5 ms·

The state is not your adversary. Taxes weren't invented to harass and punish you. This exact type of thinking is why we have this problem.

by id 11y ago

LordKano 11y ago
The state is occasionally my adversary and occasionally my ally. When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. That's your choice. You could also see it as paying your dues, or even as doing your part in maintaining your society. The optimal attitude is probably somewhere between those views. > Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit. Well, that's the point of having a state. It's often a good thing, especially in the examples you mentioned. One of the most important function of a state is to serve as a coordination enforcer - in situations when people, out of their self-interest, would predictably chose something that aggregated over the entire population leads to bad outcomes for everyone, the state is there to alter the incentive landscape and make sure they chose the better thing.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    The reason it's seen as adversarial is probably the same reason that Congress has an approval around 20% or so. It's not the fact that you're giving up money per se, it's the fact that you're giving up money to people you can't stand to do things you're morally opposed to and have no recourse to redress. I'd like it if taxes were earmarked by the people filing their returns. Say that there's a number of categories that you can assign percentages to.. defense, education, etc. An unpopular war? The people withhold defense funding. You get the idea - a lot more representative of the will of the people.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    You could also see it as paying your dues, or even as doing your part in maintaining your society. My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. Well, that's the point of having a state. That is only one point of view. Some people feel the purpose of the state is to protect us from ourselves. I subscribe to the belief that the purpose of the state is to protect us from each other. Namely, if I want to knowingly ingest poison (tobacco, alcohol, heroin or even drain cleaner), it's my decision to make. If someone wants to surreptitiously lace wine with antifreeze and distribute it to others, the purpose of the state is to stop/punish them.
    - Coding_Cat 11y ago
      >My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. You have a legal and a moral duty. Would you say it is moral of Facebook to pay (virtually) no corporation tax in the UK whilst benefiting from things like the NHS providing healthcare for its workers?
      - bprieto 11y ago
        Facebook pays for the NHS healthcare and pensions of all its workers. It's separate from corporation tax, wich goes to fund the UK government. Facebook also collects VAT and pays VAT in every country where it is generated, including UK. And I don't know about UK corporate building taxes, but in Spain every company pays local taxes depending on the size of their buildings. So little corporation tax is quite different from no tax.
      - LordKano 11y ago
        I have no moral duty to provide anything to the government. I have legal duties. Do those employees, who are based in the UK, pay taxes on their income?
    - enraged_camel 11y ago
      >>My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. How much you are obligated to pay is the point of contention. Ideally, everyone pays taxes proportional to the amount of benefit they get from public services, programs and infrastructure, so that those things can be maintained. The issue with tax-dodging is that it sidesteps this moral imperative by taking advantage of a legal loophole.
- ksk 11y ago
  >When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. The fact that you earn anything at all, or that you don't get robbed, or that you have any property rights at all, is a function of the state. I'm sure you consider the state your ally for those reasons. The state would publish a simple tax table, if people just followed it without going into legal word games and battles over verbiage and what the word "income" means. >they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit. The state limits the behavior that they have been elected to limit. Occasionally, such limits get repealed when the citizenry chooses that they no longer wish to have that behavior be controlled.
  - Floegipoky 11y ago
    >> The fact that you earn anything at all, or that you don't get robbed, or that you have any property rights at all, is a function of the state. The reason I earn is because I provide value for my employer. The fact that I don't get robbed, the same reason I have property rights, is a function of my readiness to beat the shit out of anyone stupid enough to try it. The state didn't show up to my job interview, and the state doesn't have my back when I'm walking the city at night. The best the state can do is not screw up my contributions to society or property rights- they are derived from my own self, not some organizational structure that humans came up with so we could survive without learning how to respect each other.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Way too simple. We don't get robbed, mostly, because people are too nice (have been socialized) to not want to rob. Still, its based on our own selves, in a collective way.
    - c22 11y ago
      The state is the reason you only have to worry about getting robbed by entities small enough you could potentially beat them up.
creshal 11y ago
Still, where is the line between "missing deserved tax breaks due to sloppy accounting", and (apparently immoral) "tax dodging"? If the tax laws allow you to not pay taxes by some means (which may or may not be crazily complicated), why shouldn't you use them? Obviously, if these allowances are to the disadvantage of the state (and the society at large), politics should remove them. But blaming the companies for using them in the meantime seems to be barking up the wrong tree to me.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  The difference is in the intent which can be hard to prove.
- lhc- 11y ago
  The companies are mostly responsible for creating them, though. No representative is out there introducing complex tax loopholes that benefit his donors without prompting. Whether or not it is immoral to use those loopholes once they exist, the process of lobbying to create specific loopholes so you don't have to pay anymore seems more clearly unethical to me. You're basically "investing" lobbying money in exchange for a huge RoI in the form of tax breaks.

The state is not your adversary. Taxes weren't invented to harass and punish you. This exact type of thinking is why we have this problem.

by id 11y ago

The state is not your adversary. Taxes weren't invented to harass and punish you. This exact type of thinking is why we have this problem.

LordKano 11y ago

The state is occasionally my adversary and occasionally my ally. When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. That's your choice. You could also see it as paying your dues, or even as doing your part in maintaining your society. The optimal attitude is probably somewhere between those views. > Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit. Well, that's the point of having a state. It's often a good thing, especially in the examples you mentioned. One of the most important function of a state is to serve as a coordination enforcer - in situations when people, out of their self-interest, would predictably chose something that aggregated over the entire population leads to bad outcomes for everyone, the state is there to alter the incentive landscape and make sure they chose the better thing.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  The reason it's seen as adversarial is probably the same reason that Congress has an approval around 20% or so. It's not the fact that you're giving up money per se, it's the fact that you're giving up money to people you can't stand to do things you're morally opposed to and have no recourse to redress. I'd like it if taxes were earmarked by the people filing their returns. Say that there's a number of categories that you can assign percentages to.. defense, education, etc. An unpopular war? The people withhold defense funding. You get the idea - a lot more representative of the will of the people.
- LordKano 11y ago
  You could also see it as paying your dues, or even as doing your part in maintaining your society. My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. Well, that's the point of having a state. That is only one point of view. Some people feel the purpose of the state is to protect us from ourselves. I subscribe to the belief that the purpose of the state is to protect us from each other. Namely, if I want to knowingly ingest poison (tobacco, alcohol, heroin or even drain cleaner), it's my decision to make. If someone wants to surreptitiously lace wine with antifreeze and distribute it to others, the purpose of the state is to stop/punish them.
  - Coding_Cat 11y ago
    >My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. You have a legal and a moral duty. Would you say it is moral of Facebook to pay (virtually) no corporation tax in the UK whilst benefiting from things like the NHS providing healthcare for its workers?
    - bprieto 11y ago
      Facebook pays for the NHS healthcare and pensions of all its workers. It's separate from corporation tax, wich goes to fund the UK government. Facebook also collects VAT and pays VAT in every country where it is generated, including UK. And I don't know about UK corporate building taxes, but in Spain every company pays local taxes depending on the size of their buildings. So little corporation tax is quite different from no tax.
    - LordKano 11y ago
      I have no moral duty to provide anything to the government. I have legal duties. Do those employees, who are based in the UK, pay taxes on their income?
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    >>My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more. How much you are obligated to pay is the point of contention. Ideally, everyone pays taxes proportional to the amount of benefit they get from public services, programs and infrastructure, so that those things can be maintained. The issue with tax-dodging is that it sidesteps this moral imperative by taking advantage of a legal loophole.
ksk 11y ago
>When it comes to the question of how much of the money that I earn must be surrendered to prevent me from going to jail, the state is my adversary. The fact that you earn anything at all, or that you don't get robbed, or that you have any property rights at all, is a function of the state. I'm sure you consider the state your ally for those reasons. The state would publish a simple tax table, if people just followed it without going into legal word games and battles over verbiage and what the word "income" means. >they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit. The state limits the behavior that they have been elected to limit. Occasionally, such limits get repealed when the citizenry chooses that they no longer wish to have that behavior be controlled.
- Floegipoky 11y ago
  >> The fact that you earn anything at all, or that you don't get robbed, or that you have any property rights at all, is a function of the state. The reason I earn is because I provide value for my employer. The fact that I don't get robbed, the same reason I have property rights, is a function of my readiness to beat the shit out of anyone stupid enough to try it. The state didn't show up to my job interview, and the state doesn't have my back when I'm walking the city at night. The best the state can do is not screw up my contributions to society or property rights- they are derived from my own self, not some organizational structure that humans came up with so we could survive without learning how to respect each other.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Way too simple. We don't get robbed, mostly, because people are too nice (have been socialized) to not want to rob. Still, its based on our own selves, in a collective way.
  - c22 11y ago
    The state is the reason you only have to worry about getting robbed by entities small enough you could potentially beat them up.

creshal 11y ago

Still, where is the line between "missing deserved tax breaks due to sloppy accounting", and (apparently immoral) "tax dodging"? If the tax laws allow you to not pay taxes by some means (which may or may not be crazily complicated), why shouldn't you use them? Obviously, if these allowances are to the disadvantage of the state (and the society at large), politics should remove them. But blaming the companies for using them in the meantime seems to be barking up the wrong tree to me.

ThomPete 11y ago
The difference is in the intent which can be hard to prove.
lhc- 11y ago
The companies are mostly responsible for creating them, though. No representative is out there introducing complex tax loopholes that benefit his donors without prompting. Whether or not it is immoral to use those loopholes once they exist, the process of lobbying to create specific loopholes so you don't have to pay anymore seems more clearly unethical to me. You're basically "investing" lobbying money in exchange for a huge RoI in the form of tax breaks.