3 ms·

Hopefully your local civil services are not terribly affected by your dodging of taxes, in case you or someone you care about ever needs them.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
California gets plenty of tax revenue, trust us. We’re reminded of that every paycheck.
- gilrain 6y ago
  How convenient that you're an expert on the resources required to govern one of the top economies in the world. I suppose California should adopt a pay-what-you-want model, given the prevalence of such experts.
  - stinkyball 6y ago
    Why so passive aggressive?
speeder 6y ago
Here in Brazil people think tax is theft, and that avoiding taxes is moral... Problem is, often they are not wrong, there is massive government corruption, and taxes are often used for unethical and wrong things, meanwhile actual services are often paid by the population themselves. For example: my family pay all our business and whatnot taxes correctly, because we don't want to get dragged into a crime spree (if you are avoiding taxes you open yourself to extortion, and from extortion to other crimes...), yet my parents paid my education until I was 18, I paid my own education after that, the street in front of our house, we bought it, literally (was crazy expensive too since our house is in a corner). The phone lines? We also paid for that, when we moved in there was no phone in the neighbourhood, but since we had a business we needed phone, so we paid people to install the cables for us. Deliveries? All done with private companies, the public service is crap. Police? We often pay private security, all times we had to call emergency, it didn't work (in one egregious case: we told the cop someone broken in violently in a neighbour house, the cop replied on the phone, literally: oh sorry, my shift today has few people, and we don't want to risk our lives, so we won't go), fire? Same shit, calling for the firefighters worked ONCE for me, and was because the road itself was on fire, all otehr attempts failed, many they didn't even picked up, my parents house did got damaged because of it (someone tried to burn trash in a field behind the house, it burned our backyard that was full of fruit trees, and burned a neighbour house down, and damaged a ton of other houses). Health? Well, that is one thing that works more or less right... still most of my healthcare I paid for it, the government healthcare is prone to make stupid mistakes and kill people for stupid reasons (for example the hospital nearest my house killed a guy by giving him insulin AFTER he warned them he was allergic, they didn't believed him and though he was some kind of conspiracy anti-vaccer nut and was using allergy as excuse). And the list goes on, and on, and on. Whenever I argue against taxes, people reply with a list of: "Oh, you don't use X?" and then I reply: "Yes, I use it, and pay it as a private service" the only thing I don't pay a private service for, is the military.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Does Brazil even use its military actively? Or is it just a tool to repress the Amazon natives? Guess that's tax wasted too.
xienze 6y ago
Sorry but asking people to pay sales tax on something you bought out of state is just ridiculous to me. There was a transaction between me and state A, not state B. Just because I live in state B doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the sales tax. They were never a party to the transaction, they’re just of the belief that I _would have_ bought it in state B if I didn’t have the option of going to state A. This isn’t a morality issue, it’s the state government being mad that I have options to cut them out of the loop.
- acwan93 6y ago
  To add to that: In California it's gotten so ridiculous that almost every city has its own sales tax [0]. This leads to some mild arbitrage where if I live on the border of LA County, I can go over to any city in Orange/Ventura/San Bernardino County and immediately save 3% off the purchase price. To expect every taxpayer to keep track of where they've purchased items and pay a use tax so that taxes are going to the right places should not be on the burden of the tax payer. I'm a happy taxpayer and willingly will do so to fund our civic services and public goods, but not when the sale never occurred in the area where I purchased the item. People will find and exploit loopholes the minute they are revealed. California (and some other states) have already gotten around this by requiring new cars registered to pay a tax adjustment if it was previously registered from another state. I don't think the state government just has the time or resources to do that for all purchases. [0]: https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa95.pdf https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa95.pdf

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

California gets plenty of tax revenue, trust us. We’re reminded of that every paycheck.

gilrain 6y ago
How convenient that you're an expert on the resources required to govern one of the top economies in the world. I suppose California should adopt a pay-what-you-want model, given the prevalence of such experts.
- stinkyball 6y ago
  Why so passive aggressive?

speeder 6y ago

Here in Brazil people think tax is theft, and that avoiding taxes is moral... Problem is, often they are not wrong, there is massive government corruption, and taxes are often used for unethical and wrong things, meanwhile actual services are often paid by the population themselves. For example: my family pay all our business and whatnot taxes correctly, because we don't want to get dragged into a crime spree (if you are avoiding taxes you open yourself to extortion, and from extortion to other crimes...), yet my parents paid my education until I was 18, I paid my own education after that, the street in front of our house, we bought it, literally (was crazy expensive too since our house is in a corner). The phone lines? We also paid for that, when we moved in there was no phone in the neighbourhood, but since we had a business we needed phone, so we paid people to install the cables for us. Deliveries? All done with private companies, the public service is crap. Police? We often pay private security, all times we had to call emergency, it didn't work (in one egregious case: we told the cop someone broken in violently in a neighbour house, the cop replied on the phone, literally: oh sorry, my shift today has few people, and we don't want to risk our lives, so we won't go), fire? Same shit, calling for the firefighters worked ONCE for me, and was because the road itself was on fire, all otehr attempts failed, many they didn't even picked up, my parents house did got damaged because of it (someone tried to burn trash in a field behind the house, it burned our backyard that was full of fruit trees, and burned a neighbour house down, and damaged a ton of other houses). Health? Well, that is one thing that works more or less right... still most of my healthcare I paid for it, the government healthcare is prone to make stupid mistakes and kill people for stupid reasons (for example the hospital nearest my house killed a guy by giving him insulin AFTER he warned them he was allergic, they didn't believed him and though he was some kind of conspiracy anti-vaccer nut and was using allergy as excuse). And the list goes on, and on, and on. Whenever I argue against taxes, people reply with a list of: "Oh, you don't use X?" and then I reply: "Yes, I use it, and pay it as a private service" the only thing I don't pay a private service for, is the military.

fakedang 6y ago
Does Brazil even use its military actively? Or is it just a tool to repress the Amazon natives? Guess that's tax wasted too.

xienze 6y ago

Sorry but asking people to pay sales tax on something you bought out of state is just ridiculous to me. There was a transaction between me and state A, not state B. Just because I live in state B doesn’t mean they’re entitled to the sales tax. They were never a party to the transaction, they’re just of the belief that I _would have_ bought it in state B if I didn’t have the option of going to state A. This isn’t a morality issue, it’s the state government being mad that I have options to cut them out of the loop.

acwan93 6y ago
To add to that: In California it's gotten so ridiculous that almost every city has its own sales tax [0]. This leads to some mild arbitrage where if I live on the border of LA County, I can go over to any city in Orange/Ventura/San Bernardino County and immediately save 3% off the purchase price. To expect every taxpayer to keep track of where they've purchased items and pay a use tax so that taxes are going to the right places should not be on the burden of the tax payer. I'm a happy taxpayer and willingly will do so to fund our civic services and public goods, but not when the sale never occurred in the area where I purchased the item. People will find and exploit loopholes the minute they are revealed. California (and some other states) have already gotten around this by requiring new cars registered to pay a tax adjustment if it was previously registered from another state. I don't think the state government just has the time or resources to do that for all purchases. [0]: https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa95.pdf https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/formspubs/cdtfa95.pdf