It’s always talked about in the media as if everyone cares, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a normal person complain.
I care a little bit. I work as a welder and am on the verge of completing a four year apprenticeship. My pay is going to shoot up, so I need to plan to save money for tax day.
Right now I have my employer taking an extra $15 out of each paycheck to give to the IRS. It used to be enough to receive a refund. But these past four years as my pay increased, that refund gets smaller and smaller.
I’m going to have to get my employer to take a bit more out of each paycheck. Tgat way I wont owe anything at the end of the year.
I care more about how little rich people pay more than I care about how much I pay. I also care about my tax dollars being wasted.
DOGE could actually be a good thing if it were actually looking through the functions of government to eliminate redundancies, waste, and leakage.
But nope, it’s run by a man child who uses his idea of economics (which is informed by right-wing memes) to eliminate government programs that actually help people and the economy.
It’s worse than that, it’s a malicious dismantling of government agencies who could stand in the way of capitalists making our lives worse to become richer than anyone has any right to be. It’s not stupidity, it’s a game plan. This is always what the right meant by small government, small so rich have no objectors with power.
I have heard folks distantly related to me talk like the state tax rate was pretty damn important when selecting which part of the United States to move to.
They were the sort of people that would sit ( in their living room in New Zealand ) and watch fox news and go on the engineered logical and emotional weirdcoaster that sort of media offers up. This is some pretty niche viewing for folks in my country.
Did their viewing habits affect their opinion of property taxes?
I’m not sure. They could have been describing that to me, but because the local body funding mechanism we have here is called rates rather than property taxes I could have easily got that confused in with the state tax discussion.
I was kind of astounded that a spreadsheet of tax rates would play a significant part in a decision of where you were going to live.
I’m more or less forced to, how I wish I could pay it just like another bill rather than some complicated guess-and-file game.
I also want the government to give me an itemized list, to a reasonable extent, of where my taxes are going. As a thought exercise, I added “taxation theft” to my yearly budget, which I currently calculate as over a third of my taxes. That’s my best estimate of the taxes I’m paying to bomb innocent civilians halfway across the globe, among other uses I would not approve of.
I wish I lived in a country that takes better care of its taxpayers so I wouldn’t have to care about the tax I pay.
Australia does an itemized list. It’s not very detailed but I appreciate it. The biggest expenses are aged care and health IIRC. Meanwhile everyone is demonizing the unemployed who get a pittance.
Yes. But I don’t complain about it. I do complain about wealthier people and businesses don’t pay taxes like I do.
i never did really care about income and property taxes (including vehicle related taxes), even though they can be a pain in the *ss. i believe they’re a fair share of contribution to society, at least in the capitalist context that we live in. but it bothers me product taxes, especially those levied upon non-processed or low-processed food, medicine, basic hygiene and cleaning, basic clothing and products not produced in your country when said country doesn’t have an industrial policy to encourage the production of these items internally.
Yes, the property taxes in my city are the highest legally allowed and the services we receive are dogshit.
Be mad at the way the collected taxes are spent of course. Paying tax is the cost of living in a community or societies. Unfortunately we as peons don’t get as much control over where it is spent, but definitely should have a say.
As for me, I would rather pay lower taxes and have everyone else pay higher taxes. I vote for higher taxes every time.
Now more than ever, I don’t want to pay taxes except at the state level. If Medicare and social security will go the way of the dodo bird, why should I pay? If federal agencies that make this country a civilized country have been dismantled, why the fuck should I pay? If the military and security apparatus gets bigger yet we lose out on government services that actually benefit the people, why the fuck should I pay?
And I’m at the point where I will cut someone who tells me I HAVE to pay my taxes. Because the only thing keeping me from wilding out in real life and even on the internet is the threat of prison time.
I pay a lot in taxes because I earn a lot. I earn a lot because I work hard and I was lucky (had the right opportunities, enjoyed work that is well compensated by capitalism, etc). I don’t care paying high taxes
I’m right there with you. My luck came a bit later in life, so I had 10 working years of income tax actually paid close to 0% as I made little and had huge student loan debt from an attempt to get a degree.
I finished the degree and 10 yrs into a well compensated career and I’ll gladly pay thousands to the government. The wealthy people that complain about paying their share have zero perspective. They’re basically spoiled brats.
I’ve also lived in a state with lower taxes, and now one with higher taxes. You get what you pay for. I hear people everywhere complain about the roads where they live. Not everyone has had to replace whole wheels due to the stuff that some places are calling roads. Again, zero perspective if you don’t get out and see the world at least a little.
The only time I have ever cared is when I’ve gotten a bonus. The tax rate is much higher on a bonus. I’d much rather my company just pay me $25 more a week than a bonus in December.
It would average out to be the same at the end of the year.
I waive mine into my pension tax free, future me can enjoy it when i’m earning less and thus on a lower tax band
Tax isn’t higher on a bonus. It’s counted as taxable income like the rest.
Edit: Though you might live in a different country to me–I’ve heard some people do
US tax rate isn’t different on bonuses, but the withholding is.
The govt sees you getting paid a shit ton one month and thinks it’s gonna be like that every month from now on so they keep a bunch of extra money so they can be sure you pay your taxes. Then at the end of tax season when you file, you get the extra back in your return.
The bulk of my salary depends on the company I work in and my boss’ decisions
I have a much higher ability and chance to change that, compared to changing the tax system.
Taxes are just a fraction of my salary, and they supposedly also cover for my future pension. Meanwhile, most of my taxes pays for state jobs for essential services, such as schools and healthcare. Others pay for debt interests, for money that was used to invest in the country or pay said services.
Sure, a part of it is bad management and ill intentions, but that’s such a small portion of my salary. Depending where you live, you might be paying some vere generous retirement plans, but most of the retirement money goes to old people who would otherwise require help from their family.
So no, I don’t really care about my taxes. If I feel I don’t have enough money, there are other things I can do than complaining about them
I only cared when I was poor and living paycheck to paycheck.
I think taxes are great, but the rich really need to pull their own weight. The new taxes just fuck over the poor/middle class
As a kid I guess I did, because I was borderline libertarian and something of a prick. But these days I’m older and a little more aware of people who aren’t me, so these days I don’t think about it at all.
I would prefer if rich people paid more, but that has no real bearing on how much I pay.