• doctortran@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    Strictly speaking, tax filling software, even the free ones, have simplified it all so much that for people who have a single source of income from work and not a lot of tax forms to collect (most Americans), it’s pretty trivial. Maybe 30-60 minutes, once a year.

    Less than ideal but far from the grueling, soul sucking work I was told would plague my adult life when I was a kid.

    That’s why the IRS is finally doing their own online filling system. No more making Americans shell out for software, so everyone gets a nice, simple tax season.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah it’s an unpleasant afternoon the majority of which is from the gathering of financial documents not from the math and filling it out. But if you don’t have government form literacy or basic arithmetic skills I imagine the 1040ez still can be rough. My issue with being expected to fill it out is much more connected to the fact that it just sucks to have to do than the fact that it’s difficult. Though also sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass to get your tax statements from a job you quit like a year prior and moved.