Turbo Tax is the reason why the government doesn't just give you a number to pay. The process could be easy, but the giant corporation Intuit and their political lobbying is why it sucks.
The IRS is actually testing a new system where they just tell you how much you owe/get, and that's it unless there's unreported income and such that needs to be corrected.
Okay, so I get the reason why NOWADAYS IRS can't tell you how much taxes you owe is lobbying. But how did it work BEFORE computers? Did you file your forms and IRS agents checked them one by one, and it was just most efficient to check taxes instead of calculating them? How did we get to the situation where the IRS checks the taxes instead of calculating them? I'm genuinely curious, because that's a recurring theme worldwide.
In the Netherlands, AFAIK (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the government tells you how much it is and you can make your own filing that contains various deductions that the government doesn't know about that can make the amount to pay lower. The system still has a few issues here and there but it's much better than the US, like just about anything these days
How it actually works is that the IRS doesn't known how much you need to pay. You provide your income and taxes already paid throughout the year then the IRS says "yeah, looks about right for what you made" or here's money back you paid to much or didn't pay enough. It only gets complicated when you have huge amounts of money.
I'm so tired of paying HR Block $300/year to do my taxes, which has no tax return because I do my deductions carefully. Why can't we have a straightforward system like the rest of the world??
Meanwhile here, come tax time I get a letter and only people that have special things going on like stuff they would get subsidies for (like installing solar panels or insulating), will have to alter what the letter says. Most everyone else can ignore the letter as all their taxes have been paid in full or they get something back.
I've often thought it would be fun to just punch in some random numbers, send it off and say that I owe $10, pay the amount and let them figure it out ... they already do anyway.
But I know that if I do, they'd probably make me pay financially or legally anyway.
I actually haven't done my taxes in like 2 years due to extreme poverty (in the u.s you don't have to file if your income is under a certain threshold) I think I'm still under that, but I still should probably file this year right? Is there anything specific I should do? Maybe not the best place to ask, but I hate financial anything so I'd really appreciate some advice