>> doing it at point of sale would be far more fuss
One of the reasons why I oppose VAT style taxation
Each citizen should at minimum see on a itemized bill the amount of money the government is collecting from them, IMO each citizen should be forced to write out a check to every government entity that needs to collect money
Automated, and hidden taxes is one of the reason the government can actually steal errrr collect as much money as it does, because if people had to pay their taxes like they do their utility bill there would be continual protests in the streets
I believe GP's point is that a tax return only lists a small subset of the taxes being collected from a citizen, giving the impression that the amount is smaller than it is.
Social Security taxes are a great example of this - for W2 employees they don't show up on their tax return at all. And even if the employee looks at the box labeled "social security tax" on their W2, that's still only half of it, because the other half is a "payroll tax" that the employee never sees, even in their "gross income".
When you add consumption taxes, making sure to include both the ones that show up as "sales tax" on a receipt and the ones that get baked into the price (e.g. gas taxes), it becomes extremely difficult to come up with an individual's fully-loaded tax rate.
Even if consumers see their sales taxes and other consumption taxes on their receipts, it's not the full picture. Every business in the supply chain has their own taxes to pay. What portion of those are implicitly passed on to consumers? And what about the suppliers of those businesses (a supply chain is more like a a supply graph)? Where does it end? What about imported goods (which in the US is probably a majority of consumer goods) whose manufacturers were taxed in their own countries? How do you track their taxes? Who's going to do this calculation? How does it not end up needing an even larger bureaucracy to tally up?
Frankly "taxes are theft" is a narrow-minded point of view that I have little time for. Complain about how high your taxes are, complain about how the government wastes money. But it's not "theft", at least in democratic countries. It's the price of living and working where you do.
>>>Frankly "taxes are theft" is a narrow-minded point of view
Frankly the rationalization that taxation, specially income taxation is anything other than theft because of "democracy" is absurd
The fact is that the government, like a theif, says to a person: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
The theif takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber.
He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes a person's money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these.
Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
> Automated, and hidden taxes is one of the reason the government can actually steal errrr collect as much money as it does
The government creates, and then rents to us (usury), the money we all use [1]. It holds a monopoly on money creation.
Governments can create money to build infrastructure, hospitals and housing (many leftist governments in Europe have [2]) at will. Government doesn't need to collect taxes to do any of the things I mentioned, that's a myth. External constraints on national budgets are a myth. National budgets are just monetary debts by the government carried by citizens. [3]
This is laughably false, if the government just created infinite money the money would be worthless, would cause runaway inflation and could not be used to build anything
Fiat Currency requires a careful balance of fraud like pozi scheme to convince people that is is worth something, if they did away with the "myth" as you call it then the entire fraud would collapse like pozi schemes normally do
So you are objectively wrong that the government can create money at will, while technically true they do so at the risk of complete monetary collapse
