Happy National Extortion Day - 04/15

The classic taxation conundrum: Peeps want services and benefits but don't want to pay for any of it. Go figure.

 

Love my Rays - went to yesterday's game. This is a fun promotion.

 

Without taxes how are we gonna pay to send immigrants on buses to other cities or afford to have govt police library books or shut down places with drag shows?

 

or arrest people who perform abortions?

 

Or issue voter IDs?

 

I hope I never meet another who justifies and worships the government as much as you do.

 

Trump has a day named after him already?

 

Hard to be for " law and order" if there are no taxes to pay for law enforcement, courts, and ways to punish criminals.

 

What about border security? Do we need taxes for that?

 

Show me where anyone ever said we shouldn’t pay any taxes.
Geez…it’s like I’m posting with my sisters kids.

 

How are you planning to pay for farm subsidies? Or the military? Or more border patrol? Or any of the other larger government services that you want? You planning to put all the money up yourself or are you asking for other people to help pay for the things you want?

Frankly, you supporting each of those things is advocating for them. Again, this all seems like framing to square the fact that you don't view yourself as somebody who wants more government while you want more government doing certain things.

 

An effective tax rate over 20%, which is what I pay, is not a "small part". I agree with everything else you said.

Give me an effective rate between 10%-15% and that's all you get. The rest should be up to the government to figure out how to budget properly, just like the rest of us.

 

Well, it's tax day. Based on relative GC anonymity, I'll make one point. My bank account is considerably lighter today than it was yesterday. Just sent an additional $24k that was due for the 2023 taxes, plus another $10k in estimated tax to cover 1Q 2024. Sounds like criminal theft, right?

Reality check: our effective federal tax rate came out to just 17% of gross income in 2023. And we make a fair bit of money - 35% marginal tax bracket.

 

So @Orange_and_Bluke you disagreed with me, but I'm just curious as to how you can think that government is evil. Do we not need a way to organize and enforce laws? Do you prefer a wild west scenario? No regulating body? I don't see how civilization as we know and expect it works without government.

 

100% agree. For the simpletons they have no issues. What I mean by that is this - before I got married, my taxes were 1040EZ. It didn't get any easier and I was done in 10 minutes. But today, my wife and I need 100 tax attorneys because owning a business has required that many and still the IRS screws up most of the time, costing us time and money. We screw up - we get hammered; they screw up - we get hammered. Almost every year since 2008 the IRS has sent us multiple revisions to what we owe. In 2012 alone, under Obama, we received 4 such revisions. They can't even agree on their own numbers so how are we to keep track? Then we pay our attorneys about $32,000 a year to handle our taxes and yep every year the IRS always sends us letters that we didn't do it right. If firms who specialize in tax preparation can't get it right on top of the IRS not even sure of their own numbers, how in the world are we to trust them to do anything? The tax code is so complicated, there isn't a person on the planet that fully understands it.

 

First, you havent met me. Second, those are basic tenets of a government, not an extreme view.

 

well, I think we all have to recognize that there are a few essential services that are worth paying for.

 

Still a waste, it seems like there are plenty of people out there willing to report on bad books, harass immigrants at the border and snitch on drag queens for free

 

might be onto something there. The population is already heavily armed: vigilante justice. Someone rips you off or inconveniences you? shoot them.