Well, I did my taxes this week, yay. And recently, I was unfriended on Facebook by an old friend who got irritated cuz i said that those who purposefully do not pay their taxes - not meaning those that just don't file cuz they're lazy or scared, but those that purposefully do not pay cuz they believe taxes are illegal or they are against them or they selfishly want to keep it all - well, I said that yeah, I would count that as doing something criminal cuz they are benefiting from the taxes we all pay. Now I don't expect to be backed on this here, so no worries - that ain't the question, just part of the inspiration.
So, have y'all filed your taxes yet for the year? Do you do them yourself or use software or a third party? What are your thoughts on taxes? Too high/too low/just right?
And how are y'all doing?
Comments
I filed mine this week...
i used software. i used to be old school and do them myself by hand, but i got lazy.
i think we prob don't pay enough - or at least the upper incomes do not and the lower ones should not have the burden.
i think taxes are misspent in a lot of places and should be maximized for promoting the general welfare, and not promoting the folly of war and war like actions, and not giving welfare to profiatble corporations.
we need health care and infrastructure and better education and a host of things i'd rather see my tax dollars go to....
Yeah, it's my fault he left too
But fuck it; he is living a libertarian fantasy world and stealing from society while calling people statist who disagrees with him when he benefits from the same state. Hypocrisy.
But yeah we are number 24th on median wealth per capita in the modern industrial world and on safety nets that should be funded more and more progressively with progressive income taxes; partly but also with more democratic control of our money that is created and appropriated at the federal level that we don't have now at the Fed. Locally taxes fund more and should be collected more from higher income, estates, and the like for a better educational system that is being attacked by shock doctrine. Basically either through taxation or money creation the public and the working poor as well as the middle class deserve a higher standard of living and better infrastructure.
Anyway, sorry for that dude's departure from your friend list, but his attitude is selfish and unenlightened and he is looking for justification for his own selfishness.
That is if I am making sense at all. :-)
not yer fault... he got mad at me...
you and my sister were on the ball in that one. thanks for that... and no big loss... if ya can't debate in teh big leagues, don't hang on my wall, lol... ;)
Ahh, I see. Shame he couldn't be more adult about it
Well no big loss then. Anytime, my friend. You are correct. :-)
I think if you make under $450,000 a year, you shouldn't have
to pay federal income taxes since we're all middle class or poor.
Just kidding ;)
There are millions of us who need lobbyists to get a fair shake, but alas, we can't afford to pay them.
As Obama Confronts Corporate Tax Reform, Past Lessons Suggest Lobbyists Will Fight For Loopholes
yeah - i want a lobbyist dammit!...
we should have them...
Yes, the problem is not that middle class taxes are too high ...
... its that the level of middle class services are kept too low, as the government serves the one percent.
College costs too much as the upper administrators get skyrocketing pay rates "to attract people who could 'earn' more in the private sector" while a majority of people teaching college level classes live in poverty.
Health care costs too much as we deny people basic preventative care that would avoid the need to pay for expensive emergency care.
Transportation costs too much as we force motorists to cross subsidize truckers, carrying freight over thousands of miles which would be cheaper to move by long haul electric freight rail.
Energy costs too much since Congress did its best to outlaw feed in tariffs that would give windpower an assured rate during low demand period in return for cutting our electricity costs during peak demand periods.
We can all add to the list. Compared to "the good old days", taxes on the middle class are historically low. However, services for the middle class have been driven even lower.
Cleetus
still does them by hand and yes, we have filed. No- most of the comfortable do not pay enough taxes and they whine like babies.
yes they do whine like babies...
they don't understand the long game either. once we have nothing left to give, there will be no more wealth for the upward redistribution... sigh....
check out the IRS website
I have never paid anyone to do my taxes. I've always done them myself. Go to the IRS website. Depending on your income level you can qualify for free e-filing. Even if you don't qualify for the free filing, you can do the form yourself, then transfer the information electronically at their site. I did my kids taxes about 2 weeks ago and their refunds came in yesterday. Never pay anyone to do your taxes unless you have a horse that competes in the Dresage in the Olympics.
Tax protests are a valid form of protest
While I don't think it's valid to say the government doesn't have a right to tax, I do support refusing to pay taxes as a valid form of protest.
We shouldn't let our views on whether we agree with the reason given for a particular protest determine whether we approve or disapprove of tax protests in general. So, for example, would you agree with a courageous anti-war protestor who went to jail because they refused to have their tax dollars used to support an illegal, immoral war? How about a call for revolution because the government repealed the Bill of Rights? Would you still willingly fund that government with your tax dollars because "we all have a shared responsibility to fund the government?"
Tax protest, in my view, is a very valid form of civil disobedience. The fact that libertarian neanderthals refuse to recognize that the country itself could not exist without a source of revenue makes my position on tax protests a bit uncomfortable for me but, still, we need to differentiate between the protest mechanism and the reasons some elect to use it.
As for tax fairness, consider the following:
source: http://flaglerlive.com/26685/gc-fdr-and-taxes/
I don't see non-payment of taxes as a valid form of protest
Hi, Welsh Terrier.
I have to disagree with you here. Paying taxes is a passive indirect action on behalf of a citizen. It's not possible to tell with any certainity where one's taxes end up in the federal, state or local budgets. So, someone says they don't want to pay taxes because they are protesting a war, they don't pay their taxes and thus there is less money for a local school.
I like what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. There is simply no way that a taxpayer can ascertain how their individual taxes are allocated. So how is it a viable form of protest to say, I don't want to pay taxes because I'm against X Policy, but I want to continue to reap the benefits of the taxes paid by everyone else.
That being said, I am very surprised at the silence and lack of support by many on the Left for the Progressive Caucus Sequestration Alternative Plan. I think their plan is not only realistic it brings tax fairness into the discussion.
Funding your enemy
sartoris, thanks for your thoughtful reply.
First, let me say that geomoo stole some of my thunder. I, too, was going to point to the Boston Tea Party. Was that a valid form of protest? Should the colonists have continued to pay the King's tax? What if the tax had been doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? What if the taxes were spent on more soldiers and more munitions to oppress the colonists? Would there ever come a time, under any circumstance real or imagined, that tax protests would have been warranted?
Let me address the issue of revenue allocation. You raise a good point in saying that we can't know how our individual taxes are allocated. Of course, there are federal budgets and all sorts of pie charts and such that track federal spending but let's accept your point that most of us have no or little idea how our little contribution is ultimately spent. Further, let's accept your point that by withholding taxes because of one objectionable spending program, it clearly hurts other spending programs (e.g. protesting war spending but hurting education budgets).
I see the points you've raised as perfectly valid arguments. I just disagree with them.
In the end, I see my beliefs as revolutionary. To me, this means that, ultimately, we will be forced to do whatever is necessary to seize power from the current power system. There will be no incrementalism or middle-ground. Will school budgets be impacted? Of course they will be. There may not be food or electrical power or functioning hospitals or functioning anything. An all out revolution is going to be horrible. It might not succeed, either.
But as wealth concentrates more and more and many lead lives of not-so-quiet desperation, I'm afraid our choices will dwindle and we will fight or die... or both. As the corporatists rape our planet to the breaking point, we will have no choice. As our food becomes increasingly corporatized, we will have no choice. As the oppression and loss of our so called unalienable rights become alienable, we will have no choice. As hope, itself, is extinguished, we will have no choice.
We will not be able to turn our backs on these existential threats merely to preserve school budgets or any other vestige of the current regime. In truth, school budgets will not be threatened by the tax protestors; they will be, and already are, under severe attack by the corporate state (Richard Wolff talked about this in the last half-hour of his weekly show here) (advance the audio to the 26:40 mark). Know thy enemy. To fear revolution because it could upset your apple cart is dangerous on many levels. No little share of the pie we might cherish today will last for long. This country is on such a toxic, downward trajectory that perhaps nothing we value will survive. The argument is not blind to the costs and the suffering and the instability we may hasten with revolution; the argument is that the comfy little world of today is not sustainable and that it is being stolen from us. As wealth and power concentrate unabated, we have no future without a fight.
You asked: "So how is it a viable form of protest to say, I don't want to pay taxes because I'm against X Policy, but I want to continue to reap the benefits of the taxes paid by everyone else."
I would suggest that most tax protestors expect to end up in jail for their civil disobedience and that to see them as seeking to "reap the benefits" at everyone else's expense fails to acknowledge the depth of their commitment to what they believe is a just cause. It's hardly fair to say that their goal is to seek a free ride on the public's dime.
Finally, I took a look at the Progressive Caucus Sequestration Alternative Plan. It would take too much space to elaborate here but suffice it to say that while it's better than the current sequestration plan, the real issue for me is taxing wealth in addition to taxing income. Higher tax rates on the highest incomes will do nothing to close the wealth gap. In my view, it is the wealth gap more than anything else that has perverted any semblance of democracy and any semblance of a representative government intent on representing the best interests of all its citizens.
But tea tax WAS going to the British Empire.
The federal income tax is not actually funding the American Empire, since the federal government could, if it decided to, simply monetize its spending.
Federal income taxes do not fund federal government spending, they withdraw money from the economy to prevent the government spending from generating inflation.
A common misunderstanding of how money works in a sovereign economy does not make the reality fit the misunderstanding. Tea partiers fighting fights under the pretense that federal income taxes are paying for federal government in the same way that a local school levy is paying for schools does not make it so.
And the other big difference between the tax on tea and the federal income tax is that the opponents of the patriots, the loyalists, did not oppose paying the tax on tea.
Our opponents, the corporatists, would be overjoyed to see a serious personal income tax revolt break out. The more that publicly elected government is de-legitimized, the more power that privately selected corporate governments accumulate.
No taxation without representation
This was the claim at least made for the reason for fighting he revolutionary war. The Boston Tea Party went even further we will destroy your product if you insist on taxes us without giving us control where those taxes go. It is beyond obvious to me that I have nearly zero control on where my taxes are spent.
It is amazing how the tools of torture--buildings, devices, etc.--can be almost completely isolated from those who pay for them and then no one is responsible. I consider it an understandable inconsistency that so many of us who pay taxes which go to buy electric prods used on human feel absolutely no responsibility. It's called complicity, and anyone who happens to feel strongly enough about complicity in what the USG does with taxes is, in my view, obligated to be true to themselves and not pay. This is civil disobedience. I believe it is why Thoreau spent a night in prison.
I wonder how people would feel if there were a set-up in which a wall had a panel of buttons. If ten of these buttons were pushed simultaneously, let's say, then something horrible would happen to a detainee, but the circuits were scrambled randomly so that is impossible to ascertain which ten people pushed the buttons that caused the torture. Would we stand around at that wall pushing buttons with absolutely clear consciences? It seems the same to me
The over-riding concern to me is needing a democracy for taxation to be fair. Otherwise, we are taxed by a unfettered authority and we may as well be paying liege. Would it be okay for a serf to refuse to pay taxes even though some of them paid for roads and necessary protection from marauding bands? To me, the answer is obvious.