A Tale of Two Tax Systems
by wanderer
So, this year has been my first REAL adventure into the Yankee Taxation fiasco. I call it a fiasco because, well… we don’t have to do that shit. Over here you are responsible for your own taxation. You can tell your employer to send X% of your money to the Government, but at the end of the day, it falls on you to calculate if you’ve paid the right amount. In Ireland, the Government and your employer pretty much do all that for ya, and then send you a check every year.
Now, on the surface, it seems like the Irish system is better for you, but I’m not so sure.
Hands up the people who’ve ever been stuck on Emergency Tax! ::raises hand multiple times:: It sucks so bad. It’s always at the start of a new job when you’re totally strapped for cash, and BAM! 45% of your moolah sucked away just for having the audacity to seek new employment. Now there is tax credits, and Taxable income, and non-taxable income, but 99% of us just kinda float through it, content to let the powers that be decide how much money we can and cannot have.
Not so here in the US of A. You are Forced to pay attention to this shit. You have to know where your money is going. You have to know who it’s going to, how much is going to what, and what thing you bought that you can claim back. Yes, it’s a right royal pain in the arse, and yes, it’s a an unbelievable Stress generator (made worse by the fact that you boss doesn’t give you your W-2 until 2 weeks before the Tax deadline), but it trains you to keep your wits about you.
I don’t know which method is better, the hands-off “Big Brother†method of back home, or the “D.I.Y.†American approach. But having to be involved in ultimately being accountable for my own money has made me question a lot of thing that I have, until now, been quite content to just accepts as part of the norm. And maybe for that reason alone it’s been worth it.
Comments
When I was in the US, I found online tax filing sites / tax software to be serious salvation come tax season. Massachussetts actually had a government-run online tax filing website that made everything easy and I used Dad’s TurboTax software to print out my Federal taxes.
I will freely admit, however, that things got complicated when I moved abroad. America is one of the few places that taxes all of its citizens regardless of where they live or earn their money, and the instructions for filing Foreign Earned Income tax returns runs to nearly 50 pages. So every year I pay a guy in Wicklow €130 to look at my documents and do my taxes for me, and I find the peace of mind well worth the money.
I’ve done my own taxes every year since I started working; the only reason I use tax filing sites these days is so I can get my refund faster. I don’t trust them a damn bit, and haven’t used them for anything I wouldn’t have done on my own with pencil and paper.
And if you think doing American taxes while abroad are bad, you should try applying for a visa. I read the tax regulations for living abroad some time ago, and they’re not that bad. They only become complicated when you make a lot of money, in which case they would have gotten complicated if you’d stayed here anyway.