I don't mind paying taxes.
I mind that I have to /do/ taxes because a bunch of companies lobbied to ban the IRS and financial institutions from just collating the data they already had on me and crunching the numbers.
And then some different ones managed to get themselves made gatekeepers to electronic filing.
@Azure It's not perfect up here in Canada (we still have companies in front of the electronic filing), but we apparently at least have the first part now!
I need to fix my login credentials, but apparently I can tell my tax software how to connect to CRA and pull down all the data they have for me, and auto-fill the forms so all I have to do is review. :O
Fuuutuuuuure.
@Azure I *do* mind paying taxes. The way I see it, it's exactly the same as protection money to a criminal organization.
@lyndsysimon @Azure I guess taxes are a protection racket in the same way that rent is a protection racket.
@lyndsysimon @Azure Sure you can, move to Antarctica, or start a micronation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations
@Azure considering they already know the number you're supposed to hit it's a shame that I have to spend money on a the party program / filling / payment processor to hit that same number.
@Azure When I think about it... it is truly annoying, I agree. The constant pretending by government agencies (and private companies) that they don't already have all the data on you and instead a person is to fill every application again from scratch, even when it's with the same department.
But with every new filling they collect just a little bit more info than the last time too, so that over time, the picture they get about someone is vast and deep, capturing every shade of personality...
@Azure I have always wondered why taxation in the US was so roundabout
@Azure I finally got so fed up with Intuit, I'm sitting here late at night with a paper printout of a 1040 form and a pencil
@Azure I... would rather *not* have the IRS know enough about me to randomly send a bill of collection every year.
Otherwise I'd agree with the absolute hassle that doing taxes happens to be right now. Why can't everything be as simple as, say, TurboTax? Complex tax laws and having people dedicated to filing taxes seems wildly inefficient.
@trwnh In most cases they already /do/. That's why it's so galling to me.
Though I agree tax laws /should/ be simpler. There's lost capacity in people navigating a complex tax code and many deductions are just bad and end up as a de facto transfer from poorer to richer Americans.
@Azure Here in Belgium the tax administration already knows about my income as my employer had to let them know, so I just have to (electronically) sign the pre-filled paperwork using my ID card. I still would have to edit it before submission if the situation was less straightforward though (eg if I had kids, or owned a house that I rented, made tax-deductible donations, earned money abroad, ...) but that's a balance between convenience and privacy that I'm happy with.
@Azure @USBhump I mind that about 50% of my tax dollars goes to financing murder in the middle East while infrastructure around me crumbles and homeless camps and piles of trash spring up everywhere