3 ms·

I tried to make this point in the other thread, so let me take another stab at it here. You say this like it's just a thing that people can do. But the people

I tried to make this point in the other thread, so let me take another stab at it here. You say this like it's just a thing that people can do. But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for error. "Most Americans" is an umbrella that contains mostly service workers. The people that serve you food, bag your groceries, drive your amazon purchases, and so on. If you've spent a lot of time with people like this, I encourage you to ask them "Hey, do you pay someone to do your taxes, or do you do it yourself? Why?" I'm pretty sure the conversation will go "I pay. I just don't want to worry about it." And that "worry" is because they've been hit hard in the wallet, because the (American) government is not friendly when it comes to messing up your taxes. If I am mistaken about this, I would like to know. But this is true of my extended family, and I'm pretty sure it's true for most of their friends.

wolverine876 5y ago
> But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for error. Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are paying "huge fines"? AFAIK, the IRS's audit capacity is greatly underfunded.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though, admittedly. It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many thousands of dollars from you as possible – it was still one of my worst financial decisions of all time. And that wasn't even taxes. The broader point is that "dealing with the government" is a big messy bucket that people usually want to pay a janitorial service to dispose of. Even things like "being reminded to file your taxes right now" is valuable in that situation. Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. They don't learn it in school, and their parents either don't know or didn't bother to teach them.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. That does not at all match my experience, it's widely discussed every year, and I wonder how many returns are late.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Alright. Thanks for the data point. But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't impoverished. I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the fact that you have a stable, fully functional family. Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate. If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle class or higher, then that's an important data point though.
      - astura 5y ago
        Wtf?! I grew up impoverished. Impoverished people talk about tax filing time way, way more than well off people because they need the money (refund) much more. A very pleasant memory of my early childhood was at my aunt's house celebrating her tax refund with her by making strombolis.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        I'm not talking about my family discussions. Just turn on the local news and you'll see them discuss it, including the annual segment about the lines at the post office.
        sillysaurusx 5y ago
        Ah. For what it's worth -- and it's possible I'm living in a bubble, but -- the only family member I know that watches the news is my dad. Everyone else quietly switched to netflix long ago. The news mostly comes from the drama of the day; things that show up on facebook. (The recent Chris Rock drama, and other nonsense like that.) I recently followed CBS on TikTok though, to my surprise. They had some of the best coverage of the Ukraine war I've seen. I even joked to my wife that the circle of life was complete: not only have I never watched the news in years, and not only does my dad have no clue what tiktok is, but now I'm watching the news on tiktok. Thanks for pointing out that the news is sometimes a valuable thing to keep on one's radar.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
This is quite true, even excluding service workers. Every tax season I have conversations with bright, well-to-do, college-educated people who seem to live in terminal fear of the IRS. They're absolutely terrified that if they get one tiny thing wrong during the tax filing process, they will immediately be arrested and shipped off to prison. So they always pay someone to file their taxes, even if they're simple. It's mind-boggling. The irony is that -- as you said -- the IRS hits people of modest income harder, because the IRS doesn't have the resources to take on many battles with wealthy people who can afford lawyers. This means the IRS mostly goes after easy targets who won't fight back. Yet another tax on being poor.
creato 5y ago
What are you actually referring to? In my experience, it takes a pretty serious mistake to get charged a fine (it’s never happened to me despite mistakes). The IRS just charges (fairly reasonable) interest if a mistake results in underpayment. And IIRC, they pay interest to you when you overpay too.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Much of my experience may have been shaped by my experiences with Chicago. I vividly remember how painful it was to have to call them up every month in order to pay them. It was 2016, and I forget exactly what the reason was. But autopay was somehow sufficiently painful to set up that the path of least resistance was to set a reminder in my phone of "Pay taxes to city" and deal with sitting on hold. If it sounds unbelievable, I don't blame you at all. I wouldn't have believed it myself until seeing just how Kafkaesque "dealing with the government" can be. Especially when penalties are involved. For the rest of my family, it's a little awkward to find out. It's mostly on my wife's side; my father was always very fastidious about taxes, as most families of most HN readers probably are. I only wanted to point out that there's a large number of people where this isn't true. I'll try to dig up direct answers for you. Thankfully most of this pain has been not-mine for many years now.
  - creato 5y ago
    I think most of the fear of the IRS comes from rumors like your post. I think in reality, a way to get the “civilized country” (as referred to by another poster) tax experience is just file an incomplete return, the IRS will bill you the correct amount along with a negligible “fee” (interest) a few weeks or months later. Maybe doing this repeatedly would upset the IRS, I don’t know. But it definitely works a few times without issue. That said, I wouldn’t do this on purpose :)
  - semiquaver 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what monthly tax did you pay to Chicago? The city does not levy income or property tax. Most people will only ever pay Chicago sales tax or things like a yearly “city sticker” car license fee. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/...

wolverine876 5y ago

> But the people you're telling to "Just do this" have already been trained to be terrified of the IRS. Many of them are currently paying huge fines due to missing their returns in prior years. Any small mistake can hang you when you're impoverished, precisely because you don't have any room for error. Why do you say that? I've never encountered people who were terrified nor have I read about it. How many people are paying "huge fines"? AFAIK, the IRS's audit capacity is greatly underfunded.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
My wife and her parents. Not her sisters though, admittedly. It's possible that I'm just reacting to a biased sample of people. But my impression was that this is a common mindset for a nontrivial subset of the population. Being afraid of doing something wrong on your government forms isn't really an irrational fear. Anyone who's owned a car in Chicago will tell you that the city's goal is to extract as many thousands of dollars from you as possible – it was still one of my worst financial decisions of all time. And that wasn't even taxes. The broader point is that "dealing with the government" is a big messy bucket that people usually want to pay a janitorial service to dispose of. Even things like "being reminded to file your taxes right now" is valuable in that situation. Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. They don't learn it in school, and their parents either don't know or didn't bother to teach them.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Most people don't have a clue what day they need to file by. That does not at all match my experience, it's widely discussed every year, and I wonder how many returns are late.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Alright. Thanks for the data point. But you left out income. The idea here is that HN users tend to be a biased sample. Most of us aren't impoverished. I would bet that your family's discussions are due to the fact that you have a stable, fully functional family. Most people outside of tech aren't as fortunate. If I'm mistaken about this, and your family isn't middle class or higher, then that's an important data point though.
    - astura 5y ago
      Wtf?! I grew up impoverished. Impoverished people talk about tax filing time way, way more than well off people because they need the money (refund) much more. A very pleasant memory of my early childhood was at my aunt's house celebrating her tax refund with her by making strombolis.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      I'm not talking about my family discussions. Just turn on the local news and you'll see them discuss it, including the annual segment about the lines at the post office.
      - sillysaurusx 5y ago
        Ah. For what it's worth -- and it's possible I'm living in a bubble, but -- the only family member I know that watches the news is my dad. Everyone else quietly switched to netflix long ago. The news mostly comes from the drama of the day; things that show up on facebook. (The recent Chris Rock drama, and other nonsense like that.) I recently followed CBS on TikTok though, to my surprise. They had some of the best coverage of the Ukraine war I've seen. I even joked to my wife that the circle of life was complete: not only have I never watched the news in years, and not only does my dad have no clue what tiktok is, but now I'm watching the news on tiktok. Thanks for pointing out that the news is sometimes a valuable thing to keep on one's radar.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

This is quite true, even excluding service workers. Every tax season I have conversations with bright, well-to-do, college-educated people who seem to live in terminal fear of the IRS. They're absolutely terrified that if they get one tiny thing wrong during the tax filing process, they will immediately be arrested and shipped off to prison. So they always pay someone to file their taxes, even if they're simple. It's mind-boggling. The irony is that -- as you said -- the IRS hits people of modest income harder, because the IRS doesn't have the resources to take on many battles with wealthy people who can afford lawyers. This means the IRS mostly goes after easy targets who won't fight back. Yet another tax on being poor.

creato 5y ago

What are you actually referring to? In my experience, it takes a pretty serious mistake to get charged a fine (it’s never happened to me despite mistakes). The IRS just charges (fairly reasonable) interest if a mistake results in underpayment. And IIRC, they pay interest to you when you overpay too.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
Much of my experience may have been shaped by my experiences with Chicago. I vividly remember how painful it was to have to call them up every month in order to pay them. It was 2016, and I forget exactly what the reason was. But autopay was somehow sufficiently painful to set up that the path of least resistance was to set a reminder in my phone of "Pay taxes to city" and deal with sitting on hold. If it sounds unbelievable, I don't blame you at all. I wouldn't have believed it myself until seeing just how Kafkaesque "dealing with the government" can be. Especially when penalties are involved. For the rest of my family, it's a little awkward to find out. It's mostly on my wife's side; my father was always very fastidious about taxes, as most families of most HN readers probably are. I only wanted to point out that there's a large number of people where this isn't true. I'll try to dig up direct answers for you. Thankfully most of this pain has been not-mine for many years now.
- creato 5y ago
  I think most of the fear of the IRS comes from rumors like your post. I think in reality, a way to get the “civilized country” (as referred to by another poster) tax experience is just file an incomplete return, the IRS will bill you the correct amount along with a negligible “fee” (interest) a few weeks or months later. Maybe doing this repeatedly would upset the IRS, I don’t know. But it definitely works a few times without issue. That said, I wouldn’t do this on purpose :)
- semiquaver 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what monthly tax did you pay to Chicago? The city does not levy income or property tax. Most people will only ever pay Chicago sales tax or things like a yearly “city sticker” car license fee. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/...