Submitted 5 months ago by kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
I had the thought of, what happens if millions of Americans just stopped paying taxes as a form of protest? I can’t imagine the IRS could actually handle it.
The IRS courts and attorneys seem to be mostly out of service during the government shutdown. It may just be the attorneys.
I can imagine the IRS could start seizing bank accounts and other assets like they already do for tax violators, but if it got to be a crisis they’d step up their pace.
In today’s climate I can also imagine ICE coming to your door to kidnap whoever they can get their hands on, if you’re a tax violator who posts the wrong kinds of messages on the internet (including brown skinned selfies.)
My hope would be that the IRS would be utterly overwhelmed when 50 million people just stopped paying into the system. It’s not hard to change your tax withholding with your employer.
It might work, the hard part would be getting 50 million people to agree to something so risky at the same time
It’s also not hard for the IRS leadership to direct their agents to skip all that time consuming audit and verification stuff and just start slapping seizures on everybody who owes more than $1000 in presumed tax liability.
Well they should. Taxes are a fee for government services and the people currently aren’t getting all of those services. If your utilities are shut down for a month, you don’t pay. If your government is shut down for over a month, you shouldn’t have to pay.
I definitely do not feel like I’m getting what I paid for.
Especially, when my last check was $2200 and only took home about $1700 and “cash tips shouldn’t be taxed”?!?! But here I am getting taxed so much while these fucks don’t pay taxes, cut our programs, and stop benefits due to this shutdown.
We threw tea into the ocean for less so why are we not OUTRAGED?!?!
The billionaires are way ahead of you
Got a chuckle out of me.
Billionaires should not exist and should be taxed until they are no longer billionaires. I’m not talking 99.99% of being a billionaire either, lol.
Federal tax money doesn’t work like that.
The federal government just invents the money that it issues; your (federal income) tax dollars don’t go into a large account that they pull from or something (although I think that social security does). Federal Taxes are used to control the amount of currency in circulation so that inflation doesn’t become a problem. When used correctly, they should also prevent billionaires from acquiring too much power over society via hoarding of wealth.
This is why we just had no problem coming up with 40 billion for Argentina, or funding ICE as the largest law enforcement agency in America.
So while ideally the taxes will offset the spending to prevent inflation, it doesn’t prevent the government who wants to fuck around from doing anything - they can just do it anyway.
This is different than state and local governments, who have to balance their budget because they cannot issue currency.
And how would I stop paying taxes when it’s automatic?
For payroll tax you can pressure your employer and/or claim an election that’s smaller than is real. For sales tax, you can replace some purchases with barter (and refuse to buy other things).
“Hey HR, can I change my tax election to 0? Thanks!”
Actually, yeah. Just tell her you need to amend your witholding
You need a probably reason to exempt your taxes. Otherwise you will owe the IRS an ass ton of money. I also don’t mind paying taxes as I use the library and postal services regularly
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JA7PH_eUts - This video discusses the idea of tax resistance.
You think they can’t redirect their ludicrous police forces (including ICE) to brutalize millions? Don’t underestimate fascism.
I guess the issue with those types of actions is that it leads to consequences that the people currently in power would be happy with. If people can just stop paying taxes on mass when they don’t like the government it pretty much gives permission for it as a political protest from now on.
I’m not saying that it is definitely a bad idea to give the public a veto on any government policy they don’t like, but it certainly promotes small government. Part of the point of government spending is spending money on things that some people don’t want, whether that’s ‘obamacare’ or the Pentagon. A government that was worried about avoiding any sizable tax strike would never be able to spend money on anyrhing but the most basic and widely accepted expenses. Even “law and order” which is often one of the few roles libertarians support spending on isn’t widely accepted anymore with ‘defund the police’.
Secondly, although part of a strike or protest is about causing disruption as a stick to put pressure on agreeing to demands, part of it is also on performing “costly displays”. Posting memes may raise awareness for an issue, but its unlikely to sway people to your side as literally setting yourself on fire. One is easy, one is horrific, and when someone does something ‘costly’ it let’s people see how much this matters to them. And asking me to not pay my taxes isn’t a big ask, it benefits me (in the short term at least), while with a labour strike you are usually sacrificing pay to make a point, which shows how important it is to you.
General Strike.
Most of the ones most affected by Trump’s cruelty would get something back on their federal tax return, not owe.
And the government would not be able to pay tax refunds during a shutdown.
The people who owe are less affected by Trump’s cruel policies, if they are at all. They will most likely pay to avoid the penalties. (Which ironically won’t fund tax refunds for the poor.)
If you mean like sales tax? So you’re saying you buy an item that is $20, pay with a $20, and refuse to pay the sales tax? That’s stealing. The store still has to pay the sales tax, so, just to use nice round numbers, say the tax is $1. You’ve paid the tax and $19 of the $20 item, so you’ve stolen a dollar from the store. Not the government. It’s a bit more complicated than that. They pay the tax regardless of whether the item sells. Even if the item is straight up stolen. Stores account for this (it’s called “shrink”) in their pricing, actually. So some shoplifting/theft is subsidized by paying customers. But in any case, the tax is paid regardless. Now if the store were to just not pay the tax… well, they wouldn’t. They have more to lose, and again, aren’t affected by Trump’s cruelty.
Now if you mean like states not sending money back to the feds? That’s been threatened, but the federal government also funds a lot of state level stuff, so they’d just withhold more, so there’d be no point to doing so.
If there were a serious threat to the tax system, the IRS would just fix it. That’s all we’ve ever wanted for years. For taxes to make sense, and for there to be no need to file every year because they already know what we make and what we owe — and tax our checks accordingly. Nothing over, nothing under. Maybe slightly over to account for errors, and any runoff goes back into the community. That’s the ideal, anyway.
This is somewhat true for states that take more from the Fed than they receive. But the states threatening this plan are blue states. Also, they could just take what the fed owes them out of the escrow account, and essentially bypass the Fed all together
There has been discussion of using state administered escrow accounts to temporarily hold federal taxes revenue:
MourningDove@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
No taxation without representation. We are NOT being represented.