This isn't such a far fetched claim.
In Israel for example - you get taxes deducted from your pay check every month, directly by your employer, based on the assumption that will be your constant salary for the rest of the year.
Now lets say you get fired in September, lowering your annual salary and bringing you into a lower tax bracket - unless you personally file for a return at the end of the year, the government feels no obligation to return the taxes you've overpaid.
I don't see how this is much different from the current situation in the United States.
Most people (I bet HN readership included) are paid under a full time employee structure where the employer files a W2 and deducts all (or most) of the federal taxes the employee is liable for from their paychec. Even if you are a contractor, you're supposed to pay all of your own taxes every quarter (or pay penalties + interest), including your employer's half of the Medicare/Social Security taxes.
The big difference in the United States is that you are still required to file your own forms by April for the previous fiscal year for your tax return. You still have to do work to get a nontrivial amount of money back.
OK, but in the UK it’s the same scenario until the point where the government automatically returns any extra taxes you’ve paid (assuming you’re purely paying income tax through your employer).
It's a possibility but it will not be forcibly true. In Belgium you also get taxes deducted from your pay check every month and if you pay to much they just put back the money into your account every year
