[HN Gopher] One economist went on a long whimsical journey to pa... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-16 23:00 UTC)