201–210 of 338 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The great increase in illegal entry into the country through the southern border is a good recent example. Though, I suppose this is predicated upon it being "good policy" that illegal immigration be slowed.
What increase? The numbers are very constant.
As a Brit it's baffling that this is even an issue. I filed my taxes online with HMRC for free this year (we call it Self Assessment), it took 20 minutes, and I received a 4 figure refund in ~2 weeks directly in to my bank account.
US government services are bad almost across the board. Most of us would pay a premium to use a private version over a government version of almost anything. I’m guessing you would find it equally confusing if I told you we’d pay a premium to use a private DMV or private post office. Here in the US, that statement wouldn’t be controversial at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you care about economic success of the country, the goal isn't 'collect as many taxes as possible'. The goal is to make the citizens wealthier in real terms. But the goal of taxation isn't to maximize the country's economic success or overall wealth. It's to fund necessary government services (schools, courts, police, military, etc.) and to redistribute wealth (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.). We only…
>We only want to maximize national wealth after we've funded government services fully and redistributed wealth There's a chicken or the egg issue here. If your country isn't rich enough to fund government services such as education, transport and healthcare you need some economic development first.
As a Brit it's baffling that this is even an issue. I filed my taxes online with HMRC for free this year (we call it Self Assessment), it took 20 minutes, and I received a 4 figure refund in ~2 weeks directly in to my bank account.
The tax system here (usa) is an absolute joke. I owed $5k this year and I literally did nothing different except receive a small 5% raise last year. I have the most basic taxes you can, single, no kids, no house. Literally just a salary paycheck every 2 weeks. Had no idea I would owe anything, much less that much money until I filed 2 weeks prior to our tax date in April and you're expected to pay everything you owe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
sigh this is a baby step but - Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File - From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it - Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboT…
94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for "software engineers in California".
It's SUCH a win that they managed to roll this out to a small set of tax situations and states to start. Every government project I've been on has required creativity in defining an MVP that doesn't include shipping to everyone. This was cited consistently as one of the great successes of this project, they were able to ship something that successfully filed 150k taxes b/c they were able to scope things down to somet…
sigh this is a baby step but - Many if not most software engineers in California earn more than the $200K household limitation for using Direct File - From my understanding there is no way auto-generate my state tax return from Direct File so I would have to do all the work twice even if I can use it - Complicating my tax situation (legally) allows me to save more money, I would save far more than the price of TurboT…
have complicated taxes, due to how they're making that much money. I don't have a problem with them optimizing for the simpler case (eg the intention behind the 1040EZ) while software engineers, who can afford a CPA to deal with optimizing their tax burden off non W2 income, aren't initially able to use it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
94% of Americans make less than $200k a year. Not everything is meant for "software engineers in California".
I don't get why there's an income cap though. There's nothing that gets more complicated on income alone, only if you add extra stuff to track
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the confusion? You're the one bringing up "rule of law" as if I live to be the government's personal slave along with millions of others.
The confusion is that that doesn’t follow, at all. [edit] it occurs to me that this is a term of art you may be unfamiliar with, so reading it in an unusual sense: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law Basically, it’s a super-important thing to have if you want to live in a “developed” country that doesn’t have all kinds of very-bad problems, and isn’t some proxy for level-of-authoritarianism, which is how it s…
"Rule of law" requires government (and it's officers) be above all, both in practice and in theory. Just on the basis of who can violate rights, perceived or otherwise, and who in turn pays for the consequences, it fails in the test of "equality". And in reality, it's enshrined in multiple jurisdictions varying levels of immunity.
Even if you think tax money, once assessed and collected, belongs to the government.