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> instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government knows everything about us that they could do it for us They cannot do everyone's taxes since
by II2II 2y ago
> instead of asking why do we need to do taxes when the government knows everything about us that they could do it for us
They cannot do everyone's taxes since what they know about many individuals is incomplete.
> should we really have that little privacy?
Put that way, the answer is no. On the other hand, virtually everyone demands services from their government and very few people want those services to be transactional (e.g. most people demand roads, few people want to pay based upon their usage of those roads). That means the government needs some form of revenue. For various reasons, it has been decided that a person's income should be a portion of those revenues. In order to ensure that people are paying their dues, the government needs to collect some information. Are there other ways the government could get revenues? Sure, but all of them are going to be problematic in some form or other.
> Of course, those ideas, liberty and privacy, small government, etc., isn't really fashionable with the latest generations and most people would gladly give up their freedom and privacy to save having to fill out some paperwork.
One has to be careful about generalizations. Even though a desire for liberty and privacy may be universally appealing, we would find that people's views on what those terms mean varies from generation to generation and from individual to individual. Note that I said the meaning changes, not a person's desire for it. As for the desire for small government, well, some people want small government and other people don't. It is a far less universal ideal.
- lesuorac 2y ago> For various reasons, it has been decided that a person's income should be a portion of those revenues. In order to ensure that people are paying their dues, the government needs to collect some information. Are there other ways the government could get revenues? Sure, but all of them are going to be problematic in some form or other. No, just a singular reason: Prohibition.
- superb_dev 2y agoTaxes existed before prohibition, right?
- Turing_Machine 2y agoSure, but before that most taxes were in the form of excise taxes and import duties, at least in the US. Alcohol taxes were a big portion of that. When the prohibition amendment was enacted in 1919, that money went away -- in theory because people were no longer purchasing alcohol, in reality because they were purchasing untaxed bootleg alcohol. The effect was the same: a big hole in Uncle Sam's revenue stream. Enter the shiny new income tax, passed just a few years before (1916). This had been sold to the public using Bernie Sanders-style "millionaires and billionaires" rhetoric, but, as is the inevitable way with such things, it was soon being applied to thousandaires and hundredaires. :-)
- derangedHorse 2y ago> since what they know about many individuals is incomplete No, for most individuals it is complete. Most people don’t own stocks directly (only an estimated 21% do)[1], and the ones who don’t are not probable to deal with complexly taxable transactions as the norm. [1] https://www.axios.com/2023/10/18/percentage-americans-own-stock-market-investing https://www.axios.com/2023/10/18/percentage-americans-own-st...
- voussoir 2y agoYour comment is phrased as a disagreement, but it's not. The GP post said the IRS can't do everyone's taxes, and you replied that they can do most. I think we're all on the same page that people would benefit from having available information autofilled while still having the opportunity to review and make corrections as needed.
- jjav 2y ago> They cannot do everyone's taxes since what they know about many individuals is incomplete. For the vast majority of people they have all the info needed. Hardly anyone can take any deductions other than the standard deduction anymore, so that's covered. For income, most people have W-2 jobs so that's covered and all financial institutions send 1099s to the IRS with all your interest, dividend and stock transactions so that's covered too.