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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

The nation needs a “tax sit-in” - everyone ridicules this, but wtf do people think the boston tea party was about.

If you want governments to listen without armed rebellion, the only thing one can do is refuse taxes.

They know that this is the inly othe tool you have - and thats why taxes are woven into the fabric of the economy such that its automatically taken without you having any control over them.

Its also why you can never truly own land. Dont pay taxes on land, and they will take it.

You can only pay for the privilege to rent land. Forever.

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"Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law."

- Edward Abbey

The problem is w2 employees (i.e. most of the workforce) get their taxes taken out of their paychecks automatically. It would be nearly impossible to withhold those taxes from the government.

Interestingly, the more independent contractors in a population, the easier it would be to stage a tax sit-in.

> The problem is w2 employees (i.e. most of the workforce) get their taxes taken out of their paychecks automatically

That's not a requirement, though. You can opt to have no taxes withheld and just pay what you owe in April. Of course, if you then don't pay your taxes, the IRS will find you.

That is my point about it being woven into the economy such that you have no control over it.

> Its also why you can never truly own land. Dont pay taxes on land, and they will take it.

> You can only pay for the privilege to rent land. Forever.

Yet, you benefit from the state recognizing your rights to exclusively use that land, and from foreign military invasion. Why should I subsidize the government protecting your assets?

If anything, land should be the primary source of taxable revenue. Mis-distribution of land (And the low cost of asserting ownership of it) is the cause of no end of social ills.

There are municipalities in the USA that do not extort property taxes -- I've heard of one in Colorado, one in Arizona, a few in Texas, and some in Alaska.

Since a common justification is to finance public schools, I suppose that complete privatization of education would be a necessary step in order to vastly reduce or generally abolish property taxes.

Ostensibly they tax you for “services”

Property tax

Gas tax

Sales tax

---

Schools suck

Roads suck

Law enforcement sucks

Pollution sucks

---

But shiny new government buildings

All cops have new cars

Gas prices are out of control

The recycling fund was looted

Social security was looted

Trump just announced today to the NRA that he just gave a shit-ton of military weaponry to the police “you cant buy this stuff” he said.

Corporations pay no taxes

Flint has no water

This country is a joke.

Wait until big agra (monsanto) and inefficient governments take over legal marijuana.

Legal marijuana is a scam from a tax perspective.

Look at the lotto - that was supposed to pay for schools.

Look at “paid cable television” - that was supposed to eliminate commercials for a paid service.

Have you timed how many minutes a commercial break is on CNN?

Its all a joke.

EDIT:

And the thing that pisses me off, is they want to push all the costs down to the consumers. Are ANY of the water bottle companies held accountable for the mass plastic pollution in every thread of our environment? Obviously plastic isnt going anywhere - but the oil companies and chemical companies that produce all these materials and products pay nothing.

Look at this douchebag in the EPA right now. Are you following any of his antics? He had his lackeys being pay $40,000 PER MONTH just by Morrocco alone for lobbying access.

He had his "security" guy spending $100,000 on first class flights. He stole $65,000 from his campaign fund saying that he was reimbursing himself.

And then you have morons apologizing for them and defending these clowns.

I take issue with some of these points.

> Property tax > Schools suck > Roads suck

I have no argument there.

> Sales tax

Have these been rising recently?

> Gas tax > Gas peices [prices] are out of control

Gas prices and whatever embedded taxes they have aren't that bad. They're much better than their peak around 2008 at over $4/gal.

> The recycling fund was looted

I'm not familiar with this.

> Social security was looted

Do you have a citation for that?

> Trump just announced today to the NRA that he just gave a shit-ton of military weaponry to the police “you cant buy this stuff” he said.

President Trump says a lot of things. Is there proof this actually happened?

> Corporations pay no taxes

You can argue whether they pay enough taxes, but I'd like a citation that they pay no taxes.

> Flint has no water

That's the city's own damn fault due to corruption.

> Legal marijuana is a scam from a tax perspective.

Personally, I'd rather we tax it heavily like cigarettes than to waste money incarcerating those drug users.

> Have you timed how many minutes a commercial break is on CNN?

They could use some more breaks.

My sales taxes have doubled since my childhood. I am back in the same jurisdiction and they have gone from 4% with no local component to 7% state, 1% local. Nearly a tenth of everything I spend goes to taxes, and that's on top of federal income tax, social security tax, federal unemployment tax, state unemployment tax, state income tax, county income tax, property tax, fuel tax, excise tax, cable and internet tax, phone tax, restaurant tax, and probably a dozen others.

Other localities in other states are worse than that.

"In its annual report filed to the SEC in February 2018, Amazon estimated that not only would the company not be paying anything in 2017 federal income taxes, but it would be getting a $137 million tax refund."

http://services.corporate-ir.net/SEC.Enhanced/SecCapsule.asp...

A $137M federal tax refund. And a $211M state tax bill, plus a $724M bill in international taxes.

Also, that refund is something that happened only in 2017; they paid over $1B in federal taxes in 2016, for example.

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