371–380 of 454 posts
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Yes, I love the command line and want to remind people how it was back in the days when they didn't have these GUIs. Everyone will have to give up the GUI! Its a legitimate cause! : )
Hello. This is the ministry of bad analogies. Your fine is ready.
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>if you make $400 selling vintage cabbage patch dolls on eBay? This hurts my head to think about. According to CNN, 20% of large corporations pay almost nothing in corporate taxes.[1] 1 - http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/13/pf/taxes/gao-corporate-taxes...
In fairness most corporations shouldn't be paying taxes... their investors and customers do though. Also, corporations shouldn't have legal "personhood" or rights to invest in political agendas either. Also, corporate owned property that is unutilized or underutilized should probably be subject to forfeiture for better use. But that's because I feel that corporations should be mostly about collective ownership and pr…
I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all…
It's almost that simple in the US if your situation is that simple. What happens in NZ if you make $400 selling vintage cabbage patch dolls on eBay? What if you earned $1k in returns on your investment account? What if you are renting your place out on Airbnb? If all you have is a simple income in the US, then the 1040ez is a single page and you can file it for free online if you make under a certain amount. You can…
I live in New Zealand. I don't have to file taxes if my income is a standard wage my tax payments are automatic. My employer deducts them from my wage and they are sent to the IRD (Our government tax dept). My student loan and super payments are also automatic. If there is anything wrong then at the end of the tax year I can file to correct things. I also get donations rebates, this is a one page form that lists all…
The United States has a complicated tax code because it attempts to make things more "fair" for some people. Some of these are things people like, such as deductions for people with children, paying mortage, etc. Some are more dubious.
Just throw it all out and call it good enough. If you really need deductions for expenses, found a business. For persons, expenses are indistinguishable from consumption.
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> Why would anyone oppose a simple system like this? Because you want to make people angry and upset at least once a year at the government? Because you want to remind people that taxes are something the government takes, instead of letting them think of taxes as money they never earned to begin with. I love paying my taxes, but if you think taxes are bad (and lots of people do), then the current U.S. system makes to…
> I love paying my taxes I'm sort of with you on this. I am proud to know, for example, that my taxes help pay for healthcare for everyone and schools and roads and so on. I like to believe I'll pay in more than I'll get out and that's brilliant. However. Come bonus time I really struggle with the bit where they say "we're going to give you £x" and then I actually get a bit over half that in the bank. Somehow I inter…
If you aren't relying on the bonus for other things it's a good option. It means the bonus sort of 'disappears' psychologically, but then if you have a mortgage it probably just gets swallowed up by that anyway.
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The UK has a similarly simple tax system as New Zealand. Taxes are taken out of pay every month, and that's it. Every individual gets assigned a tax code, and that tax code defines how much is taken from your pay. That tax code takes in to account how many kids you have etc. etc. The UK tends to approach tax deductions in a different way, preferring to subsidise stuff up front instead, so you never have to remember t…
Do you get any kind of deduction for giving to non-profits/charities? I give about 12-15% of my gross income to non-profits/charities every year and get a generous tax deduction for doing so. The other thing that tends to be complicated with my taxes is selling stocks. How does the UK handle things like that?
There is no personal benefit.
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I'm not sure how complicated the US system is FYI - At various stages of my life I've filed in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Switzerland and the US (California). I can't generalize to all persons, but I do have a decent spread of countries in my own experience - and the US was by some serious margin the most complicated.
It isn't that bad in the US using turbo tax. Just remember to answer no to receiving payments from the "Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement". (Actual question).
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Some people would disagree with you. I believe military and defense spending should actually be one of the only role of governments. Leave healthcare and education to industry. Let the free market decide the curriculum, teachers salaries, and come up with innovative ways of teaching. I see no reason Khan academy shouldn't be allowed to teach our children. Since when did it become common place to allow a government to…
I don't believe there are systems that can't be gamed. Given that assumption it's probably better to decide policy based on actual results. In places where social programs are abundant you have fewer suffering individuals, it seems healthier to count that as a win and not get hung up on the (truly rather small) percentage of people potentially gaming the system.
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The UK has a similarly simple tax system as New Zealand. Taxes are taken out of pay every month, and that's it. Every individual gets assigned a tax code, and that tax code defines how much is taken from your pay. That tax code takes in to account how many kids you have etc. etc. The UK tends to approach tax deductions in a different way, preferring to subsidise stuff up front instead, so you never have to remember t…
Do you get any kind of deduction for giving to non-profits/charities? I give about 12-15% of my gross income to non-profits/charities every year and get a generous tax deduction for doing so. The other thing that tends to be complicated with my taxes is selling stocks. How does the UK handle things like that?
For cash gifts the charity can claim back 25p in the £ on your gift. For property, land and shares you deduct it against your tax payments at the end of the tax year and claim for a refund.
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Yes. I love paying taxes. Not because I like having less money in my bank account, but because I understand what paying taxes represents.
Yes, funding a $600 billion military industrial complex [0]. Just think, your complete yearly taxes were probably almost enough for a single JDAM [1] which was then dropped on Iraq, in a war where 13% of all civilians were killed directly by US-led forces [2], and many more in the chaos that ensued from the invasion. But you love it. [0] - https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spendi... [1] - https://…
UK tax payer here, so the specifics are different, but I have no problem paying my taxes. We have decent free health care, a capable and I think 'right sized' armed forces for our needs, competent policing and security services and my children get free education. If any of those things were not true I wouldn't necessarily want my taxes to be reduced, I'd want the problems with those services to be fixed.