On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:23:13 -0400, Warp wrote:

> 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 angels can dance on the head of a pin? ;-)

>   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?

In the US that is the case if you make over a certain amount in the 
year.  There are a handful of different forms based on how complex your 
income situation is, too; 1040EZ is pretty straightforward, the full 1040 
form is a bit more complicated.  Many people have to have an accountant 
do their taxes.

>   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.

A lot of the information that goes onto the US tax form comes from other 
forms; automating the information from employer W2 forms and 1090 forms 
is something that *could* be done if there were sufficient funding and 
motivation at the IRS to automate it instead of sending us a million 
pieces of paper with the information on it.

We've done our taxes electronically the last several years, so at least 
the chances of a calculation error are drastically reduced.  Ironically, 
my dad discovered the early onset of his alzheimer's while doing the 
taxes one year - he caught himself going back for the same information 
over and over and over and over again and decided to get tested.

Jim

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