Absurd sure, but it jibes well with the related sentiment of paying everything in cash for a short interval of time to physically feel the "pinch" of paying for things that come too casually using a credit card.
It's a pretty crazy notion that our employers are the unpaid tax collectors of the government. This is precisely why the government fought all the movement toward 1099 contract work since then there were effectively more employers to juggle and more likely to not be able to collect as effortlessly as with few large employers.
And the lawmakers in the US know a dirty secret: if taxpayers had to actually write a check for their entire tax bill on April 15 each year there would be blood in the streets.
Instead - the withholding system not only keeps the riots at bay but also makes “tax day” a happy day as money rains from the sky onto almost every US household [1]. Horray, it’s TAX DAY! Honey, we’re going to dinner and takin’ the kids to Walmart to pick out a prize!
That's a common thing I have to repeatedly explain to people, that a large tax return is essentially a free short term loan to the government. I had a friend post a photo of $9k in cash with some comment in the direction of friendly prideful boasting of some sort. I replied to him informing about what happened and that he needs to update his withholding so he doesn't have a large return and emailed him some articles about the drawbacks of large returns. It's a pretty crazy world. I've also had a friend who donated a ton of his money through the year and itemized deductions and had returns in the tens of thousands of dollars. His HR department was using the family size withholding table which maxes out at like 6 dependents or something. I imagine they did so for simplicity and probably didn't have many individuals for which that table was suboptimal. I pointed out that there's a formula withholding section to the W4 that he needs to look into so he doesn't have these ridiculous sums of money come tax season.
why so Employers benefit from state provided infrastructure and from the education of workers.
Or are you suggestion that Amazon pays a tax for every truck mile they use or pay for the cost of their employees education.
and from my experience a self employment true 1099 contractors are ripped off by employers.
the point is about the interest the government takes in the ratio of the number of tax collectors to the number of tax payers and keeping that number low; it's not about the merits or abuses of the 1099 status.
It's a pretty crazy notion that our employers are the unpaid tax collectors of the government. This is precisely why the government fought all the movement toward 1099 contract work since then there were effectively more employers to juggle and more likely to not be able to collect as effortlessly as with few large employers.