit, and every single year, TurboTax knows from the previous questions that I cannot possibly be eligible. They ask me anyway, because it seems like a complicated credit so it makes taxes seem more complicated.
Taxes could take less than 15 minutes for nearly all Americans. Turbotax's bullshit, even disregarding the stupid tax they are charging the whole country just to copy some numbers from column a to column b literally wastes everyone's time every year.
People who insist that taxes are complicated are flat out wrong. If you run a small business, you absolutely have the choice to just file extremely simple taxes and pay a higher tax rate. It is a choice to attempt to take every possible deduction. Each and every one of those deductions is a handout to business owners. They bitch and moan about how bad taxes are, but their taxes are complicated so that they can make more profit.
Guess what? Nobody forces you to run a business, which again, is a handout to capital owners. A few hundred dollars in permits or registration every year is a perfectly valid cost to enable you to take advantage of the insane benefit of "you can literally cause hundreds of deaths but as long as you weren't obviously grossly negligent you are in the clear". Nobody forced you to attempt to take every single handout offered every single year. Nobody forced you to be your own boss, to own capital, to profit off of the labor of others.
Such entitlement. These same people will turn around and cry about "freeloaders" and "welfare queens" and "handouts"
I don’t know why assume that in every country in the world that is free. In my European country until 15 years ago or so you had to hire someone to do your taxes for you, and currently the free method only works for the most simple tax filing. In fact what you get is called a “draft” of your tax filings because you’re supposed to make sure it’s okay, and it’s your responsibility if you miss something or if the draft is wrong.
And obviously the draft usually assumes that you will have to pay more tax, since there’s a perverse incentive given it’s the government who fills it for you.
Which country if I may ask? I have lived in France Switzerland and Ireland and haven't seen something like this, even though governments provide the tax filing software.
I wonder if the explanation actually had to do with these people who used to do the job 15 years ago influencing the process to ensure they remain relevant. Kind of like in the US actually.
