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Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

npr.org

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Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#21

Post by hugh3 »

japherwocky wrote: post #20
hugh3 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a nice idea on the face of it, but apart from the inevitable chaos which comes from having budgets of government departments fluctuate wildly from year to year, I think it would lead to a world where government departments spend about half their time and money begging taxpayers for money. Every television ad for the first four months of the year would probably be some variation on: "Remember, the FBI do…

I'd rather see ads for the FBI than for political parties!

You'll get those too. Government departments from November to April, political parties from April to November.

(The rest of the time it'll still be ads for medications for diseases you never knew you had.)

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#22

Post by anthonyb »

hugh3 wrote: post #12
ghotli wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a happy medium would be that I get to choose where 10 or 5 percent of my taxes go. The politicians can expect a certain cut, with the rest we're empowered to fund what we believe in. I also don't realistically believe this will ever happen.

If you feel strongly about it, why not donate five or ten percent of your income to the government department of your choice?

Or invest it in a company which is doing something that you want to support.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#23

Post by anthonyb »

zacharycohn wrote: post #18
jonursenbach wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a return policy then most people are going to be asking for a return on everything .

The counter to that would be that you can only ask for one return per year. The counter to THAT is that people would just ask for the largest amount to be returned to them (Take that, Social Security!)

Except that if you've already gotten your money back, you haven't actually bought it. No security for you if you lose your job!

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#24

Post by zach »

From the report:

"At best, motivated taxpayers can locate a pie chart on a government website that gives percentage allocations about how large categories of spending are distributed.

But these are difficult to find and difficult to understand."

This is disingenuous puffery. It's in every copy of the 1040 instructions and is simple to understand.

They're actually suggesting a far more complex and entirely non-visual spending report. That's useful, but the existing report is neither hard to find nor understand.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#25

Post by Aetius »

hugh3 wrote: post #17
Aetius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, after all, NPR...no surprise the war was prominent as they have a decidedly progressive news team. I won't call NPR liberal, but certainly left of center, and very critical (as they should be) of the wars.

Your comment would have been much better without injecting your own political opinions on the matter via the parenthetical "as they should be".

I'm actually not one of those antiwar protesters that crawls in ditches. I didn't say "they should be against" the wars. I just said they should be critical of it; as a publication-of-record it's their job to critique major national issues.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#28

Post by DanielBMarkham »

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone.

I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on current budget trends. That way you could see how the coming year is different from the current year. Complaining about NASA funding is one thing -- seeing that they only get 20 bucks while Social Security gets over a thousand? Puts the situation in much sharper contrast.

It's strange that the government works in such an arcane fashion. A simple thing like a receipt for your taxes is probably very hard or impossible to accomplish. It took many years for Moynihan to get his SS statements. I have doubts that this would ever fly.

But it is certainly a simple and profound idea.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#29

Post by [deleted] »

Aetius wrote: post #16
hugh3 wrote: post #2

Not a bad idea. But why does it say "selected items"? I haven't added the numbers up myself, but one of the comments says that the listed things add up to only sixty-something percent of the total. Where's the other money gone? One might almost think they're trying to make a political point with their careful selection of items (eg. "Combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" somehow got to fifth place on the list wh…

This is, after all, NPR...no surprise the war was prominent as they have a decidedly progressive news team. I won't call NPR liberal, but certainly left of center, and very critical (as they should be) of the wars.

[deleted]
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