Our Idiotic Tax Payment System

Joe Bankman, a law professor at Stanford, explains the "logic" of our income tax.

"Imagine if you had to pay your credit card bill the way you pay your taxes. 

Each month, Visa would send you a blank form. The form would instruct you to gather all your receipts, write down every purchase you had made, and calculate the total amount you owed Visa. 

After you sent in your bill, Visa would check its records. If you’d forgotten a receipt and underpaid, Visa would fine you. If you’d made a big enough mistake, you’d go to jail."

I would just add that in this example the cost of paying your Visa bill this way would be about 20 cents per dollar of purchases.

The United States is the only wealthy country in the world that forces its taxpayers to gather up tax forms and calculate their own bill. It exists because the tax compliance industry and government both benefit from the system. At your expense.