Want to give back to your community? Pay taxes
Taxes are the new tithing. Plus, a round up of tax advice to help you file with ease this year
I love paying taxes. (There’s a sentence that can only come from a socialist. 🤷♀️)
Generosity is the highest form of financial responsibility, and taxes are the absolute easiest way to be generous with your money. Most of this form of giving is automated, so you can give to people in need without the labor of deciding how to distribute resources.
Our culture treats taxes like an evil perpetrated against us by some shadowy government fat cats. But taxes can be a way of extending generosity to your community — giving, similar to charity or gifts, that reaches individuals in need through government spending and services.
It’s odd that we treat taxes with such disdain, when they’re a near-exact secular parallel to the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of tithing, which is touted by many of taxation’s biggest opponents as a necessary good.
Biblical stories of tithing describe a social practice of mutual aid, giving according to your ability to others according to their need. The money might have gone to citizens without means to care for themselves or to people who’d dedicated their lives in service of the community (as priests or other workers in the church). Historically, a tithe wasn’t a direct gift; it was often required, collected by the Church and distributed as needed… like a tax.
The dictionary definition of tithe even refers to it as a tax in support of a religious establishment.
When we think of taxes as a form of giving, we can work to ensure tax dollars are used in the most generous and sustaining way possible, and stop fighting against the notion of paying them at all. The way our governments collect and distribute funds is far from fair, equitable, sustainable or healthy for our society, but giving less isn’t the solution. The solution is to hold these governments accountable for using tax dollars in our best interest. Because when our governments actually try to help us, it works.
Now that we’ve got our mindset straight… let’s address the pragmatic stress of dealing with taxes in the United States.
As we dive deep into this annual tax season, here’s a quick round up of some of the tax advice I’ve shared in past years:
Have more tax questions? Drop them in the comments, and I’ll help you find resources!
ICYMI, last year, I shared my ultimate guide to taxes, including exactly how income taxes work in the U.S., how to make your tax plan to file your tax return with ease and what to do if you haven’t filed a return in several years.
Don't panic if you're expecting a big tax bill — you have 4 options
Tax season is scary for a lot of people, because you could get a tax bill you’re not prepared to pay. But that’s OK. For Business Insider, I list four ways to reduce the burden of payment and avoid penalties from the IRS, including:
A long-term or short-term payment plan.
Delayed collection.
Offer in compromise (i.e. a settlement payment).
Extension to file later.
1099 Vs. W-2: What’s The Difference?
In this nuts-and-bolts guide for Forbes, I break down these two common tax documents. Employers have to file 1099s and W-2s each year and distribute them to workers by the end of January. If you earned at least $600 from anyone in 2023, you should have received one of these forms from them. This guide explains who each is for and how to use it.
How to Get Free Tax Filing through the Free File Alliance
When I say I love paying taxes, please don’t take that to mean I love filing a tax return. The latter is a giant pain that shouldn’t exist, and it persists in the U.S. in part because of a public-private partnership called the Free File Alliance.
In this article for The Penny Hoarder, I explain how tax preparation companies make filing an annual headache by obscuring their free filing options — but also how to get past their nonsense and file your taxes for free, an option 70% of American workers are eligible for.
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Love this! I think it may be written into our American "DNA" to hate taxes on principle. But I've also often wondered why people hate them so much. Yes, they come out of our pay. But taxes are what ensure all our services work, like schools, fire departments and police departments, community spaces like parks and libraries, and so on. So, if we don't pay for government services with our taxes, we don't get any of these things. I think people often forget that. Another consideration: Our reluctance to pay taxes often means we pay more for some things. I'm a huge supporter of universal healthcare. Yes, if we had universal healthcare our taxes would go up. But no one ever does the math. We'd actually end up paying less through our taxes than the average American pays out of pocket for healthcare now. This, our reluctance to pay for universal healthcare with our taxes is the reason we have the most expensive healthcare of any first world country. (Side note: We also have the worst healthcare of any first world country.)
I think a big reason people have a problem with paying taxes is because they see so much waste. We know that taxes help pay for some services (example safety and roads), but more and more we have to keep paying for things. Where we live now we have to pay for trash pickup ourselves and separately for recycling. My partner is a government employee and the things they share blow my mind. Waste, redundancy, inefficiencies, to name a few. Also there is the perception (true or false) that middle and lower class have to pay more than their fair share for services that are also used by those who are more well-off. Not mention how complicated the tax system has become.