To also explain a part of the American tax system… people who are super excited to get a ton of money back on their taxes via refunds are complete idiots.

That’s a direct function of paying too much withholding and not calibrating against their relevant deductions. Some of these people also feel that their tax burden has gone up if their refund is smaller from one year to the next, which may or may not be accurate.

It’s a racket. The government does receive enough information to automatically calculate taxes for 90% of us, but Intuit and HR Block lobbied congress to keep it complicated and not allow automatic filing.

My paycheck has deductions for tax, healthcare insurance, and 401k (superannuation) so net around 50% of gross like everyone else, and we don’t generally have to pay more at year end.

You might be getting the wrong idea. We have tax withholding on our paychecks, same idea. Then when you file your taxes, you either send a cheque (if your withholding was less than you owed) or you get a return (if your withholding was more than you owed).

A typical employee would have taxes taken out of every paycheck. Employers calculate that assuming they are your only source of income and you have nothing interesting going on tax wise, which is correct for 90% of people. Employees can ask for their income tax withholding to be changed and employers will do so no questions asked [1]. At the end of the year, you’re employer will give you a form W2 that says how much they payed you, how much they paid in taxes on your behalf, how much they payed into your tax deductible account on your behalf, etc. Basically everything about your job that is tax relevant. A copy of this W2 form is sent to the IRS.

If you have investment accounts, work as an independent contractor, or various other forms of income, you will generally be given a form 1099. Again, a copy of this will be sent to the IRS. Income tax is not automatically withheld from these, so if you get a lot of income through them, you may owe taxes at the end of the year.

You may also qualify for tax deductions that lower your effective income for the purposes of computing your income tax. For instance, the interest on you mortgage, charitable donations, etc. However if you choose not to claim these, you can instead claim a deduction of about $14,000; which is more than most people would be able to deduct anyway, so there often isn’t a point of keeping track of these.

There are a couple of less common situations that you may need to deal with

1. You can deduct significantly more than the standard deduction, so actually need to keep track of all of your possible deductions.

2. You are self employed. In this case, you need to keep track of your business expenses, as those are deductible. You also do not have anyone taking out your income tax for you, so you are responsible for making sure you have enough saved come tax time (these tend to be the people who have problems). You are also supposed to pay taxes quarterly.

3. You have a significant amount of income that is not from a single W2 employer. This can be multiple W2 jobs, 1099 jobs, investment income, proceeds from criminal activity, etc.

4. You make a significant amount of money from unreported cash tips. (In practice, you can underreport this and no one will know).

5. You choose to deduct your state’s sales tax instead of your states income tax; and do so by actually tracking how much you pay in sales tax instead of estimating it based on your income.

Having said all of that. For 99% of taxpayers, the IRS knows exactly how much you owe; because all of your income was reported to them, as was your only significant deductions, and nothing else matters because you just take the standard deduction for the rest. The IRS could send you a bill/refund based on this and let the remaining 1% file if the IRS gets it wrong. However, that would collapse the tax preparation industry, so companies like TurboTax have lobbied against it for years.

What actually happens instead is you go to TurboTax, upload all of the forms that were sent to the IRS, and let them file taxes on your behalf. This service was “free” until they were sued for false advertising on account of charging money.

[0] At least for income tax. There’s a few other taxes on payroll that you cannot change.

[1] Assuming you asked in the form of a properly filled out W4.

It’s not that complicated. You’re taxed on income and some things you can deduct to reduce your taxable income amount.

The irs provides worksheets to help with the math.

The irs will audit people at random to make sure it’s accurate.

A scummy third party intentionally keeps things confusing to help convince people to use their services to do the math for them.

At the end of the tax year you generally receive tax documentation forms (a W2 or 1099 etc). These tax forms detail your taxable income and possibly any tax credits or exemptions you might be eligible for.

You fill out I9 forms detailing your status (single married etc) and what dependants you have when you start at your place of work and then update those forms as that status changes over time. This information is used by your employer to withhold taxes on your earnings from your pay checks and send that money along to the federal and state governments as necessary.

When you receive your end of year tax forms you enter that tax information into a tax preparation service or paper form, sign it and send it off with what you owe in check form to the IRS, unless you have made accurate tax withholding in which case you have already paid. If you are owed money by the government for overpayment of taxes they will then mail you a check or direct deposit the amount owed to you into an account of your choosing.

There are exceptions if you own a business or have other forms of income for the tax year which you may have to submit a more detailed filing to the IRS with documentation that can absolutely include receipts. But for the most part you use the tax forms you receive to submit your taxable income calculations to the federal or state government and pay or get paid accordingly depending on if you owe them money, or if you are owed money by them for overpayment.

Wage workers fill out a form with their employer called a W-4 that lets the employer determine the appropriate amount to deduct in tax and pay to the IRS for you.

Many people have additional sources of income though, some of which will pay tax for you, some of which do not. Each Year when you ‘file’ your taxes you gather all that information together and pay any outstanding balance. (or receive a refund for overpayment). The form is called a 1040 and comes with a workbook that walks you through everything. It includes very large tables where you can look up the tax amount to avoid having to calculate it as well. If your tax situation is fairly straightward an eighth grader could probably do it.

https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions

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End of year is balance time to see f your addition income r extra credits mean you pay tax or receive withheld tax back. Like if you have a baby mid year, or your spouse goes on disability, those grant you tax credits.