It all seems to be an absurd charade. Attempts to reduce the bureaucratic burden are opposed by the tax return return companies who bribe heavily to prevent any simplification.
Keeping taxes hard to pay is an important carrot in keeping the public mad about having to pay them in the first place. It's governance through dark patterns.
I am pretty sure the reason most people are mad about having to pay taxes is the thousands/tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands of dollars of their income that is taken from them.
On the high level, I always felt fortunate that I was in position to have to pay a lot of taxes. But it's pretty ridiculous. Case in point, we just bought a small, 100 year old house on a tiny lot. New York State didn't hesitate charging us a "mansion tax" on it. Believe me, it's no mansion. While there's a limit to how mad I am about that, it's not the paperwork that's annoying me.
Taxation exists in every functional modern democracy and there are no viable alternatives to it. States and municipalities that reduce their revenues through tax cuts wind up relying on things like speeding citations and civil forfeiture to bridge the gap. Wouldn't you rather suck it up and pay once per year than potentially having assets seized by a random cop that you then have to go through the legal system in order to get back? You're gonna pay either way. Even in anti-tax states like Texas, people get hit with massive property tax bills because it's one of the only ways that the government generates revenue.
The real problem is that the vast majority of people don't really care once the money leaves their hands. You don't like the mansion tax, which makes sense, but have you taken the time to look at your state or city budget to see where all of this money is disappearing to? Because that's where the more of the focus needs to be. Just glancing at the executive summary of the latest NY budget(0), it looks like $86B of the $212B total goes towards Medicaid alone.
So do we just leave the poor to not have healthcare? Why does healthcare cost so much and how come despite all of these tech entrants into the healthcare space, the cost never seems to go down? I really hope for the sake of your own argument that you don't work in healthcare, because what that industry is doing to communities across the nation in terms of cost is nothing short of outrageous.
[0] https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/budget/review-enacted-bu...
Perhaps this depends. In the USA, perhaps. In Iceland, not so much (https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1355490017288867841).
In the USA you have to pay your taxes and then you have to pay for your public insurances, where in most of Europe these are the same things. And perhaps tax payers in the USA are not happy with this. So to amend your statement, perhaps a more accurate one is: Most people are mad about paying taxes because of the thousands of dollars of income that is taken from them without any tangible benefits.
Put another way, we are at the lowest tax rate this country has seen in a century. How much lower can we expect it to drop?
You don't interact with the revenue service as an employee, or fill out forms, or something.
In the UK the government communicates your tax code to your employer payroll department to tell them how much tax to withhold on your earnings (taking account of tax credits etc.) Banks have to withhold the basic rate of tax (higher rate tax payers must file, but that already excludes 90% of tax payers from worrying about it.)
In the US the system seems similar except the government doesn't let your employer know how much tax to withhold so you fill in a form for your employer with the information that gets it mostly but not quite right (so long as you don't switch jobs that year!) Filing taxes as a regular employee ends up being substantially more complex than filing taxes as a self-employed person in the UK where the government provides an online system much simpler than that provided by the tax filing companies in the US (otherwise print and mail several different PDF forms and do the math yourself, fortunately if you get it wrong the IRS already knows what you owe so at that point they'll just point out the corrections and tell you what you owe...) And this beurocracy is of course all doubled because states have their own completely separate set of rules.
Even as a freelancer, it usually takes me 10 minutes on the web to fill my yearly taxes nowaday. It used to be way longer, with queue at the tax offices, real papers to fill, etc.
But I do have a very convenient status, administrative wise.
French tax law is actually very complicated, I guess like just about everywhere. If your only revenue is your salary, and you don't have a lot of deductibles, all you need to do is sign the form (electronically). But if you are self-employed, it is highly recommended to hire an accountant if you don't want nasty surprises if you get audited.
