1053
Useful Life Skills [extra fabulous] (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
73 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Transcript[An angry kid sits at his desk in school complaining]

Kid: Ugh why don’t you teach us about things we’ll actually need to know as adults?!

[An unamused teacher]

Teacher: Ok, I’m going to teach you how to do your taxes while also dealing the death of a loved one

[The teacher, wearing the same expression, holds a knife in one hand, and a hamster in the other]

Teacher: Please itemize your deductions while I deal with Mister Hamps, the class pet

[A class of shocked and crying kids look on in horror while trying to simultaneously do their taxes. The cries of the hamster off screen are cut off abruptly]

Hamster: SQWEEE- -

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[–] 87 points 5 months ago (10 children)

And then I’ll remind you that it’s well within most governments’ capabilities to do their citizens taxes for them. Also any for-profit service you use to do your taxes uses the money you give them to lobby the government to keep the tax system this way. Also your taxes are getting used for unfathomable crimes, and there’s no paper trail or audit done to them to prove your tax dollars are going where you’d like them to.

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  • [–] 22 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    In the UK, unless you're self-employed, taxes are just kind of automatic. It just gets handled by your employer.

    If you're self-employed, and especially so if you're VAT-registered, it can be a bit fiddly. For most people, however, it's just handled invisibly.

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  • [–] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Fun fact: if you're self employed in the UK, you've been able to do your taxes online via a simple (ish) form on the HMRC website, but they're in the process of phasing it out in favour of third-party proprietary software, so some people aren't allowed to use the free web form anymore, and within two or three years, it'll become totally unavailable. Everyone always loves it when the government finds things that Americans complain about and copies it here so we get to complain about it, too.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    Those things tend to not all happen at the same place and time.

    Specifically, places where bribery is done in the form of lobby usually have audits and paper trails showing where the money goes to.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I've been living in 5 different countries and I still have to find one place where doing your taxes is not an absolute nightmare.

    They all have been slightly different nightmares, I will concede that point.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Depends entirely on how complicated your income/expenditure is. This year was the first time in 10 years or more that I needed to add to my pre-filled tax notice (major reno, deductions worth it). I may have missed out on a few hundred € of deductions in that time, but my simple life has always been listed immediately correct: Income from work done in the country, benefits, voluntary retirement insurance, stocks&funds wins, losses, dividends. Finland.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

    Switzlerand is a breeze. Digital, prompt led, explanations next to the form fields, import of previous year. Takes five minutes to upload a phone scan of a few documents, a bit longer for more complex data entry like trading dates.

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