Every year, millions of people in the U.S. go through the anxiety of filing their taxes. Many people wait until the very last minute, mainly to avoid dealing with it.
Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that taxes were completely automatic. What if the laws were set up so that the entire process happened completely behind the scenes.
In that alternate reality, your taxes would just be automatically withheld, sent on their way to pay for all those nice things that we take for granted — like roads, airports, schools and fire departments — and that would be it. Nobody would even think about taxes.
I am sure there are good arguments against such a thing. But then again, maybe in the long run we would all be happier.
This is how it is for the majority of people in the UK. You do have to file if your situation is “complex”, such as high earners or those that get income from more than one job. But even if you do have to file, you just fill in the online forms in the government’s website and they calculate it all for you.
Having submitted tax forms for both the USA and the UK, it is night and day the difference.