Community | January 22, 2009 | 33 comments

Why do you pay taxes?

source: http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/why-do-you-pay-taxes

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unitedliberty
If you’re concerned about where your money is going as you pay taxes this April, I can think of several ways to respond. On one hand, I’d encourage you to consider the American banking system as a new national park. You’ve paid over $350 billion already, with trillions in future guarantees. In the case of Bank of America, the most recent $138 billion bailout dwarfs its market capitalization, so you own it just as certainly as you own Yosemite.

Visit the offices of local TARP-receiving banks. Enjoy a cup of coffee, admire the decorations on the walls. If you’ve been laid off, evicted, or otherwise having trouble making ends meet, you might try camping in the parking lot or on the leather couches inside.
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33 comments // Why do you pay taxes?

  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • The tax system is but a symptom of a general economic cancer the USA is about to die from if nothing is done ...& fast !

      Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses." : Gore Vidal - The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

      So what else is new ;)

      "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to office.": - Aesop, c.550 B.C.

    • 3 years ago
  • sirach481
    • 0
      sirach481  

    • By law, an employer can only withhold social security tax. Tell them not to withhold, and pay only what you want to the IRS.

      Many pay no tax, or only partial tax. I f you don't support war, withhold a portion of your tax.

    • 3 years ago
  • Saladin
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • DIRE STRAITS ?

      Economic Nobel Prize gives Obama a hint...

      Obama's Team Signals It's Taking the Taxpayer Ripoff Route to Saving Our Financial System

      By Paul Krugman, The New York Times. Posted January 20, 2009.

      Old-fashioned voodoo economics — the belief in tax-cut magic — has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.

      Unfortunately, the price of this retreat into superstition may be high. I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect that taxpayers are about to get another raw deal -- and that we’re about to get another financial rescue plan that fails to do the job.
      http://www.alternet.org/workplace/121051/

      Remember Obama saying he'd welcome any good idea ?

      "The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same." - George Orwell, 1984

    • 3 years ago
  • NoGodsNoMasters
    • 0
      NoGodsNoMasters  

    • I pay taxes because I care about my country. I care that we are in debt, I care that our infrastructure is falling apart, I care that we need to improve our healthcare system and our education, I care about the future of this country. Unlike Republicans I'm not going to piss and moan every time I am asked to do my civic responsibility. I pay taxes to keep America afloat so republicans can have the freedom to bitch about paying taxes.

    • 3 years ago
  • cybexg
  • clownpuncher
  • NoGodsNoMasters
    • 0
      NoGodsNoMasters  
    • NoGodsNoMasters:

      Really? Was that "nuff said". Nice open ended statement. You can turn on the news and know that he is a criminal for not paying his taxes. That proves nothing. You want to go person for person on both sides of the aisle of who have avoided paying their taxes? Ok then, heres one, Kenneth Lay. Founder and CEO of Enron and one of the largest finanical contributors to Bush for America along with his many other connections. You still remember what was going on with the books at Enron don't you? Heres another, Rupert Murdoch. He is the Chairmen and CEO of News Corp which owns everything from Mtv to Fox News. He is a registered Republican, he was the number 1 donor for Bush in 2000 and 2004, McCain in 2008, and Dole back in 1996. And in 1999 he just so happened to forget to pay $350 million dollars in taxes.......do I really need to continue?

    • 3 years ago
  • chokolat3warmth
    • 0
      chokolat3warmth  
    • NoGodsNoMasters:

      and how much of ur money is going to fixing all that you listed, probably like 5 %, consider how much goes to the military and the corporations that really look at you as a vermin on their land. So you can keep paying ur taxes, and keep believing ur saving ur NATION, but i'm sorry the truth is that, ur tax money, and others tax money usually ends up in the pockets of the feds and the generals.
      Now if you didnt pay your federal income taxes along with everybody in Amerika, that is more likely to save ur NATION because that could potentially cause a reform or just abandonment of the Monetary System and move on to something better.

      Before you go on telling us how you believe in your NATION and how ur one of the million of Amerikan superheroes who are going to help save it, go read up on the Federal Reserve policies and implementation, or how the income tax came about, there are some very valid reasons why one doesnt want to pay taxes and that would exclude being a republican and wanting to whine.

    • 3 years ago
  • Nephwrack
    • 0
      Nephwrack  
    • NoGodsNoMasters:

      seriously chocolate stop bitching about the United States unless you're willing to come over here and do something about it. i dont know many rich generals around here but i do know one thing, if you do NOT pay your taxes, you end up in prison, where it's nigh impossible to do anything about our political system. it's easy to sit in another country and deride another's policy, but complaining about it's citizens is foolish and arrogant. sure we americans hae more freedoms than citizens of many other countries, but the divide between the rich and the poor exists here too, so dont expect anyone to change our national policy overnight, espescially by themselves.

    • 3 years ago
  • NoGodsNoMasters
  • clownpuncher
  • numinant
  • NoGodsNoMasters
    • 0
      NoGodsNoMasters  
    • clownpuncher:

      What are you even talking about? Blue collar middle class is a vast majority democrat. Which party has a base of the rich? Oh, thats right, Republicans. And a majority of those rich republicans come from old money that they never earned.

    • 3 years ago
  • clownpuncher
  • Tayllerand
    • 0
      Tayllerand  

    • We pay taxes because we are owned by the queen of england.
      She is the ruler of the world, check your birth certificate if you are born in america.

    • 3 years ago
  • chokolat3warmth
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • MONEY TALKS LOUD !

      DON'T JUDGE POLITICIANS ON WHAT THEY SAY BUT ON WHAT THEY DO !

      CITIZENS 2.0 : PLAYERS NOT CHEERLEADER

      JUST THE FACTS MA'AM !

    • 3 years ago
  • numinant
  • expatincebu
    • 0
      expatincebu  

    • One of the reasons I left the US two years ago was to stop paying taxes. I was sick of my money going to support a bunch of non productive welfare hos to kill women and children for corporate profit. The military budget is over 50% of US Federal spending and all it does is create wars to justify itself.

      Taxes can be a good thing when they pay for police and firemen and roads and schools and medical care. When they are paid to corporations and for a huge standing army they are a waste. Jefferson said that the two greatest threats to democracy were from within, standing armies and central banks. Look who runs the country now, a huge military welfare system and corrupt central bank.

      Soon you will begin paying the biggest tax of all, in hyperinflation, as the Fed prints trillions of dollars to pay for its bailouts of banks and failed corporations.

    • 3 years ago
  • numinant
  • Tyrannous
  • numinant
  • intelligenceisacurse
    • 0
      intelligenceisacurse  
    • numinant:

      yes of course you have a choice.

      in order for them to take the taxes out of your check,
      you have to fill out a W4 form each year.

      next time you do so, write on the form that you want
      no taxes at all taken out.

    • 3 years ago
  • Nephwrack
    • 0
      Nephwrack  
    • numinant:

      right but noone will hire you without a w4. also there are aspects of the way we are taxed that i dont necessarily agree with. noone complains about receiving unemployment benefits or social security.

    • 3 years ago
  • mikeygleason
  • CalgarC
  • Tyrannous
  • cerealforeal
  • cerealforeal
  • Tyrannous
  • clownpuncher
  • kewal91
    • 0
      kewal91  

    • I dont know why really... My family and i pay taxes in the United States AND Canada.. I am a canadian citizen on a visa that renews yearly. i pay the exact same tax as everyoen else,yet i have neither a SSN or a green card.. or obviously the right to vote... "No taxation without representation".. wasnt that the reason the thirteen colonies broke away in the first place?.. .i find it unfair but at the same time America has opened up a world of oppurtunities for me and i always knew i'd live here.

    • 3 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  

    • WAY INTERESTING INDEED...

      Determined to find the law that requires American citizens to pay income tax, producer Aaron Russo set out on a journey to find the evidence. This film which is neither left, nor right-wing is a startling examination of government. It exposes the systematic erosion of civil liberties in America since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was fraudulently created. Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, a former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents and tax attorneys and authors, Russo connects the dots...

      "The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president." -- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, November 23, 1933 in a letter to Colonel Edward Mandell House

      "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power of money should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." -- President Thomas Jefferson

      "Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." -- President James A. Garfield

      "Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people." -- Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna, former Chancellor of Exchequer, England

      "It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -- Henry Ford

    • 3 years ago
  • neocongo
    • 0
      neocongo  
    • Image

    • Here we go again. People in the US pay essentially the lowest income taxes in the developed world. Corporations, with their legion of tax lawyers pay only as much as they want. This graph represents tax rates. Not actual amount paid.

      We get an abundance of services for our taxes, managed with far less waste and inefficiency than the anti-government types like the Current CATO crowd would have you believe.

    • 3 years ago
  • cerealforeal
    • 0
      cerealforeal  
    • neocongo:

      And the only nation out of those that doesn't get free health care. It only makes sense if you pay more taxes, you get more out of your government. So what if we don't pay more? Doesn't mean we're getting the better end of the deal.

    • 3 years ago
  • neocongo
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