1. This doesn't make any sense. The easiest way for the government to impose more taxes is to raise the percentages on the taxes they already collect. Private filing has nothing to do with it.
2. Americans don't have the lowest tax rates in the developed world. Mexico, Ireland, Chile, Turkey, and South Korea all have lower tax rates[1]. And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because they're not spending half their budget on occupying other countries.
"And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because they're not spending half their budget on occupying other countries."
This. The American military is perhaps the largest and most wasteful social program on the planet. Americans spend way too much time trying to find their way around this elephant in the room.
> 1. This doesn't make any sense. The easiest way for the government to impose more taxes is to raise the percentages on the taxes they already collect. Private filing has nothing to do with it.
To raise the percentage rates, politicians have to vote to raise those rates. Private filing means that everyone is very aware of how much they’re paying in taxes. It’s not just an invoice they receive listing how much was withheld. They have to recalculate it. That makes them much more sensitive about voting for politicians who vote for higher taxes.
> 2. Americans don't have the lowest tax rates in the developed world. Mexico, Ireland, Chile, Turkey, and South Korea all have lower tax rates[1].
I don’t think people would consider Chile and Mexico to be developed countries. You’re right that Ireland and South Korea are lower (depending on the year, Ireland cut taxes significantly recently). But they’re together with the US in the bottom band.
> And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because they're not spending half their budget on occupying other countries.
I think it’s true that other countries do more with less. But it has little to do with the military budget. US government spending as a percentage of GDP is 38%, meaning all levels of US government spend $7.3 trillion annually. The military budget is just 10% of that, or 3.2% of GDP. That’s high compared to Europe, but not a big difference compared to overall government spending. The US military budget is proportionally where the U.K. and France’s was in the late 1980s, back when those countries had robust welfare states: https://worthwhile.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451688169e2022ad3a0...
If the United States cut its military budget to the same proportional level as France, we’d have an extra $175 billion for other things. That’s not nothing, but to put that into perspective, we spend $970 billion a year on education (5% of GDP). We spend $1.1 trillion on healthcare and welfare for poor people. Cutting our military budget to European levels wouldn’t revolutionize our budget.
> To raise the percentage rates, politicians have to vote to raise those rates. Private filing means that everyone is very aware of how much they’re paying in taxes. It’s not just an invoice they receive listing how much was withheld. They have to recalculate it. That makes them much more sensitive about voting for politicians who vote for higher taxes.
I'm not sure how you think private filing is related to manually filing your taxes. Yes, if taxes were just paying an invoice at the end of the year, that would make them less noticeable, but that's not a necessary component of private taxation. Adding up all your income and just calculating a simple percentage would create just as much awareness--probably more, because there's some clarity/transparency that is easier to understand.
In fact, I'd argue that a complex filing process puts a focus on where money is coming from, rather than where it is going, which is arguably much more important to make transparent to people.
> I don’t think people would consider Chile and Mexico to be developed countries.
Any basis you could have for not considering Chile and Mexico to be developed countries applies to large sections of the US (incidentally, they tend to be the parts of the US with the lowest taxes). There's more poverty in the parts of Alabama and West Virginia that I've visited than the parts of Ecuador I've visited.
> You’re right that Ireland and South Korea are lower (depending on the year, Ireland cut taxes significantly recently). But they’re together with the US in the bottom band.
So the rest of your argument doesn't work, since it was based on your claim that we have the lowest taxes.
2. Americans don't have the lowest tax rates in the developed world. Mexico, Ireland, Chile, Turkey, and South Korea all have lower tax rates[1]. And in some cases the governments provide more services with less money because they're not spending half their budget on occupying other countries.
[1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxe...