>> (Seriously - why the hell does anybody in the modern era need to be
>> fluent at long division?

Ever tried dividing one polynomial by another?  A useful skill if you're 
doing Laplace transforms and stuff that need polynomials in certain forms. 
Without knowing how to do long division with numbers, you'd be stuffed to 
try and divide a polynomial.

>  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?


or if you have some "special" items, like company car, shares, working 
abroad, or basically anything that is non-standard.

>  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.

Which is essentially what you do on the UK form too, if you get one. 
Everyone gets a "P60" form that tells you how much income you got and how 
much tax you paid over the last year.  You simply copy&paste those two 
numbers onto your tax return form.  The rest of the tax form is for other 
items.  I suspect a lot of people simply leave 90% of the form blank (there 
are many many optional sections).

It can get complicated if you are a family, paying a mortgage with two kids 
at university, have a company car and shares in the company you work for. 
You just need to sit down and read through the guidelines carefully to work 
out which numbers to put in which boxes.  Of course, many people just pay 
someone else to do it for them who is much more familiar with the system.

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