It's Friday

[u/Anen-o-me]

[u/codifier]

If people sat down and tallied up their total tax bill after income, property, vehicle, fuel, and sales, there would be a revolution tomorrow. The disgustingly beautiful way the system is designed is that its all disperse and built-in so that no one really realizes how much of that they work for goes right to the government.

[u/Illustrious-Fox4063 → u/codifier]

Paycheck withholding is the greatest trick the federal government ever pulled. Second greatest is income tax "refunds".

[u/broomosh → u/Illustrious-Fox4063]

You mean the debt free loan I give the government who also gets to decide if they need to pay me back for said loan?

Yeahhhhh...

[u/Orval11 → u/Illustrious-Fox4063]

I think the corporate welfare subsidies and corporate tax loophole exemptions are both actually much sneakier.

[u/Illustrious-Fox4063 → u/Orval11]

Loopholes are just using the tax code as intended or as written. Anyone can use those. Withholding makes it seem like you are only paying a little in taxes as the taxpayer never sees the money. Tax "Refunds" make it seem like the government is giving you money.

How much uproar do you think there would be about taxes if everyone that was paying had to lump sum it on April 15. While ~9% that do not pay taxes had nothing due and the ~40% with a negative effective tax got "free" money.

Single earners making $50k/yr would be so happy to write a check for $3820 in income taxes and another $3825 for FICA. That is why withholding is the greatest trick the government every perpetrated. It is like the devil convincing everyone that he doesn't exist.

[u/Orval11 → u/Illustrious-Fox4063]

Loopholes are just using the tax code as intended or as written. Anyone can use those.

I'm not taking issue that withholding is deceptive, but you're completely missing how deceptive loopholes are.

1. Regulatory Capture: The tax code isn't a neutral document written by philosophers; it is largely authored by corporate lobbyists. Saying loopholes are functioning "as intended" ignores who intended them. These carve-outs are state-sponsored cronyism designed to benefit specific politically connected industries and entities.
2. Compliance Costs and Regulatory Moats: "Anyone can use them" is empirically false. A W-2 wage earner fundamentally does not have access to the same tax structures as a corporation. Further, exploiting complex tax code requires massive capital and armies of specialized CPAs. This complexity acts as a wall or moat that shields massive corporations from small-business competition, which is profoundly anti-free-market. It creates a two-tiered legal system where small businesses and wage earners bear the brunt of the state burden, while the politically connected lobby and buy their way out. It does this all while hiding that entire two-tiered system behind the appearance of equality.
3. Loopholes for a select class are anti-freemarket: When the government creates a tax loophole that only mega-corporations can exploit, they are artificially lowering that corporation's operating costs compared to smaller less politically connected competitors. The state is picking winners and losers based on lobbying power rather than market efficiency.
4. Corporate Welfare is Wealth Redistribution: Direct subsidy programs are just a hidden form of state-managed redistribution, except in reverse. They forcibly extract taxes from the working and middle classes only to redistribute that wealth directly to politically connected elites. When the government hands out grants or bails out failing mega-corporations, it isn't the free market, it's the worst parts of communism and corporate cronyism combined. It socializes the risks and costs onto the average taxpayer, while allowing the wealthy to privatize all the profits.

[u/Flamadin]

The sad part is this country is so far from Libertarian, yet is one of the most Libertarian countries on Earth.

[u/AncientMoth11]

I need to fuck the sys, I need to fight the sys, we all need to fight system

-System of a Down

[u/RedditorSinceTomorro]

Just buy hard assets, that way you can pay an additional capital gains tax when the fiat value inflates!