I Am Now Called Monzo Everywhere

How in the name of sane pancakes are you supposed to remember every little free thing you’ve received over the past year? Are you expected to keep a log of everything? Does that include freebies from loyalty cards? That’s seems a bit excessive. Makes me feel a bit less burdened by the UK self assessment form, though…

Does this include people that are only employed? (In the UK, self-assessment forms only have to be completed by those that have done some sort of self-employed work… does the US have a version of PAYE?).

And the fact that the USA taxes based on citizenship has always struck me as crazy. It’s one of very, very, very few countries that do. And it seems exceptionally unfair. If you’re not using the public services (for want of being in a completely different country), why are you paying taxes toward them? At least treaties exist to eliminate (or at least reduce) double taxation… with a few countries.

Personal responsibility. If you buy anything online from out of state, sales taxes are not charged. You need to pay these along with your state taxes in April, if your state has these.

Nope, everyone needs to file taxes. There are some circumstances to get out of this, but they are small.

Thats just personal responsibility for the sake of it, nothing more than needless bureaucracy. We had that system here in Portugal and moved on from it two decades ago. Nowadays taxes are done automatically and one just has to check that everything seems ok every April/May. You don’t even need to check it, if you don’t do anything you’re implicitly agreeing with what’s there

The accountants and tax prep software companies heavily lobby the government to keep the current system as they would loose money.

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There’s a really good Reply All episode about TurboTax and how insanely complicated the US tax system is, and how those making money from it seem to be able to call the shots in terms of reform: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ATUlZsZ7vRX8xiCVWhnLr?si=Fb-oUIZATi-OLyyB87vJmg

This is changing, however. Amazon, eBay, big online retailers were forced to start collecting sales tax after a fairly recent court ruling on the matter.

Also, the second part is true, but I’ve always found it a bit unfair how it doesn’t work the other way around- if you live in a state with sales tax you’re supposed to keep track and report it yourself, sure, but if you live in a state with no sales tax and shop somewhere with a sales tax, with the exception of Washington state there’s no way to claim it back.

I think the best way to handle that sort of thing is how it’s done in most (if not all) EU countries, where you just have to pay the VAT you’re charged when buying something. If you’re buying something online, as an example, and are charged higher VAT from another country, you can’t claim it back but if the opposite happens and you’re paying less or even nothing at all you don’t owe anything either

Haven’t you learned Americans hate taxes?

I doubt anyone hates consumption taxes more than me :wink:. I’m just not convinced that sales tax or VAT will go anywhere anytime soon, so maybe they should at least be handled with as little hassle as possible for everyone involved

On a side note, funnily enough, I know of Americans that actually defend sales taxes. I’ve never heard anyone defend VAT in Europe except politicians and economists

I would hazard a guess that that’s because individual municipalities in the US can levy a sales tax, so it serves as a revenue stream for small towns/counties. In Europe, VAT goes straight to the central government.

There’s also the fact that sales taxes in the USA are generally much lower than VAT rates in Europe.

Often the tax is for something very specific, such as 1% for homeless housing, or to build a new Subway system.

Not wholly true, there are other criteria that drop you into that bracket too. They generally only apply to higher tax bracket earners though.

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In Germany, it’s traditional to give a Christmas bonus. But this is taxed. So the company pays the tax. But the tax is taxed. So the company pays that tax too. They do three rounds of this before the German version of the HMRC/IRS gives up.

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Here in Portugal its mandatory. It’s the same value as your regular monthly wage, so you basically get paid twice. How else would you buy nice Christmas gifts? :slightly_smiling_face:

That seems very confusing. Doesn’t it pay the same taxes as what you usually receive month to month?

To be clear, I have never worked or paid tax in Germany, this is just an anecdote from a friend who did.

Late reply, but PAYE people have to do SA forms once they earn over £100k.

I signed up for a Netflix free trial but did not realize they set my account name to the name on the card until I got this random notification

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Probably some kind of autofill that you didn’t notice, my Netflix name is different from the one on the card I use to pay it

The terms seem to state it is prepaid. Which is right? No pun intended :smirk: :woman_mage:

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