Since it's that day again. . .

[brutus]

I figured a little bit of tax humor was in order. I've had this on a bulletin board for some time. Might be worth sharing.

[Nightwatch2]

Democrat proposed simplified tax form

Line 1. How much did you make?

Line 2. Send it in

Republican proposed simplified tax form

Line 1. How much did you make?

Line 2. Keep it.

[Poohbah]

TurboTax is the worst video game ever.

[Bob Dedmon]

TurboTax is the worst video game ever.

yeah

[Nightwatch2]

TurboTax is the worst video game ever.

yeah

It does get the job done if your tax situation is not too overly complicated

[Johnnie Lyle]

TurboTax is the worst video game ever.

yeah

It does get the job done if your tax situation is not too overly complicated

At a price, naturally.

The whole thing is a shell game for what should be pretty simple.

[Craiglxviii]

yeah

It does get the job done if your tax situation is not too overly complicated

At a price, naturally.

The whole thing is a shell game for what should be pretty simple.

I have to file a personal tax return in the U.K., it’s one form (2 pages, 4 sides) and takes me a day.

[Nathan45]

I've used Freetax USA for years, my return is moderately complex including tracking rental depreciation and investment gains etc. Colorado state is trivial, you just enter certain rows from you federal. Biggest time waste is collecting all the relevant reports.

[Johnnie Lyle]

It does get the job done if your tax situation is not too overly complicated

At a price, naturally.

The whole thing is a shell game for what should be pretty simple.

I have to file a personal tax return in the U.K., it’s one form (2 pages, 4 sides) and takes me a day.

Turbotax took me roughly an hour, but my situation is pretty simple.

The basic 1040 US form is equally simple, assuming you don’t have a lot of deductions or non-wage income. That’s the problem - you have to run through all your deductions and then determine whether the standard or itemized is better, and then play around with the different tax rates for different income types.

The concept of a standardized deduction is frankly ludicrous. It’s effectively lowering the tax rate, but the politicians lack the fucking balls to say they’re lowering the rate, so they make people spend time and money figuring it out.

Junk the deductions, drop the de jure tax rate to the de facto one, revise the withholding tables, and fuck the tax break industry.