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Republican War on the Poor

monstrous to complete a tax return, not to pay taxes

Yeah. They’re always going to think it’s monstrous to complete a tax return as long as the purpose is to pay taxes.
 
again, i think he means the roundly criticized process of completing the return. it's tedious, complex and can be extremely difficult - so much so that it's almost required to pay someone else to do to make sure you do it correctly
 
I don't know why I have to keep repeating myself. They're always going to complain about the process as long as it ends in them paying taxes. One of the reasons the process is tedious is so it can offer multiple ways to get out of paying taxes. The wealthiest people came up with this system. Nobody is stupid enough to believe the poors came up with it to make the rich work harder.
 
With today's software, most people can do it themselves. If your situation is really so complex that you need to pay someone then you probably can afford the cost.

A lot of the complexities have to do with attempting to incentivize desired behavior.
 
With today's software, most people can do it themselves. If your situation is really so complex that you need to pay someone then you probably can afford the cost.

A lot of the complexities have to do with attempting to incentivize desired behavior.

with software you have to purchase, generally. and it's not about being able to afford, it's the insanity that it's necessary.
 
Either way, no way the more wealthy should pay lower rates.

Ph is right that Pubs have done a horrible disservice by demonizing the IRS and shrinking its resources. Part of a better civics education would indeed champion the power of collective pooling of resources, including money/taxes.
 
Filing individual taxes is hard and complex in large part because anti-tax American politicians want people to hate paying taxes, and also because they don't want to fund the IRS to create a better alternative.

Many countries, including Germany, Japan, and the UK, have a no return system for most people. They deal with the whole thing via withholdings.

In some other industrialized countries, the tax agency creates your return for you based on your payroll and other records. They send it to you. If you do nothing it is final and you're finished. If you think they've made a mistake, you deal with it.

https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-other-countries-use-return-free-tax-filing

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/the-10-second-tax-return/475899/
 
For most folks that’s exactly what their tax return is - comparing what the govt withheld to what the govt should have withheld. The “should have withheld” part is what individuals have to calculate since there are things like charitable contributions that the IRS would have no way of knowing about until the return is filed. Or things like capital gains taxes - there are different rates depending on the taxpayer’s overall tax bracket so the government can’t accurately withhold if they don’t know full year income. Which goes back to the “should have withheld” calculation.

Goes back to someone’s original point in that since the tax code has been used to incentivize various behaviors you basically need the tax return process to let the government know whether you did any of those behaviors. A necessary evil based on the way the tax code has been set up.
 
Also - unpopular opinion I’m sure but filing taxes is not that hard for the vast majority of folks. Most every form you need is mailed to you and the tax forms are not that bad to follow even manually. Marketing has made it sound like an insurmountable project and the IRS will bend you over if you even look at the word deduction. For the most part if you put the numbers on your forms into the tax form there is no complication to even audit.

Add it to the list of things about which we need totally transformed civic awareness. And guess which party is largely not in favor of an informed populace, the answer will shock you.
 
Either way, no way the more wealthy should pay lower rates.

Focusing on tax rates solely in a vacuum is nothing but a red herring to distract from our already progressive tax code.

The Top 20% of households fund over 88% of federal income taxes according to the CBO.

This "study" by the NYT is yet another example of the anti-capitalist and "soak the rich" propaganda pushed by many on the left.
 
TIL that only rich people complain about paying taxes.
 
Part of a better civics education would indeed champion the power of collective pooling of resources, including money/taxes.

Feel free to move to Venezuela to see first-hand how successful the "power of collective pooling of resources" can be.

No worries... you can still access your WaPo and NYT opinion pieces online via your dialup modem in Caracas.
 
Ah yes. If you’re not with Trump you want to be Venezuela. Real constructive, boot licker.
 
For most folks that’s exactly what their tax return is - comparing what the govt withheld to what the govt should have withheld. The “should have withheld” part is what individuals have to calculate since there are things like charitable contributions that the IRS would have no way of knowing about until the return is filed. Or things like capital gains taxes - there are different rates depending on the taxpayer’s overall tax bracket so the government can’t accurately withhold if they don’t know full year income. Which goes back to the “should have withheld” calculation.

Goes back to someone’s original point in that since the tax code has been used to incentivize various behaviors you basically need the tax return process to let the government know whether you did any of those behaviors. A necessary evil based on the way the tax code has been set up.

Plus these days, many of those numbers can be automatically imported from payroll and investment sites.
 
Focusing on tax rates solely in a vacuum is nothing but a red herring to distract from our already progressive tax code.

The Top 20% of households fund over 88% of federal income taxes according to the CBO.

This "study" by the NYT is yet another example of the anti-capitalist and "soak the rich" propaganda pushed by many on the left.

What percentage of the income do those 20% receive?
 
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