Maybe once they tackle this they can figure out a way to just send me a fucking bill every year instead of forcing me to do their work to then send them money.
They’ve actually been trying to do this for years. There were actually a couple years of tests out in California I think. However, there are two big lobbies that always put a halt to it, tax preparation services (H&R Block, Intuit, etc.) and groups that want taxes to be a pain in the ass so we’ll all bitch about them.
Check out this episode of Planet Money if you want to learn more:
TLDR: Our government is for sale and two corporations apparently give instructions to the entire IRS and tax system because they pay a “subscription fee” to our politicians.
Protip: just fill out the paperwork! It walks you through it and takes no more time than making a pathfinder character. Tbh the whole act of doing it reminds me of making a ttrpg character: you get a template sheet and a booklet that walks you through it.
I should be able to just stuff what I think is the right amount of gold coins in an envelope and label it “to IRS” and they can figure out if I need another coin or two.
And then I get one thing wrong and get a bill years later that I can’t fight with interest payments or they cut out the middleman and just email my employer and demand they take it out of my pay.
if the free ones would automatically populate for free I would totally use them just to not do the data input. But since they are all bs and don't actually do it for free I do the free fillable forms. Real pro tip is use a spreadsheet to add things up for wierd forms that don't do stuff for you. I put my 1099's in a spreadsheet and copied and pasted from it and it just made the whole thing easier to look over and verify. will do the same anytime I have multiples of the same form and then also for things like ira nonfillable pdf.
I’ve been using the Cash App one and it’s totally free. It was formerly Credit Karma’s before TurboTax bought them and they were forced to divest the free tax program. I usually will run the same numbers through TurboTax and the results end up being the same.
I don’t think sending you a bill would work for most people, since they don’t know how much you owe until you tell them whether you’re married, have dependent kids, have a mortgage, etc. These are things they need to verify every year, so you will always need to send them something every year.
That said, they could certainly make the process simpler.
The government already knows all that information about you. You give your family information to your employer which passes it on to the government. Your mortgage company (and any other financial institution for that matter) sends the government information about your loans/accounts. That’s how they know you filled out your taxes correctly to begin with.
You give your family information to your employer so they can estimate your taxes. But you’re not required to keep them up to date.
So for instance if you tell your employer that you’re single and then get married, you are not required to update your employer. Same is true of having a child, etc. Hence the need for an official annual update, which goes directly to the IRS.
I think they already do in a sense; that’s the standard deduction. If you want to maximize your returns you might be better off itemizing though, and that option is what makes everything complicated (I suspect they’d have a hard time sending you a bill for everything you itemize… I don’t know that they really know everything you could itemize; I think that really only comes up when it’s suspicious/you get audited).
i.e., if they did that, you’d basically get fewer options, and maybe less money back(?)
Even when you take the standard deduction, only had one job in one state for the tax year, and have no investments or other income (ie. the only way your taxes could be simpler is if you don’t have any income and someone else pays all your bills), it’s still complicated to file taxes manually. Many other developed countries will automatically calculate the most common scenarios for most taxpayers, and only people with unusual situations have to do any manual calculations (or pay a tax preparer).
87% of people take the standard deduction. Just give people a bill (or I dunno, take out the correct amount to begin with) and allow people to contest or do an itemized deduction if they disagree.
Several countries have already figured this out, ot isn’t rocket surgery. The government has a pretty good idea what you owe, and send you a bill. If you want to take another route, you’re free to submit your own taxes, but the vast majority don’t need to do anything like that. There’s no reason we couldn’t use the same system, if it assumes standard deduction that would cover the vast majority of people. Anyone who wants to itemize would be free to, it just wouldn’t be automatic, so essentially, nothing would change for them. Well, almost nothing, the difference is if they take too long they have a safety net standard deduction already filed and done I guess.
It’s not because of commercial real estate that offices are forcing people back.
It’s simply because managers who are in charge of making that decision prefer to be in the office.
They like everyone in the office, so they’re forcing it on everyone. Either because it makes them feel more powerful to look at all their underlings, because they enjoy working face-to-face (probably how they got high up in the company), or because they suck at their jobs and can only micro-manage by looking over people’s shoulders
Absolutely. This was the entire reason the CEO at my last company forced everyone to return to office, giving local managers zero latitude to allow flexibility. He sent out videos saying crazy things like “introvert or extrovert, we’re all energized by working in person together!” Just completely tone deaf bullshit. We got a month’s notice for when we had to return, and I found a new job in that month and am much happier now.
Zero reason for people to be in the office if they can be just as productive as home, and happier doing it.
I wish I shared your optimism. ChatGPT looks like a drop in replacement for some of the buzzword spouting VPs already but I wouldn’t hold my breath because they’ve been using it as an excuse to get rid of the rank and file instead.
I bought a house that’s further away from where my office was than I’d have ever considered buying if not for the permanent wfh change made during the pandemic.
I’m now a minimum of an hour away from where most jobs would be in-person, and that’s not something I’m ever willing to do again.
I also did this, and as a family we’re much happier, but recent return to office mandates now mean I travel 1.5 hours each way 3 times a week, also at a cost of $80 in petrol.
We’re not willing to give up our life to move back, so I am definitely keeping eyes open for similar paying jobs that have less in-person requirements.
My wife and I left our company when they clawed us back to the office. It’s been 3 years now and there is 0 chance we’ll go back at this point. For all the big companies complaining about their empty buildings there are medium size players happy to poach top talent and let them work remote
Im currently complying with RTO because my office is close to my house and it is convenient, but there are talks of forcing employees to relocate to where the majority of their team is which would be halfway across the country for me. Needless to say we’re losing people in droves and many medium/small companies are picking up tons of talent.
We were full staff in office before covid, then full remote office optional in 2020/21. In 2022 we went back to one in person all staff meeting and one small team meeting each month. These are scheduled far in advance and lunch is often catered. We also went from all private assigned offices and desks to about half. Now people can reserve unassigned spaces in half or full day increments as needed. On an average day anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of staff are in for some or all of the day.
I live fairly close and spend about half of my workweek at the office. I typically go in 3-4 days a week but start my day at home and go in mid morning after traffic dies down. I also leave mid afternoon before traffic picks up again. Remaining work can be done when I get home or later that evening. If I lost that flexibility I would probably be looking.
I know millions of parents have figured this out but I literally cannot wrap my head around how we would be raising 2 small kids if my wife and I both had to be in the office full time. I take them to and from school most days and take care of other business during working hours. Then I work late at night to catch up on busy work. Or sometimes the weekend. If I lost that flexibility I would be looking immediately.
When my kids were young we reached a point where we did the budget of paying for childcare versus one of us staying home.
We figured out that having my wife get a masters degree and make 1/4 of the money she made in the office doing contract work from home was better than paying for childcare.
We chose not to have children, but our friends are spending upwards of $2k/mo on daycare because both parents work full time in the office. It’s outrageous.
Most parents take their kids to school. Ours started going to daycare at age 2 and he is now in preschool. We started taking him during covid because it was not possible to work. He wakes up at 6am and goes to bed at like 9pm… when the hell would I get any work done lol. And I have to be able to schedule meetings and phone calls during work hours. City employees don’t work at 9pm either. Business owners don’t do site visits at odd hours.
We went full time back in the office in April of 2022 and haven’t done very much remote since. The nature of our work makes it almost impossible to do WFH, and particularly new employees need considerable mentoring (10 hours a week isn’t uncommon) and hands on learning. Doing that remotely would probably eat up another 30 hours a week of my time, which would actually push my work from 50 hours to 80 hours a week.
So while I could do production only work and answer emails, its kind of hard to do the rest of the job sitting a desk at my house. Also, everyone else in the house works or goes to school, so I ended up being stuck at home for almost a year by myself which was depressing as fuck.
If true, all I can say is THANK YOU to the Biden admin for forcing these deranged Facebook billionaire scumbags to remove dangerous propaganda from their fascist site.
In the SHED survey, the gravity of this situation becomes more evident. The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2% to 3% pay cut.
Those number seem way too low to me. Just picking some semi-random numbers, let’s assume a 40 hour work week and an average travel time to work and back of 1 hour per day, so 5 hours per week. Being forced to come to the office would then be equivalent to 12.5% more of your time spent to earn the same amount of money. Of course that scales depending on how far away from the workplace you live, but for 3% or 2% to be realistic you would basically have to live right next door.
Let’s not even account for the other added expenses of going to work. Like clothes, different food, gas, car repairs, and lost time for flexibility of appointments.
People aren’t that logical. Most people feel more pain losing something than never getting it in the first place (eg: rolling back an accidental raise would be worse to someone than not getting the raise at all)
If you tell people to get back to work or lose 3% pay, you’ll get more takers than offering people a 3% bump. Although they’ll be very disgruntled of course.
Even if they are next door, who cares. If you’ve got hybrid/remote status, you don’t have to put on pants today. Some days you just don’t want to get out of your pajamas.
And if you are within walking/biking/no-transfer range, chances are there’s a bunch more other employers in the neighborhood, and several of them will let you work hybrid.
I use 25% (or 5% per day required in office premium). I assume an hour commute. Usually its less but it tends to be close enough. Its a bit of an over estimation but that all is easily covered by things like walking the dog at lunchtime and eating cheaper and healthier. Along with seeing my wife even if I don't have time to talk there is something about just being around. Oh and using my own bathroom with my prefered bath tissue. No catching other peoples kids crud. Man the list goes on and on.
To be clear, it’s “Covid information” suggesting the virus was man-made, as well as suggestions that the vaccine was harmful. So…… quashing debunked bullshit that tends to float around predominantly right-wing circles. Boohoo.
Yes, we quashed your man-made virus conspiracies. No, that is not the same as entertaining the idea that it could have been leaked from a lab studying coronaviruses
This is so heartbreaking. That ecosystem is so much more fragile than it seems. I wonder if replanting would help in this instance, or if it would be too difficult/expensive.
The post I responded to says "why the hell so you need a judge to rule he is a criminal’. It is not the grand jury indictment (that is a different conversation to be had) it is that comment
What the heck are you on about? When we went into full work from home at my former company, productivity went UP.
There’s studies showing that companies forcing their workers back into the office suffer huge brain drains and cannot hire as fast as more flexible employers.
There are some companies the productivity went up. There are some that it has gone down.
At one company that I personally know of: the manager will message an employee via the internal messaging program in the computer (sorry I’m being vague but I need to because of how I found out) … anyway she will message the employee and get no response. Half hour later she will message again… no response… try again and again… she will email a few times… two to three hours later finally get a bull shit response of “oh I’m so sorry I didn’t see your message”…
If that happens once, ok fine I get it. Continuously from most of the department? Yeah bull shit they weren’t at their computer. It will show they are busy but yet no response.
She is about ready to tell everyone back in the office full time.
So I get why some companies are saying get back in the office.
I remember when Covid first started that there was post after post of people asking how do I make myself look busy on the computer when I’m not. Doesn’t take much to put two and two together.
I know that studies have shown that when a company says get back in the office people quit. So I do see that side.
Is it good that your company the productivity went up when you did work from home? Well yeah it’s good. It’s just not true every where.
For the banks… well let’s be honest… if their people are more productive at home and they are still saying get back in the office AND the company knows if the employees are told to get back in the office they will quit… well then maybe the banks need to figure out a better way.
To be fair, that sounds like poor people management. The first time it happened there should have been a email sent round reminding people that they’re expected to be promptly available during work hours and those that aren’t will be pulled up on it.
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