Yet now it seems people think it's reasonable to fear an elected government (and its civil servants) as if we were subjects instead of citizens.
Back on topic ... the effort involved in tax preparation here is also ridiculous. Millions of man-hours wasted every year on this. !!? Reform is needed.
> I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds
I am pretty comfortable with an elected government putting the general interest before Inuit's. I am pretty confident that Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0...
Well, historically, yes. But in my dictionary, bigoted means "obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group". So you can certainly be bigoted against the IRS and its employees. No need for the "oppressed or marginalized" part.
Are we talking about the same people here? Cause when I hear tax collector I think sheriff of Nottingham lol. I feel like something has gone way off the rails here.
Though personally I wouldn't blame the kid for the sins of the father or grandfather.
I prefer wholesale deprecation of the state - also to advance functioning of the country - but even during the time period where the state continues to exist, I think that income tax is specifically unjust (compared to taxes on gains and consumption, for example).
We were almost 150 old as a nation then. We had already become a superpower, as WW1 and WW2 would shortly confirm.
Sure, apart from that whole Civil War fracas in the mid-1800s and the ensuing decades of reconstruction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Revolutionary_Sociali...
Did I say income?
The question is how much? Federal revenue in 2022 was $4.9 trillion. That's more than $37,000 per household in America. The median household income in the US is $71,000. [1] So I think these sort of data are what "really" draws the dividing line. Is $37,000 per household enough to ensure the functioning of a country? Is the problem more with a lack of money, or more with how that money is being spent?
My point still stands that the $37k per household are just an illustration, as the tax base are not just households, and that a lot of what US foreign policy achieves is to the benefit of a very few of those households.
If you are paying taxes as you legally are required too, then they are higher then necessary because other people are cheating the system.
Public defenders do not preclude private defense in the courts, they provide an option for people who don't have other options or don't like the ones they have. Public tax prep would probably work much the same. Mostly this expands liberty rather than taking it.
“The IRS purchases guns and ammunition for special agents in its criminal investigation division, a law enforcement branch established in 1919. The typical IRS auditors that Americans would encounter in a routine audit are unarmed.
…
Special agents train for weeks at the National Criminal Investigation Training Academy in Georgia, the 2021 report said. That includes firearms training and handgun qualifications for agents, which is a big reason for the large orders for ammunition.”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/aug/12/matt-gaetz...
I'm not blaming Biden or a boogeyman army. It doesn't make sense at all that a revenue department purchases guns and ammunition. Does your company's accounting department train with weapons and purchase large amounts? Why does the US Government?
Let the IRS do money works, and any of the other armed departments do the shooting, I guess.
Historically, it makes plenty of sense. Financial crimes can’t always be solved behind a desk - there was a time when most tax evasion investigations were against gangsters running illegal liquor operations, for example. Al Capone was arrested by treasury agents, not the FBI.
Whether it still makes sense in 2023 is another question that I’d never really thought about until this moment, but my knee jerk reaction is…maybe it does? Hoover taught us what happens when you concentrate too much power in a single law enforcement agency.
In a well-designed government, the IRS would not have any armed agents. If they have an operation where they need armed support, they'd simply call up some other agency (perhaps the FBI, or even local police or SWAT teams) that specializes more in armed agents and operations, and partner with them to conduct the operation. IRS agents don't need to shoot at people; they can let some other highly-trained people do that, and then come in after the bullets have stopped flying and seize documents and analyze them.
2. From reading this thread, it seems US citizens are scared out of their minds. Scared of making a mistake, when filing their taxes. And it appears that Biden's proposed reform aims to alleviate that fear.
I did have to go correct my tax information for 2023. For some reason my work-from-home tax deduction was set manually to 900€ instead of the full 920€ that I'm allowed. Hopefully now my 2023 tax filings will be correct.
> Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it.
There are so many duplicate fields and redundant parts in Elster and the pre-fill function is a joke.
In the UK it's a bunch of nicely designed web forms with clear worded explanations what they expect you to fill in the fields.
In Germany it's ... well you can be masochistic and try to use ELSTER webapp which runs only on certain browsers. With explanations like "fill in here any amount if you fall under §223 EKST, 4 II".
So you either get a paid 3rd party software which still isn't the quality of the official UK filling service (somehow Germans have a love for their cryptic explanations directly referencing laws - god forbid someone would use simple and clear explanations) or you pay a professional to do your taxes. Which is what most people do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sca...
It is as if the EU wanted to regulate mobile phone roaming charges by offering a tax rebate on your phone bill, which it then used to calculate a penalty that is added to the phone companies corporation tax bills. There is no federal EU tax bill passed on to citizens of course but if there were you might continue to have your payroll taxes go to your country’s government but you could then submit your phone bills to the federal EU government to get money back from any tax they levy on you. They’d have to levy it in the first place but to avoid unfairness they offset it against anything your state takes, first.
At the other end of the spectrum, some city funding is done via income taxes. That seems a lot more equitable than, say, the UK where you pay a rate based on the value of the building your landlord bought. Because it’s an income tax though, and because double taxation is anathema to any voter, it too must be used to offset state and federal income tax.
In a way it would be a lot easier if each entity could just stick to one kind of tax. Maybe city funding via property tax, state funding via income tax, and federal funding via corporation tax. The power of federal government is restricted via the tenth amendment, so it’s always going to try to end run states rights via the only means it has — your tax form. That seems unlikely to change. Also I’m not sure my off-the-cuff idea of having the federal government answer only to corporations (via corporation tax) is a very good one, but it is a good example at least of how the machinations of taxation, if not the politics, might be easier if things were picked apart.
To give some idea for our not-American friends, here's a very general, far too simplified gist of how the tax system is laid out:
* Federal taxes, overseen by the IRS.
* State taxes, separate and independent from Federal taxes and overseen by the governments of each State.
* County taxes, mostly separate and independent from State taxes and overseen by each county's government.
* Municipal taxes, mostly separate and independent from County taxes and overseen by each municipality.
Taxpayers need to file their taxes with the IRS (Federal), their State, their County, and if applicable their Municipality. No, these taxes are not handled together in the bureaucratic machine (for good reason; individual rights and all that).
The reasons for the complexity are rooted in how the United States is structured politically, where having certain rights and freedoms at each level of governance is a very big deal.
All of the various tax collection agencies already manage to do all the work necessary to determine my tax bill. They do it every year.
As far as income taxes, the state income taxes have always been pretty simple for me. City even simpler, and I've lived place with and without them. Most of the complexity is federal (although in part because state and city take the income from the federal as their starting point). But that's enough! And sure, adding more on top doesn't help.
The federal taxes keep adding complexity, even for people with relatively simple situations. It's true for low-wage earners who don't have many assets, federal taxes can be... relatively simple. Maybe as simple as European ones. I dunno, it's a mess.
Consider a scenario where I have £100 and decide to start a business as a self-employed individual. I invest £100 in inventory, but only manage to sell it for £100, resulting in zero profit. Under your hypothetical tax system, the tax authority would demand (let's say) 20% of my revenue, which amounts to £20. However, I don't have £20 to pay since I made no profit. Consequently, I am now £20 in debt to the state and essentially penalized for trying.
For a self-employed person, or a company, profit is analogous to an employed person's salary. Both represent the net flow of money or disposable income resulting from business activities or employment. This is why self-employed individuals and companies are taxed based on their profit, while employed persons are taxed on their salary.
Moreover, your use of the term "subsidy" is incorrect. A subsidy implies that the government provides financial support. In the case of a loss, the government does not send money to the individual or company. Instead, they simply refrain from taxing them, which is not a subsidy.
Note also in this example that in investing my £100, I likely generated tax revenue for the government through taxes on sales, salary, and profits on those who I bought from. So even though I paid no income tax, my activity still resulted in positive tax flows.
Then you wait for your updated tax return later in the year, which would automatically combine self-employed earnings, wages, investments, debts, tax deductions due to paying for childcare, etc... I normally have to spend 10-15 minutes to correct that if something like a travel calculation for my employer is wrong.
The US was a weird model where they ask you to resubmit the same information they already have in hope you will declare more income than they know about.
In part, because the US taxes you on your global income, not only your US income, which means that there will be income they won't know about unless you declare it.
For the majority of people that only have income from salary, it's an unreasonable burden and Intuit has lobbied the government so that it continues to be a burden.
The US already has pre-filled forms, the interface for the "pre fill" button is just a bit convoluted.
It is a strong incentive to not lie on your taxes
I would prefer that they quietly recognize that their time is up and die with whatever dignity they might have left.
Sooo... the IRS knows that you installed solar panels last year and will be taking an energy credit for them? They know how much bitcoin you sold? How much mortgage interest you'll be deducting? The strike price of the stock options you exercised in your private company, and their current fair market value?
There's a bajillion variables that go into filing a tax return, and only you are the one that knows all of them, and sometimes not even then! This idea that the government "already knows" how much you owe in taxes is a complete fiction.
This is a remarkably consistent topic that most of the populace agrees on, and is only at all difficult because of this lobbying.
Asking citizens to pay their fair share of taxes should not include them spending a day or two every year trying to find a piece of paper to mail to an agency which _already has that piece of paper_ and is categorically more equipped to process it.