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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

Filing taxes is good because it’s a reminder you pay taxes. Everyone who earns money should gave to go through this if only to remind you to hold government accountable. It’s not that taxes are bad, but that they should be justified.

A government that just does them for you might sound nice but in the end just makes people even more complacent and subdued. Every tax paying person should be conscious of this. A paycheck withholdings isn’t enough. It’s internalized too much. The yearly reckoning (and massive bill in a year you managed to have sone luck) is a great bit of clear headedness.

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"This annoyance which could be avoided by automation is necessary because suffering is good" is, to me, a very weak argument. I can look at my weekly paycheck to see taxes. If the IRS sent people a summary of their taxes with an option for amendments, people would see their taxes.

While this may be frowned on by HN rules, I don't believe any politician ever believed this rhetoric. At "best," they want to exacerbate the pain of taxes. It's the difference between pointing to a wound and shoving a finger in it.

You still have to pay your taxes, including writing a check or getting a return at the end of the process. This just cuts out the billions of wasted hours of busywork along with the billions of dollars spent on unnecessary tax prep.

Plus, most people end up with a return, and many think they are getting money back from the government. Doesn't that counter your reminder/pain of actually filling out the forms?

No because the day will come when each individual is not getting a return. I have more than a couple friends that were very pro taxes until the day came they were real payers. Their attitudes changed very quickly.

Okay, did they change their attitudes because they owed money or because they spent 20 hours filing their taxes?

My attitude changed a lot more once I had a kid. I was never a big tax fan, but once you have a kid and realize

1) You pay the daycare

2) You pay the birth

3) You pay the food

4) You pay the healthcare

....

basically the list goes on, and all along society tells you to get fucked. Society isn't there unless maybe you let your kid walk alone to the park so they can have the slightest shred of confidence and then they arrest you for "neglect." It's not "we're a society we'll work together" -- no its "on your own you dumb fucker, by the way dont abort or you'll be in jail for murder." As soon as you raise the kid, suddenly society says "Look we need to take 30% of the kids stuff, including for retirement of everyone else" no matter that society straight up told you to get fucked for the costs of raising the child up to become someone who can pay the taxes.

It's that way with everything in the US. We pour money straight into Israel and get nothing in return. Blow up brown kids with drones only to have the world hate us.

Taxes are theft. I'd rather live with McScrooge evilCo that requires a toll every time I enter the road than this fucking dystopia where my tax money goes to blowing up innocent people around the world and the world's highest prison rate.

Sounds less of a reason not to have taxes and more of a reason not to have kids

Ok, but this thread isn't about the actual value of the taxes. This is just about the waste of time that is filing taxes.

This is a fine example of the slippery-slope fallacy.

Ugh, not this nonsense again.

I am not interested in increasing my annoyance and expenses around tax preparation just because some people might -- might! -- be too lazy or complacent to read over an automatically-prepared tax return in order to make sure everything is in order.

I "internalize" my tax burden just fine on my own, thank you. I also suspect that the number of people in the US who look at their tax return and then go and "hold government accountable" is a number approaching zero.

It's really an amazing coup that the tax-prep industry has managed to convince a lot of people that they are stupid, lazy, and complacent, and it's their patriotic duty to suffer and waste time and money in order to make up for it.

Find a new, better argument than this tired old trope.

I'm pretty sure I would still manage to be reminded that I pay taxes if the government sent me a bill.

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