More than 32 countries do this: All of Scandinavia, Finland, Spain, Estonia, Macedonia, Australia, India, the Netherlands, Japan, the U.K. and a bunch of others.
Belgium as well. Your employer reports your income to the tax administration, your bank reports your house mortgage for tax deduction and so on. For me it’s pretty much just a bunch of checkboxes check. The hardest part is getting my electronic id to work to log in to the bloody site.
I finished filing my taxes two weeks ago, a day after the pre-filled form became available online on the revenue service's website (works in all modern browsers, on all operating systems).
It took five minutes (two incomes, mortgage, bank accounts, all filled in correctly by employers and banks). Most of that time was spent authenticating myself and my partner.
Anyone fighting this in the US should make a bunch of videos showing average people from these countries filing their taxes in the blink of an eye.
Not really comparable though. Tax filing in the Netherlands is simple for almost anyone who doesn't own a business. That's the vast majority of people. If you do own a business, it's still manageable, just not as automated.
I own a house in a household with two incomes: taxes took five minutes for both of us.
A system like this was launched this year in Poland, this year limited to employees and contract workers, but it's planned to expand to self-employed / business owners as well. If one doesn't log in / doesn't do anything, the form will be submitted Apr 30. If you log in you can update the form (e.g. add deductions or declare extra income), or just accept it as is - then it's submitted right away.
There were some minor kinks, but in my opinion it was a success. Being self-employed I didn't get to use it, but saw how it works. I filed taxes on-line directly from my book keeping software and it took me ~20min, including getting my wife's pre-filled taxes from the govt service to combine with mine.
Many other European countries do things like require you to register with the government within a week whenever you move to a new place. They track much more information about you.
Even in the US you eventually need to basically 'register with the government' (usually in the form of getting your ID/drivers license updated, and notifying USPS of mail service change).
You only need to update your drivers license when you change states, not when you change residences. (And if you don’t drive you don’t need to do that either.) And you don’t neee to notify USPS of your mailing address.
Have you ever heard of someone getting ticketed for not doing this? I have never once notified the DMV of anything, and have driven for years with old addresses on my license.
And, of course, if you don't drive, none of this applies.
I've actually gotten ticketed for this in Texas outside of Austin on the way back from Round Rock. It wasn't very expensive but was thrown onto a ticket for speeding.
I think it was a speed trap(I got a ticket for going 64 in a 55) and he knew he could get an extra infraction if my address was out of date which probably happened a lot with college students because they move a lot, don't update their address, and are dumb enough to admit it to a cop.
That's interesting. I'm not sure I see how it could be anything worse than the penalty for driving without your drivers license (which will always get you ticketed, but rarely anything worse). I can always just not present my license at all.
> I can always just not present my license at all.
Sure, that might work.
But a likely scenario is the officer will ask your name and DOB and look you up on his MDT and now you've got three tickets (including whatever you were pulled over for because now it is definitely not going to be a warning) instead of just one.
Another scenario is the officer discovers you have your license and are just refusing to show your license. In California, and other states, you've now escalated a simple ticket to a misdemeanor with large fine and possible jail time.
Another scenario is you just update your address with the DMV and don't risk compounding your problems during a traffic stop.
Right, I'm not suggesting you can't get a ticket for it (though that's never happened to me; the police always asked "is this your current address" and I'd say "nope" and give them my actual address and that'd be the end of it --- it is handy that I'm a middle-aged white dude, though). I'm just surprised by the idea you could get worse than a ticket.
I don't at all see how you could get in trouble for "refusing" to show your license. You'd just say you didn't realize you had it. (This is relevant to my interests; in Chicago, your DL is also your bond on tickets, and also, when you get a new license, you get a paper temp license day-of, good for several months, and the real license in the mail; I'm holding on to the paper temp and denying possession of the real one if I'm ever pulled over, because getting bonded DL's back is a giant pain.)
I'd be interested in knowing whether you could point me to a state that explicitly says not updating your address is a misdemeanor.
Interesting. It's a cheap fix-it ticket (much cheaper than a speeding ticket) in MN, but (apparently) it's annoying because it requires an actual court appearance (I haven't cracked the code on which offenses require court appearances in Chicago; I've only had to go once or twice. I wonder if those were misdemeanors as well.)
Change of address within Illinois is required within ten days after moving. I remember in Montana it was required on the day you started a job and in that case people were getting tickets
