I manually filed taxes on paper (federal) last year and they still have not been processed. Got a letter that the IRS is sitting on my 5-figure tax payment but haven't gone through the 1040 yet.
There is an institutional (mainly Republican) commitment to strangling the IRS here in the US. Filing taxes should be free and easy.
Or, ideally, not needed at all. In the UK having an average financial situation like a job (one that doesn’t pay megabucks, anyway), a pension, a tax-efficient savings account and a student doesn’t require any filing at all. Everything happens through payroll. If you do earn a lot or have other things that trigger the need to file it’s free and not overly onerous — certainly within the grasp of a mere mortal.
(And before someone chimes in with “how do you know the government gets the figures right?!”: because the tax code, or at least the parts that face most people, is straightforward and most people have a bog-standard default configuration that is easy to verify.)
They get my income, loans for future capital gain deductions, have calculated in the basic deductions and so on.
I wanted some extra deductions this year, so I simply went and inserted those on their own web site with simple boxes to fill. Even before the tax season. No problems...
It is great when the tax agency isn't actually adversarial, but instead ready to help and even work with you if you are having troubles.
> A long-standing law requires the IRS to pay interest to those who received their tax refunds late — notably 45 days after the typical filing date of April 15. Just as taxpayers must pay interest on any outstanding obligations they owe to the IRS, the rule works both ways if the IRS is late on the money they owe back.
They pay 3% interest currently, which is pretty nice.
There is an institutional (mainly Republican) commitment to strangling the IRS here in the US. Filing taxes should be free and easy.