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I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.
You’ll never see rich people argue for a wealth tax, but they sure as hell will parade demanding that we raise taxes on income of the service class.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. There exist politicians who believe that forcing you to fill out the paperwork reminds you that taxes are evil. They're doing it for your own good, see? 2. There exist tax preparation companies which profit enormously from doing the paperwork for you and they'd miss out on that profit if the government just billed you.
The real reason is that Americans owe money on more income than the gov't is aware of, and if you're going to omit income, they want you to explicitly lie about it so you can be prosecuted for it.
“If you had any income that is not reported here, report it on irs.gov/…. Failure to do so is punishable by …”
This would make things significantly easier for 90% of the population.
I find it odd that the IRS does a lot of heavy lifting to go after Joe-Blue-Collar but completely seems blind to the thousands of money launderers both individuals and corps. Personally, I think the entire financial system is broken and should be squashed.
It's uglier than you can imagine.
If the IRS knows how much money I owe why dont they just send me a bill?
The IRS doesn't know how much tax you owe because Congress has created a massively complex system that includes using deductions to incentivize certain types of behavior, as well as using the tax system as a mechanism to deliver means-tested benefits.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. There exist politicians who believe that forcing you to fill out the paperwork reminds you that taxes are evil. They're doing it for your own good, see? 2. There exist tax preparation companies which profit enormously from doing the paperwork for you and they'd miss out on that profit if the government just billed you.
The real reason is that Americans owe money on more income than the gov't is aware of, and if you're going to omit income, they want you to explicitly lie about it so you can be prosecuted for it.
Since “they” also define what you can be prosecuted for, that’s a bit of an odd justification even before considering the fairly strong evidence from both tax prep lobbying and anti-tax candidate behavior (including occasionally saying the quiet part out loud directly about the pain in the process being necessary to keep tax burden front of mind for taxpayers) that the two reasons cited by the grandparent are, in fact, the dominant factors.
I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.
You’ll never see rich people argue for a wealth tax, but they sure as hell will parade demanding that we raise taxes on income of the service class.
I have a conspiracy theory that there are far more rich people than we are lead to believe, also that most of us are just working to prop them up and keep them rich.
Why is Brookings eligible for a .edu TLD?
"Please note: The .edu Cooperative Agreement allows registrants that registered .edu domain names prior to the Agreement taking effect October 29, 2001, to retain those registrations regardless of whether the registrants meet the current .edu eligibility requirements, so long as they renew their registrations and otherwise follow domain policy" https://net.educause.edu/eligibility.htm FWIW the Smithsonian also has a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’ll never see rich people argue for a wealth tax, but they sure as hell will parade demanding that we raise taxes on income of the service class.
No idea why you're being downvoted
Wealthy people will push for income taxes while trying to eliminate capital gains and inheritance taxes.
This conversation came up years ago when Bill Gates Sr tried to push for income taxes in Washington state and critics pointed out that it would not affect wealthy people.