> But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for error.
Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are paying "huge fines"? AFAIK, the IRS's audit capacity is greatly underfunded.
My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though, admittedly.
It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many thousands of dollars from you as possible – it was still one of my worst financial decisions of all time. And that wasn't even taxes.
The broader point is that "dealing with the government" is a big messy bucket that people usually want to pay a janitorial service to dispose of. Even things like "being reminded to file your taxes right now" is valuable in that situation. Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. They don't learn it in school, and their parents either don't know or didn't bother to teach them.
But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't impoverished.
I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the fact that you have a stable, fully functional family. Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate.
If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle class or higher, then that's an important data point though.
I'm not talking about my family discussions. Just turn on the local news and you'll see them discuss it, including the annual segment about the lines at the post office.
For what it's worth -- and it's possible I'm living in a bubble, but -- the only family member I know that watches the news is my dad. Everyone else quietly switched to netflix long ago. The news mostly comes from the drama of the day; things that show up on facebook. (The recent Chris Rock drama, and other nonsense like that.)
I recently followed CBS on TikTok though, to my surprise. They had some of the best coverage of the Ukraine war I've seen. I even joked to my wife that the circle of life was complete: not only have I never watched the news in years, and not only does my dad have no clue what tiktok is, but now I'm watching the news on tiktok.
Thanks for pointing out that the news is sometimes a valuable thing to keep on one's radar.
April 15 (ok. Sometimes a few days later based on holidays.) is pretty engrained into the minds of adult Americans who pay taxes. I have rarely watched tv news in years and don’t even get it any longer. But I can pretty much guarantee if you asked a bunch of middle class adults when tax day is, an overwhelming majority would tell you the correct answer.
I grew up impoverished. Impoverished people talk about tax filing time way, way more than well off people because they need the money (refund) much more. A very pleasant memory of my early childhood was at my aunt's house celebrating her tax refund with her by making strombolis.
Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are paying "huge fines"? AFAIK, the IRS's audit capacity is greatly underfunded.