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.
I am required to pay taxes to the US government, not elon musk running a fraudulent government agency, why should I pay?
Submitted 4 days ago by Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
foggy@lemmy.world 4 days ago
100% doing this.
I’ll be an old man telling 16 year olds to withokd 0 and create a savings account for tax day sounding like a depression era grandma telling you to reuse the trash bags.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just so you know, you will likely face underpayment penalties doing this.
I suggest you avoid giving 16 year olds tax advice.
Lowpast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
What? You have it backwards. 0 withholdings means the largest amount withheld on your paycheck, and a higher refund end of year.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s quite the hope to risk prison for on someone else’s advice.
Clbull@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
blipcast@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
protist@mander.xyz 3 days ago
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
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
You can underwithold income and payroll taxes through the year. There is no need to have periodic withholding it is just a convenience for budgeting.
The thing you cannot do if you don’t declare standard withholding is fall short or pay late (without a qualified extension). If you’re unable to pay the taxes you declined to pay through the year they will go after you. And if you’re late paying you will pay pretty significant interest on your owed amount.
MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Just make sure to set those taxes aside so if it does still exist you don’t end up in jail for nonpayment.
plz1@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Most employers don’t give you that option.
protist@mander.xyz 3 days ago
If you’re an employee, you should have filled out a W4 when you started your job to indicate your tax withholding. You are able to submit a new W4 at any time
IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
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.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We are probably past the point where any sort conflict or skirmish can change anything. We need to think how we can establish a long term, sustained, counter to what the trumples are doing.
This is just an example, but another poster wanted to say this is all a conflict of country vs city. Suppose that’s true, well then we a clear path to solving it. If rural people can attack city folks politically, there are certainly ways we can retaliate. Rural people are so isolated they have no idea how much they depend on the manufacturing and industry residing in cities. That doesn’t have to be the end of it either. We can leave the urban centers and do work from home or get by through other means.
These are just examples of how we need to be thinking. We tried really hard to change the laws that oppress people and what resulted was an attack on equity and people who believe in it. We need to regroup, understanding the law has never been on our side, and form new strategies that accomplish the same goals.
MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You will be fined or jailed if you do not.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 days ago
Can’t arrest everyone
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The wall they’re building isn’t to keep the Mexicans out…
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 days ago
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.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Weird definition of the word cheat
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Unfortunately it’s because they are underfunded. A lot of them would love to go after the wealthy, so I’ve heard.
Notyou@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
They found $4.7 bill last year in back taxes. They will find a lot less than that going after the lower income brackets.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Does it matter who has the monopoly on violence, if you don’t? You pay taxes because if you refuse to for long enough, burly men with guns will eventually take your stuff and lock you up.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Why aren’t burly men coming for musk?
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
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.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
marshadow@lemmy.world 4 days ago
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.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
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?
marshadow@lemmy.world 4 days ago
For being a low-key menace. www.cia.gov/static/…/SimpleSabotage.pdf
sexy_peach@feddit.org 4 days ago
Because you’ll get bonked
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
We are all getting bonked. Our future is being robbed right out from under us.
sexy_peach@feddit.org 4 days ago
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.
artificialfish@programming.dev 4 days ago
I have money and I’m not comfortable in prison. That’s why.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They can’t put 350 million people in prison. What good is your money in a country of lawlessness? When you pay the thugs to not rob you, what will be left for yourself?
artificialfish@programming.dev 4 days ago
When you get all 350 million people to riot I’ll be on your side. But laying low is a more likely to succeed option. This country has never been fair or politically good. I prepared for this, because I could see it coming.
shadowhawk0000@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Legit point.
over_clox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
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.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I am broke, no doubt, but they take the money from checks.
over_clox@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You get a check? Like, those paper payments?
I haven’t found one bank or establishment that’ll cash any of my former employer’s checks in over a decade. They tell me the companies I worked for aren’t registered as trusted employers/check issuers.
My past employers all had to cash their own damn checks and hand me cash money. And that’s largely why I quit repairing computers, tablets and phones back in 2017, apparently all the tech companies here are shady, to the point even their own banks don’t trust them.
Wish I knew what it was like to have an honest employer…
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You are free to do whatever you want to do, however, there are consequences to your actions. If you believe that the US government will collapse and there will be no one to start garnishing your wages when you don’t report your taxes, then by all means, stop paying them.
Your reaction is “reactionary”, though. You come across as though you are looking for a reason to not pay taxes, and you think you’ve found one. Instead, you should be looking for ways to correct the problems you see. If you don’t like Musk, then find ways to undermine him. Refusal to pay your taxes isn’t it, though.
Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 4 days ago
There is a whole government infrastructure in place to prevent musk which he has usurped. Why is it on me, and me alone?
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You are giving false equivalency arguments. You are equating Musk’s abilities to some direct link in your taxes, as though the 25% you pay each paycheck is funding him. It isn’t. It is still funding garbage collection, national parks, welfare programs, and other critical infrastructure. Your taxes haven’t started going to new places. They are doing the exact same thing they have always done. You are being reactionary, and it comes off like you are either 15 years old and just learning about taxation, or 55 and learning about Libertarianism. Get a grip on yourself, realise that there is still work to be done, and being an infant about this shit isn’t doing anything but wasting people’s fucking time. If you don’t want to pay taxes, don’t. But don’t lie and say it’s about Musk. It’s selfishness. It’s because you can’t manage what money you have, and you think that little bit extra is going to make a difference. It won’t, though. You’ll still be broke because you spent all your money on weed and black light posters.
distantsounds@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You are not alone. You have the ability to make positive change. If you would wish to have a larger impact, organize, find strength with those in your community and it will grow.
kjira@lemmy.today 4 days ago
You’re definitely not the only person proposing your course of action. By the way, it would be silly for me to refrain from filing taxes since I’m likely to get a small refund. From your own reasoning, why would I want the government to keep my money even longer interest free? In that case, I absolutely should file my taxes to take the money away from them.
thefartographer@lemm.ee 4 days ago
Because of everyone does the thing with all the might necessary to do it themselves, then together they will do the biggest thing that’s ever been done.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 4 days ago
Of course if that happens your dollars won’t be worth anything anyway.