Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job?

Companies in the US will take care of paying a portion of your required income tax on your behalf based on some paperwork you fill out when starting work. However, it is up to you as an individual to submit an income tax return. This is used to ensure that you did not end up under or overpaying based on what your company did on your behalf and any other circumstances that may impact your actual tax owed.

In my experience, the process is similar in Europe. I think anyone who has a family, a house or investments in Europe would need to file an income tax return as that is when things start to get complex.

Why is the US still working with paper checks when Europe went digital about a decade ago? Tax filing is just another area in which the US is lagging. Modernizing it costs money, and the US is quite close to bankruptcy (as seen by the repeated government shutdowns).

Also, the US tax code is quite complicated. For instance, I doubt there's anyone who has a full and complete list of all allowed deductions.

Some comments wonder about multiple incomes. This doesn't require tax filing either. My local tax authority just sends me a combined statement with data from 2 employers and 2 banks, and asks me to confirm the resulting payment. This is possible because tax number usage is strictly regulated. SSN abuse in the US presumably makes this problematic.

you either tell your financial department about them (e.g. I used to get a student's tax discount), or you file them separately. But you don't have to file anything by default.

That is a comment connected to the question.

In the united states you can almost achieve this. 90% of the numbers on my tax form are automated. The W-2s are sent to the IRS, the 1099-s for my non retirement accounts are also sent. The two biggest items that take time are charities, and the educational benefits.

Nobody has to claim every deduction they are entitled to. They must claim all the income, and decide to take the standard deduction. It would probably take less than an hour to finish the families taxes: both federal and state.

Politics is certainly part of the equation, in two ways that I can think of. These don't necessarily reflect my views; just trying to explain as I see it.

First, there are a lot of interests in having the current, convoluted tax system entrenched. ProPublica did a piece talking about the question you're asking, and Intuit, makers of the popular tax software TurboTax, is mentioned as a company that lobbied heavily to keep the kind of system you describe out. It's spun as increasing the size and cost of government (which, I guess, is true - someone has to do the work if you aren't filing) while opening up possibilities for error, but the piece portrays the companies as being more interested in preserving the status quo.

Second, plenty of people don't like the idea that taxation is done automatically, out of sight and out of mind. An issue that illustrates this is airline pricing. Consumers don't like seeing a $19 fare advertisement and then finding out that they'll actually have to pay $50 after the taxes are added. However, those in the airline industry and those who are generally against taxes don't like the idea that a tax can be added without the consumer really knowing that the government was responsible for the price increase. You sometimes see this with gasoline prices, where taxes are built into the price per gallon. My home state of Pennsylvania recently raised the gas tax without anyone really noticing since the overall price was dropping dramatically at the time. Contrast that to Pittsburgh-area bars who were able to very specifically pin an alcohol tax on its creator.

Point being, direct deposits with automatic deductions already take most of the thinking out of taxation. Those in that situation really only think about their income in terms of the amount that shows in their bank account. For some, that time of filing taxes is the one time a year where you actually get to reflect on the amount of money you're paying the government for its services. The more automatic taxation is and the less that the public thinks about it, the easier it is for the government to raise it without people noticing.

One significant reason it makes sense for filing to be the default is home ownership rates. I think far more so than investment income, Americans own homes: as there is a significant mortgage interest deduction, between that and investments a large number of Americans would have to file (about a third of Americans get the mortgage interest tax deduction, and a large chunk of the richest don't qualify but would have to file for investments anyway).

We also have a very complicated tax code, with nearly everyone getting some kind of deduction. Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor (folks making, say, $30k for a family of 4 with a full-time job get several thousand dollars in refundable credits, for example), the Student Loan interest deduction, the above mortgage deduction, almost everyone gets something.

Finally, your employer may not know about your family situation. As we have tax credits and deductions for families based on number of children, for example, it's possible your employer doesn't know about those (if you don't get health insurance on their behalf, they may well not know). Start reporting things like that separately... and you end up with about as much work as filing is now.

There are a few reasons:

1) Deductions and credits. We have a lot of them. While I suppose we could pass this information on to our employers for them to file, why would we want to? That just unnecessarily adds a middle-man as well as sharing potentially private information more than it needs to be shared. This is the one that effects the most people.

2) Income sources. While normal employment, contract work, and normal investment income already gets reported to the IRS, this is not true for all sources of income. For one, the U.S. is almost completely by itself on actually taxing income that its citizens earn outside of the U.S. While this policy is completely absurd, the only way for the government to know about such income is for the person to report it, since the IRS can't require foreign employers to send information to them. Also, barter income as well as other income that doesn't meet the qualifications for the payer to be required to inform the government requires the employee to self-report. Similarly, capital gains on things outside of normal investments (real estate, for instance) require self-reporting.

Having said all of this, U.S. reporting requirements are absurd and illogical. For instance, the IRS already knows about all of my stock trading activity. My broker is required to report it to them. Yet, I still have to list out every single trade on my own return, which is really tedious and completely redundant. For charitable contributions, on the other hand, I only have to give the IRS the final total without listing out all of the individual donations, despite the fact that they don't have that information made available to them by another source. It makes no sense at all, but such is the federal government.

For two reasons:

1- People are entitled to deductions and credits that your employer cannot possibly know. Only you as an individual know about your personal situation and can therefore claim these deductions and credits by filing income tax returns.

2- Me telling you that you made $100,000 last year is not the same as telling you that you made $125,000 last year, but someone took $25,000 out of your pocket. Tax season is the one time of the year when citizens know exactly what chunk of their hard earned money was taken by the government, creating more collective awareness about taxation and giving politicians a harder time when they propose raising taxes.

One of the reasons is also general distrust to the government. Another one is that there exist special interest group which profits from the complicated scheme, keep adding special cases, and has stronger financial situation that the opponents of such complex scheme.

People do not trust government, or companies, to act in their best interests. So they (we) waste huge amount of time and/or money to comply with byzantine income laws.

In 2004 Democratic presidential primary, presidential candidate Wes Clark (who beyond being 4-star general has also master degree in economics from Oxford, and taught economics in West point) proposed similar scheme: for people with income under 50K, employer would do all the (simple) paperwork, if desired, and get return.

In the noise of the campaign, idea how to simplify taxes for half of the population was lost.

Funny how the only candidate in recent history who was both professor of economics (not MBA, which is about business and profits) and distinguished military hero, could not get any traction in Democratic party.

A couple things. First of all, most people's MAIN source of income is from their job, but they have others, such as bank interest, stock dividends, etc. So that income has to be reported with their wage income.

The second thing is that most people have deductions NOT connected with their job. These deductions reduce income (and generate refunds). So it's in their interest to file.

I think the key point that's making the other commenters misunderstand each other here is the concept of "deductions". I can only speak for the UK, but that's only a concept that business owners would understand in this country.

For things like child credits or low income tax credits, we don't get paid them at the end of the tax year, but into our bank accounts every couple of weeks all year round. Therefore, we have nothing to "deduct". If we work for a company and have business expenses, then the company pays for them. If we make interest on our savings, the bank pays it for us. We make money at our jobs, and the employer works out what taxes and national insurance we owe, based on a tax code that the government works out for us annually (which we can challenge).

To be fair, it's not like we're free from bureaucracy if we want to claim these benefits. There are often lots of forms if you want child benefit or disability allowances, for instance. We just apply as soon as we're eligible, rather than waiting to get a lump sum rebate.

So it appears to be a very different system, and neither is inherently better than the other (though I'm personally glad I don't usually have to fill in a big tax return myself, which I only did one year when I was self employed). I'd be interested to know, since Google has let me down, which countries use the American system, and which the British or Czech.

Because Freedom(tm). Seriously though.

In the US you are free to use your hard-earned money to

• blow it on blackjack and hookers
• donate to charity
• pay State and municipal taxes
• take a mortgage on a home
• prepay into a "term-restricted endowment" for your healthcare
• prepay into a "term-restricted endowment" for your retirement
• prepay into a "term-restricted endowment" for your child's college

Every one of these actions has a tax consequence in the US. So it's impossible to reconcile your taxes until you've said what you did with the money. That's why you have to file tax forms.

The work of government

"But wait. Many of those activities seem like the mission of governments - charity, taxes, healthcare, education..." And I'll readily concede that point. Other governments find other ways to fund this without giving tax deductions.

For instance in the US if I want to donate $53 post-tax to a charity, I donate $92 and deduct the $92, netting $38 back, and the charity doesn't pay State VAT, netting $100 worth of goods. In the UK I donate $53 and the government matches with another $47 via the National Lottery something-or-other, and again the charity gets $100.

In the US I spend on a Health Service Plan to pay my insurance gap, and it's tax deductible. The UK, NHS just pays all my medical bills and done.

The US is starting to swing that way too. Our first swing at Individual Retirement Endowments, (IRAs) we made contributions tax deductible (here we go again) and retirement-age payouts taxable (so two tranches of tax treatment, with growth taxed). Now, US retirement (Roth IRAs), the contributions are taxable (i.e. don't get any special tax treatment) and then, withdrawals are tax-free (so 0 tranches of tax treatment, with growth not taxed.)

Why the US won't match instead

Similarly, the US could engage similar tricks - like matching charity gifts instead of allowing deduction, ditto health spending plans, college funds, you name it. However a couple things. First, this matching would become an Entitlement - an amount the government simply must pay, and Americans dislike tax entitlements.

Second, and bigger, the current "tax deduction" system favors the rich at the "expense" of the poor. This varies by deduction. For instance IRAs (traditional) are deductible from dollar one. For most other deductions, you must tally them all up on Schedule A, and choose to take these instead of about a $12,000 default deduction everyone gets. Unless you have have over $12,000 of deductions, fuggedaboutit. This crushes the soul of the incentive for any lower and middle class, as they'll never stack up that many deductions. The incentives are for rich people.

This also means regular folks do not enjoy the effective government match (via tax deduction) since the government doesn't lose any tax revenue when they contribute. It's very weird and creepy.

The $12,000 default deduction is a product of the Trump tax changes. It used to be half that, they folded in another unrelated exemption to cut 2 lines from the tax form. The result is deductability is even more out of reach for most Americans, who will now never file a Schedule A, and will never collect a tax benefit for many good activities. Charities are particularly feeling the pinch.