Modern tax return stuff is so good how it already knows about all of my dividend and interest payments etc. Most things are auto-filled but I just need to crack open my google doc I keep with my expenses I put in and keep track of purchases I can claim, whack that stuff in there, get briefly mad at how much tax I pay every year and then hit submit. Probably takes me about 10 minutes. 15 with a double-check of everything.
It’s certainly a massive improvement on the old paper forms. The early electronic lodgements were also basically just the paper form online, all of this automatic stuff makes it so much easier.
Before I came to Australia I had this impression that tax was Awful and Complicated and A Nightmare - primarily from American media - and this was before I was old enough to have needed to file a tax return.
I think USA has the additional complication of having both State and Federal income taxes. There also seem to be a lot of things that can be deductable there that don’t apply here - like mortgage payments on your own home and the value of donations given to charity (not just money, but stuff like old clothes you drop off at the op shop!). Plus they have the option to file a joint tax return as a couple instead of being treated as two individuals, which is beneficial in some circumstances but not others.
Modern tax return stuff is so good how it already knows about all of my dividend and interest payments etc. Most things are auto-filled but I just need to crack open my google doc I keep with my expenses I put in and keep track of purchases I can claim, whack that stuff in there, get briefly mad at how much tax I pay every year and then hit submit. Probably takes me about 10 minutes. 15 with a double-check of everything.
It’s certainly a massive improvement on the old paper forms. The early electronic lodgements were also basically just the paper form online, all of this automatic stuff makes it so much easier.
Before I came to Australia I had this impression that tax was Awful and Complicated and A Nightmare - primarily from American media - and this was before I was old enough to have needed to file a tax return.
Only to find out it’s a total breeze here.
Operative phrase there is ‘american media’.
I think USA has the additional complication of having both State and Federal income taxes. There also seem to be a lot of things that can be deductable there that don’t apply here - like mortgage payments on your own home and the value of donations given to charity (not just money, but stuff like old clothes you drop off at the op shop!). Plus they have the option to file a joint tax return as a couple instead of being treated as two individuals, which is beneficial in some circumstances but not others.