Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (Seriously - why the hell does anybody in the modern era need to be 
> fluent at long division?

  No such thing as useless knowledge.

  How many people thought high-school math classes were boring and useless,
until they fell in love with POV-Ray?

> > and then she sits down 
> > to do the taxes, and just gets completely frustrated at all the numbers.
> > 
> > I think it is some sort of a block.

> No no - *everybody* gets confused as hell by taxes. ;-)

  Is it really so that in the US, the UK and other places everybody has
to explicitly fill out tax forms each year, specifying all their income,
tax reductions, etc?

  Here in Finland all that is automatic: You receive a pre-filled form
with all your income, tax reductions, etc. already put in. If everything
is correct, you don't have to do anything about it. Only if there's
something not in the form already (for example some significant payment
which has not been notified to the tax officials, or something which is
worth tax reductions) you'll have to add it to the form and return it.

  (Of course for employers it's a completely different matter, but normal
people don't have to worry about that.)

  I would be really surprised if this was not the case in most other
countries too.

> [Why do they make them so complicated? Is it a conspiracy to ensure you 
> get them wrong and hand over more money than you're supposed to??]

  You mean there are no tax returns where you live? That would be odd.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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