131–140 of 279 posts
Perhaps it would be easier to have the government collect all of our income, subtract the taxes, and pay us the difference once a year. That would be even simpler.
The NTA (National Tax Authority, cited as the Kokuzeicho in the article) doesn't figure out your taxes for you. Your employer does, as one of the (many!) ways in which they exercise paternalistic control of your life. If you do not have an employer, you get to go through a process which is almost exactly as fun as it is in the US, modulo a modestly competent online filing application. I spent $3k this year on account…
yeah I was not too convinced when I read the article. The government can easily figure out the taxes for your wage (which your employer did actually figure out) but they can't figure out the taxes on your real estate revenue, and maybe other activities (traded cryptocurrency? freelanced on the side? Airbnb"ing" some of your estate)
Today I filed taxes in Sweden for the first time. 1. Sign-in from Bank-id at Skatteverket 2. Review pre-populated amounts 3. Digitally sign acceptance filing with Bank-id If I just have one salary from one employer all year round, why should it be more complicated than this?
Overlooked in this article and comments is the influence of one man -- Grover Norquist. He runs an extremely influential organization that administers a sort of purity pledge that, for most Republican candidates for Congress, is necessary to sign in order to avoid being primaried. He has decided that making taxes easier to do would make people more okay with tax increases, and so he has decreed that support for the k…
Norquist started Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. taxpayer advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform Doesn't sound like you are describing Norquist's organization they way they do in their mission statement. Do you have any references?
Next you'll be telling me that Google does evil.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
BTW, the refund is a super-cool thing about the Australian system that may not be super-widespread. The Icelandic system is a very similar pay-as-you-go tax system, so tax is predicted and withheld from your wages over the course of the year. But Iceland errs on the side of under-withholding, if they don't know what your income is going to be. As a result, come tax time, most people get a letter saying "you owe us 60…
I view over-withholding as an interest free loan to the government. No thanks. I'd rather underpay by 1% than overpay. For me 1% is over $100/mo. I'd rather earn interest, dividends, whatever on that and then pay the balance.
On the other hand, it is likely a huge benefit to the poor and those who are poor at managing their money. Come tax time, they could easily face a bill that exceeds their paycheck and paying interest on top of their taxes. It would also cost the government more since they would have to pursue collection more aggressively.
The NTA (National Tax Authority, cited as the Kokuzeicho in the article) doesn't figure out your taxes for you. Your employer does, as one of the (many!) ways in which they exercise paternalistic control of your life. If you do not have an employer, you get to go through a process which is almost exactly as fun as it is in the US, modulo a modestly competent online filing application. I spent $3k this year on account…
Wouldn't American employers also be spending a fair bit of money figuring out taxes for their employees prior to handing off the data and money to the IRS? And wouldn't financial institutions be doing something similar for their clients? The systems described by the article seem to be using the data submitted by employers and financial institutions to generate a tax return, which the tax payer verifies or adds to (in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why other people in this thread think this is crazy. This is actually a widely held belief by Republicans. Many of them want paying taxes to be hard so people will be conscious of government burden. They believe making tax filing simple is a risk to our liberties.
I have read about this before, but it still sounds totally crazy to me. There have been plenty of inefficient and corrupt governments which still have managed to impose police states. To me it seems like a cult of personality for the leader is a greater threat to your liberty than efficient bureaucracy.
Overlooked in this article and comments is the influence of one man -- Grover Norquist. He runs an extremely influential organization that administers a sort of purity pledge that, for most Republican candidates for Congress, is necessary to sign in order to avoid being primaried. He has decided that making taxes easier to do would make people more okay with tax increases, and so he has decreed that support for the k…
Norquist started Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. taxpayer advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Tax_Reform Doesn't sound like you are describing Norquist's organization they way they do in their mission statement. Do you have any references?
I for one find the grandparent's explanation of the organization to be quite accurate. My guess is that you aren't getting the subtext: His main goal is, in practice, to lower taxes for those with high incomes, and the rest of that group's stated goal is just mandatory steps to make it possible to pass that.
The visibility factor is huge, just because without it, his movement would not have legs: The more visible, the more likely it is for people to dislike taxes, whether they are getting a lot out of them or not. Making all taxes lower is also key to sell that goal too, as flattening the system while maintaining revenue would mean a tax increase for a large majority of Americans, which is also a non-starter.
Once you get those real, non-stated goals, then the stated goals make perfect sense, as they align 100% with what one would need to do to get the real goals achieved in practice.