I feel, however, that he fails to heap enough scorn and ridicule on the inanity of this statement. I am not taking issue with the reference to abolishing the income tax; that is a reasonably debatable topic. But the comment about abolishing the IRS?
Regardless of whether we get the government’s money from an income tax, sales tax, property tax, excise tax, luxury tax, or door to door collection plates, the government requires getting money somewhere, and thus it requires someone to collect and distribute that money. The IRS is the Treasury Department. You can get rid of the IRS - change it’s name to “the Government Fund Collection and Distribution Agency”. But you still have the same actions going on. You can change the nature of the agency - don’t chase income tax from citizens, rather tax corporations and businesses only. Or count all the voluntary contributions, and solicit more voluntary contributions. You still have an IRS.
It really irks me when people make that inane comment.
Irishman,
Even though technically you’re correct, people have such rancor for the IRS, they would want it dismantled and have another “name” collect taxes. I know I would.
I think it’s absolutely OBSCENE that they take $500+ out of EACH of my paychecks. That’s more than my car payment. Hell, that’s some people’s house payments. The government has to be able to work on less than this.
I would support any type of tax if they stopped taking money directly out of my paychecks. And I’m sure every American worker would too.
You know, some of that withheld is matched by your employer. That extra does come out of your check, but you have no evidence of it. Maybe everybody would be happy if the rules just made all of it invisible. Except to business owners, of course.
Another thing that would make a lot of folks happy is if the burden of proof were shifted. As it stands now, it is up to the taxpayers to prove innocence/compliance when confronted by the IRS. To my way of thinking, this is just wrong.
If the IRS thinks you have filed an incorrect or fraudulent return, well, they should be have to be able to provide documentation to that effect. If they have no proof, then all they have is suspicion and conjecture. In this country, that should not be enough for any agency to come in, seize assets, garnish wages, etc…
If you don’t like them taking $500 out of your paycheck each month, you could always move to someplace like Germany or the Netherlands, where you probably lose over 50% of your pay to taxation.
Or you could move to a tax haven, like Bermuda, where there is no income tax at all.
Oh, so the problem is not their practices or the size of government, it’s just the “name”. So what we really need is a PR blitz - an ad campaign. I can see it now…
“The IRS - we make your government go round.”
“Support the IRS - we’re just the bill collectors.”
“Be nice - file your return on time. :)”
“IRS - we’re here to help.”
“Don’t hate us, we make welfare possible.”
You’re focusing on the wrong issue, and it’s silly and pathetic. If you want to change the problems, then address the problems. Abolishing the IRS will just mean we have to make a new organization, one that could be WORSE. How about paying 70% of your gross pay in taxes? How about taking away some of those nifty deductions?
Now that’s a legitimate complaint. How do we get the federal budget size down, so they don’t take as much money? Or how can we put the onus on the corporations and off the individuals?
Okay, how’s this. You get to keep your entire paycheck, but every April 15 (just to be consistent) you have to mail in 50%. If you fail to comply, they come arrest you, take all your possessions, and flog you with a wet noodle while you whistle the national anthem.
Divemaster, no arguments. Those are legitimate complaints.
Yeah, yeah, governments can waste money on stupid shit – like none of you ever bought a lemon, invested in penny stocks, or ordered more than two premium cable channels.
But the money you pay provides an infrastructure of services from which you benefit (albeit some of which you only benefit from indirectly, or, is there ‘in case’ you need it).
Roads, schools, police, military, environmental protection, consumer protection, educational grants, social security, and welfare.
Yes, welfare. Sure some cheat the system. But then there are the truly needy who are helped, or, would you rather have them knocking on your door begging for a hand out?
Don’t forget that taxes redistribute the wealth. Is that socialism? You bet. But do you want Bill Gates and a few mega corporations to own everything? … and I mean everything. Bill and the megacorps don’t become poor from the taxes, so don’t worry too much about their tax bill.
Insufficient data to share your moral outrage. What’s the pay period and what’s your gross pay? If you say gross is $2,000 a week, I’m not throwing any pity party for you.
DIVEMASTER: the IRS already has the burden of proof in many cases. 1. fraud- they must show fraud beyond any reasonable doubt criminally, and civily must show it is more likely than not, buy they have got the burden of proof. Unreported income: again, the IRS has to show reesonable evidence that you had income you did not repoet. true, once they do that, you have the burden to show it is non-taxable. Only on deductions do you have the burden of proof, and even there the “Cohen” rule will come to your aid. I’ll bet you have never actually been audited. It’s not that bad, as long as you have a cooperative attitude, and some OK records.
No, I’ve never been audited, but my grandmother was and it was a nightmare. No, actually, I can’t say nightmare, because her situation was nothing like the horror stories I hear about of innocent people really being put through the wringer.
For some reason, the IRS felt that my grandmother had made some kind of mistake on a previous year’s return. Nothing evasive, just that she (actually, her accountant) had screwed up on something.
Well, she had the paperwork that showed that the IRS was all wet. Everything was correct. Simple right? Just show them the paperwork, and everyone will be satisfied.
Wrong. The IRS finally admitted after a year’s worth of increasingly nasty and threatening letters against my grandmother that they were in error. Why they refused to accept the documentation that should have cleared up the issue in 5 minutes was never explained.
No apology was ever issued. They even managed to sound magnanimous when finally telling my grandmother that the investigation was concluded and she was free to go about her business. Pricks.
I was going to suggest that we rename the IRS something more honest like the Rainy Monday Tax Collectors, but after I read divemaster’s previous post, I realized that “Rainy Monday Pricks” is an excellent name for a rock band. So excuse me while I go talk to my agent…
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
The IRS sent me a letter and bill saying that I failed to report W-2 wages, and that I owed an extra $1500 for the past year.
In a way, I did fail to report the W-2 wages. But that’s because, as someone who files self-employed, one of my contractors should have issued a 1099-MISC instead of the W-2 that they gave me (and subsequently reported it to the IRS). I had declared that income duly in my profit and loss worksheet instead of on the main form as W-2 wages.
So, I sent a letter to the IRS explaining the situation. They said, “Oh, OK, nevermind then.”*
Hmm hey moriah what would you say if i took all your money and then used part of it to indirectly help you?
“Don’t forget that taxes redistribute the wealth” they redistribute it into the goverment:)
“But do you want Bill Gates and a few mega corporations to own everything”
I guess the goverment owning everything is better? The idea of a small group of people not owning everything is a fairly new concept. New to civilaized people anywais.
I would say that’s bad. But luckily, that’s not what the government/IRS does. The don’t take all of anyone’s money. Only a percetage. So, your point is basically imbecilic.
Again, you make the premise the government owning everything. That’s not the case, and never likely to be. So, again, the point is foolish.
The idea of democracy is new, and a pretty good one. It won’t last without the contribution of all its members, albeit a mandated contribution.
I have a friend who is quite taken with the idea of government setting tax quotas for each state which they then have the responsibility to collect.
A state could have a smaller quota based on the average income and population.
It seems this would allow the states to collect (or not collect) from their citizens in whichever manner they pleased.
And, it would eliminate the IRS.
Is there any reason in particular this wouldn’t work? Off-hand, the only thing I can think of is getting the states to pay up. Eliminating their benefits after taxation wouldn’t help if they were paying a larger portion of the tax burden.
I can see why your friend likes the idea of having the states set their own tax policies for collecting their allotments, but I think there are some problems with the idea. The first thing the feds need to do is decide how to come up with the states’ allotments. There are two ways to do this:
Based on how many people are in the state.
Based on how much income or assets there is in the state.
In the first case, a poorer state would need to have a higher tax rate than a richer state in order to collect the same amount of money per-capita. Not only is this unfair, but over time richer people would move out of the poorer state making things progressively worse.
In the second case, the feds would need to figure out how much income or assets is in each state. This is essentially what the IRS does now, so you haven’t gained much.
Dive: it sounds to me that your grandmother wasn’t actually Audited, if so, there would not be so many letters involved. She prob rcvd an inquiry from your Service Center, which means something made the computer go urp (which you admit). letters are a horrible way of getting things done, and my guess your accountant was explaining things poorly to a low level underpaid & uncaring “paraprofessional”. If things ever get really bad, there’s always Appeals, or Problem resolution/Taxpayer Advocates office.
Kyber: things would get MUCH worse. With the IRS, you actually have RIGHTS, but with your State Tax agaency (out here we call it the Franchise Tax Board), you have damn few.
I recently represented a freind to both IRS & FTB. It took some careful explaining, and a threat to go to Appeals, but the IRS prob was solved with 0 $ owed. The FTB took a “who gives a fuck, prove you are innocent attitude” and she now owes them $700. Note, same issue on both.
Y’know, it’s always interesting to me how many people assume that you can redistribute taxes to those awful corporations, as if that makes the taxes disappear. It disappears only to the extent that that it won’t be specifically enumerated if your humble hide. But the tax will still be paid, and paid by individuals (in other words, you and me). Economically (and I’m oversimplifying things here, but bear with me) there’s really no such thing as taxing an entity. Taxes on corporations are actually paid in one of three ways: 1) by being priced into products, 2) by being priced out of wages, 3) by being priced out of either dividends (old school) or stock price (new school). In all three events, it’s individual human beings who end up paying the tax: consumers, employees and stockholders (whether direct or indirect – an example of the latter is a beneficiary of a pension fund). The difference is that unlike withholding from a paycheck, the taxpayer has no idea up front how much he or she is paying; moreover it’s difficult to even determine exactly what is paid.
People like to perceive of corporate entities as “things,” and in some respects they are. Fundamentally, however, a corporation is owned by people. There are lots of good arguments for eliminating the corporate tax entirely, since it would make the tax system more transparent. The problem, of course, is that the administrative conversion would be a nightmare. Taxes that are assessed directly on individuals would have to increase, and that might happen before the “give-backs” would be visible in the form of lower prices, higher stock prices and higher wages.
Now, the separate question of withholding: you may hate losing $500 from your paycheck (I know I do), but would you really prefer having a big whopping bill at the end of the year? For reasons to complicated to explain, I can’t have my state income taxes withheld, and confronting a large, nasty bill every April is Not Fun. Plus, since the IRS really does understand human nature, the likelihood is that noncompliance would increase enormously, as people would plead that they’d spent what the should’ve been keeping aside for the tax man.
So quit whining and pay yer taxes. Know that there’s waste (there is in the private sector too) but understand that a lot of government is simply doing what the people want it to. It may not be what you or I individually want it too, but that’s the cost of living in a democracy. And to paraphrase Churchill, it’s the worst possible systmem of government, except for all the others.
NO IT WOULD NOT ELIMINATE THE IRS!!! Did you not read the OP, or are you an imbecile?
It might eliminate the 1040, and the federal income tax, but there would still be some federal government agency adding up the revenue generated, and comparing it with the expected revenue (i.e. assets, withholding, etc). And there would probably have to be new state agencies to handle the increased beauracracy at that level, or at least an increase in staffing of the existing state agencies.
Look Irishman.
A) Name calling is unnecessary and uncalled for.
B) The OP does NOT cover the case of taxation being handled in this fashion. It covers flat taxes which is a completely different matter.
C) The proposal was one made by a friend who does not use this BBS. I had asked for responses as to why it was impractical. I would have preferred civil responses. Your point about the additional overhead is noted, but one would expect it to be much less then in the current case where the IRS has to follow up on every single citizen.
I am trying to keep this post out of the BBQ pit, but you are starting to piss me off.
