441–450 of 489 posts
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Don't they know that from the W-4? Or does that not go to the IRS
W-4s are not filled with the IRS. Employers are required to maintain them for inspection whenever the IRS wants though.
Now we're just left with this illogical part of the tax system: The State: Pay me taxes or I'll put you in a cage! Citizen: OK, how much do you need? The State: You tell me, but if you're wrong you'll regret it!
If you mess up your taxes, the IRS actually has a very reasonable process for making amends, with penalties that aren't egregious at all. It's mostly a small interest (like a couple percent above prime or something), which caps at 25% of the unpaid amount. In fact it's the same interest they pay you if you were due refund and they were slow giving it back. My main complaint is that it's a super, super slow process. T…
Then California is the same way too it sounds even going after former residents as they went after the inventor of the microprocessor who moved to Nevada, and even broke Nevada law while doing so since they sent state officials across state lines to stalk him and dig through his trash. He sued California in Nevada and was granted millions of dollars, but due to a loophole, California didn't even have to pay as much as the judge in Nevada ordered. California says living in an apartment isn't a permanent home, you must get a mortgage and buy a house to no longer be a California resident... Well, of course, that isn't the actual law, so the state of California abused their power.
I wonder how California would view someone getting into YC, doing the program for the 3 months and then going back to where they were originally living or moving to a totally different state after such as Austin, TX since they had no intent of living in California? I wish YC would expand to Austin. San Francisco looks nice to visit, but due to it being expensive, and politics it's a turn off for some people. However it seems like Austin is starting to have some of the same problems with cost of living rising since it's growing, Apple is expanding there to be the largest employer in Austin.
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> 1040EZ, if you even know what that is I think you buried the lead here. American public schools, part of the American government charged with teaching children and funded by taxes, don't teach kids how to pay taxes to the American government (maybe it sometimes happens, but it's certainly not standard.) It's ludicrous.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but how are schools supposed to teach kids how to pay taxes when it's such a convoluted specialty that requires college level education to learn?
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Or people do understand how taxes are used and fundementaly disagree that taxes should be used for those purposes Taxes sole purpose should be to collect money to provide services, Nothing else they should not be used to socially engineer the society the way the government sees fit, that is not a free society or a functioning democracy/republic at that point
Australia gives tax cuts if you have a family with children. (Family tax benefit part A and B). Do you think that's unacceptable social engineering?
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Australia gives tax cuts if you have a family with children. (Family tax benefit part A and B). Do you think that's unacceptable social engineering?
Yes, Why should a person the choose not to have children be punished by the state with higher taxes for their choice?
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a) The great majority of the population who perceives a salary not needing to file taxes. In the United States, and many other nations, the vast majority of taxes aren't collected from payroll. If that was the case, things would be easy. But there are hundreds of other ways that taxes are collected, and they vary from person to person. More importantly, taxes aren't exclusively about revenue generation. They're used…
Or people do understand how taxes are used and fundementaly disagree that taxes should be used for those purposes Taxes sole purpose should be to collect money to provide services, Nothing else they should not be used to socially engineer the society the way the government sees fit, that is not a free society or a functioning democracy/republic at that point
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The US hasn't had a real balanced budget in much longer than that. During the Clinton era the balance was achieved in part by stealing from Social Security by keeping the surplus inflows and pretending there's a magic locked Social Security box with trillions of dollars in it (which are really IOUs backed by the Fed's ability to debase the future for past over-spending). We similarly treated as 'surplus' tax revenue…
Can someone explain to me the negative consequences of running a deficit? Countries aren’t people. They don’t die. As long as countries are willing to lend us money and the US can service the debt, what does it really matter if the national debt is multiples of the GDP?
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> What kind of insanity leads to this? The government is prohibited from creating software that helps its citizens? "Lobbying" and "campaign contributions", aka paying congresspeople aka straight up corruption but you can't use the C word in US politics. H&R Block and Intuit have been greasing palms for years to keep the agreement in place and encode it in law: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-…
While I agree there is a money problem, it's not quite so simple as just "paying people off". The money goes to their campaign funds which I'm sure get abused sometimes, but they also get called out and prosecuted for it. Additionally, money donated directly to the politician's fund is limited. Money paid to a PAC is very much separated from the politician. They can't so much as coordinate with the PAC. So it's more…
There were whole weeks of "The Colbert Report" where Colbert and Jon Stewart legally set up a super PAC for colbert to run for "president of South Carolina" where they exploited every bit of the super PAC legislation just to show how easy it is and what kind of legal things people can do with the money. The "you cannot coordinate" part was hilariously easy to get around.
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Corporate tax policy has no impact on the complexity of individual taxes. It's two completely independent sets of rules. Your theory is wrong.
Tax deductions for retirement, mortgages, etc. are tax code complexity that benefit the financial and real estate industries. Even if it could be done simpler, TurboTax and other tax prep companies will lobby against it. You'd be hard pressed to find any government financial policy that isn't tied to business interests. The tax code is no exception.