Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
From a UK perspective it seems a strange system. Unless you're self-employed or a high earner, most people here don't have to worry about tax. Your employer deducts the correct amount from your monthly salary and everything happens automatically. All our tax allowances are either a fixed amount or a fixed percentage of your salary, so there's no uncertainty about how much you need to pay.
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Ah, but the american tax code is a tangle of social engineering exceptions designed to deliver "personalized" tax rates. No two people pay the same amount or rates.
There are regular calls for flat tax rates but they never go anywhere because with a flat tax and no exceptions the government couldn't "encourage" politically correct behavior like buying chinese solar panels or electric cars or not-farm extensive tracts of land...
Vote-buying needs its mechanisms and the tax code is the preferred way to dish out pork.