If you need to check it, then maybe they are not calculating your taxes for you, so much they are taking their best guess and asking you to sign off on it. If their best guess is as good (or better) than yours, there is no difference in practice. But there is still a difference in principle: whether a citizen is permitted to declare their own income or whether the government is obliged to determine it for them.
ggBarabajagal
joined 2 years ago
The IRS calculates an employee's taxes based on the income and withholding information provided to the IRS by the employer. The employee "volunteers" his tax information (and IRS witholding payment, if any) with each paycheck. The accounting for all this is listed right there on the paystub.
We have a "voluntary" tax system in the U.S. -- that's always been the situation. "Voluntary" doesn't mean that that you can choose to not volunteer to pay your taxes. It mostly just means that the way we run things, by default, it is each citizen's responsibility to calculate and pay their taxes each April.
American taxpayers filled out 1040 forms in the days before computers, a lot like they do now. The IRS selected certain fillings for audits, just like they do now -- sometimes because of an apparent discrepancy, and sometimes just at random.
It would be a lot more work, take a lot more resources, and be prone to a lot more error and lawsuits, if the IRS tried to calculate everyone's taxes for them. Even now that we are in the days of computers, it is much more efficient for the IRS to only audit a fraction of the filings submitted each year.
I'm also pretty sure our "voluntary" tax filling system has something to do with the Fourth Amendment and other privacy concerns. A lot of Americans very strongly believe that it is not the government's place to be all up in their private business.
-- EDIT to add:
There is a difference between whether it would be possible for the IRS to calculate individual citizens' taxes and whether we should abandon our voluntary tax system for one in which the IRS simply calculates the taxes owed by every citizen and send us each a bill. My original response was intended to address the latter, but now I'll say something about the former:
For someone whose single source of income is a job working for someone else, of course it is possible for the IRS to calculate your taxes. You've already volunteered all the information the IRS needs to do so. Your employer has already told the IRS exactly how much income you've earned and exactly how much of it you've had withheld for taxes. Remember when you signed that withholding paperwork with the HR department on your first day? That was the moment when you personally volunteered your income information and payments to the IRS. You've literally already been reporting your income and paying taxes on it ever since.
The way taxes work in practice for a single-income employee does not reveal the potential complexity of tax accounting for individuals who are self-employed, who have multiple sources of income, and anyone who doesn't want to make regular fillings and withholding payments throughout the year. The tax situation for single-income American employees is not the situation for all Americans. Not everyone has an employer who calculates their taxes and pays installments for them throughout the year.
It is common for Americans to have a single job with an employer who calculates and pays their taxes for them. This makes it very easy for the IRS to know exactly how much the taxpayer owes (or is owed) at the end of the year. If it ends up feeling to like this is the same thing as the IRS calculating your taxes for you, however, I'm guessing it's because you forgot that it's actually your employer who's been doing that accounting job for you all along, with each paycheck.
It's not just for quality, but for authenticity too, I think.
Foods that are fermented or aged can take on a unique flavor profile, based on the unique blend of bacteria and mold and yeast in the area. Even using the same milk from the same cows and processing it the same way, cheese that is naturally aged in a cave in France might taste different from cheese that's aged in a cave in West Virginia. Not necessarily better or worse, quality-wise, but different. Not authentic.
Weather patterns, seasonal changes, and soil conditions are also distinct and varied in different places. The same grapes grow differently in German soil than they do in Kansas. The grass that the cows eat grows differently in different places, and this can have a significant impact on the flavors of the milk and cheese.
I'm American, but I used to work in a fancy wine store that sold a lot of imported cheese and groceries. I imagine that in practice, PDO must seem like an annoying mix of over-regulation and jingoistic propaganda -- especially to someone in Europe. But it does seem to serve a purpose, even if in an overbearing way.
I think being proud of local food culture is more like community spirit or neighborhood pride. It's like saying, "here's something ingeniously delicious we created using only our limited local resources." I don't think of that quite the same way as "pride" about race, gender, sexuality.
A pastor usually leads a Protestant church. Catholic churches are led by priests.
Confession of sins to (God though) a priest is a rite in the Catholic church, but not in Protestant churches. Protestant churches often encourage members to ask forgiveness for their sins directly to God through prayer.
There are more Catholics than protestants in the world, but there are more protestants than Catholics in the U.S. The type of Christianity most often associated with socially conservative Republican/MAGA primary voters is Protestant "evangelical" Christianity.
Evangelicals are a hardcore subset of Protestants who take the Bible literally. They're sometimes called "Born-again Christians" because of their belief in the importance of personal conversion. That is, you're not really a real Christian until, as an autonomous adult, you willingly choose to surrender yourself, mind body and soul, and devote your life to (your pastor's teachings about) the teachings of Jesus.
Anyway, now I've done an eight-hours-later four-paragraph TED-talk riff on what is otherwise quite a fine and clever comment. I mean no offense and hope none is taken. I mostly just wanted to note that when Nikki Haley talks about "pastors," she isn't talking to Catholics; she's talking directly to the GOP evangelical voter base.
Yet you still don't seem to understand why a serious person might hesitate to take you seriously?
I know that the "United States of America" is the only country with the word "America" in its name. I know that the "United Mexican States" also has the words "united" and states" in its name -- are Mexicans "USians" too?
I know that most Mexicans, by default, refer to people from the United States as "Americanos." I know that most Canadians are quite happy not to be confused with the "Americans" from south of their border.
I know that people from the United States of America have been referred to as "Americans" for over 200 years. I know that when someone makes it a point to start calling someone else by a different name than the one that's preferred, that person is usually pushing some outside agenda and should not be taken seriously in the conversation at-hand.
TL;DR: What does any of this have to do with your point about Israel and Gaza?
USians
Just as I was starting to take you seriously,,,,
As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.
I'm pretty sure he tried, but institutions held and the military didn't let him get away with it.
I think Gen. Mark Milley was on-guard against Trump's antics (especially after he got tricked into appearing in uniform with Trump for that upside-down Bible photo-op) and that through the end of Trump's term, Milley stood firmly against use of the military against civilians or for political purposes.
But if Trump really were to be elected again, who will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under his new administration?
Jack Smith does not want to remove Cannon. Or he shouldn't at least. Not at this point, anyway.
By far, the best possible outcome is still for Jack Smith to convict Donald Trump in Aileen Cannon's Florida courtroom. As long as Cannon doesn't start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody's best interest.
This morning's (11/07/'23) headlines are all about how Trump verbally attacked the judge in his fraud trial in New York yesterday. Trump has repeatedly accused Judge Engoron of being partisan and biased, to the press and now in his sworn testimony. MAGA eats that shit up. The more Trump looks like a victim to them, the more riled up they get in his defense.
It seems to me that "The Case of the Stolen Nuclear Secrets" is going to be much simpler and easier for people to understand than "The Case of Strategically Shifting the Valuation of Heavily Leveraged Real Estate Properties for Various Tax and Loan Purposes." Considering even just the evidence that has already been made public in this case (photos of boxes of classified documents haphazardly stacked in a spare bathroom; audio recordings of Trump bragging that he shouldn't be sharing a classified brief he'd illegally kept) the chances of a conviction are strong.
If Trump gets convicted by a jury in a Florida courtroom run by so seemingly biased a judge as Cannon, it's going to be a lot harder for him to claim it's all rigged against him by the Democrats. It's going to be a whole lot harder to work that conviction into the whole victimhood narrative that Trump is currently thriving on.
But how do they know what they know about your income? Didn't you (or your employer on your behalf) already volunteer this information to the government in the first place? Or is your government monitoring your private financial transactions without your express consent?