How is the government getting taxes from people it doesn’t know exist??
Going to the store and handing over my money for the stuff. There’s a % sales tax at the bottom of my receipt, but how is this possible?! I didn’t tell the government I was going shopping today.
Drive back home to my apartment, where I pay my rent for the month. My landlord forward a chunk of that money to the city as real estate taxes. But I never formally registered my citizenship at this address, so how can that be?
Heading to the bar where I earn my living. Most of my income is in tips, which my boss collects and skims the business tax rate off of before distributing the balance. But there’s no bartender’s license to work here, so how did he know to do that?
Omw home, I’ve got to remember to re-register my car and buy more gas-taxed petrol and damn it feels like there’s a lot of ways for a government to collect tax money from me.
Could you not write this less condescending? I’m sorry I’m not from the US. When I heard people say that sales tax isn’t included in the price and that you need to file your taxes every year I assumed that was how the tax was collected.
In the United States there is federal corp tax taken from documented workers and paid to the national government (federal tax) by businesses. State tax is also taken the same way and paid to the state.
This just income tax, but there are many other forms of taxes. Vehicle tax, gas tax, food tax, clothing tax, restaurant tax, etc. These all go to the state and vary in amount depending on the state.
This is also why our prices don’t include tax. So apple/amazon can show a single price and your state tax gets tacked on at checkout.
So this “undocumented Immigrants paid X in taxes” is them paying taxes on good but not income. Businesses can pay these people in cash under the table and not paying taxes or benefits for them.
I’m sorry I’m not from the US.
Sales, real estate, and other consumption taxes aren’t unique to the US.
When I heard people say that sales tax isn’t included in the price and that you need to file your taxes every year
You’re hearing bullshit. There was a historical loophole by which online merchants asserted that sales taxes needed to be collected from the individuals purchasing the goods rather than the businesses selling them. That loophole has long since been closed.
But virtually nobody paid the tax. Few people even know how or what they might owe. And even if they had, you don’t need to be a citizen to buy something online.