[HN Gopher] One economist went on a long whimsical journey to pa...
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One economist went on a long whimsical journey to pay his taxes
with cash
Author : djoldman
Score : 48 points
Date : 2023-04-15 17:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| msla wrote:
| "Whimsical" now means "making pointless work for yourself and
| everyone else" and seems rather close to "speed-running" ("slow-
| running"?) a bureaucracy for social media clout. Really, really
| pitiful social media clout.
| photonbeam wrote:
| How did people do this before electronic payments?
| yarg wrote:
| With cheques.
| ksherlock wrote:
| Write a check and mail it in.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| A LONG time ago, I was at a (small) company that shared a
| building with a phone company office. I was amazed at how many
| people paid their phone bills in cash.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Yep. Middle class people don't really get all the ways that
| being poor is a detriment. You often don't have credit, and you
| may not have a bank account, so you get paid in cash, or at the
| last minute by check, forcing you to use a check cashing store,
| which will rape you on unnecessary fees, siphoning any cash you
| might have saved, keeping you poor.
| etothepii wrote:
| Governments tend not to think of their citizens as customers but
| subjects.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Writing a book on the advantages of using cash is like writing a
| book on the advantages of using human waste as fertilizer. Even
| if there is some advantage, I'm pretty sure everyone would just
| rather not.
| galago wrote:
| We totally do though...
|
| https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/03/30/boston-massachusetts-pf...
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| That was far less onerous than I expected.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Having to make 1 appointment is unacceptable, let alone 2.
| cuuupid wrote:
| Interesting article but it sounds like all the author had to do
| was schedule an appointment and wait 30min.
|
| Also the conclusion is discouraging: rather than make self
| payment easier, the IRS easily has the information available to
| estimate and deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an
| easy online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this
| for good reason, because with TurboTax you still have to input
| information and calculate taxes whereas with the IRS they have
| the data available already.
|
| The conclusion I drew from this article is the most annoying and
| tedious part of this process was manually calculating taxes well
| in advance, which I'd be willing to bet took significantly longer
| than the commute to the IRS office + 30 minute wait.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| W2 withholding is set at a fixed rate at the beginning of the
| year. If you get a raise mid year, that typically isn't
| adjusted to zero out at the end of the year and you end up
| overpaying. Add in all the potential deductions the IRS can't
| anticipate and isn't really possible to make tax payments
| exact.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Overpaying: so the IRS issues a refund. That's part of the
| process.
|
| Deductions: 86% of tax returns use the standard deduction.
| It's OK for the IRS to assume that the standard deduction
| will be used unless the taxpayer tells them that they want to
| itemize.
| [deleted]
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The article mentions that they were "lucky" because in many
| places throughout the country, the physical location they would
| have needed to visit would have no available appointments until
| after taxes were due. Further, it wasn't a 30 minute
| appointment, it was a 30 minute appointment made well in
| advance, after which they (illegally?) _refused refused cash
| payment_, followed by another 30 minute appointment a week
| later. Except it wasn't timeboxed to 30 minutes because they
| didn't bother to tell them (or didn't know) how long it would
| take to make this simple transaction. Notice your options are
| to 1) have a bank or 2) use non-traditional digital means which
| all charge some form of "convenience fee" or 3) suffer major
| hassle to pay cash without surcharge.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you technically need a bank? You should be able to head to
| the post office or Walmart and pay with a money order.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Money orders are $1000 maximum, and they have fee of $2.40,
| so you might need to pay couple of dollars extra depending
| on how much you owe.
| jalk wrote:
| He didn't tell us how much he spent on parking and gas to
| go to the IRS office twice.
| yurishimo wrote:
| You can pay for things with multiple money orders. I used
| to pay my rent this way.
| artsytrashcan wrote:
| You will notice that much of the de-facto mission of
| government for the past ~50 years has been to replace a given
| institutional function, for which there is a clear and
| attainable path to effective implementation for the good of
| the public, with a private middleman who may or may not be
| friends with/former colleagues of/funding the election
| campaign of an interested politician or bureaucrat (or to
| prevent the reversion thereof). You may argue that this is
| somehow more cost-effective or efficient, but it's happening
| all the same. So much energy is invested in the great battles
| involved in this mission that we have no time or funding to
| address the new and pressing dilemmas which as-of-yet have no
| solutions, public or private.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Conversely, in many locations throughout the country (Fargo,
| ND being one of them), you can walk into the IRS building
| without an appointment and converse directly with an agent
| who will happily take cash, almost every day. They didn't
| want to go somewhere else, so if cost them just over a week
| in process. There are costs to living in bureaucratic
| hotspots.
| tester457 wrote:
| > IRS easily has the information available to estimate and
| deduct taxes as they are due automatically or via an easy
| online form. Turbotax and other providers lobby against this
| for good reason
|
| It's funny how people accept this lowered quality of life
| despite it being common knowledge that the IRS is purposely
| worsened to benefit private corporations.
| irrational wrote:
| > If the government wants everyone to pay their taxes, why
| doesn't it make it as easy as possible?
|
| Uh, they do make it as easy as possible, as long as you aren't
| trying to pay in cash. Even the description of how to pay with
| cash sounded as easy as could be expected.
| jsnell wrote:
| > If the government wants everyone to pay their taxes, why
| doesn't it make it as easy as possible?
|
| Seems like they do; those easier ways are "not with cash".
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| In Brazil:
|
| As a person, it's super easy to pay your taxes: download the
| government app, double check the data and send it (it's more
| complex to a few people, of course).
|
| As a company, it's the hell on earth.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| Not everybody is allowed to have bank accounts.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But anyone can buy a money order at Walmart or USPS.
| retrac wrote:
| Here in Canada, taxes can be paid in person at a retail bank, or
| the post office.
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(page generated 2023-04-16 23:00 UTC)