just want to chime in to say that it's around that fast in the US as well
Most people will just have to enter their W2, choose the standard deduction, and then click submit. There are free tools that do this already like FreeTaxUSA.
That said, I have 2 gripes with the current system:
1. companies like TurboTax lobbying to prevent the government from building their own tool... if TurboTax is genuinely better then people will still use it even if the govt builds a tool.
2. the tax code being so complex that it's profitable for wealthy people to avoid taxes with special deductions and hire lawyers to defend them from the overstretched IRS.
Do you have a source for this claim, because I found this:
==Individual income tax return filing is the most time-consuming element of the tax system, with the average taxpayer spending 13 hours to comply with the Form 1040. For individuals with business income, the average amount of time it takes to file taxes is even higher: 24 hours.==
Maybe I'm just extremely fast but I can't imagine it taking that long because like I mentioned, it's just those 3 steps for most taxpayers. It's hard to explain unless you've actually filed taxes in the US which most foreigners haven't.
The estimates you shared are based on survey responses so you'd have to take them with a grain of salt. All the other websites are repeating the same survey.
13 hours is wild. I bought a house, got married, sold a bunch of stock, and qualified for a bunch of deductions last year. We filed jointly in maybe an hour and a half, including finding all of the paperwork. I'm pretty good with numbers and instructions, so I could see 4-6 being the average.
It was through freetaxusa, maybe handwriting balloons the job a bit? But it looks like only 14% file physically.
Most people will just have to enter their W2, choose the standard deduction, and then click submit. There are free tools that do this already like FreeTaxUSA.
That said, I have 2 gripes with the current system:
1. companies like TurboTax lobbying to prevent the government from building their own tool... if TurboTax is genuinely better then people will still use it even if the govt builds a tool.
2. the tax code being so complex that it's profitable for wealthy people to avoid taxes with special deductions and hire lawyers to defend them from the overstretched IRS.