It’s always talked about in the media as if everyone cares, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a normal person complain.
Property taxes bug me a lot. The tax has gone up over 10% each of the past 3 years. It’s adding a lot to my mortgage.
I pay quite a bit in Denmark, but used to live in the US.
I pay more taxes now (not THAT much more but definitely more). However I see what I get for my taxes here: healthcare, bicycle lanes, cheap and very good trains/metro/ferries/buses everywhere, etc., and sooo much support for people. It makes me proud to pay taxes here, even though of course I always want more in my pocket and I want more for my money.
In the US I hated the taxes because I paid more than rich people (as they pay nearly none) and I didn’t feel like i got a lot from them.
No problem with taxes as a concept, but I hate how the US uses tax money
I care anytime some rich prick pays less than me.
The vast majority of tax in most countries is paid by those with higher incomes. In the US the top 1% of earners pay more than 40% of the tax collected and almost all the tax (97%) is paid by the upper half of earners.
In the UK the numbers are a little different, but tell the same story (top 1% pays around 30%, top 10% pays around 60% of all tax collected).
So while I know you mean relatively and not absolutely it’s still worth spending at least one minute to consider how much of the tax burden is actually shouldered by the wealthy.
I come from a Scandinavian country and I’m ALL in on redistribution, free education, free healthcare etc. But let’s not have politics ignore the facts.
The top 1% here in the US absolutely don’t pay their fair share. In theory, they pay 40%, but there are so many loopholes that they often don’t pay any at all.
Depends on the tax. Progressive income tax? I don’t care so much. Flatter taxes like sales, property, gas, etc, I care about more because it affects the people at the bottom disproportionately. We only need a progressive income tax AND accountability at the top end for people to pay in. Tired of billionaires getting off free with loop holes.
No , my problem is just about where it got spent
WAR! WAR! WAR!
This is it. If all my needs were met by the state, I’d happily pay 90% tax with 10% on luxuries, which is about what I spend anyhow
I pay a lot in taxes because I earn a lot. I earn a lot because I work hard and I was lucky (had the right opportunities, enjoyed work that is well compensated by capitalism, etc). I don’t care paying high taxes
If you get within earshot of a Republican, chances are you’ll hear complaints about “damn taxes” within five minutes. So to a certain set of people, definitely everyone they talk to is constantly complaining about taxes.
When I was starting out and making little money, the taxes I paid were definitely cutting into my ability to live. I think instead of “standard deductions” we should have real minimum incomes. If you are under the minimum income for your location, you don’t pay taxes.
Now that I am at the end of my career, I think it’s stupid that my taxes are not higher. If I could have given young me some of the money I am keeping now, I would have had a much better life overall. I obviously can’t do that now, but I can give someone else the same breathing room.
If you are under the minimum income for your location, you don’t pay taxes.
Then what if you start earning more, suddenly have to pay taxes and end up getting the same or even less than before?
That is not how taxes work. If you earn the minumum income or less, you pay no taxes. If you are above the minimum, you pay taxes on the amount that surpasses the minimum only, so there is no way of getting less if you earn more.
I’m downvoting myself for my idiotic early-in-the-morning comment. I do know that. The exemption is 12k in Germany.
I am perpetually shocked at how many people don’t understand marginal tax rates, and I truly think ignorance of them is used to confuse people about how wages work.
Then to add on top of that people believing it’s illegal to discuss your wages with other employees. Very little opportunity to be corrected.
I became more aware of how much tax I was paying when I became self employed because instead of paying a bit out of each check like a w2 worker I have to pay it in lump sums quarterly.
I run a low overhead medical practice so I don’t have a tax cheat llc, I take the standard deduction every year and as a result my taxes are pretty much the same as they ever were. Even though it’s roughly the same amount (slightly more actually, now that I cut out the overhead of medical systems stealing 30-60% of my labor) there’s something psychological about paying the amount in a lump sum
I think paying taxes is important and I want to do. However I feel conflicted about spending this money because what I feel paying taxes are important for are generally not what my tax dollars fund, and increasingly so. I want to pay and gladly will for community enrichment, better public schools, access to healthcare, infrastructure like roads, power lines, sewers, moving away from fossil fuels, better handling of trash and recycling programs, rehabilitation programs for criminal offenders, mental health programs including interim programs like community supports and mobile programs that exist in between outpatient and inpatient, social welfare programs that give people access to housing, food, electricity, etc
But instead my taxes pay for these things increasingly less. About 20% of my taxes go to military and defensive spending and while I do think some amount needs to go to this I think it’s absurd. Most countries spend 3-5% on defensive spending. Even China, the second highest after the US, spends 6%.
So I don’t resent paying taxes but I do resent how much when roughly 1/5th of that goes to defense contractors to launder billions from taxpayer and Israel for genocide. I also resent that my tax burden continually increases despite making roughly $60-70k a year while the services around me continually decrease.
I care more about where they are spent. My local government is spending it far better than my federal government. If it was half my income and was spent in ways that lower the cost of living and improve quality of life, then I’d have no problem with that.
If I get a tax cut, I think, cool, at least I choose where this money goes, because I actually do give some to non-profits that benefit society. Tax amounts are not something which determines how I vote, I gloss over it in the news, it’s just incidental that the anti-worker parties want to raise my taxes and spend them in worse ways.
I pay roughly 30% of my gross income in th US. The only tangible benefit I get from it is the ability to drive on free roads on my way to work to earn more taxable income. I only wish my money didn’t go to subsidize the rich and make bombs to blow kids up on the other side of the planet.
You get other benefits though. Like the few social safety nets we actually have, public school funding, social security (unless it runs out/gets cut), fire departments, regulatory agencies that keep your food, water, and drugs safe. Etc. It costs a lot of money to have a society. Even if you don’t directly benefit from them, they still make society less shit.
That said, it’d cost a lot less if we didn’t spend so much of it murdering children.
I’m not saying other benefits aren’t there, it’s just that we know a lot of regulatory agencies are being severely cut so it’s gonna be less apparent soon enough. I’m in one of the higher tax brackets so aside from unemployment insurance, a lot of safety nets that require means testing are essentially inaccessible to me as well. Frankly it’s a miracle American society is still functioning even with so many tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
True that. Our tax dollars could be spent much more effectively if our government was more focused on the wellfare of its people.
I’d care a hell of a lot less about the amount if it felt like it was being used for anything other than padding rich assholes pockets. I want my taxes to feed and help people, repair and maintain roads, and subsidies public transit. I guess I’m saying I want my money to help my community and the vulnerable, not sit in some rich fuckers bank account while a homeless settlement I drive by daily grows, tent by tent.
I have heard folks distantly related to me talk like the state tax rate was pretty damn important when selecting which part of the United States to move to.
They were the sort of people that would sit ( in their living room in New Zealand ) and watch fox news and go on the engineered logical and emotional weirdcoaster that sort of media offers up. This is some pretty niche viewing for folks in my country.
Did their viewing habits affect their opinion of property taxes?
I’m not sure. They could have been describing that to me, but because the local body funding mechanism we have here is called rates rather than property taxes I could have easily got that confused in with the state tax discussion.
I was kind of astounded that a spreadsheet of tax rates would play a significant part in a decision of where you were going to live.
If it were being used responsibly I’d advocate for higher taxes, but here in the US taxation is theft.
In California, yes. Moreso because taxes keep rising but services keep dwindling.
I care more about how little rich people pay more than I care about how much I pay. I also care about my tax dollars being wasted.
DOGE could actually be a good thing if it were actually looking through the functions of government to eliminate redundancies, waste, and leakage.
But nope, it’s run by a man child who uses his idea of economics (which is informed by right-wing memes) to eliminate government programs that actually help people and the economy.
It’s worse than that, it’s a malicious dismantling of government agencies who could stand in the way of capitalists making our lives worse to become richer than anyone has any right to be. It’s not stupidity, it’s a game plan. This is always what the right meant by small government, small so rich have no objectors with power.
