>Is this similar to PAYE or do you actually have to submit a tax return but it's pre-filled for you?
As long as your PAYE is like Ireland's (ROI) PAYE, then the American's system is far-removed from it.
Even though their tax revenue office gets the reports from businesses for how much they were paid and how much taxes they paid, the Americans still need to fill out a tax form - every year - to repeat the same information (it's an added benefit for the prison system, in that mistakes on tax forms can equate to jail time). They get a form from their employer (which their tax office also has), that contains all of this information.
>In the UK, most people don't have to submit a tax return at all. Not sure the actual cost of this, but the convenience is unparalleled.
Aye, it's the same in Ireland (ROI). You can just call-up or email Revenue and they check if you've overpaid, by how much, and they just send you the money. No forms. No bullshit. No threats of jail time. It's pretty deadly[0].
You want nothing to do with the Yanks' tax system, trust me.
> Even though their tax revenue office gets the reports from businesses for how much they were paid and how much taxes they paid, the Americans still need to fill out a tax form - every year - to repeat the same information (it's an added benefit for the prison system, in that mistakes on tax forms can equate to jail time). They get a form from their employer (which their tax office also has), that contains all of this information.
You seem quite ignorant of the U.S. tax system. There are no criminal penalties for mistakes on your tax form. (the IRS doesn't even have prosecution authority--all it can do is collect evidence of a crime, and refer the case to the Department of Justice.)
And your tax return doesn't just "repeat the same information" as your W-2s. For example, the W-2 reports income on an individual basis, while married couples file a return as a single unit. The amount of tax owed will generally be different for married couples versus the amount of tax withheld. (And there is no federal government database of marriages the IRS can use to match up things on the back end.) The IRS also has no idea how many children you have living with you, and can't give you the appropriate credits for that.
Technically, the social security administration gives out social security numbers. But that aside, more than 40% of children don't live with both biological birth parents: https://ifstudies.org/blog/more-than-60-of-u-s-kids-live-wit.... So your automated calculation will get it wrong almost half the time.
> All of those tax credits you mention are given by our respective tax agencies when we become employed and/or we change status with the tax agency and/or we obtain a new job (depending on how you avail of tax credits).
There are many tax credits in the U.S. that aren't tied to changes in job status. Every year, I have to dig up receipts for what we spent on daycare, what we spent out of our HSA accounts, etc. The government doesn't track any of that.
> Odd, I thought you faced the penalty of perjury[0]?
Perjury requires willful (i.e. knowing and purposeful) false statements in your tax return. I guarantee you that if you make false statements using Ireland's online system for claiming tax credits, you're under penalty of perjury as well.
>Every year, I have to dig up receipts for what we spent on daycare, what we spent out of our HSA accounts, etc. The government doesn't track any of that.
Aside from the daycare costs (as an aside, creche in Ireland is quite decent[0]), isn't all of that is still reported to the IRS? Your HSA isn't sitting in some dark corner that the government doesn't know about, ever since the Patriot Act, yeah?
I'm fairly certain it is reported to the IRS because Americans find getting bank accounts overseas quite cumbersome because your government strong-arms agreements that demand that Americans' overseas bank accounts are reported to the IRS. Surely, more domestic reporting shouldn't come as a surprise or shock.
>I guarantee you that if you make false statements using Ireland's online system for claiming tax credits, you're under penalty of perjury as well.
What do I get for a broken guarantee[1]? :)
This batering back and forth really only arrives at the conclusion that I originally posited:
Those of us in the PAYE system[s] would abhor having to do things the American way and this wasn't meant as an affront (and I apologise if anyone may have taken it that way).
Our tax agencies are responsible for keeping track of these things and the only things we're responsible for is reporting status changes and/or providing receipts for other proofs of burden (such as Independent Contractors who file as Directors of Umbrella Corporations and need to write-off business expenses).
The IRS does not in the ordinary course receive informational returns about people's bank accounts. They do receive informational returns about interest generated by bank accounts (and other places), but they don't get e.g. transaction lists by default. Google "1099-INT example" to see one of these informational returns. They're minimalistic and they are minimalistic precisely because a large portion of the US polity hates the notion that the IRS would have arbitrary read access to people's financial lives.
You can reasonably assume that the IRS can use subpoena power to compel a US financial institution or foreign financial institution to surrender records to it. This is an oppositional process and they use it relatively rarely next to the total universe of taxpayers and accounts, generally only after they already have evidence of hinkiness and want to quantify unsurveilled amounts and/or locate assets.
These are not secret facts about the world; the operations of the IRS are exhaustively public (trust me, I have weird hobbies). People on a programmer-dense message board should have more weight for "While I understand that X would be accomplishable via an API if it existed, it is possible that that API does not factually exist" than they often do.
Also, the number of times someone in the financial industry typed in git commit -m "tldr Patriot Act compliance" is orders of magnitude below the number that HN comments routinely predict.
>I wonder what more it will take to have something actually be done about this, haha.
It's the CFC/Ozone Hole problem[0], all over again; only at a much larger and far more damaging scale. Humans, despite all of their best qualities, are still going to human.
>Perhaps this is selecting for desperate job hunters who send thank you notes.
That's entirely plausible. I mean, you're probably <insert arbitrary percentage here> more likely to not turn an offer down, even if it's below the cost-of-living for the area in question, if you're willing to go to those lengths, yeah?
Their solution to the problem of having offers turned down seems to be not to investigate why but to just hire the people most willing to take them... I mean, they found a loop-hole but to quote the Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."
New theory... the original twitter's annual performance metric is based on number of successful new hires (turned down offers and candidate who realize they are a bad fit are negatives)
>But online ads and the technology that makes them work have played a considerable part in the development of almost every aspect of what we’ve come to enjoy as the free and open internet of today.
Online ads and free and open internet are not synonymous and I really wish that people would stop trying to equate them as such. The pervasive advertising systems that are running today (e.g.: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.) aren't running to make the internet free and open but to squeeze out more profit margins for their respective shareholders and nothing more.
Were online ads the cause of the move from dial-up to "high-speed" internet? I'd argue it was actually pictures, graphics, movies, etc. and the desire to be able to consume those at a reasonable rate that caused the move from dial-up to "high-speed" internet.
How did advertising play a role in the development of that portion of the free and open internet? (Genuinely asking, in case I'm missing something here.)
Yes this. Most people who work outside software development and several within, are convinced that they have access to free internet services only because they are willing to tolerate ads.
Ads ≠ "free" services, and "free" services ≠ ads.
["free" in scare quotes to refer to not paying money per usage or to gain access to usage, but you may be paying in other ways]
Counter examples are public libraries (no ads but "free") and cable television (not "free" yet ads).
He didn't say that in principle the only way to make money on the internet was through ads. He's saying that in practice most (not all) of the services people actually use on the internet for free (at no direct cost to themselves) are in fact paid for by advertising.
As an observation, I think that's hard to argue with.
The quote in question specifically says “free and open internet” which has a massively different connotation than merely “no direct cost.”
Free and open software, and by extension the internet services wishing to provide a free and open internet, often has no direct cost to end users and also does not generate income from ads, and seeks non-exploitative funding or donation models very different from advertising.
Regardless of how many ad-based services people use at no direct cost, it’s highly debatable whether these services contribute in any way to the “free and open” internet... their widespread usage and superficial lack of direct financial cost certainly don’t factor in at all and are not relevant details for what the quote is discussing.
They have been wherever I've lived, you only would ever pay a late fee if you dont return a book in time, or if you're printing something. The caveat sometimes is that you need to be a resident of the town to access the normal services for free.
I'm not sure libraries are a good counter example. They're less free than "free" internet, because they cost real money from the user in the form of taxes. If you asked someone if they'd rather have their library plastered with ads and get their $50/year back in county/city taxes that goes to the library, many/most would likely say yes.
Let me add a sample to your made-up statistic: I would not.
I don't think selling everything we hold dear on the Market will lead to a good society. We could make a few bucks by covering churches, schools, and hospitals in ads too. Let no place be spared from the profit-maximizing Market.
It's also dangerous to assume that just because something has no immediate monetary cost (e.g. plastering ads everywhere), it has no eventual cost. The kid's section of the library (the most lucrative demographic!) will get plastered with ads pushing sugary drinks, snacks, and microtransaction-laden smartphone 'games'. What should be a place of relaxation and calm will get drowned with visual noise trying to convince you to spend money. Stress and poor diet contribute to health issues.
Obviously you pay in other ways. When Tesco have an advert, they have to charge more to pay for that advert. The money still comes from me, the person shopping at Tesco.
You seem to forget the actual function of adverts, an advert gets you more customers so they make more money as a result than they had spent on the advert. If running ads was a net loss no one would do it.
Ads have a function, but they don't produce anything. They either divert customers from a competing business, or try to convince people to purchase something they so far haven't.
Instances where they provide useful information are comparably rare - with the exception of notifying people of a new business or kind of product, the yellow pages, word of mouth, or a search engine are much better, from a consumer's point of view.
With how information-sparse most ads are, it's hard to see them as anything but a drain on society, economically and socially.
In the prisoner's dilemma, it's also in the individual's best interest to betray the others, despite ultimately that leading to a worse outcome for everyone.
Yes but I'm addressing the OC as he specifically says that they have to charge more as if they're recouping losses. I'm trying to make the case that no losses are actually being made.
I'm saying isostatic may still be right, even with your objection.
Everyone can be having losses due to advertising (and be forced to charge more), despite advertising still being profitable for any particular business, compared to not advertising.
Tesco spend say 2% to try to get people to spend money there rather than ASDA.
ASDA spend 2% to try to get people to spend there rather than Tesco
Net result - both stores have no change in customer numbers, but an increase in overheads. Therefore they have to charge the customer more to make the same profit.
He never said they were synonymous. He also mentions ads - and the technology that makes them work - have played a part. Perhaps you should read the sentence you quoted again.
Advertising pays for most content on the internet, that's the "free" part as most consumers experience it. The rest is about the technical advances that have been made in building out modern adtech companies and infrastructure, and what those companies have then gone on to contribute afterwards.
I can only speak for myself but I'd be happy to get my 90s Internet back. The Internet was much better before companies grabbed their share of it and eroded standards.
> If you don't want to pay for the content, it needs to be funded in some manner - donations or ads - we haven't found any other business models.
I'd argue that it doesn't actually need to be funded at all. The internet and plenty of content on it existed prior to any advertising. People still talked on the internet, and they still put up their own content, even when there was no money to be made. Bloggers would still blog without ads. And we're right now using HN - a free service with free content provided by users, without ads or tracking.
Funding only matters in a worldview where everything you do has to somehow turn a profit and grow to a gigantic scale to bring in even more profit. There was a time when people on the internet weren't looking at it like "how can I get rich from this".
> And we're right now using HN - a free service with free content provided by users, without ads or tracking.
It's obvious that ycombinator's business model is not based on Hacker News advertising - but hacker news is still used as platform for their portfolio companies and services. Hacker news is just a curated list, so calling it "free content" is a bit of a stretch, unless you're saying that the content provided are the comments of the user, but I'd argue that the website wouldn't be the same without the link to the content being commented on (which are in a big part, funded by ads). Y-Combinator is for profit by the way, and it invests in companies supported by advertising (e.g. Reddit).
> Funding only matters in a worldview where everything you do has to somehow turn a profit and grow to a gigantic scale to bring in even more profit.
Funding is not required only for growing into a gigantic scale. If you want to open a restaurant in your small town, you'll require some sort of funding. Even if you don't want to profit and just want to cover costs, you'll need a stream of money coming in from somewhere.
I personally don't see anything wrong in people getting paid for their work - if you really want to create your own content and give it out for free, you can do so (a lot of people currently do just that).
> There was a time when people on the internet weren't looking at it like "how can I get rich from this".
I'm not sure exactly when that was. There's been people trying to get rich from the Internet for a long long time.
You still have to invest time and money, even if you don't want your service to scale or to get rich from the information you're providing.
At the very least someone has to pay for the server and network infrastructure, maintenance and of course content creation. Some of that might be provided for by public funding while other aspects are covered by enthusiasts putting in their time.
Just because somebody else pays for it or somebody else does the work required it doesn't magically become free.
Most people can do without those 95% percent. Never fall into the trap of believing that because you offer something for free (i.e., ad-driven) that people consume, they like your offer or couldn't live without it. That seems to be a common misconception among Internet companies that do not sell any real products.
Most stuff on the commercial Internet exists just for entertainment. If people can't get X-entertainment for some reason, it's likely that most of them won't care at all and turn to Y-entertainment instead. For example, if Youtube closed tomorrow, there would be an outcry about the lost pirated music and a few silly popular Youtubers, but after a month the site would already have been forgotten.
Eh, most people can do without 100% of the internet, but they don't want to. And why should they? It's easy to opt out of ads - just don't use sites that have them. But if person A wants to watch some ads in exchange of "just" entertainment (which is downplaying the importance of entertainment, but whatever), why should that bother me?
Assuming of course that person A is fully aware of what they are giving said ad company, which currently is often not the case.
> if Youtube closed tomorrow, there would be an outcry
Clever youtube though, let you become a paying customer and bypass the ads. It really is a very compelling resource once the millstone of advertising is removed.
It's just not ads. I'm willing to pay for the content but I need the guarantee that content provider or company won't sell my usage information. The problem is that ad-tech companies won't stop when we start paying. Google will still sell our usage profiles even if we buy YouTube music.
> I need the guarantee that content provider or company won't sell my usage information
I think GDPR provides this no? Leaving the privacy aside for a second though, there's other ways in which pervasive advertising is destructive. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to side-step even if I am still dealing with evil-global-mega-corp (but then again, what large company isn't?).
EDIT - this thought actually occurs to me, that your data is probably safer with evil-global-mega-corp than with smaller businesses even state institutions because at least evil-global-mega-corp knows better, and has a larger attack surface for scrutiny.
Who are you to judge what other people can do without?
People can live without a lot of things, but that's not what this is about. We're in a modern society where people can fill their wants and desires, and they're perfectly able and willing to make their own choices about the content they consume and how they pay for it.
Youtube is just distribution. The content, the demand for it, and the creators who produce will still exist and still continue to be paid primarily by advertising.
You have misunderstood me. My statement was merely supposed to reflect an empirical fact, not some sort of personal value judgement. I could be wrong about that empirical fact, of course, but the history of the Internet has shown several times before that people cared much less about some companies than those companies had wished for. See AOL, Myspace, Yahoo, Altavista, ...
>What about 95% of the content on the internet that ads pay for?
This is such a pedestrian argument, as if advertising pays for the content to be made and then hosted - when the truth of the matter is that someone else pays for the content to be created (and hosted) and that cost is recouped (with additional profit added on top), after the fact by advertising.
For example, advertising companies are not paying for YouTube content creators to create their content and then for it to be hosted on YouTube. Advertising companies seek those with the largest audience (typically, that requires having made content a priori, yeah?) and then make partnerships with those people and, then, those people may make videos pushing those products.
WSJ, since this is predominantly an American board, doesn't have advertisers paying their reporters', photographers', editors', etc. salaries. Advertisers are not paying for the content to be created or to be hosted. All of that is done by WSJ, who then recoups the costs via advertising, yeah?
So, the only point at which "95% of the content on the internet that ads pay for" is true, is (predominantly) after the content has been made and hosted and is only true over time (e.g.: not with immediate effect).
>Malware isn't advertising
You have that backwards from the OC's comment: Advertising networks have been used to push malware.
>...and security is an issue in any industry and sector.
This comes across as a whataboutism, "So? Other industries have security problems, too!" and, whilst true, largely ignores the fact that those other industries (mostly at large) weren't leveraged as attack vectors to spread malware. (I'm assuming your meaning of "industry" infers the meaning of "commercial industry", that generates revenue in exchange for a product or service, which would ignore the obvious things like P2P and the like.)
Is this even an argument? We don't pay for Apple's engineers/designers, Foxconn's workers when buying an iPhone. But they won't be paid if iPhone stops selling.
Ok? The point still stands that advertising ultimately pays for the content. Manufacturers buy raw parts first and then recoup the costs by selling the final product, does that mean consumers aren't actually paying for the business?
Security is an eternal problem and a completely separate topic from advertising as a business model. Do you suggest we stop using email because some people got scams and viruses? Or can we talk about communications while acknowledging that it's separate from implementation and UX issues?
>(e.g.: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc.) aren't running to make the internet free and open but to squeeze out more profit margins for their respective shareholders and nothing more.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" - Adam Smith, 1776.
"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter II.
Another excellent Smith quote with which I fully agree, and one often overlooked by avowed Smith fans, though I don't see it's immediate applicability to the issue at hand.
Currently only high revenue is taxed (at a personal level). Wealth isn't taxed. At least not in the UK. I guess in the U.S income tax deductions mean it's skewed a little more to profit rather than revenue.
Right!? You can't have prisons run by for-profit companies and then expect everyone to believe you want low recidivism rates - much less low crime rates. Bodies make the businesses money, businesses making money keep running the jails/prisons, and "being tough on crime" gets the votes - so it's a self-perpetuating machine.
>These services are ludicrously expensive. Video calls cost 40¢ per minute in Newton County, 50¢ per minute in Lowndes County, and $10 per call in Allen County.
The use of the video system is now compulsory, in person visits are banned, and another at-cost for families of criminals is seemingly tacked on because... ...freedom? Capitalism?
At what point do we agree tapping the families of inmates (note: not the inmates, themselves) out of money is going too far?
> You can't have prisons run by for-profit companies
IIRC only ~10% of prisoners are held in privately run prisons. It's kind of a red herring.
The bigger (and much harder to solve issue) is that all prisons, public or private, work with a slew of private companies in order to run (think food, phones, etc.) who have big incentives to keep the prison population high. And they can easily prey on prisoners, who are generally much poorer than the general population, because of America's concept of "justice".
But these huge costs of, say, video calls, are borne by the families of the incarcerated, who, like the prisoners that they're supporting, skew poor. As you pointed out, it's a vicious cycle.
After living in the US since 2000 I believe that a majority of the US population believes in the punishment aspect of prison and thinks it's OK to make prison life as miserable as possible. There is not much thought about rehabilitation and I have heard lines like "Why do we have to pay for job training for them if I have to pay for college?" even from very liberal people. Punishing people as hard as possible is deeply entrenched in the american psyche.
> I have heard lines like "Why do we have to pay for job training for them if I have to pay for college?" even from very liberal people.
I would argue most "very liberal people" would argue that both should be free. Granted, I'm not in the US, but free college is quite favourable nation-wide in the US in polls over the past few years -- let alone among progressive circles.
You know, there are legitimate answers to that strawmanish question. Why would you say something ridiculous like that, which just begs the further response, "Well, then we better not release such monsters at all..."
increasing the number of capital crimes might actually to increase the number of murders. If you are committing a capital crime, you have a strong incentive to get rid of the witnesses.
I’ve heard very few people arguing to expand the list of capital crimes. After all, California hasn’t even executed more than 700 people on death row, let alone all the other first degree murderers who could be executed without any expansion in the list of capital crimes.
> But these huge costs of, say, video calls, are borne by the families of the incarcerated, who, like the prisoners that they're supporting, skew poor.
Video-only options are inhumane, but the family gets screwed either way.
Prisons are built way out in the country and not easily accessible. These same poor families can end up commuting for four hours, burning through a tank of gas and hours of their time just to see a loved one for 30 minutes.
It takes its toll on them and eventually they stop coming to see you anyway. Video should have solved that problem as an alternative but of course, human nature being what it is...
I'd almost be okay with the COSTS of the tech being borne by the families, Even with a reasonable profit to the company, but the extra kickback to the jail gives a very perverse incentive to raise rates over and over, to bring in more fees.
It also means someone with a competing product, that is better, and cheaper, won't be looked at seriously, if it doesn't include kickbacks.. (or do we call it something else now?)
> IIRC only ~10% of prisoners are held in privately run prisons. It's kind of a red herring.
I disagree. Even if only 10% of prisoners are held in privately run prisons, the corporate leadership of those prisons has a disproportionate effect on policy-making for all people. CCA and GeoGroup are the largest recipients of federal contract award grants (for ICE), and they collectively make over 1bn / year from these contracts. They also sponsor legislation that _increases recidivism_ and makes it easier to put undocumented immigrants in their own jails. Just because a small % of the population is housed in private prisons, doesn't mean that private prison's have no impact on our society's relationship between profit and punishment.
> You can't have prisons run by for-profit companies and then expect everyone to believe you want low recidivism rates
Sure you can, it's just no one is doing. The private market is very efficient at finding the most efficient way to provide the things they are paid for. In this case they are paid to house people where house has a specific minimum definition. They figure out how to provide that stuff and nothing else.
If instead we paid in a way that encouraged reducing recidivism they would find a way to do that instead. For example today (according to google) the average prissioner costs $30K per year per inmate. let's say we paid $10K per year as a base, but then paid another $10K every year a former prisoner didn't commit a new crime for 5-7 years after they got out. Then these companies would be looking for ways to ensure that people don't reoffend because that means they lose out on the vast majority of their pay. I would expect the greedy selfish private prison companies to start providing lots things that prisoners will need to be successful when they leave for example behavior management strategies, life skills classes, GED programs, diagnosis and treatment for mental illness, even providing free post release things like job placement, or family counseling. All because these are things the will prevent recidivism and get them that sweet yearly payout.
The thing about greedy capitalists, is they are very easy manage, if you are the one paying them. If they are the ones paying you... well we call that corruption.
Really I think the fact we don't see more of this type of pattern suggests that city and states that run prisons care more about punishment than rehabilitation.
That's what you propose sounds like a really good idea. One concern though: it seems that many people (not all of them) who end up in prison are not really a good people. Maybe for some of them education, psychological help, etc. would indeed help, however there could be a certain and not negligible percentage of people who will not take advantage of those opportunities and prefer to be criminals. No private company would decide to risk its income for a potentially bad bet. Recidivism rates in the US are high - from 45 to 80 percent (depending on various factors). Even if this was cut to best of the World Swedish 40% recidivism rate, this still will not be economically viable.
That's more a matter, then, of adjusting the algorithm such that you recognize there will always be some recidivism, and you tier your goals, such that current status is "barely profitable", costs covered, etc., and that each leap to a new tier is more and more profitable.
> but then paid another $10K every year a former prisoner didn't commit a new crime for 5-7 years after they got out.
Then you'd have a private corporation with agents with direct access to people with criminal backgrounds and connections with a direct financial incentive to ensure that an ex-prisoner was not identified as the perpetrator of any crimes in a certain period.
Why not just say "dump Windows"? It's a good OS, if you want someone to hand-hold you, but as somoene once elegantly put it: "Trying to hack in Windows is like trying to dance in bodycast."
>Reverse Engineering.
They list scripting but, as saagarjha notes, knowing how to program is a pivotal quality. Otherwise, when you reverse engineer something, how do you know what the feck you're looking at?
For example (I'm aware of the irony of this example), it does me no good to reverse engineer something in ILDASM[0], if I haven't the faintest idea of what it is I'm looking at.
>Debuggers could input and output memory addresses as proquints as an alternative to hex.
...but why? In debuggers, you're not concerned with memorising the address of an object as much as you are concerned with what the hell is mangling said object. There's no "value-add" for proquints, here. If you were live-debugging in a session with someone else, sure, but how often are you generally doing that?
>Network tools such as browsers, ping, netstat, traceroute, etc. could input and output proquints as an alternative to dotted quads.
Again, what is the value-add? Since I've known 4-octet IP addresses and numbers my whole life, it would take more effort to translate from proquint, to understand the output on the screen. Adding a translation layer in a cut-over fashion instead of a phased-in fashion just seems like wholly unnecessary overhead, only intended to further justify the proquint, yeah?
Yes, that debugger example really confused me and made me wonder why he added it. Anyone who has actually done live-debugging sessions will know that hex is perfectly pronouncible, and furthermore is a direct mapping to binary.
True, even in post-mortem debugging (assuming I have the objects from the heap), it's not like I'm going to exclude the addresses of objects in my write-ups (or as they're exposed via commands, such as !sosex.mdso[0]).
In native, if you're on the stack (e.g.: not using pointers), then addresses don't mean much of anything and if you're using pointers, memory optimisation means the address could mean feck-all after a cycle or two (assuming you've looking at an iDNA/TTT[1]).
So, to agree with you, who are agreeing with me: It is quite odd that this would be a principal argument for proquints.
As long as your PAYE is like Ireland's (ROI) PAYE, then the American's system is far-removed from it.
Even though their tax revenue office gets the reports from businesses for how much they were paid and how much taxes they paid, the Americans still need to fill out a tax form - every year - to repeat the same information (it's an added benefit for the prison system, in that mistakes on tax forms can equate to jail time). They get a form from their employer (which their tax office also has), that contains all of this information.
>In the UK, most people don't have to submit a tax return at all. Not sure the actual cost of this, but the convenience is unparalleled.
Aye, it's the same in Ireland (ROI). You can just call-up or email Revenue and they check if you've overpaid, by how much, and they just send you the money. No forms. No bullshit. No threats of jail time. It's pretty deadly[0].
You want nothing to do with the Yanks' tax system, trust me.
[0] - https://www.whygo.com/ireland/irish-slang-deadly.html