But if we remove the annual pain of dealing with taxes, then Americans will get complacent and may stop being bothered by having to pay taxes.
- The serious ideology of a major American political party vis-a-vis taxes.
Similarly, there is a group in the US whose main goal is to change the law so that employers can't pay your taxes on your behalf. Instead, you would get your full salary, and then have to write a check to pay your taxes. The group believes this would raise tax awareness.
Doesn't seem like a particularly useful way to approach life, to me.
That's called Weight Watchers. The general principle was pretty effective for me. Most people don't keep a log of wear and tear on their car, but we definitely operate airplanes that way. That also seems pretty productive to me.
But yeah, it's not the only way to operate. I don't really like the idea of putting more responsibility on people in order to "raise awareness". I take that to really mean someone would like everyone to be more upset about taxes, and would like to make them less convenient to increase upsetness.
But forcing it just wastes everyones time, adds red tape, and additional bureaucracy they purport to rail against.
If a politician raises taxes, and all it does is change the value of a annual withdrawal on your account, I think that pain would be the same, regardless of difficulty of filing.
The pain is estimating and filing 4 times a year.
They simply do not understand the fact that, no, that check is not "free government money" but is instead money that the government took, held onto for free all year, interest free, and then let you have back after you filed the proper forms.
So the suggestions to have people cut checks to the government (quarterly, monthly, annually) is generally made from trying to overcome that viewpoint that too many folks view their tax return as some form of "gift" from the government, and instead get them to recognize just how much tax money is being consumed.
I appreciate transparency like that, but I hate other examples that add additional steps or paperwork to the process.
Which individuals? How do you know these people?
Also I don't agree with your perspective on tax withholding. If you don't want your employer to withhold taxes, I think they have to stop withholding taxes. It's a convenient default, in my opinion.
In principle I like your suggestion but in actuality I think many Americans will not like their "yearly tax bill." Just think about people who are already living paycheck to paycheck; not saving much, or just overall spending every penny that comes into their bank account. They would be in trouble come April if they had to pay it at that point.
Perhaps they could do a monthly installment payment for last year's taxes... And the taxpayer would auto pay once or twice a month when they get paid... But then, we're back to where we started.
Tldr in an ideal world where every citizen is disciplined about not spending every penny they get, this suggestion would be great.
I know some people _have_ to spend every penny because they need to to survive, but there are also plenty of people who spend every penny because they just have no discipline and buy anything they want without regard to whether or not they could afford it. Ideally the people in the former category would get some sort of welfare. Not sure what, if anything, to do with the people in the latter.
But it doesn't work for low-income people that are already living paycheck-to-paycheck.