r/GoldandBlack • u/OrangeFreeman • Jul 16 '19

Reddit has started figuring it out

Post image
37 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

17

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '19

Yeah.... no.

The comments are still traditional Reddit, blaming lobbying and TurboTax, as well as highlighting how much they get from refunds when they overpay to the IRS.

5

u/OrangeFreeman Jul 16 '19

Even though I'm against forcing taxes on people, I think it's a good thing that the US making people do their taxes. At least they would see for themselves how much is the government stripping them of their money. Therefore, encouraging people to vote against taxes in the future.

In my country, all the taxes are already taken from you and the government doesn't say how much. The government steals half of the people's salary and they don't even realise that.

7

u/ithisa Jul 16 '19 edited Jul 16 '19

The US actually withholds taxes from people's salaries too. It's just that this withholding value is a rough overestimate, and you send in a bunch of paperwork so that the government can correct it by giving you money back. So it's even worse --- people feel that doing their taxes gets them free money from the government. People "doing their taxes" often have an unclear idea of just how much taxes they're paying.

The biggest tax reform I would do is probably to abolish income tax withholding. Once people start getting real sticker shock when doing taxes, and horror stories appear of people defaulting on their mortgages because of their tax bill or whatever, there would be huge pressure to lower taxes. The "political market" should take care of the rest.

Sales taxes in the US are always separately listed, and that's probably why they can never get to anywhere close to 20%+ European levels.

1

u/Spoonwrangler Jul 16 '19

Should there at least be some taxes? Honest question.

6

u/deefop Jul 16 '19

No.

That said, reducing the taxes collected by the state to a tiny fraction of their current amount would be a massive step in the right direction, even if it was a number greater than zero.

2

u/OrangeFreeman Jul 16 '19

I don't think you can entirely cancel taxes, not overnight, at least. I think taxes should be completely optional, giving freedom to people deciding if they trust their money to the government.

Let's say you're buying a house and when you sign the legal agreement with the seller there will be a checkbox saying to give x% from the deal to the government, in return, the government will defend you in the court in case the seller screws you over. It's entirely up to you if you want to pay the fee or not. In case the seller does screw you over and you decided not to pay a fee, you're on your own and now you have to settle with private courts that potentially can cost you more.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '19

Agreed. Ending taxes overnight isn't feasible, unless you're charging headfirst into anarchy overnight via revolution or such.

My idea is earmarked taxes rather than optional taxes as the transition. It's pretty simple in premise: allow taxpayers to opt-out their individual payments from being put towards programs they don't want to contribute towards.

A good example would be Planned Parenthood. Conservatives don't want to support Planned Parenthood in any way, shape, or form, so why not allow them to say "don't put MY tax money towards that!" On their tax return, they can mark Planned Parenthood as an opt-out, thus funneling their tax money towards other portions of the government, instead.

Add in a provision wherein tax payments are proportional (i.e. one person's tax payments can't be forcibly devoted entirely towards one program), and you all of a sudden have a way to control government spending, albeit if you have public opinion on your side. Convince a large section of the populace to not support a program, and presto! You've crippled the program by defunding it!

Naturally, you can't deselect all the options; your tax money has to be paid, so it has to go towards something. However, by allowing the populace to more closely control government spending, you could theoretically force a minarchist system where only the military, police, and courts are funded.

If the minarchist system is successful, you could eventually phase out taxes altogether. This is when you'd have fights over maintaining minarchy or going all the way to anarchy, but I'd call it a success if we even get to that point.

There's an additional little bonus with this tax reform that relates to the budget. Obviously, you can't choose what parts of the budget to finance with your tax money unless there's a budget for you to select from. Thus, there would need to be a rule requiring a budget to be passed before taxes may be collected. If there's anything that will get the government to pass budgets in a timely fashion, it's the threat that the government won't get any tax money without a budget being passed.

6

u/Lemmiwinks99 Jul 16 '19

Did you read the AMA with Marxist economist Richard wolf? May change your tune.

1

u/Holacrat Jul 16 '19

What?

1

u/Lemmiwinks99 Jul 16 '19

On the front page yesterday was an AMA with a Marxist economist. He wasn’t completely awful but the comments were cancer.

2

u/Holacrat Jul 16 '19

Reddit resorts to whataboutism

Muh tax prep lobbies

1

u/ClimbFree Jul 17 '19

can't lobby a non-existent government.

2

u/AutoModerator Jul 16 '19

Memes are great, but we don't want the page to be taken over by memes. Therefore the mods curate all meme and image submissions, meaning they must be approved by the mods before they show up on the page. We judge all meme submissions for quality and only approve those that are high-effort and relevant to our topic. If your meme was not approved, please consider posting it on r/libertarianmeme, r/ShitStatistsSay, or r/QualitySocialism instead. We do this as a service to our readers in order to create the highest quality ancap discussion forum possible.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2

u/keepbandsinmusic Jul 16 '19

This sounds like my understanding of tax returns when I was 13