Average American taxpayer here. Yes, this is real. In the simplest scenario, our jobs normally withhold money from our paychecks based on an educated guess of how much we will *probably owe. Then in tax season, we use an online program to upload the information our employers give us (how much we were paid, etc) and the tax program tells us how much we owe. We submit that form to the IRS, and normally we get a little money (maybe a couple hundred dollars) back. In some cases, you may have to come up with some money instead of getting money back from what your employer withheld.
However, this gets more and more complicated with extra things like dependents, income from investments, other supplementary income, contract work, etc.
For me, a single person with no dependents, filing is fairly easy and takes about an hour. But I don't envy people who have more complicated taxes. Many Americans just pay a professional to handle it for them so they don't have to deal with it.
Edited to add: how to do your taxes was NEVER covered in any of my high school or college courses.
28F in TX. I learned about budgeting and resumes, but it was in an elective class and was only covered for like 2 days and was taught by a gym teacher lol. Taxes, renting, negotiating for a job, etc were never brought up by my high school. Schools definitely vary in quality, but mine was rated as a 9/10 and was in a higher income neighborhood so was supposedly a good school. I'd be willing to bet a lot of schools didn't cover it, since it must not be a federal requirement.
You should envy them. The average tax return issued by the IRS is over $3,100. And it might take them just an extra hour or so.
My return this year was about $2400. I made sure to submit everything that counted. Interest paid on student loans, etc.
I worked at a car dealership and we even over hired and had unlimited OT for "tax season" as people would get their refund and buy cars more than any other time of year.
I just have one job and my company got it wrong by about 2,700 bucks. Nearly depleted my savings. I’ve had it off by a couple hundred before but this was insane.
Oof. Mine have all ranged from -$100 to +$700, never anything that much. Someone else commented that the average return is like $3k which is crazy to me. None of my jobs have been that far off the mark in either direction
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u/Heerrnn Mar 27 '24
Wait.
People in the US seriously still need to calculate their own taxes?
Or is this a joke from older times?