[Lurkynerd]

Great, let's nickle and dime the single mother selling arts and crafts on Etsy while the mega corps get away with billions.

This was buried in the same legislation supposedly drafted to help the poor. But of course, the fattest handouts were all to big banks and the rest of too big to fail corporate America.

[ahallock]

Income tax was supposed to be temporary. It shouldn't even apply to people making under a certain amount because they have very little disposable income. The first say 50k, probably more, is eaten up pretty quickly by expenses. That's why so many people take out massive loans and go into credit card debt. I honestly think taxes like this are meant to subjugate what's left of the middle class and keep them from gaining financial traction.

[whimsicalism]

61% of Americans paid no federal income tax in 2020.

[gruez]

>Nearly 61% of U.S households paid no federal income taxes during pandemic-stricken year of 2020, because of declines in income and boosts to government subsidies that wiped away tax liabilities, according to data from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/u-s-house...

In other words, it's a one-off. Failing to mention that is highly misleading.

[legobmw99]

43.6% in 2019 for anyone curious like me

Source with both numbers: https://taxfoundation.org/us-households-paying-no-income-tax...

[cma]

It looks like they are including Puerto Rico (no federal income taxes)?

[stjohnswarts]

thanks you saved me from having to go look that up. Notice the person who posted that didn't also post how much of the wealth and revenue went to the upper 39% lol.

[pessimizer]

What percentage of those paid no payroll taxes?

[tata71]

Figures don't lie,

but liars can figure.

[tmaly]

16th amendment grants the government the power to directly tax natural persons. The only true way to make something temporary is to revoke said power.

[bumby]

>Income tax was supposed to be temporary.

Yes. But when it was temporary there were also very little in terms of federal social programs that people have become quite fond of. Do you propose we get rid of those safety programs along with the income taxes that help pay for them?

[chroem-]

Unpopular opinion: it's not a social safety net if people stay on it as a lifestyle.

[woodruffw]

I'll take the even more aggressive tack than the other people who have replied to you: it actually is still a social safety net. Even people who (supposedly) bilk social safety programs have dependents, and those dependents do not deserve privation because you disapprove of their guardian's behavior.

Have a little perspective and focus your ire on our ridiculous military budget (which is also a welfare program, mind you) instead.

[yardie]

Great, let's get those people off of it. Any company that doesn't pay their employees a living wage should have their taxes balloon to offset that safety net.

[bumby]

I think we disagree on the definition of social safety net. Social safety nets “improve lives of vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution.” Sure, temporary assistance is a subset, but duration isn’t part of the definition. For example, pensions are part of the social safety net as is social security. Both (in theory) continue in perpetuity to fund ones “lifestyle”

[kevingadd]

I think "people who stay on it as a lifestyle" (how many is that, really?) are far less of a concern than the people who are stuck on it because even working 2-3 jobs isn't enough to climb out of poverty. Kroger and Walmart employees rely heavily on the social safety net, for example, and some of them are even homeless despite working (https://www.businessinsider.com/1-in-7-kroger-workers-homele...)

[chefkoch]

the good old welfare queen argument?

[throwaway0a5e]

Welfare queens are a rounding error. Manufacturing a persistent underclass is the problem.

There are tons of potentially productive members of society languishing because if they made any serious progress toward improving their lives they'd lose their benefits. The outcomes for children born into such households are... not great.

[beamatronic]

God forbid, we help 10 truly needful people at the cost of 1 person taking advantage.

[genewitch]

Disallowing corporations from putting their earnings in off shore banks and then taking low interest loans to pay for stuff in the US against their off-shore holdings. As an example.

I.e. close all tax loopholes, and make the tax code more sensible, so that you're not forced to cheat or end up uncompetitive.

[cwkoss]

How much revenue is raised from income taxes on people making <$50k?

Napkin math, I'd guess avg $5k from 100m people. Are we really collecting half a trillion dollars a year from people earning subsistence wages?

[bumby]

I think you’re misunderstanding my post.

I’m not saying it come tax is oppressing lower socioeconomic classes or that they disproportionately pay into it.

My point is the opposite. The income tax system helps those classes by funding social programs and we would either need to pare back those programs or find alternative ways of funding them

[cwkoss]

I started writing my comment with the assumption that low income earners weren't paying that much in taxes, then napkin math pointed that they may be paying an order magnitude more than my expectation. Is my napkin math accurate?

[bumby]

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have time later today to look for research on the topic. I believe it’s the typical case that low income earners pay less (in federal tax, at least) as that’s the point of a progressive tax structure

[conductr]

> people making under a certain amount because they have very little disposable income

Then let them file and report it and pay no taxes like the current system intends

[tinalumfoil]

Reminds me this Parks and Recs quote:

> Whatever happened to “Hey, I have some apples, would you like to buy them?” “Yes, thank you!” That’s as complicated as it should be to open a business in this country.

With sympathies to Ron Swanson though, I don't think it can really be that simple.

[rmah]

In America today, for many types of businesses, it's still that simple. You can open a sole proprietorship business with zero paperwork and no permission from anyone. You're not required to incorporate. You're not required to have a separate bank account.

Now, if you're selling apples (and other foods), you may have to deal with health code regulations. If you open a dentist office, you'll probably fall under other regulations. You can argue if those regulations are too heavy or not.

But many products/services in do not have many (if any) regulations governing them in most states/municipalities in the US. Just say you're in business and voila, you are.

[ultrarunner]

I think this greatly oversimplifies the situation. If you find that people love your apples and are buying them too quickly, you might want to tell a friend you'll that if they'll help you sell your apples you'll give them some of the money. You've now incurred numerous tax obligations, requiring an EIN, PRWORA reporting, worker's compensation, citizenship requirements, required benefits, time tracking for overtime compliance (depending on FLSA designation), insurance obligations, and probably several other steps I'm missing (occupational licensing is a big one; let's hope your apples aren't really hair cuts).

Do all these requirements protect people from their employers? Well… maybe kind of. But no, in most circumstances you can't simply start interacting with other people without a lot of red tape.

[tata71]

Move outside the 100 mile from the border zone, and find out just how sustainable it is.

[vmception]

As someone that has to file my own 1099s to people I pay, I feel this routine nickle and dimes me more than this new thing, since its so punitive to do and wastes my time.

This new thing is just the payment processors filing their own that just gives the IRS insight into which tax filings to match up.

A single mother selling arts and crafts already had to report earnings. Reporting doesn't mean there is a tax due. The single mother likely has many tax deductions possible just like the mega corps do.

[JaakkoP]

You might want to look into tools like Wingspan to save up some time with the 1099s. Even Gusto's contractor plan might work depending on your use-case.

[vmception]

That looks pretty cool, I like the "invite your CPA" option on wingspan. I have a couple entities though, for now I think I can manage it. Its just 3-10 1099's a year.

Gusto Contractor plan does look good. Just the right price.

[LinuxBender]

I probably should not compare a country to a company, but when a company starts getting more aggressive with debt collection that is sometimes a sign that the company is in trouble financially. Could that be the case here or is that just wild speculation on my part?

Or is another possibility that these institutions are positioning themselves to become actual banks with their own ATMs so that one could entirely bypass the reporting that banks do for the IRS? Can people extract money from these institutions without interfacing with a bank throughout the transaction?

[genewitch]

A decade and a half ago there were Paypal debit cards, where if you sold something on eBay via PayPal you could spend the PayPal balance without ever transferring it out. I don't use it anymore with an account so I am unsure if this is still the case.

[thehappypm]

I mean.. you’re advocating for people to not pay their taxes. A million small Etsy shops is a ton of money. Shouldn’t state and federal taxes apply?

[ahallock]

The taxes aren't just. The state blows trillions on wars, foreign aid, etc so I think there's a spending problem. Maybe if they could reign their spending, we could let people keep more of their money. Instead people take out loans and go into debt to keep up. And then we tell them to be austere (no smart phone for you, skip the coffee, etc) while the state spends with wild abandon.

[adventured]

The primary cost center for the US Government - and a rapidly expanding one - are entitlements, not wars and certainly not the tiny foreign aid budget (and of course the US should not repeat the mistakes of Iraq / Afghanistan).

Entitlement costs already dwarf defense spending, and it's going to get a lot more dramatic over the next 20 years.

Entitlement costs aka the people getting money.

> Instead people take out loans and go into debt to keep up

Well that certainly depends on who you're talking about. US households at the median and above are in decent debt shape, including debt interest expenses in relation to household disposable income. The payday loan context trap for the working poor is still every bit as bad as it has ever been.

The biggest household financial threat right now are real consumer prices - including rent/housing, education, energy - rising considerably faster than wages.

[jackson1442]

edit: I was mistaken, see below for corrections

~~https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/presidents_fy_2...

the military budget is 50% of the US budget for FY22

[throwawayboise]

That's misleading, that's showing 50% of discretionary spending. Defense is not even 20% of total spending.

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend...

[wrs]

50% of the discretionary budget. Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) are 65% of the budget. The full budget is about $6 trillion.

[thehappypm]

This is a huge tangent and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

[genewitch]

I think it's completely relevant, and it should always be pointed out that humans are suffering because of our tax dollars.

[beamatronic]

Correction: VOTERS are suffering because of their own voting choices.

[cwkoss]

Correction: VOTERS are suffering because their choices are no longer meaningful.

(Two party system is broken and neither does a good job of serving the interests of their voters. "Vote harder" isn't practically effective and displaces blame to the victims. Ineffective, selfish and corrupt leaders have captured the majority of political positions, and until we get rid of them change is impossible.)

[jackson1442]

I am anti-military and vote to reflect that position. Last I checked, my tax dollars are still going towards the 700B+ military budget. How is this a consequence of my own voting choices?

[yboris]

Foreign aid is an absolutely minuscule amount of the US budget and should be increased. I'm disappointed you're uttering concern over foreign aid in the same sentence as wars ("defense" budget).

[pessimizer]

It's also not charity. It's 1) used as diplomacy, and 2) earmarked to purchase from US companies.

[wincy]

So I should pay money to foreign countries and foreign wars under threat of violence, if I don’t pay I will have my assets seized or even go to prison? We’re 30 trillion dollars in debt and still think this is a good idea?

[edmundsauto]

The money paid to foreign countries is economic diplomacy, and is inexpensive compared to actual military diplomacy. A good part of the reason you are able to earn what you do is because of the US' might in both economic and military influence.

I agree that the military budget is problematic, but it's short sighted to spend too much time worrying about foreign aid. It's a very cheap way to wield influence.

[yboris]

In 1970 countries agreed to give at least 0.7% of GNI [0] and the US has been giving severely less than that for decades: only 0.17%

[0] - https://www.oecd.org/development/stats/the07odagnitarget-ahi...

[1] - https://w3.unece.org/SDG/en/Indicator?id=72

[adventured]

> In 1970 countries agreed to give at least 0.7% of GNI [0] and the US has been giving severely less than that for decades

The US and nearly everybody else. The biggest exceptions most recently? Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway. Gee, I just can't figure out why the US doesn't match Norway (or other tiny hyper affluent European nations) on such a matter. The only real exceptional outcomes in that list are Britain and Germany, and France to a lesser degree - outside of that the entire world is largely failing badly at that supposed test.

Meanwhile during that time the US supplied nearly half the world's food aid, while only representing 4%-5% of its population. A tradition of food aid going back more than a century now.

For example:

"The U.S. contributed $3.4 billion to WFP [UN World Food Program] in 2019, which was 42% of all contributions last year." - from the UN WFP homepage. And that's just to one entity.

Globally at present the US is supplying around 40% of the world's food aid all by itself (the number used to be slightly higher in the past and I think the US should do more, however that's still astounding coming from one nation).

You know what the US should do? It should pull its military entirely out of Europe and Asia, and let Russia and China run wild (they'd promptly conquer and pillage like it was the 1930s all over again). North Korea would be in South Korea before the final US troops were out of Asia; South Korea would cease to exist as we know it today within a decade. Then we should cut that related defense spending, and redirect that former defense expenditure to meeting that 0.7% GNI target (and helping the people ravaged by the inevitable large wars, which is how we used to approach the problem circa the WW1 & WW2 eras).

[Domenic_S]

> A million small Etsy shops is a ton of money.

Sure, but this accepts the premise that a million small Etsy shops are worth the government's time, which protects the 0.1%, which is why this argument exists. To quote one of my favorite blog series:

> When they talk about raising taxes on the rich, why do they pick a "low" point and push it higher? Should the highest rates be at $250k/yr? $300k? Another way of doing it, which is precisely why they cannot do it, is start at the top and move down. "We need $1T. Ok, top five guys pay 90%. Not enough? How about top ten guys pay 90%. Not enough? Top...." I'm not advocating this or any other policy, not my place, I am pointing out that doing it the way it's done protects the 1% by letting [everyone else] act as human shields. They take the bullets, the unknown mega-rich take tinted window rides to the Hamptons. During those tumultuous 80 seconds of OWS [...] the majority of the personal attacks were against people who made <$300k, not >$50M. It's easy to hate, and so the media nudges you in the wrong direction.

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_sta...

[telxosser]

Is the single mother selling arts and crafts outside of society then?

If anything this is the problem. No one thinks they should pay any taxes. Everyone basically wants to free roll the structures built from taxes without paying anything.

I am hardly rich but I gladly pay taxes. I would prefer to pay less but that is the reason I vote.

If you want to blow it all up then I think the counter to that is Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.

I even might gain personally in that world but overall it is a miserable world to live at the systems level. It is better to just pay taxes.

[genewitch]

Is apple part of society? How much have they paid in US taxes?

[bdcravens]

Those taxes already existed.

[bumby]

The existed, but some had different thresholds for reporting that may not be trivial for small businesses.

1099-K threshold in 2021: $20,000+ AND 200+ transactions

1099-K threshold in 2022: $600

[lotsofpulp]

What is not trivial for small businesses? They do not have to do the reporting. They are liable for the same amount of taxes they were prior to the reporting requirement update.

[bumby]

I meant the overhead in accounting, paperwork etc. I would argue the "tax burden" goes beyond just the financial to also include the paperwork etc.

For a person on the cusp, making a $600 a year may help. Now, erode that with the additional costs of filing (both financial and time) can make it no longer worthwhile.

[gamblor956]

You do understand, that this doesn't increase the accounting and paperwork required for the Etsy seller?

The requirement is for Etsy to provide the 1099 to report income that the Etsy seller already should have been reporting on their income tax return (hopefully along with corresponding expenses to offset that income).

In fact, the whole point of this requirement is to make it easier for small sellers to properly report their income to the I.R.S., because now they don't have to dig through a year's worth of receipts to figure out how much they made from what source.

[bumby]

Thank you, I think I was thrown off by the whole “mom-and-pop” debate and your comment makes much more sense.

[lotsofpulp]

Do you have an alternative proposal to implementing income taxes then? Other than having the government have a record of every single transaction for everyone and automatically sending everyone with less than $x of incoming transactions a letter stating they do not owe income tax, I do not see a fair way of making sure people pay their taxes without having reporting and filing requirements.

The alternative is that the person that goes and gets a W-2 job for $600 has a mechanism which forces them to pay taxes, but the person that does odd jobs and gets paid here and there via an app has no mechanism to force them to pay taxes. How is that fair?

[rhino369]

It gets taxed the same as a single mom who works at Kroger during the pandemic.

If you want to lower the taxes on single moms, increase child credits and raise the 0% tax rate bracket to cover higher incomes. Simple. If there are tax reporting issues that make it hard for side-hustle self proprietors to claim real expenses, which could be the case, let us fix it.

But not reporting this income just because it was on a payment processor is just helping people cheating their taxes regardless of income level. That's not okay just because some of them are single moms.

[iMerNibor]

> while the mega corps get away with billions.

The difference here is that megacorps use legal loopholes (and pay accountants and lawyers plenty of money to find those loopholes and make sure they are allowed) to avoid paying tax while the single mother probably thinks she can get away with not doing it while she may be obligated to

You can't go after companies for follwing the law, you'd have to change the law first.. which I don't see happening personally

Edit: Don't get me wrong - I'm all for making things easier for small businesses to enable them to grow

[_fat_santa]

You are correct. The anger over this isn't about any details. We know that these large corps are following the rules, just using loopholes and such to lower their tax burden. The anger is over the fact that it's clear the government needs money because of the spending, so rather than going after the big multi-billion dollar companies that should be paying way more in tax, they are instead going after the low hanging fruit.

[Domenic_S]

"Loophole" implies that these strategies are meant to circumvent the explicit purpose of the law, but these tax breaks are intended. There is no such thing as "closing a loophole", only purposefully and meaningfully deciding that raising tax on corporations is a thing to do.

[efdee]

It's easier to take one dollar from a million people/companies than a million dollars from one person/company.

[cwkoss]

Is it? Seems like taking $1 from a million people would cost $.50+/person in administrative costs.

[CalRobert]

Often they're not just finding the loopholes, they're making them.

[max_]

Yes. Features, not bugs.

[pessimizer]

Mom and Pop Etsy shops don't get to write the law. Companies that buy up 10,000 Etsy shops get to write the law.

[emptybottle]

I'm more concerned with being double-taxed for splitting bills, then seeing small businesses receive 1099s for payments received through one of these systems.

What bothers me is cases where people are taxed when being paid back for things like dinner out, or splitting a vacation rental. That income was already taxed. Using e.g. venmo to split the bill should not result in that money being double taxed as it changes hands.

[gruez]

see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29981813

Unless you're splitting your bill using commercial transactions, you're fine.

[LorenPechtel]

But how does the IRS know what's what? What happens when you have both business and personal transactions with someone?

[emptybottle]

The title in both article and HN should reflect that.

[kybernetyk]

> Great, let's nickle and dime the single mother selling arts and crafts on Etsy while the mega corps get away with billions.

Laws apply to everyone.

[ForgotMyPwOops]

Only when enforced equally, which is not typically the case in America

[bko]

Do you believe someone with an etsy account selling a few hundred dollars of merch is more likely to be audited than a billionaire?

[null0ranje]

Yes. Turns out, auditing the poor is low-hanging fruit, since the poor don't have the means to fight back.

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-ameri...

[missedthecue]

in this case, the "audit" consists of an automated letter sent to their mailbox requesting additional information. It's not an IRS attorney opening their books and going line by line.

[ForgotMyPwOops]

I have heard that the IRS doesn't have the resources to go after people who can afford good lawyers

Though I was referring more generally to things like known pedophiles getting slaps on the wrist by the feds, the spouses of politicians making millions insider trading, politicians not facing consequences for deleting public records, ect

[telxosser]

<single mother> :~~~(

[thehappypm]

How is it different in this case? Any Etsy shop can also configure into an LLC and do the necessary accounting to reduce their tax burden. If you don’t want to do that an Etsy shop is just a weird job, and you pay income tax on jobs.

[bumby]

I think a comment below addresses this, but the usual counterpoint is that a) the "necessary accounting" can become an undue burden itself and b) creating additional audit risks small may not be able to mitigate

The idea is that it is a structure that effectively prefers larger scale businesses who have the means to mitigate both of those

[thehappypm]

I’m not sure I follow. If you don’t want to set up an LLC you can just treat your Etsy dollars as plain-old personal income like you would as an Uber driver or any other side hustle. It’s just income. Why is a person paying income tax on their income controversial?

[mindslight]

The argument is that all of the bookkeeping and accounting required to adequately deduct expenses creates an undue burden on small businesses, especially when it comes to mandatory accounting paradigms like depreciation. This is effectively demonstrated by the conventional wisdom of "just hire an accountant", which will run you at least $500, in addition to needing to get up to speed on how to track expenses and what to track.

A single member LLC defaults to a "disregarded entity" for income tax purposes, meaning it has no bearing on taxation or this discussion. And opting into being taxed as an S-corp (or partnership) creates even more paperwork.

Having said that, one of the great inequalities of our tax code is that individuals are not allowed to take most deductions that business take. It's patently ridiculous that a W-2 employee driving their car to work every day cannot deduct that necessary expense to have worked. But really the whole filing process needs to be simplified, the IRS needs to release tax forms as executable programs (eg python) rather than this archaic "add the lesser of line 25 or line 27 to line 3 from form 1138", and the formulas need to be set and published ahead of the tax year as to stop being ex post-facto laws.

[bumby]

Oh, sorry. I think I misunderstood your comment. I was comparing pre-2022 to 2022 rules for other business structures; I didn't realize you were implying they settle taxes as a non-business.

[roody15]

Just configure into an LLC? How much does this cost with attorney fees and filing ?

Not a trivial amount especially for people making some money on side.

[throwawayboise]

In my state forming an LLC is an online filing that takes 5 minutes and costs almost nothing. Getting an IRS EIN is similar.

Now, to structure it properly with all the proper recordkeeping and documentation to ensure you really get the protection of an LLC when it matters, is another matter.

[thehappypm]

Yeah, and if you don’t want to do this, anything from Etsy is just regular ol’ income.

[ctoth]

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread-the rich as well as the poor."

[oh_sigh]

The law also prevents insider trading and other activities which realistically only the rich engage in.

[Wiseacre]

One action (insider trading) is done to make money in stocks with an illegitimate advantage, and the other (sleeping under a bridge) is done to...survive.

[oh_sigh]

Should insider trading be legal if it is done to survive?

At least in my region, the ACLU has sued and won a ruling saying that cops can't ticket people sleeping rough if the shelters are full/not accepting people.

[telxosser]

Exactly.

The sociology of this counter-narrative is super interesting though.

For whatever reason, we just don't want to take on power laws directly.

We live in this deluded world that power law distributions are something not "natural". Nature gives everything at a normal distribution. Obviously, that has nothing to do with nature. If anything it is the opposite.

Personally, I think this is the power of narrative and the way Francis Galton poisoned statistics that we haven't recovered from.

[noja]

> Laws apply to everyone.

Riiiight. Which is why a corporation uses a team of well-paid lawyers, rather than the single less well-paid lawyer that the single mom would use.

[cromka]

But only few can afford to skillfully navigate them for their own profit.

[imwillofficial]

Apparently not

[mdoms]

Well I mean you (Americans) keep voting the same type of people into the white house and local offices, what do you expect? It's not like you haven't had options with better candidates.

[pessimizer]

All of our information about those candidates, and the world, comes from media outlets who support the same type of people in the white house and local offices.

Those same companies own your media, too, but they probably care far less about who you vote for.

[whodunnit]

Public institutions have succumbed to regulatory capture everywhere. It’s the final stage of Capitalism.

[throwaway6734]

Yes. Everyone should pay the taxes they owe. If you want exclusions for these people codify it into law.

[max_]

I call this "the structure of impunity". The rich simply cannot accept to get poorer.

[darrery]

This is why I don't use this kind of payment gateways.

[loudtieblahblah]

>This was buried in the same legislation supposedly drafted to help the poor.

This is what many of us politically homeless have been saying about the Dems for years. They're not here for us.

The young and idealistic see that they're not Trump and wha the bills are titled and slogans repeated on MSNBC.

But they're actively attacking working people's income. Are they giving a higher min wage? M4a? Tuition debt relief? No.

They get up at campaign time and try to put-progressive AOC but when push comes to shove, they're 90s Republicans

[lotsofpulp]

States led by Democrats do have higher minimum wages, paid leave, better health insurance subsidies, etc.

Under the current federal electoral system, Democrats have no power to go further. They barely got a compromised ACA passed in 2010, and the votes at the federal level have moved in Republicans' favor since then. As we just witnessed, they do not have the numbers to get paid parental leave passed.

The young and idealistic should be able to understand that AOC is not going to be able to accomplish anything on the federal level.

[throwaway6734]

These are taxes that are already owed.

Why are you in favor of people cheating on their taxes?

[TameAntelope]

I know it's popular to decry every single dollar lost as a critical dollar (the difference between eating and starving), but if you're selling $600+ arts and crafts on Etsy, you should a) probably pay the US government for creating the infrastructure enabling you to do that in the first place, and b) the taxes are not going to mean very much to you in any event, especially considering how we structure our tax system to enable folks making less to pay less overall in income taxes at the end of the year.

Edit: There's a clear anti-government push in this comment section, which I don't think is representative of HN at large. I'm curious where it's coming from, if not organically, though I admit my lizard brain is more likely just pattern matching despite there not being any actual pattern at all.

[_dark_matter_]

This is the amount accumulated. So e.g. 30x $20 transactions, not $600+ arts and crafts.

[TameAntelope]

Yeah, it doesn't matter from a tax perspective. You don't pay more on additional transactions.

[bumby]

I get your point, but how do you reconcile it with the fact that taxes and most social safety nets are on a progressive scale, with lower strata effectively paying less than what they use while upper strata pay more for said infrastructure?

[javert]

Should we be paying the US government to send our young men to die in trumped-up wars that we have no reasonable hope of winning?

a) Vietnam

b) Afghanistan

c) Iraq

That's what your tax money goes to, folks.

Is that what Etsy moms should be paying for?

I pay my US federal taxes, because it's illegal not to.

But, at a fundamental level, it's immoral to do so.

I don't think all taxes are immoral. Just US Federal taxes.

Remember that the Federal government now exists almost purely to serve lobbyists and interest groups - not the people and not the states.

[TameAntelope]

If that's what the officials we elected decide to do, and we don't un-elect them, what else can you expect?

There is no "them" in this false "us vs them" narrative you're constructing. It's just us. We do this to ourselves.

[javert]

That's incorrect. The will of the people cannot necessarily be expressed when it has to be channeled through exactly two parties. The fact of there being two parties is dictated by the first past the post system.

More detailed explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo (this is the famous CCP Grey video with the animals, for those who have already seen it).

Also, even if it WERE the will of the people, it's still wrong, and immoral.

Democracy is only as good as the demos is moral. I judge the American demos to be insufficiently honest and thus insufficiently moral. Basically, each half of the country thinks that about the other half; I simply agree with both sides.

[TameAntelope]

Yes, there are trade offs with the US government's system of electing representatives within its government, trade offs the country seems to be willing to accept, given its lack of mobility on electing people who would make changes to that system.

And while it's true that, on the margins, the will of the people can be nudged one way or another, you still have to find a whole lot of people to vote for you in order to get elected, and those are your fellow countrymen who do believe those wars you mentioned made sense at the time (for example). You may call those people as many names (e.g. "immoral") as you like, they're still entitled to their votes, exactly as you are.

There is no "them", it's just "us". The divisive rhetoric you're employing is, in my opinion, more problematic than the voters themselves.

[javert]

I don't agree with that, but let's not litigate it.

I only still reside in the US because I don't want to pay the exit tax to expatriate. I'm being kept against my will. But I'll make it out eventually, when I can make it make sense tax-wise. Good riddance.

By the way, I live in a US territory, so I have no federal representation, even in theory, personally, even though I pay federal tax. Which is OK, since when I lived in the states proper, my "countrymen" never elected people I believed to be reasonable.

[bumby]

Or: "In a democracy, people get the government they deserve"

[tut-urut-utut]

Would it be ok to send your young men to die in a war that you have hope of winning?

[javert]

If it's a just war, it could be. Depends on the specific case. For instance, it was moral for European countries to fight the Nazis.