My wife inherited a small amount of telecom stock from her grandmonther who worked for AT&T back in the early days. No records had been kept as to when the stocks were bought (they were part of her salary I think). Of course they were all acquired before the Bell breakup. So what she inherited was a big mess of baby bells and about once a year or so one of them will be bought out and they'll do a stock merger and automatically sell any fractional shares left after the merger so we have to pay the Capital Gains on that sale. I am still not sure how someone without a Lexus Nexus account is supposed to calculate the net profit on those shares.

Thus far most of them have been small and we've been calling the entire thing profit (purchase price of $0) but I know one of these days we're going to have to do it for real.

I can't for the life of me comprehend why people do their own taxes. A quality accountant costs maybe 400-500 bucks, which sounds a lot but depending on your salary, it can represents many thousands of dollars of savings. My theory is it's the do-it-yourself fix-the-house type mentality. But that mentality misses that the tax system is intentionally left complicated, requiring experts to help the rich save their riches.

Just get an accountant. :-)

Might be worth it if we ever had to do a big sale though.

I pay against my will because the government holds a monopoly on violence. They will lock me up for not paying.

A society built on top of the threat of violence is not one I endorse.

But while naughty, the alternatives to these governments are private individuals / militias / warlords doing far worse against your values and morals.

I can pay taxes without grousing about it too much, so long as they're just taking my money. It's when they start taking my time that I start to get bitchy about it.

If it takes me 20 times longer to calculate the taxes associated with doing something than it actually took for me to do the thing, then that tax is simply not reasonable, no matter how much or how little it costs in dollars.

The worst part of the entire US tax system is the requirement to self-report on taxable events. If the IRS really wants to dig down in such detail to find out what I owe them every time I move money from my left pocket to my right, they can damned well send me a pair of tax-compliant pants. Write wallet software for US users that makes the tax compliance automatic and seamless, don't bother trying to collect taxes that can't be fairly enforced solely through self-reporting, or FOAD.

It's like they think we exist only to do their paperwork and write them checks. Do they even realize how much more I'd be willing to pay in taxes if I didn't have to do an annual ritual humiliation of proving to them through the submission of forms and reports that I am not trying to cheat? If they just sent me a freaking bill, so long as it explained why my regular payroll withholding wasn't enough, and the amount seemed plausibly close to correct, I'd probably just pay it. There is no particular need for me to fill out 12 pages of forms, so that I can figure out what I think I should owe, based on my own understanding of the tax code. Likewise, if I were due a refund, they could just send out a check.

It's not just based on violence. It's also based on institutional bureaucratic displays of social dominance.

Isn't that the only way governments' have come and gone on this planet?

Well of course if people seriously think locking up your tax chattel so they can not be productive at all (assuming they were locked up on tax evasion, yet still contributing goods/services to someone/thing else) is a effective allocation of resources, then there is no way to argue against that.

Taxes used for ensuring murderers aren't free on the street is a lot different than taxes used to put people in prison for pot.

This is especially true since we are at a point where most people are taxed without representation, because their vote buys so little in comparison to lobbying or other factors (such as us having first past the poll system of election in the US).

Surely you also mind being the member of a civilized society.

I feel like I have been paying for them since I got my first job at 14. I'll probably still be paying for them when I am 80.

Spoken like someone who likes to speak for someone else using a curious line of reasoning. You don't want to pay taxes because taxes pay for bombs. But they also pay for poor people to get health care (yes, even in the U.S., at least up until now), older people to get health care, and much more.

Furthermore, I have every confidence in people to care for each other as brothers and sisters in the absence of the state. The internet will not tolerate the bombs and the fake money, but it will facilitate health care and, as you say, "much more."

I believe he was pointing the same about your comment, just in reverse.

>The fact that taxes are used for some good things is a really shitty excuse for the misery and slavery that empire casts upon the world.

The fact that taxes are used for some evil things is a shitty excuse for not letting it be used for the good things.

>Furthermore, I have every confidence in people to care for each other as brothers and sisters in the absence of the state.

You are as entitled to that opinion as those who have little confidence in it.

By contrast, I do advance and enable senseless state violence by paying taxes. It is a source of personal shame.

More to the point, your objection has some merit- but if you (or anyone else reading this) feels that way, are you protesting or otherwise politically agitating against war, or are you just sitting around feeling abstractly ashamed?

But that wasn't quite the point I was making. All I'm saying is that there's no reason to be proud per se of paying taxes.

And while I wish that education were better funded (and National Parks, and NPR), I don't think that it's reasonable to suppose that, so long as we make the mistake of delegating those things to the state, that it won't use our money mostly for misery and death.

The state takes tax money and uses it to literally put people in cages and literally drop explosives and chemicals on children. I didn't mean this as an analogy - it's a literal statement.

But I don't think it's fair to consider one nation in isolation; the entire world system has afforded hegemonic states for over a century now. Time to bring it to a close.

When the government was funding all of the residential schools, you had no option but to pay the government or risk being tortured.

There are plenty of things Canada can do better, too: universal drug benefit, universal dental and vision, childcare, not exporting asbestos so much, etc. I can honestly say though, its a much better way to live up there than down here. You can point to what your taxes do, like allow you to live without the fear of crushing medical debt at any moment. So you pay them without the same amount of tooth gnashing.

Also known as just "following the law." You could also say you had no choice but to not rape someone or risk being tortured.