Right now, Americans prepare their tax returns themselves. But when most Americans fill out their wages and dividends and mortgage payments and all the rest on their tax forms,
they're not telling the government anything it doesn't already know. So once Americans have filed their returns, the government checks their work against its own calculations, and decides whether it agrees. If the government doesn't agree, taxpayers then
choose whether to fight it.
In other words, filling out your own tax return is often an entirely superfluous step. That's why plenty of other countries — Japan, Israel, the Netherlands, Britain, Peru, Sweden, Spain, etc. — don't include it in the process. The government just cuts to the chase: It prepares everyone's tax returns itself, sends them out, and then taxpayers check the returns for errors.
It's called a "return-free filing" system.
T.R. Reid
recently described how this system works for his friend Michael, "a Dutch executive with a six-figure income, a range of investments, and all the economic complications that come with an upper-bracket lifestyle."
An American in the same situation would have to fill out a dozen forms, six pages long. Michael, by contrast, sets aside 15 minutes per year to file his federal and local income tax, and that's usually enough. But sometimes, he told me, he decides to check the figures the government has already filled in on his return. At this point, Michael was getting downright indignant. "I mean, some years, it takes me half an hour just to file my taxes!" [T.R. Reid,
The New York Times]
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Originally Posted by Chris
