As a non-American who's not self-employed or a business owner I get a monthly payslip with my gross pay and the tax deduction. I see that every month, I know exactly how much I pay the government. All my investments also have tax deducted by the provider as well, when applicable.

I never have to think about calculating or filing tax, but I always see it and know exactly how much it is.

This is also the case for most Americans, but we're still expected to file every year. For most people, it's verifying what the government already knows. Filing a 1040-EZ with no itemization should be unnecessary.

Nit. But the 1040-EZ form was discontinued. I don’t disagree with the basic point that simple taxes could be more automatic—though the reality is that simple taxes are pretty simple.

As a counter-example, sales taxes (and VATs) are very simple, yet almost nobody knows how much they’re paying.

In Europe VAT is a line item on every invoice. And apparently in the US you have to do some mental gymnastics to manually add sales tax to the listed price to figure out how much to pay in the first place.

Of course most people have no idea how much VAT they pay for Amazon purchases in a year, but that's mostly a product of them not knowing how much they spend on Amazon in a year. If they know the latter, the former is trivial to figure out.

In the US, it's still a line item on your receipt. Most places don't include sales tax on the shelf tag or price sticker due to complexity. You can have state, county/area, and/or city taxes that apply. In NYC, for instance, we have a 4% NY State sales tax, a 4.5% NYC sales tax, and a 0.375% NYC metro area sales tax, totaling 8.875%. Clothes aren't taxed in the metro area sales tax so are 8.5% unless they're under $110 and then they're exempt. Most food is exempt except prepared food. Then there's the issue of fractions of a cent as the sales tax is calculated on the total bill not each item individually. There's also the fact that taxes change now and then... they adjust what food it applies to or what the cutoff is for clothes, etc. Some organizations have a sales tax exemption certificate (if they are a business planning to resell for instance) and that must also be taken into account.

Due to complexity, all larger stores with multiple geographic locations would never have separate pricing signage for every single store, so they don't. Other stores do the same. It's all calculated at the register as things are scanned in the computer.

As has been said numerous times, this is a bullshit excuse. If the register is capable of calculating the taxes, an electronic price tag system ( which is the norm in all big chain stores in Western European countries, which have multiple geographic locations and have locale-specific prices) would too.

If you're referring to the digitally updated signage at the shelves (e-paper or otherwise), none of the stores I go to in NYC have that except Best Buy.

It may be weird for you when you visit, but, as we all grew up with it, it's just normal here.

FYI, in the US, depending on the jurisdiction, some items are exempt from sales tax. E.g. necessities like food and clothing. In my jurisdiction, clothing is taxed by the county but not by the state.

Which is a long way of saying that even if you knew the total you spent at Amazon, you wouldn't be able to derive the total amount of sales tax paid.

> apparently in the US you have to do some mental gymnastics to manually add sales tax to the listed price to figure out how much to pay in the first place

FWIW, usually in the US it's just a line item on the receipt or checkout screen.

The exact amount doesn't matter for this, all that matters is that you vote against taxes. It is sufficient that you suspect you may owe some amount and realize that you are required to figure it out. If it's hard to figure out, that serves the purpose of those who want you to associate negative emotions with taxes so that you'll vote against taxes.

That sounds like an incentive to vote against complexity, not against taxes. Paying a larger amount doesn't make the calculation any harder to figure out, nor does paying a lesser amount make it easier.

It's pretty obvious if you do your own taxes, even without fully understanding the tax code. The last few lines include "Add up [lines]; this is the total you owe for the year: ____" and "Add up [lines]; this is how much you already paid: ____".