The U.S. doesn't make you do this, either. Most people don't itemize deductions. You just plug in the data from your W-2. The percentage of people itemizing was 30%, but with the Trump Tax Cut which capped state and local deductions (i.e. lowered the maximum allowable deduction, effectively increasing taxes on a large number of people) this was predicted to drop to 10%.
If you're itemizing, you're in a minority of tax payers, and in most cases a voluntary minority seeking to minimize your taxes in a way that simply wouldn't be possible elsewhere.
The U.S. also has one of the highest rates of voluntary tax compliance, and hypothetically that might have something to do with 1) ability to itemize and 2) having to sign on the dotted line every year.
Here in the Netherlands I don't have to plug in any data, everything is pre-filled. Income, bank accounts, mortgage, advances on deductions, etc. All you have to do is verify it (you can change things if necessary, but I've never had to do that). Takes about five minutes max.
I run a small biz, I do PAYE on a simple spreadsheet, then type the results onto an IRD web page, takes me less than 10 minutes a month.
Most people though just use a tax preparer at something like H&R block. A little searching indicates there's roughly 60k to 80k jobs like this in the US, and they earn (at least at H&R Block) about $16 per hour, and only for about 3 months a year. A small # of tax preparers with a bit more training & experience may provide other financial services in the off-season or assist small business with quaterly filings or bookkeeping.
Overall though, you're not talking about much of an industry collapse in terms of people employed. The ones that work in that area year-round will lose some extra hours. The ones that don't, having some experience in finance, might seek further training to get a higher level job of that sort (maybe become an actual accountant) I don't think it should be considered a barrier to ending regulatory capture within this area.
Apart from that, a few software products would collapse, losing most customers, retaining the ones that legitimately needed advanced guidance. And the company would probably have to charge the more for it, and possible compete with actual accountants on price in that respect.
But I don't think "industry collapse" is correct.
This is still a lot more work than in many countries, and you still need to either fill in a paper 1040 (plus state taxes where appropriate, and some of those (cough CA) are far from simple), use tax prep software, or someone like H&R Block.
In the UK, if you're in the majority of people who have one job and straightforward finances (e.g. not renting property, no CGT, etc) you need to do nothing at all for your taxes. Your employer deducts tax from your wages and that's it. I guess technically you should verify that your "tax code" (the mechanism used to inform employers of what needs withholding) is correct but again, unless your situation is more complex that is a standard figure shared by the rest of the employed workforce.
My parents never filed a return in their entire lives.
Not in my experience. The online options the IRS provides free of charge is pretty easy, and many states have similarly simple online forms for free.
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/free-file-fillable-form...
Although I do not dispute other countries do have it easier, and do it better than the US.
The IRS does a terrible job with the information it does have. One year, I had a typo in my daughter’s social security number. The IRS sent me a note that her number didn’t match the previous year’s return. I assume that they believed the previous year’s number was right, but instead of saying “we’ve amended the return by using the social security number that appeared on last year’s return,” they said “we’ve amended the return by removing that dependent and recalculating taxes; if you disagree with your higher bill, you’ll need to send us the following paperwork with the correct social security number” (of course, “correct” meant “the number we already have on file” more or less, but I had to figure out what that number was by looking at my own copy of the previous year’s return). Luckily, the previous year’s number was correct; otherwise I would have had to amend the previous return and then refile the current year’s.
People should have some "skin" in the game of taxation, if we allow the process to become seamless overtaxation becomes a real problem.
Even today people do not treat their Gross income as their income, they look at net. This is the wrong way to look at it.
I believe people should have to physically pay the government every month just like you do your water bill, your groceries, etc.
If people had to write a check, or trigger an electronic payment to their local taxing authority every month there would likely be more focus on where that money is going, and why the government things they deserve a huge chunk of my income (hint they do not)
This prevents the government from just raising taxes and hiding these increases.
As for itemizing, again, you may not know if you should itemize or not until you actually go through the process and see where the numbers fall.
Meanwhile the IRS is held out as a boogey man who will ruin your life financially if you get something wrong.
For most here on HN who deal with interlocking blocks of logic, tech documentation, etc? It's fine, and probably for a plenty of other people too. For a very large number of people though, it's the common paradox that it's only easy once once you already know what you're doing. And for a few weeks/months a year the tax prep industry works hard to convince people it's not something they should try to navigate on their own, and if they do then they're a sucker throwing away refund money because of hidden secret tricks to get more refund money back.
11.4% of tax filers itemized in 2018:
https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-tax-stats-at-a-...
