I have moved to the US very recently. I have actually filled my 2017 French revenue form today.
It took me 10 minutes and that's because I had to find how much I had paid home cleaning services (home employment is deductible), it could have been done in 2.
Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours.
The 2 jobs are comparable and should be just as easy to declare for.
It's worth ponying up a little extra for a CPA, or spending a little extra time reading the instructions on the tax forms and googling/asking online for answers.
I've only met a couple of people who can fill out ONLY a 1040/1040-EZ, and that was because they were still in college or younger.
Nearly half of all people file their taxes with a 1040EZ or a 1040 (instead of a 1040A).
No retirement accounts other than my 401k. I'm under the impression that there are no tax implications until I retire and start withdrawing (because my contributions are already deducted from my taxable income on my W-2 form).
No hobby or self-employment income. No charitable giving or other deductions that I consider worth the trouble of filing.
As soon as my employer made it hard for me to download my W-2, I withdrew consent to only receive an electronic copy.
I had to check a box saying that I don't own a TV (so I don't have to pay that tax) I also had to connect to my home cleaning service website in order to know exactly how much I paid them in 2017. That's pretty much it, everything else was already filled.
Since my employer has declared that I worked for them (I mean .. that's the case for most people except black market), the FISC (french IRS) already knows how much I made that year.
If you are freelancing, or another regime different from full time job in a company, it might be more complicated. but for 90% of the people, you connect to the gov website, approve your taxes and that's it.
US has federal and state taxes. Both are obscure. AFAIK, there is no government website to do your taxes. No prefilling either of course. So I had to google a lot, look for my w2, etc. I used hr block since it looked easier than figuring out everything myself. It was still more of an headache than my french taxes and I don't think that it was only because of my expat status.
i was curious about your comment
> Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours.
I used turbotax for both state and federal it imported and prefilled my adp w2 and imported my tax account from etrade.com. It took me 10 minutes to finish it.
http://www.impots.gouv.fr/ . (it would be taxes.gov.us here ) already has all the prefill that all these services have.
I guess it can always be argued that maybe corporations are more cost effective than a government.
We would need to compare the figures though, in France corporations don't spend millions bribing the government in order to do abandon the idea of improving the tax system.
> Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours.