If you refuse to pay and convince enough other people to refuse to pay, then well congrats. You just started a revolution.
Why aren't we in the streets?
As someone watching from outside, I seriously have no idea.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Because we have no community because we're worked like slaves, and nobody can save in this economy.
So anyone who stops working has a few months before becoming homeless, and will have no support system
It’s no coincidence that employers have started demanding everyone work from an office lately. If you’re commuting back and forth and everything with it you’ll have a lot less time and energy to fight back.
Also culture war bullshit to keep people distracted and divided.
And it was designed that way.
why aren’t we in the streets?
looks out window to street covered in protestors
But the reason not everyone is because mainly the middle and upper middle classes are still content enough, even if they hate trump. I don’t like him, but my living conditions are still very good. It’s a status quo I’m fine with
Those conditions are becoming less and less. Sure you might sleep well tonight but the second your maimed driving your polution machine you're a burden on a system that no longer cares.
Say you make it to old age. A few more raids on the stock market and your 401k disappears and when you go to cash your social security it's been drained since 2025.
Your future was just stolen from you and you don't even know it yet.
No worries you raised a family, surely they will care for you. Except there is so much generational resentment they want nothing to do with you. Say you were good to them and they love you. Even then your fucked because elon took college grants and blew up the department of education. Now they are scrapping by because you didn't have the money to bank roll them through private school and college.
Your twilight years which were suppose to be spent playing every game in your steam library while hooked up to an oculus rift have been replaced with waiting at Costco in the bread line and giving blowies so you can buy 30 minutes at the local PC bang to play overwatch 3.
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Honestly - set your paycheck withholding to zero, hope others do the same to defund the government... and when tax day comes next year double check if the IRS still exists before submitting your payment.
100% doing this.
I'll be an old man telling 16 year olds to withold 0 and create a savings account for tax day sounding like a depression era grandma telling you to reuse the trash bags.
Just so you know, you will likely face underpayment penalties doing this.
I suggest you avoid giving 16 year olds tax advice.
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That's quite the hope to risk prison for on someone else's advice.
I don't think you'll want to risk prison time, especially when you risk being locked up alongside MS-13 gang members.
Trump has agreed a deal with Nayib Bukele that will effectively allow him to deport illegal immigrants of any nationality to El Salvador and transfer US prisoners to their facilities.
This is bad advice. The annual income you report on your taxes indicates how much you should have been setting aside throughout the year. Failing to do so can result in fines. There are exceptions for when your income increases part way through a year, but if you do what you describe, they WILL ding you for that.
You misunderstand how tax withholding works. When you sign up for tax withholding, the IRS gets a portion of your wage each paycheck and sets it aside for you to cover your tax bill the following year. The IRS is only holding that money for you during that time before your annual bill is due, in what amounts to you loaning the government money interest-free. Many people do not withhold taxes and just pay it all at once. And yes, at this point, whether the IRS will exist as a functioning entity in 2026 is a legitimate question, so not giving them a free loan might be a good idea
You don't pay all at once, you need to pay quarterly tax estimates or you will be constantly paying penalties.
I really wish people would stop giving bad tax advice to strangers.
https://www.irs.gov/payments/underpayment-of-estimated-tax-by-individuals-penalty
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Does it matter who has the monopoly on violence, if you don't? Ultimately, you pay taxes because if you refuse to for long enough, burly men with guns will eventually take your stuff and lock you up.
Why aren't burly men coming for musk? How can my neighbor sit by and let it happen to me when they see nothing happen to him? The man illegally sticking their hand in their pocket.
Because he’s paid for them.
With who's money?
Does it matter?
It should matter, if it's your money.
Why aren’t burly men coming for musk?
He has the support of the people with a monopoly on violence.
How can my neighbor sit by and let it happen to me
The fact that your neighbor can't do anything is what makes it a monopoly.
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You seem to think there is some kind of cosmic balance.
There is not.
Musk in charge, you aren't. That's why he gets to do what he wants and you don't. And it sucks.
Because the IRS doesn't come for the wealthy who cheat. They come for the typical who cheat. And you know the IRS under Trump is gonna squeeze the lower classes like a beast.
Weird definition of the word cheat
Unfortunately it's because they are underfunded. A lot of them would love to go after the wealthy, so I've heard.
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Because the state has a monopoly of violence.
The only thing stopping me from just robbing food from a chain corporate store and redistrubuting it to everyone is the potential of going to prison (or getting shot on the scene by pigs).
Same thing with taxes.
I won’t be able to do this for long. Why aren’t we in the streets? What’s so great about your life that authoritarian rule is not a threat to you?
Ask anyone in an authoritarian country (that was already authorian before 2025).
One of the answer is: No one would take risks until there is nothing left to lose. Most people are not brave enough to take action (including me 😓 I'm afraid of the authorities). Survival instincts would overrule any desire to resist, its just the nature of living beings. It takes a lot of courage to even go to a protest, and much much more courage to revolt. There's a scale between a peaceful protest and a revolt. Not paying taxes is leaning 90% towards the side of revolt.
And many people still view the US as a full democracy, they don't see the backsliding and regression to a hybrid regime (or are in denial about it), and eventually, authoritarianism.
Some people are still trying to just "wait it out" until the next election. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, but that's just some people's view on the trump situation.
As a Chinese-American, I'm particularly afraid that by attending a protest, if I get arrested, they would start blaming, not just Chinese-Americans, but also the entire Asian-American community.
Can you imagine how much more fucked this timeline would be, if the trump shooter was a black person, or hispanic person, or asian person, or some other non-white racial/ethnic group? (Or LGBT+, or any identity that's not a Republican Straight White Person) Magats would be rioting and burning down places. We'd have a "Bleeding Kansas" right now.
And its even harder for Asian Americans to find the courage to go protest, because there is often a lack of Asian American solidarity, where as Black Americans tend to have a stronger bond with each other in their community. Black American communities would encourage each other to take a stand, while Asian Americans don't have as strong of the sense of community. (I mean, I would get called a "chng chng" in class, and my classmates who are US-born kids of Chinese ethnicity, would just sit there and watch me get bullied, like wtf dude?!? stand up for your bros/sis)
TLDR: Most US Americans are just "waiting for the next election", because direct action is very risky.
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You will be fined or jailed if you do not.
Because not paying your taxes will draw attention from what remains of the system. I'm not thrilled about paying taxes to the dead and looted corpse of our government, but it's better to stay under the radar.
Stay under the radar for what? Praying I'm not next? So I can continue an unfulfilled life as a wage slave and blink out of existence having learned or felt nothing of importance?
For being a low-key menace. https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf
Menance away
Because you'll get bonked
We are all getting bonked. Our future is being robbed right out from under us.
Yes, but also always has been. Times have been bad before and it wasn't ideal a few years ago either. Keep your head low and push in the right direction, like many good people have done before us.
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Ok, but depending on your situation, you've already paid your taxes and filing them is you telling the IRS to give you a refund.
Just throw away all your money and live like half the rest of us, broke. If you have no money, you have nothing to tax.
Legit point.
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