463
IRS braces for $500bn drop in revenue as taxpayers skip filings in wake of DOGE cuts
(www.independent.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
463 points (100.0% liked)
Economics
914 readers
10 users here now
founded 2 years ago
So you enjoy killing people. Got you. Because that's what your tax money is used for. To fund wars halfway across the globe. For people you've never met and who have caused you no harm.
What a disingenuous take. Surely you can see how no one's going to take that message seriously, and no one will be convinced?
Taxes also pay for health care, roads, libraries, arts, and countless other things. Do you hate health care, roads, libraries, and art? I mean, maybe, but I wouldn't be confident about guessing that based solely on your position on taxation.
None of this is supporting your initial claim of "taxation is theft"
Oh yes, because the United States has such great healthcare that a CEO was shot in broad daylight on the streets of New York. But a couple of months ago. As for roads and libraries and such, that's what state taxes are for. Mind you, I somewhat disagree with state taxation as well, but at least state taxation benefits you directly.
You have an issue with capitalism not taxation and that's ignoring the fact that if we reverted back to pre 1940 tax schemes we would be taking in more money and only the richest people in America would pay a dime.
Cut 99% of the government, and you could accomplish that. If nothing else, you could always eliminate the income tax and put consumption taxes on goods besides groceries and housing. An income tax disincentivizes making more income, but a consumption tax would disincentivize needless consumption.
Are you Elon Musk? Because "cut 99% of the government" is the kind of uninformed ass-pull I would epxect from him.
Consumption taxes on goods is extremely regressive. That will tremendously impact the poor.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Oh yes, because eliminating groceries and housing from the consumption tax hurts the poor so badly because the poor need to buy five cars and ten yachts, etc.
I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. No one is talking about poor people buying five cars and yachts. I'm talking about how when you're poor, and you're trying to make what little you have cover (for example) clothing, paying $10 in taxes is a bigger portion, and thus hurts more, than if you were rich and had to pay the same tax.
Do you know how money works? How the more money you have, the less each dollar matters?
What I'm attempting to say, and apparently not getting across properly, is that if the common day-to-day items that you need to live your life are exempt from the consumption tax, then the poor people would never have to pay it.
If food was exempt from the consumption tax, then nobody would have to pay the consumption tax, because everybody eats food. Both rich and poor people.
Another example would be shirts. How many new shirts does the average person need per year? Set the consumption tax to apply to any purchase of shirts more frequently than that. If a person needs two shirts per year, then those two shirts would not be taxed, and the third shirt and beyond would be. So you still get shirts, and you don't have to pay the tax.
You need a new car, say once every 10 years, and you can buy one car every 10 years without getting the consumption tax. But if you want more than one car in that time frame, then you pay the consumption tax, etc.
Mind you, this is if we agree that taxation is needed at all, anyway.
And who would exactly make sure that you are not going over the amount of shirts to dodge the consumption tax? With no IRS and without 99% of the government I assume nobody???
Ok, I kind of get what you're going for, but that's still a very regressive taxation model. Assuming we could reach some consensus on "taxation has a place in government", in my opinion you want to tax people who can better afford it. This is why flat taxes kind of suck.
Like let's say we did a flat 10% tax of money. Someone who makes $10,000 pays $1000, and is left with $9000. Barely enough to live on. Someone who makes $1,000,000 pays $100,000 and is left with $900,000, which is a shit load of money. This is why progressive taxation is more popular. We say, don't tax the first $10,000 at all, then tax stuff from like $10,001 to $100,000 at 10%, then $100,001 to $500,000 at 20%, and everything above that at 50%. (Numbers made up). Now people who have a lot of money pay more, and the cost of being rich scales.
We don't really want very wealthy people. We don't want money and power to consolidate in the hands of a few people. We want a flatter distribution of wealth. Now you have more people living life, having ideas, making inventions and art. If you put all the money in the hands of a few, and everyone else struggles to meet their basic needs, your society isn't going to thrive.
Taxing what people purchase would be regressive, because there's a certain floor for what everyone needs to buy. Some rich guy just isn't buying so much more stuff that it's going to work out.
The progressive tax, as you have more money, is clearly working. Because Elon Musk exists, and Jeff Bezos exists. If it was truly working properly, these types of people would not exist. The idea appears to make sense, but we're living it and it's not working.
Progressive taxation has been systematically attacked by conservatives for years. That's why you see people saying we should make the top marginal tax rate back to 90% like it was in the 60s. https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
You also need to address problems like stepped-up-basis, and buy-borrow-die strategies. I think there are also unpatched problems with corporate income, but I'm less familiar with the details there.
This is a complicated and storied part of humanity. I really recommend reading more about it.
You're like 70 percent water, can we remove that and expect you to function?
That's kind of the point. We don't need a functional government because we don't need government at all. Governments want us to think we need them when we do not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ0Qkhnt6bQ
That's immensely dumb and highlights a basic misunderstanding of government.
That is irrelevant to your claim of "Taxation is theft". Taxes pay for programs like medicare, medicaid, and social security, which are extremely popular.
Pushing stuff down to the state level makes coordination difficult, some projects impossible, and again is irrelevant to your argument that taxation is theft
That's just an argument that the military budget should be dramatically reduced (absolutely agree!), not that taxation is a problem in general.
Can't fund the military without taxation. If you told citizens to donate to support a war effort halfway across the globe that has no impact on their daily lives, they'd be absolutely certain to do it. /s. Now, coerce them with the threat of being thrown in a cage, or at the barrel of a gun, and that's different.
Yes, but you CAN have taxation without funding the military. You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I don't think taxation is the only way to do this, but you do need some kind of process for ensuring common social services and infrastructure exist and are maintained. Taxation is what we have now. How would you support those services without it?
If you absolutely must have taxation, then have state taxation. Because I don't see the state of Texas declaring war on Pakistan.
How would you fund federal services?
Seems to me the problem isn't taxation, it's the process for deciding how that government spending is distributed..
You can't fix that problem. The fact that there is a big pile of money there means that greedy people will attempt to get their hands on it. No matter what. So the only way to fix that is to not have the big pile of money sitting there to begin with.
So... you think that: a) you can't change the way government spends money, but b) you can change the way government receives money?
That's an interesting world view.
Don't give the government money at all.
Get off the internet, it was started because of government funding. Don't drive on roads, government funding. Don't use gas or a car, or helmets or drink water, or take any medicine. You can't wear clothes you didn't make yourself, don't live in a house that was built to code. Forget gfic outlets. Electronics that meet safety regs? Get rid of them. You better not have an up to date Electrical box either. Food safety? More government overreach funded by taxes. Those wastages.
Not in my country. What? You forgot the USA wasn't the only country in the world?
It seems like you have a problem with capitalism, not with the concept of taxes.