5 ms·

The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes. As the article suggests some are just filing incorrectly, what are the real risks an

The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes. As the article suggests some are just filing incorrectly, what are the real risks and consequences of this?

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes What exactly is a fair tax?
- yonaguska 4y ago
  By the founders definitions? At least 90 percent of the taxes we pay are not fair.
  - mellavora 4y ago
    What percentage of the services provided by today's government were not around at the founding? I'd very much like to see government downsize, but if you want to pay taxes at the level at which the country was founded, you also have to restrict government activity to that level. Not sure if that is tenable.
  - dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
    I was thinking more along lines of 100% ... But hey, point taken taken, we are generally in agreement.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  Any tax others have to pay, that I don't.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  No tax is fair. They're all involuntary transactions. The US is the textbook experiment which proves that even minarchy (a minimal government) can't work. All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). Even if that very first government was founded on not collecting very little taxes for this very reason.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). The USA have 330 million citizens and 10 million people without valid residency, in total something around 340 million citizens. The public sector clocks in at 15%, which includes the military and USPS. That is, seriously, not much. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-service-and-the-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
    - hartator 4y ago
      U.S. total public spending is around 40% of the GDP. [1] [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        So what? It's not like that money is lost. It ends all back in the economy because people spend their wages.
        logicchains 4y ago
        Money is just paper. The _value_ is lost; if the government buys itself a banana, that's one less banana available to the people.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      It's sort of like how when developers learn how much they cost the company per hour and they get mad about how they don't get to take more of that home. Well, say you work at a company with 100 developers. That's who's making the stuff. Everybody else is there to make sure the stuff gets made. There's a manager for every 6-8 developers (13-17), and there's a couple managers for those managers. Add in HR and you're already up to about a 25% overhead and we haven't talked about equipment and buildings and customer management and advertising and litigation and taxes and so on and so forth.
- chrischen 3y ago
  Whatever the consensus is.
  - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
    Good, let tax some minority/marginalized section of the society so that their living becomes hell.
ceejayoz 4y ago
> The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes. Unfair because of lack of legislative representation. One can get into a debate over gerrymandering and whatnot, but American voters most certainly aren't an overseas colony under an unelected king/queen anymore. There is non-rebellion recourse available to citizens if they don't like a tax. The newborn country (including President Washington himself at the head of the army) very rapidly demonstrated it wouldn't accept "we don't like the tax" as an argument from represented citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion
taxopinion 4y ago
> As the article suggests some are just filing incorrectly, what are the real risks and consequences of this? Provided you never used an R&D tax credit, none. But if you did, with a huge templated report report about software R&D, you have a verbatim provable record of doing R&D expenses. And those reports, they come from 10 different vendors who all use the same words and formatting. The IRS could easily solve one case and get everyone.
- ilandsman 4y ago
  Just to clear this up, this change is unrelated to if you've taken the R&D credit. You should take it as it slightly helps offset this change, but regardless the calculation applies to dev salaries and costs without regard to if you've actually taken the R&D credit.

The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes. As the article suggests some are just filing incorrectly, what are the real risks and consequences of this?

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes What exactly is a fair tax?

yonaguska 4y ago
By the founders definitions? At least 90 percent of the taxes we pay are not fair.
- mellavora 4y ago
  What percentage of the services provided by today's government were not around at the founding? I'd very much like to see government downsize, but if you want to pay taxes at the level at which the country was founded, you also have to restrict government activity to that level. Not sure if that is tenable.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
  I was thinking more along lines of 100% ... But hey, point taken taken, we are generally in agreement.
olyjohn 4y ago
Any tax others have to pay, that I don't.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
No tax is fair. They're all involuntary transactions. The US is the textbook experiment which proves that even minarchy (a minimal government) can't work. All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). Even if that very first government was founded on not collecting very little taxes for this very reason.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > All form of governments, no matter how small, tend to grow into huge socialist monsters (the usa is the largest employer in the world, second only to China, maybe). The USA have 330 million citizens and 10 million people without valid residency, in total something around 340 million citizens. The public sector clocks in at 15%, which includes the military and USPS. That is, seriously, not much. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-service-and-the-federal-government/ https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-servi...
  - hartator 4y ago
    U.S. total public spending is around 40% of the GDP. [1] [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/...
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      So what? It's not like that money is lost. It ends all back in the economy because people spend their wages.
      - logicchains 4y ago
        Money is just paper. The _value_ is lost; if the government buys itself a banana, that's one less banana available to the people.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    It's sort of like how when developers learn how much they cost the company per hour and they get mad about how they don't get to take more of that home. Well, say you work at a company with 100 developers. That's who's making the stuff. Everybody else is there to make sure the stuff gets made. There's a manager for every 6-8 developers (13-17), and there's a couple managers for those managers. Add in HR and you're already up to about a 25% overhead and we haven't talked about equipment and buildings and customer management and advertising and litigation and taxes and so on and so forth.
chrischen 3y ago
Whatever the consensus is.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  Good, let tax some minority/marginalized section of the society so that their living becomes hell.

ceejayoz 4y ago

> The US was practically founded on principle of refusal to pay unfair taxes. Unfair because of lack of legislative representation. One can get into a debate over gerrymandering and whatnot, but American voters most certainly aren't an overseas colony under an unelected king/queen anymore. There is non-rebellion recourse available to citizens if they don't like a tax. The newborn country (including President Washington himself at the head of the army) very rapidly demonstrated it wouldn't accept "we don't like the tax" as an argument from represented citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Rebellion

taxopinion 4y ago

> As the article suggests some are just filing incorrectly, what are the real risks and consequences of this? Provided you never used an R&D tax credit, none. But if you did, with a huge templated report report about software R&D, you have a verbatim provable record of doing R&D expenses. And those reports, they come from 10 different vendors who all use the same words and formatting. The IRS could easily solve one case and get everyone.

ilandsman 4y ago
Just to clear this up, this change is unrelated to if you've taken the R&D credit. You should take it as it slightly helps offset this change, but regardless the calculation applies to dev salaries and costs without regard to if you've actually taken the R&D credit.