Scottish here. Apart from a brief time being self employed I have never needed to look at how much I have paid in taxes, it all gets done automatically by my employer and I get a yearly update through them.
It’s incredibly stressful. I get about 3-4 months to do them, depending on how quickly I get all the necessary forms. If I don’t pay in time the IRS fines me 25% of my taxes as a late payment.
Figure I typically put in about 40 hours per year to do my taxes, AND I HAVE TAX SOFTWARE!
It’s done automatically in the US too, as far as it can be. Income tax is withheld from our paychecks based on a form we fill out, where we say if we’re single or married and how many dependents we have. But the formula used to figure out how much to withhold for tax can’t anticipate things we do during the year that change our taxes - for example, charity donations, investment income, or using our own cars for work purposes. So we have to do a final figuring.
Scottish here. Apart from a brief time being self employed I have never needed to look at how much I have paid in taxes, it all gets done automatically by my employer and I get a yearly update through them.
No idea how you all do them.
It’s incredibly stressful. I get about 3-4 months to do them, depending on how quickly I get all the necessary forms. If I don’t pay in time the IRS fines me 25% of my taxes as a late payment.
Figure I typically put in about 40 hours per year to do my taxes, AND I HAVE TAX SOFTWARE!
Wow, your situation must be complicated. With TurboTax or FreeTax it doesn’t take me more than a couple hours - and I’ve never used the short form.
We even have this in Ukraine. I guess our quality of life is still higher than the US.
It’s done automatically in the US too, as far as it can be. Income tax is withheld from our paychecks based on a form we fill out, where we say if we’re single or married and how many dependents we have. But the formula used to figure out how much to withhold for tax can’t anticipate things we do during the year that change our taxes - for example, charity donations, investment income, or using our own cars for work purposes. So we have to do a final figuring.
What we generally do is pay for other people or programs to do it for us.