Think about this. You work for the government. (If you don't pretend you do.) You pay taxes. From the government. Where does your money come from? THE GOVERNMENT. They give you a wad of cash every month, you take some out and give it to them every so often. THIS IS STUPID! It's a waste of time and money. Governments should just pay their workers a little less than they'd get for doing the same job for anyone else and not tax them. Instead, they create mounds of paperwork to tax millions of people on money that will go in part, to pay the people that pay the taxes. The paper to process the taxes will cost money and the people processing the taxes will cost money. This is just plain dumb, wasteful and absurd.-- Madcat, Feb 11 2004 Inflation reversing tax http://www.halfbake...1092526755??????Add eliminating COLAs and you've got something! [SurfDory, Oct 04 2004] Bun for FIGHTING THE SYSTEM!-- spacecadet, Feb 11 2004 Say I work for the government, which I do, and I also do just a little work on the side. Just enough that an employer would definately report it to the government.
Now when I calculate my taxes at the end of the year, do I count the government pay toward by gross income so I can pay at the same percentage as other taxpayers? Or do I just pay taxes as if I only made $1000 dollars in a year?
The latter is great for me. But it screws the rest of society.-- swamilad, Feb 12 2004 What do you mean, pay a "little" less? Obviously you're not from Canada.-- pleasefondleme, Feb 12 2004 //It's a waste of time and money.// Whose time and money is wasted when I do my tax returns? Mine! Does the government pay me for it? No! If those government employees had no tax return to prepare like everybody else they would get completely out of touch with reality. Government employees (including those in senates, congresses, houses of lords, houses of gods ...) should have an extra hard time preparing their taxes.
Extra hurdles: Government employees don't get any kind of proof of income from their employer. Instead they have to prove it all on their own, detailed report on living expenses, detailed log of bank statements and other means that are hard to keep track of.
Government employees are not allowed to hire a tax preparer. They have to do all the forms in person.
Government employees cannot file amendments. If they don't get it right the first time they loose any additional money the government may owe them. If they owe additional money they are taxed at 100% for the next year.-- kbecker, Feb 12 2004 [Madcat] What country's tax system are you refering to. The only one I'm familiar with is the USA's.
Here, taxes are witheld from every paycheck and employers give that to the government. In the case of government workers, the government is the employer, so it just witholds the money and sends it directly to the correct department. For a person with only one source of income who didn't itemize deductions, the government could theoretically withold exactly the right amount, so no money would need to exchange hands when taxes were filed. In reality, I believe the default witholding amount is a little high, so if the person makes a little extra from investments or whatever, they will still get a refund at the end of the year. Of course those who are willing to go to the bother can adjust the witholding so that some taxes are owned at the end of the year, but you have to be careful to avoid having too little witheld and getting hit by fines and intrest. I guess witholding extra during the year makes for a good insentive to get most people to file without having to spend a lot of time enforcing penalties.
I'm all for simplifying taxes, but at least in the USA, this idea by itself wouldn't simplify it for anyone. It would just make the forms that much more complicated for government employees if they made any income from investments, or wanted to itemize their deductions. It would probably cause a lot of grief as well from ignorant people complaining that it was unfair that government employees didn't have to pay taxes, or ignorant government empoyes complaining that their base salaries weren't as high as private sector workers.
Now if the whole tax system were simplified so that taxes actually could be removed from the picture for government employees, I'd be all for it.-- scad mientist, Feb 13 2004 You're idea seems to have a slight error.
sp: everyone.
Stop Taxing Everyone.-- ato_de, Feb 13 2004 Lower salaries means more suseptabilty to corruption. Government employees still have to pay the same prices we do for goods. Your idea states the drive to pay them less. You seem to be focusing the object money itself as it moves around, not the choices that cause the patterns you see. go fish-- Around TUIT, Aug 14 2004 random, halfbakery