It's been a little frustrating having to wait for my brother to finish up paperwork needed for me to file my taxes. This will be a yearly problem as long as we jointly own a rental property. But this year is different, as I have had to search for a new tax preparer. And I decided to duck one issue by choosing someone I knew from my work at the LGBT center, as I felt I needed some form of familiarity with someone new. With familiarity, I can more easily communicate my concerns about my newly complex tax situation, and ask how I can prevent problems in the future.
Taxes in the US are needlessly complicated, as most tax preparation forms depend on complexity to justify their existence. There is n excuse for this, as most Americans have all of their significant income reported to the IRS. Ideally, the government could receive a taxpayer's income statements, deductible state/local tax information, and generate a bill/refund for the taxpayer. (Let's ignore privacy issues here for now. I'm just arguing for simplicity.) In theory, the vast majority of us wouldn't need to pay for tax preparation services, as the same computers that are programmed to detect tax fraud would also be doing tax preparation for us.
Unfortunately, I would still be likely to need a tax preparer, as long as I own part of a rental property. But how many Americans own one? Business owners would still need their accountants, as they would always need to track money flows within a corporation, determine the net profitability (or lack of) of the corporation, and insure that properly computed taxes are paid to all affected governments.
With all of this being said, I am grateful to have my problems instead of others. I know how to manage my problems, as they are "first world problems." It could be much worse. All too many of us do not have the resources to get by in one of the most prosperous nations on this planet. Getting rid of the inefficiencies of our system may just provide some of these people a small bit of relief.
No comments:
Post a Comment