Law is complicated for many reasons. Private people (here referred to as the personally taxed) don’t have the means, both financial and time, sometimes also the ability to understand the language used in lawmaking, which isn’t made to be easily understood, to keep up with the law. Normally people aren’t really expected to, if you’re a “good” person (morality being subjective and cultural, of course), you’re unlikely to break a law and get punished for it (not diving into edge cases of people forced by their circumstances). But then you’re forced to comply with tax law. If it’s automated, you can get unrightfully made to pay more without your knowledge. If it’s not, you get forced into a game staged against you. People shouldn’t be taxed. Tax should be solely handled by the companies, because they have the means to hire people dedicated to taxes. I feel like this is very important and tax is frequently brought up in many ways, but I don’t see people speaking of this and I’d love to!
Disclaimer: I file for tax literally refreshing for it to be available and help other people with their tax. It’s precisely why I think personal taxation is wrong. I know too many people who paid way too much in tax and didn’t know and cannot claim it, because it’s been too long since.
The only reason you have to make a guess about your taxes is because of the personal tax lobby in America. There are lots of other countries out there that send you a tax form that lists out their calculations and what you owe as a result, and then if you have a problem you obviously speak to the tax authority and work out the issue.
In fact, that already happens in the US if you have property taxes. The local government tells you what they think the land and improvements are worth, and if you have a problem with it, you contact them and dispute their formula.
Like, it’s not an all or nothing proposition here. The issue is that there is a bunch of companies that make money by keeping the tax process annoying and opaque and they lobby Congress to cut the IRS budget every year so the IRS doesn’t have enough people working for them to answer questions and deal with disputes.
I don’t nor have ever lived in USA. I’m very insulted you thought I do. :( I’m on the beautiful continent of AfroEuroAsia.
You’re posting on the fan site for Citations Needed, so I mean, me making the mistake that we were discussing the United States is at least an understandable mistake, yes?
America defaultism still claiming victims on Hexbear :(
A gross take tbh. USA isn’t the default and I hoped at least here it wouldn’t be treated as such. :/
A gross take, to acknowledge that it was an assumption that was not correct, and making a joke as to why it was made?
I would ask that you please assume that I am doing all of this in good faith and be respectful, or at least more understanding
Taxes strike me as one of the more bizarre inefficiencies of capitalism. Instead of having the entity that prints the money, nominally owns all the land, nominally builds all the infrastructure, sets all the regulations, and administers large sections of society handle it’s own finances, we’ve got like five thousand different entities jostling for tax income, while a hundred million individual taxpayers try to skeeve out of their tax responsibilities, and huge parts of the country can’t sustain basic infrastructure and public services? Most rational economic system.
I didn’t even think of this! Thank you for putting out this perspective.
It’s indeed very dumb.Also, if you have a pronoun chosen and put “none” in the second slot, only the first slot will be displayed. Just in case you didn’t know, but maybe you like being a he/him he/him so sorry for assuming. >////<‘’
Also, if you have a pronoun chosen and put “none” in the second slot, only the first slot will be displayed. Just in case you didn’t know, but maybe you like being a he/him he/him so sorry for assuming. >////<‘’
Holy shit, I didn’t even realize that was an option! Damn I really like the comrade part though
If I could be comrade he/him comrade he/him that would be best
wealth taxes are also good, at least until we have the power to expropriate it.
Of course! But I think it should be smartly implemented to ensure they cannot fight against it by appealing to poor people with delusions of becoming rich one day. Instead of choosing a wealth tax per income, I’d put a wealth tax per property owned, making it so one person can only own however much housing their family needs. I.e. dictating it by square meters per person inside the family, so they cannot game it through making it so husband owns one thing, wife another and child another while they live in one place and rent the rest (and so the rich who live in unreasonable mansions cannot say “I only own one” while their mansion is bigger than housing for hundreds). And of course a tax on unspent wealth, but I’ll be fully honest and admit I’ve no idea how I’d approach it not to screw over people trying to save up for retirement or people saving up to buy their first home.
by ensuring that those needs are guaranteed by the state regardless of one’s ability to work.
Of course! I also don’t believe in privately owned housing, and really hate when families don’t move into appropriate sized housing once their children move out to make space for families with children who need these, however, in the truly bisexual fashion, I play both revolutionist approach and reformist approach. Reform will not sate me, but I still feel inclined to seek ways to improve conditions for the working class
even if temporarily.
making it so one person can only own however much housing their family needs. I.e. dictating it by square meters per person inside the family, so they cannot game it through making
Honestly, we can just say, one house per household. No need to get into finer and finer graduations of “how much is too much”
Like, the problem is hedge funds and investment companies buying houses to rent, and people who own like 10 houses. There is a lot of people that have far in excess of what is needed, before we would ever need to actually break it down by square foot.
Nah. I know of too many families living in way too much of confined spaces and of too many old people who feel lonely having multiple spare rooms, but won’t move to make way for families who need the space. And no, endlessly building isn’t the solution. Urban planning can take only so much horizontal space and nature literally needs the horizontal space, because, unlike humanity, it cannot go higher.
I know of too many families living in way too much of confined spaces and of too many old people who feel lonely having multiple spare rooms, but won’t move to make way for families who need the space
I honestly don’t think those are the people that are the cause of a housing crisis.
The capitalist first takes a slice of my pie, then the landlord, and finally the fuckin state comes in to steal my money to build bombs and NOT fix the goddamn busted roads
It’s enough to turn one into a Khrone Berserker
Isn’t blood for the blood god a form of taxation?
Just got to make sure it’s the blood of the rich
Marx and Engels, from the early 1840s right up until – in Engels’s case – the early 1890s, make a string of prescriptive observations very much of contemporary resonance. They support progressive taxes, both on capital and income, have a strong preference for direct over indirect taxation, and back restrictions on inheritance. The 1880s basis for a land-value tax is challenged, while taxes on financial transactions, though associated with the stock market, whose “immorality and rascality” Engels is happy to denounce, are nonetheless indirect in structure. The management of state finances is critiqued. There is even some tacit endorsement of tax evasion, both personal (by Marx) and corporate (by Engels).
There is also the rare sight of Marx as a campaigning activist, as he and close associate Wilhelm Woolf highlighted regressive taxes, to contrast the lives of peasants and laborers with those of the 1%-ers of their day, through the pages of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in 1848-9.
The tax landscape of Marx and Engels is clearly different to our own – thus in 1849, indirect taxes accounted for 40% of the Prussian Royal Finance Ministry total tax take, and direct taxes, only 29%, whereas today in the UK or Germany, indirect taxes are in the minority, with direct taxes generating around two-thirds of the total take.
. . .
Property tax, in need of reform in many countries, is one tricky item in the Marxist tax universe. Although then UK Chancellor Philip Hammond argued that Labour’s (tentative) support for a land-value tax (LVT) in 2017 would be “attacking land on Marxist principles,” both Marx and Engels were strongly opposed to LVT, as propounded by Henry George in Progress and Poverty, given that “what Henry George demands, leaves the present mode of social production untouched.” But Marx’s observation on The New English Budget in 1857, “now, if taxes are not to be raised by customs and excise duties, they must be directly derived from property and income,” points to some ambivalence in this area.
https://marxistsociology.org/2019/08/marx-on-taxation/
Basic Marxist article on taxes if anyone’s interested.
There is even some tacit endorsement of tax evasion, both personal (by Marx) and corporate (by Engels). Any idea why it may be?
Shout out to a country that abolished personal taxes
I’m no economist so I have no idea how you structure a national economy without them. In our current system, money enters the economy via loans and government spending - maybe if you pegged the amount of debt and spending directly to the size of the economy instead of making a guess every time the legislature passes a budget, you could have a system that automatically self corrects and doesn’t need taxation to take money back out of the system, or something.
Personal taxes aren’t for the gov, they’re for the corporations. It’s very blatant in tax havens. The tax haven corporations may not even operate much there and don’t bring much money to the gov, but the rich always look out for the rich first and foremost and only tbh.
Now I kinda want to be prosecuted for being a commie so I can flee to DPRK.
You prompted me to think a lot about a rational taxation system, and of course the most rational system is one without money where goods are distributed based on need, but if you concede that money has to exist for some reason (ie a transitional period) then taxation should be about encouraging pro-social behaviors and bandaging societal problems. Taxing unhealthy additives in food to discourage their consumption, taxing Wall St. speculation because it puts everyone at risk, etc. We should tax putting carbon into the atmosphere and making industrial use of common resources like drinking water, but we’re out here taxing people for getting a job.
Taxing people for getting a job This is a great point!
Income taxation abolition would be incredibly popular among right wing morons and idk why the left doesn’t capitalize on that but hey Im not a money nerd maybe I’m naive in just thinking the govt doesn’t need to penalize individuals to fund itself when it controls the fucking currency.
Income tax abolition would be sick as hell, imagine snapping your fingers and making everyone’s paycheck bigger. You could replace it 1:1 with taxes on capital gains and stock speculation and it would do a lot to level the financial playing field between the rich and the poor (who would still be paying the lion’s share of sales taxes and other govt fees, something else to look into).
It would also just like simplify things for people. It’s hard to tell how much I’m really improving my situation getting another $2/hr when it’s like, oh, now those dollars get taxed more. And my rent is still gonna go up, and the cost of my food, etc. Yay
I want a $2 pay increase to mean you’re actually taking all that home and not require some fucking calculus to figure out what it actually means for you
(talking to the IRS or the bank): I make 45K
(doing my actual budgeting): I make 35K
yeah it sucks
That’s a good point! Further reason to listen to my twink rambling. :3
With a progressive tax system, the majority of income tax paid in aggregate, is by the very rich, and that’s even after they have avoided a lot of it through tax schemes.
Abolishing income tax would reward the wealthy.
Okay then no income tax if you make <100k a year idk i don’t want to argue about this. I don’t want every fucking dollar I negotiate for myself to be worth less and less when it’s so fucking hard
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I don’t want to destroy US. Please don’t tell them of my take. I want US to destroy itself to make it a political end for a country which destroyed so many. We will abolish income tax for people everywhere else. :3 (minus DPRK because they already did
)
