Yup. On one hand the public is so smart that they don’t need regulations, any one of them can read 70 page mortgage documents over night, figure out if this drug is safe, and can evaluate complex financial instruments without the help of the steenkin’ SEC.
On the other they are too dumb to read their pay stubs to figure out how much they paid in taxes.
This is basically a proposal to undo a successful technological improvement.
Why not keep the existing system, but move tax day to the week before Election Day?
There’s not a lot of paperwork at all to make an estimated tax payment and really, anyone could do it if they wanted. Just file exempt at work and make your own estimated payments.
But the people unable to read their check stub to figure out what they’re paying in taxes are probably not going to be good about saving up the money to pay the tax.
Nothing says right wing nuttery like the 5th and 13th amendments.
Nobody forces you to fill out a form once per year, nor to incriminate yourself. Cite.
Of course, if you decide to take advantage of the government service called the free market (as set up by legal codes and enforced by the police), then you gotta pay for the service.
Don’t like it? All together now:
MOVE TO SOMALIA
As for this proposal, I think it’s great, and it should be a central platform of the Republican party at all levels. Imagine:
If I am president/senator/representative/governor, my highest priority will be to make paying taxes more inconvenient for you! Then you’ll realize how much you hate government! Vote Republican!
Seriously, I back this plan 100%.
How do you propose that government constructs the bill you mentioned, then?
Random number generator? I Ching? One size fits all?
When we do our taxes there are tons of private details I don’t have to provide. In fact, about the only thing I really have to give is my W2 ( and 1099s.) If I don’t want gummint to see who I gave donations to, I just don’t need to report them. Purely voluntary! Whatcha kvetchin’ about?
The fifth amendment reads in relevant parts: No person shall be… …compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.
Filing taxes is not a criminal case
You are really stretching when you equate filing out tax returns with involuntary servitude. You lost all credibility when you say things like that. Why not say that forcing me to pay taxes at all is involuntary servitude?:rolleyes:
I realize the collection problems, but I can’t help but going back to the premise that this is nothing that we don’t demand that small businesses do every year. If I tell the government that “oopsies, I spent the money I was supposed to pay you with” then I am in a whole heap of trouble. No human interest stories on the news about poor me. I have to deal with my own lack of planning. The paperwork burden for reporting estimated taxes really is minimal.
I like it for individuals because it reinforces the point that YOU are paying. Not your employer or someone else. It’s YOU writing the check to the government. Sure, you can read your paystub, but that doesn’t show what you owe, it shows what was withheld, and generally you get a refund from that.
Plus a full half of the social security taxes are hidden from your pay stub. You think you pay 6.2 percent? Start a business and see.
I have admitted my bias, but I don’t see the problem with truth in advertising by having people actually write the damn check to hammer the point home. I would also be giddy at the proposal to have people write checks to the individual agency. Tax dollars for the popular programs like federal highways and the like are a pittance compared to social welfare programs. Again, people would be outraged when they are struggling to get by to have to write a check for Obamaphones.
If a program is out there that people write a check for knowing what it is and don’t demand its immediate repeal, then it is likely a good one that should stay. Sort of a self-sequester.
So? We also demand that small business comply with a slew of planning, registration, licensing and regulatory requirements, but that’s hardly an argument for making people who don’t run small businesses comply with similar requirements, invented purely for the purpose of annoying and harrassing them.
Look, this is not difficult to grasp. We make small business report their turnover, income and taxes because this creates less work - much less work - than imposing this requirement on those who provide their income; their customers.
However, when it comes to the income of wage-earners, the converse is true; this is much more efficiently reported and collected if it’s done by employers, not workers.
What you are proposing is that government create and impose on citizens an entirely unnecessary burden not because it will improve the efficiency or effectiveness of the tax system, but because you think, or hope, that it will advance your political objectives.
But, with respect, if you are, as you say, a conservative, you must believe that you have no moral right to do this. It is simply not the proper business of the US government to promote the political objectives of jtgain, still less to impose on citizens for that purpose. It seems to me that if you think you are entitled to advocate this, you must also think that much of the conservative critique of the role of government simply collapses. In which case, what is left of your conservatism?
The problem, in a nutshell, is that you have somehow managed to persuade yourself that your proposal is in any way analogous to “truth in advertising” requirements. It isn’t.
And what is the relevant difference between small businesses and individuals, such that we ask individuals to predict how much they’ll owe in taxes, whereas we ask small businesses to pay according to what they actually owe?
There is a correct answer to this question.
It is pretty close, since refunds are not that big a percentage of tax owed. Your check might not be any more accurate - unless you want people to fill out a 1040 every quarter. Who’d pay for that time lost from our lives?
Good idea - because most of us make more than our paystub says. That Social Security money will come back to us, remember. Anyone self-employed sees it also.
No it is not truth in advertising, it is blatant psychological manipulation. Writing a check does not provide any more information than looking at a pay stub.
Odd how you guys are for cutting federal welfare programs because people will pick up the slack, while at the same time saying that if people had to specially write a check for food stamps they’d rebel. Kind of gives away the true motivation, doesn’t it? The right would also get pissed when we stopped funding the military. JSF? Screw that. But I must admit that the opportunity to take money away from Ted Cruz is appealing.
Obamaphones? You’ve been lied to: ObamaPhones | Snopes.com
Anyway, if you think federal highways would be a pittance, cell phone service for welfare recipients would be a dot on the ‘i’ of pittance.
Again, your plan has a political agenda. If only the great unwashed were as wonderfully well informed as you, then they’d realize how government spending should be slashed. You’re being quite condescending to the wage earner in thinking that the only possible way he can understand what government costs him is to physically write a check. So the wage earner has the convenience of tax withholding that the small business owner doesn’t. So what? You want the freedom of running your own business, then you have the extra burden of making those quarterly payments. Don’t want the hassle? Then don’t run a business.
Well, speaking for myself alone, that’s only one of the myriad reasons I have no interest in being self-employed.
The notion in the OP does present the possibility of a new type of small (or huge) business arising in our information-based economy. For a small fee, you can direct your employer to remit your paycheck to me; I will take care of the necessary record-keeping; withhold what you will be needing for your quarterly tax bill, and either forward the payments on your behalf or return them to you so you may transfer them to the gummint yourself.
I suppose some of the larger employers will make arrangements with an automatic data processing payroll* service to save the employees the hassle. It could be considered part of the compensation/benefits package that employers use to attract and retain the best people.
*Did you see what I did there? 
clapclapclap
I think that the U.S. Government is ALREADY doing what I propose, only in the opposite direction and imposing a pro-tax agenda. By withholding taxes, one doesn’t feel the pain of actually paying them, thereby making the current level of taxation more palatable. Whether we do it the current way or my way, the same amount of taxes are paid.
Do you dispute that, everything else being equal, April 15=payday versus April 15= painful check to the government, that the attitudes towards taxation would remain the same?
Since we would agree that there would be a psychological difference, why do you (the general you) insist on hiding it? I think that you accuse me of proposing what you are already doing.
You’re asking us why we’d want to avoid causing people psychological suffering. Is this seriously a question you have to ask?
:rolleyes: Well what do expect, an anti-tax agenda? The government needs taxes to exist. No taxes means no government which means no civilization.
And? “Let’s make a necessity of life more painful” isn’t a desirable agenda. Getting rid of taxes is not an option, no matter how painful you make paying them.