Have you ever cared how much tax you pay?

We have a saying in my country: there's no point in complaining because nobody listens. I mean we are all paying so what's the point of moaning about it

The last 2 months I have cared a lot. I typically overpay my tax on purpose so the IRS gets an interest free loan and I get to save some money. I aim to change that soon so I just pay what I owe, and possibly don't get a refund in April. I don't want to give the regime a single penny more than I owe, and frankly if my state seceded and I didn't have to give them a dime, it would be preferred.

I think taxes are great, but the rich really need to pull their own weight. The new taxes just fuck over the poor/middle class

I'd care a hell of a lot less about the amount if it felt like it was being used for anything other than padding rich assholes pockets. I want my taxes to feed and help people, repair and maintain roads, and subsidies public transit. I guess I'm saying I want my money to help my community and the vulnerable, not sit in some rich fuckers bank account while a homeless settlement I drive by daily grows, tent by tent.

I was glad that when I started earning a lot more money, I was being taxed more on that higher portion of the earnings. In theory, this means that I am supporting more good things. I am disenfranchised, however, with the fact that clearly large corporations and the mega rich are not paying their fair share, and that often my tax pounds are being spent in direct opposition of my very existence (anti trans policy, reversal of climate policy, etc).
I care about taxes, a lot, but I don't care about being taxed a lot, as long as the heavy taxes I face are being used in a good way. If a small dip to my quality of life or excess earnings means that overall the quality of life in the country gets better, I'm super happy to see it.

As for me, I would rather pay lower taxes and have everyone else pay higher taxes. I vote for higher taxes every time.

I care more about where they are spent. My local government is spending it far better than my federal government. If it was half my income and was spent in ways that lower the cost of living and improve quality of life, then I'd have no problem with that.
If I get a tax cut, I think, cool, at least I choose where this money goes, because I actually do give some to non-profits that benefit society. Tax amounts are not something which determines how I vote, I gloss over it in the news, it's just incidental that the anti-worker parties want to raise my taxes and spend them in worse ways.

I care a little bit. I work as a welder and am on the verge of completing a four year apprenticeship. My pay is going to shoot up, so I need to plan to save money for tax day.
Right now I have my employer taking an extra $15 out of each paycheck to give to the IRS. It used to be enough to receive a refund. But these past four years as my pay increased, that refund gets smaller and smaller.
I'm going to have to get my employer to take a bit more out of each paycheck. Tgat way I wont owe anything at the end of the year.

I care anytime some rich prick pays less than me.
- The vast majority of tax in most countries is paid by those with higher incomes. In the US the top 1% of earners pay more than 40% of the tax collected and almost all the tax (97%) is paid by the upper half of earners.
  In the UK the numbers are a little different, but tell the same story (top 1% pays around 30%, top 10% pays around 60% of all tax collected).
  So while I know you mean relatively and not absolutely it’s still worth spending at least one minute to consider how much of the tax burden is actually shouldered by the wealthy.
  I come from a Scandinavian country and I’m ALL in on redistribution, free education, free healthcare etc. But let’s not have politics ignore the facts.
  
  The top 1% here in the US absolutely don't pay their fair share. In theory, they pay 40%, but there are so many loopholes that they often don't pay any at all.

I pay quite a bit in Denmark, but used to live in the US.
I pay more taxes now (not THAT much more but definitely more). However I see what I get for my taxes here: healthcare, bicycle lanes, cheap and very good trains/metro/ferries/buses everywhere, etc., and sooo much support for people. It makes me proud to pay taxes here, even though of course I always want more in my pocket and I want more for my money.
In the US I hated the taxes because I paid more than rich people (as they pay nearly none) and I didn't feel like i got a lot from them.
No problem with taxes as a concept, but I hate how the US uses tax money
- healthcare, bicycle lanes, cheap and very good trains/metro/ferries/buses everywhere
  Danish healthcare is cheaper than US healthcare, and bicycles/public transit are also cheaper than the car centric US transportation infrastructure. If the US adopted socialized healthcare and sane transit, we'd pay less taxes not more.
  
  I agree, if the US also used their tax dollars as intelligently as the Danish government does as well.
  Seems like a pipe dream, but I hope at least parts of the US become more modern in those ways in my lifetime

I've heard many right wing folks complain, because in this country at least (Canada), the right LOVES to brain wash them into believing government should be smaller, socialism is bad, and high taxes are evil (even though when they get in they only give tax breaks to their rich friends).
I, one of seemingly few rational thinking humans left in this country, have always understood, believed, and told those people at every opportunity - "THAT IS WHAT PAYS FOR OUR SERVICES"
I remember before I deleted my FB account one tool on there complaining about an incoming 'digital services tax' (i.e. Netflix subs and such), and I quickly skim his wall or whatever, and he was collecting the "oh noes, I lost my job cause covid, please give me money government" benefit we had just like, a year prior - they SERIOUSLY just do not understand they very benefits and services they rely on and complain aren't big enough or good enough, ARE FUNDED BY THOSE DAMN TAXES.
As infuriating as all that is - it's even worse to see an entire half of our government fanning the flames of this idiocy, reinforcing it, and teaching them it is right!!

Yes, the property taxes in my city are the highest legally allowed and the services we receive are dogshit.
- Be mad at the way the collected taxes are spent of course. Paying tax is the cost of living in a community or societies. Unfortunately we as peons don't get as much control over where it is spent, but definitely should have a say.

I'm fine paying what I pay, but I reserve the right to question the quality of services they pay for.
- And no. A person who pays millions dollars of tax does not have a louder voice than I do. We are all the same tax payers who pay proportionally to our earnings.
  Give me back the public infrastructure I need and the billionaires hate.

If it were being used responsibly I'd advocate for higher taxes, but here in the US taxation is theft.

i never did really care about income and property taxes (including vehicle related taxes), even though they can be a pain in the *ss. i believe they're a fair share of contribution to society, at least in the capitalist context that we live in. but it bothers me product taxes, especially those levied upon non-processed or low-processed food, medicine, basic hygiene and cleaning, basic clothing and products not produced in your country when said country doesn't have an industrial policy to encourage the production of these items internally.

Now more than ever, I don’t want to pay taxes except at the state level. If Medicare and social security will go the way of the dodo bird, why should I pay? If federal agencies that make this country a civilized country have been dismantled, why the fuck should I pay? If the military and security apparatus gets bigger yet we lose out on government services that actually benefit the people, why the fuck should I pay?
And I’m at the point where I will cut someone who tells me I HAVE to pay my taxes. Because the only thing keeping me from wilding out in real life and even on the internet is the threat of prison time.

Last year I owed 10k USD. I certainly cared then.
Overall I don't think about it until I do my taxes. That said, I'd happily pay more if everyone else got healthcare, good infrastructure, and a clean environment.

As a kid I guess I did, because I was borderline libertarian and something of a prick. But these days I'm older and a little more aware of people who aren't me, so these days I don't think about it at all.
I would prefer if rich people paid more, but that has no real bearing on how much I pay.

Property taxes bug me a lot. The tax has gone up over 10% each of the past 3 years. It's adding a lot to my mortgage.
- Texas sucks. Everyone talks about how much it has a low cost of living and minimal taxes because there is not a state income tax, then the homeowners insurance rates go up or get cancelled and you can count on property taxes going up 10% annually. We bought our house in 2016 and the amount has gone up 10% every year since, not including the other bond issues which increase the tax rate on top of the existing rate.

Only when the administration is blatantly corrupt. I take pride in funding my share of society, but not when nutjobs are spending it.

If you get within earshot of a Republican, chances are you'll hear complaints about "damn taxes" within five minutes. So to a certain set of people, definitely everyone they talk to is constantly complaining about taxes.
When I was starting out and making little money, the taxes I paid were definitely cutting into my ability to live. I think instead of "standard deductions" we should have real minimum incomes. If you are under the minimum income for your location, you don't pay taxes.
Now that I am at the end of my career, I think it's stupid that my taxes are not higher. If I could have given young me some of the money I am keeping now, I would have had a much better life overall. I obviously can't do that now, but I can give someone else the same breathing room.
- If you are under the minimum income for your location, you don't pay taxes.
  Then what if you start earning more, suddenly have to pay taxes and end up getting the same or even less than before?
  
  That is not how taxes work. If you earn the minumum income or less, you pay no taxes. If you are above the minimum, you pay taxes on the amount that surpasses the minimum only, so there is no way of getting less if you earn more.

I pay a lot in taxes because I earn a lot. I earn a lot because I work hard and I was lucky (had the right opportunities, enjoyed work that is well compensated by capitalism, etc). I don’t care paying high taxes
- I'm right there with you. My luck came a bit later in life, so I had 10 working years of income tax actually paid close to 0% as I made little and had huge student loan debt from an attempt to get a degree.
  I finished the degree and 10 yrs into a well compensated career and I'll gladly pay thousands to the government. The wealthy people that complain about paying their share have zero perspective. They're basically spoiled brats.
  I've also lived in a state with lower taxes, and now one with higher taxes. You get what you pay for. I hear people everywhere complain about the roads where they live. Not everyone has had to replace whole wheels due to the stuff that some places are calling roads. Again, zero perspective if you don't get out and see the world at least a little.

No , my problem is just about where it got spent
- WAR! WAR! WAR!
- This is it. If all my needs were met by the state, I'd happily pay 90% tax with 10% on luxuries, which is about what I spend anyhow

Depends on the tax. Progressive income tax? I don't care so much. Flatter taxes like sales, property, gas, etc, I care about more because it affects the people at the bottom disproportionately. We only need a progressive income tax AND accountability at the top end for people to pay in. Tired of billionaires getting off free with loop holes.

I became more aware of how much tax I was paying when I became self employed because instead of paying a bit out of each check like a w2 worker I have to pay it in lump sums quarterly.
I run a low overhead medical practice so I don’t have a tax cheat llc, I take the standard deduction every year and as a result my taxes are pretty much the same as they ever were. Even though it’s roughly the same amount (slightly more actually, now that I cut out the overhead of medical systems stealing 30-60% of my labor) there’s something psychological about paying the amount in a lump sum
I think paying taxes is important and I want to do. However I feel conflicted about spending this money because what I feel paying taxes are important for are generally not what my tax dollars fund, and increasingly so. I want to pay and gladly will for community enrichment, better public schools, access to healthcare, infrastructure like roads, power lines, sewers, moving away from fossil fuels, better handling of trash and recycling programs, rehabilitation programs for criminal offenders, mental health programs including interim programs like community supports and mobile programs that exist in between outpatient and inpatient, social welfare programs that give people access to housing, food, electricity, etc
But instead my taxes pay for these things increasingly less. About 20% of my taxes go to military and defensive spending and while I do think some amount needs to go to this I think it’s absurd. Most countries spend 3-5% on defensive spending. Even China, the second highest after the US, spends 6%.
So I don’t resent paying taxes but I do resent how much when roughly 1/5th of that goes to defense contractors to launder billions from taxpayer and Israel for genocide. I also resent that my tax burden continually increases despite making roughly $60-70k a year while the services around me continually decrease.
- So I don’t resent paying taxes but I do resent how much when roughly 1/5th of that goes to defense contractors
  Don't forget to also resent how much money sneakily goes to defense contractors (or other megacorps) by way of every other government office. It depends on the agency, but the majority of the federal workforce is not US government employees, it's contractors, so taxpayer funds go to an army of middlemen before trickling down to the people doing the work. Taxpayers end up overpaying for labor, and the laborers make less money and with less job security than if that tax money just went directly to the worker.
  
  In addition to this I didn’t even touch upon the resentment towards stupid bullshit outside of defense
  Like I like in Pennsylvania and the amount of tax dollars that are spent propping up fossil fuel industries. Like I want to spend money on developing energy infrastructure, of course. But I want that money to go into putting power lines underground (my power goes out every six weeks minimum and 2-3x a year for over 24hours, sometimes over 72), nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, etc
  But what do I get? Fracking, propping up the coal industry, etc. fucking ridiculous.
  Road quality decreases and yet no public transportation expansion. It’s garbage if you have a car and if you don’t it’s impossible if you’re outside of a city.
  So that stuff too
- I want to pay and gladly will for community enrichment,
  Most people say this and I agree. And then the comment under you is complaining about paying property taxes which directly pay for these things you'd like to see funded.
  
  I'd rather pay income tax than property tax. The problem with property taxes is that lots of elderly people in old homes with no plans to sell are getting taxed as if they have million dollar house money. They're basically getting punished for the gentrification of their neighborhood.
  If we collected that money from income taxes and capital gains taxes instead, the results would be more equitable. This would likely increase my own tax burden, but I can afford it a lot better than my elderly neighbors. They can pay when they sell their house, which is when they have the money.

In the UK there is a crazy band between £100k and £125k where for each two pounds above £100k you lose one pound from your personal allowance (personal allowance is £12.5k).
The effective tax rate for this is 60% then it carries on at the regular 40%
Always has struck me as odd.
Never paid this rate myself because I don't get paid enough. Apparently it disincentives doctors from doing overtime.
- I recruit some people into this band. It always amazes me how much people care about whether they are paid £100k or £110k. The difference is about than £72 a week when they're already getting paid over £1,300 a week (after tax).
  Ego.

I care how much taxes I pay for several reasons (Germany):
Rich people are taxed less than working people
Given that we have one of the highest tax rates in the world, a big part of my taxes go into corruption, incompetence or the pensions of civil servants (pensions for civil servants are way higher than for normal people, especially for some pencil pushing)
It gets even more fun, when I think about how many big companies are getting subsidized by my taxes with billions (speaking about companies which are making billions for their stake holders)
In our system, costs for health care system and workers pensions are also mandatory deducted from my income (they don't call it tax)... Given, what an average worker pays, we get not enough out of it, neither from health care nor when thinking about the pensions
A final tax, which is not called tax, is for public TV/state propaganda. There were more scandals about that money recently than anything else: The higher ups in that system earn more money than the president of Germany (no kidding), people get special pensions for the rest of their life which are obscenely high (after working like a few months, again, no kidding)
Don't get me wrong: I would happily pay taxes if the biggest parts would go towards services, infrastructure, public transport, health care, people in need and smart/strategic investments of the economy.
As it is right now, my taxes are siphoned into the pockets of the so called elite instead , so I care.
If you don't care about paying taxes, you are either mostly happy about were the money goes or have too much money to care.
- I don't care because no tax cuts in my country will ever come out of the "hurting people" bin, only out of the "attempt to help" bin.

The bulk of my salary depends on the company I work in and my boss' decisions
I have a much higher ability and chance to change that, compared to changing the tax system.
Taxes are just a fraction of my salary, and they supposedly also cover for my future pension. Meanwhile, most of my taxes pays for state jobs for essential services, such as schools and healthcare. Others pay for debt interests, for money that was used to invest in the country or pay said services.
Sure, a part of it is bad management and ill intentions, but that's such a small portion of my salary. Depending where you live, you might be paying some vere generous retirement plans, but most of the retirement money goes to old people who would otherwise require help from their family.
So no, I don't really care about my taxes. If I feel I don't have enough money, there are other things I can do than complaining about them

I only cared when I was poor and living paycheck to paycheck.

The only time I have ever cared is when I've gotten a bonus. The tax rate is much higher on a bonus. I'd much rather my company just pay me $25 more a week than a bonus in December.
- Tax isn't higher on a bonus. It's counted as taxable income like the rest.
  Edit: Though you might live in a different country to me--I've heard some people do
  
  US tax rate isn't different on bonuses, but the withholding is.
  The govt sees you getting paid a shit ton one month and thinks it's gonna be like that every month from now on so they keep a bunch of extra money so they can be sure you pay your taxes. Then at the end of tax season when you file, you get the extra back in your return.
- It would average out to be the same at the end of the year.
  I waive mine into my pension tax free, future me can enjoy it when i'm earning less and thus on a lower tax band

No (US). Those who loudly complain are generally conservatives who can’t understand how marginal tax rates and brackets work.
- (smugly) I won't take that raise because my tax rate would go up. You're a sucker if you want to take that raise. You make more money by taking less money.
- In Britain we have a pressure group that's inexplicably on TV every other week pedalling this lie and the one that corporation tax hurts businesses. (Corporation tax is paid on net profits, so businesses only pay if they can afford it).
  What's funny is they're called the "taxpayers alliance" yet their narrative suggests none of them actually have any experience of paying tax.

I pay roughly 30% of my gross income in th US. The only tangible benefit I get from it is the ability to drive on free roads on my way to work to earn more taxable income. I only wish my money didn't go to subsidize the rich and make bombs to blow kids up on the other side of the planet.
- You get other benefits though. Like the few social safety nets we actually have, public school funding, social security (unless it runs out/gets cut), fire departments, regulatory agencies that keep your food, water, and drugs safe. Etc. It costs a lot of money to have a society. Even if you don't directly benefit from them, they still make society less shit.
  That said, it'd cost a lot less if we didn't spend so much of it murdering children.
  
  I'm not saying other benefits aren't there, it's just that we know a lot of regulatory agencies are being severely cut so it's gonna be less apparent soon enough. I'm in one of the higher tax brackets so aside from unemployment insurance, a lot of safety nets that require means testing are essentially inaccessible to me as well. Frankly it's a miracle American society is still functioning even with so many tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

Yes. But I don’t complain about it. I do complain about wealthier people and businesses don’t pay taxes like I do.

Not really. In the UK for hourly employees the employer handles all that before you even get your paycheque. When it's payday you have a big breakdown in the slip on what's gone to various taxes and stuff, but you skip all of that and just look at the number that says what's going in your bank.
If I was self employed, or won the lottery or something I would probably be a little pissed off about the concept.

I have heard folks distantly related to me talk like the state tax rate was pretty damn important when selecting which part of the United States to move to.
They were the sort of people that would sit ( in their living room in New Zealand ) and watch fox news and go on the engineered logical and emotional weirdcoaster that sort of media offers up. This is some pretty niche viewing for folks in my country.
- Did their viewing habits affect their opinion of property taxes?
  
  I'm not sure. They could have been describing that to me, but because the local body funding mechanism we have here is called rates rather than property taxes I could have easily got that confused in with the state tax discussion.
  I was kind of astounded that a spreadsheet of tax rates would play a significant part in a decision of where you were going to live.

I care more about how little rich people pay more than I care about how much I pay. I also care about my tax dollars being wasted.
DOGE could actually be a good thing if it were actually looking through the functions of government to eliminate redundancies, waste, and leakage.
But nope, it’s run by a man child who uses his idea of economics (which is informed by right-wing memes) to eliminate government programs that actually help people and the economy.
- It's worse than that, it's a malicious dismantling of government agencies who could stand in the way of capitalists making our lives worse to become richer than anyone has any right to be. It's not stupidity, it's a game plan. This is always what the right meant by small government, small so rich have no objectors with power.

A little, but not too much.
Flat taxes annoy me more than proportional taxes.

I'm more or less forced to, how I wish I could pay it just like another bill rather than some complicated guess-and-file game.
I also want the government to give me an itemized list, to a reasonable extent, of where my taxes are going. As a thought exercise, I added "taxation theft" to my yearly budget, which I currently calculate as over a third of my taxes. That's my best estimate of the taxes I'm paying to bomb innocent civilians halfway across the globe, among other uses I would not approve of.
I wish I lived in a country that takes better care of its taxpayers so I wouldn't have to care about the tax I pay.
- https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals-and-families/your-tax-return/your-notice-of-assessment/tax-receipt#ato-Taxreceiptrecipients
  Australia does an itemized list. It's not very detailed but I appreciate it. The biggest expenses are aged care and health IIRC. Meanwhile everyone is demonizing the unemployed who get a pittance.

I've not heard anyone ever complain about it other than in media.
Maybe you need to be more upper class to relate.

Yes. Even with extra withdraws, I always owe. So it's more of an annoyance. Not to mention I don't like how my tax dollars are being used. If the US wasn't such a dumpster fire, I might feel differently.

Nope.
They'll take what they choose to take. It's 2025. Social mobility doesn't exist, our votes are meaningless, and economic policies change with the seasons.
I have no agency, so it's not worth the stress.

Me? Not really. The people I hear complaining the most are those that:
have no clue where their tax dollars go.
are most likely to make use of government services, and complain the loudest if those services are changed or removed.
think we pay FAR more taxes than every other country (am in Canada).

Yes, all the time (not me though). I know a good amount of people who moved to a place with lower taxes because of it.

In California, yes. Moreso because taxes keep rising but services keep dwindling.
- You’re fucking high, California income taxes are very well structured. At $880k my taxes after deductions were like $30k.
  
  At $880k my taxes after deductions were like $30k.
  I'm not American, is this a joke or do you really pay 3.5% effective tax rate?
  
  Personal income, and even business income, absolutely agreed (my personal for the year was $10k or just shy of 10%, my corp tax was about $900, not bad at all). It's the other nickel and dimeing CA is famous for. Fuel taxes, property taxes because home values are now sky high, DMV fees, and then all your municipal taxes, and then all your varied county/municipal sales taxes, and plenty of others I'm not thinking of right now, and of which added together are exorbitant compared to other states. Now, don't get me wrong, you certainly get what you pay for in terms of great weather and good quality of life compared to other states, as well as many other benefits, but let's not pretend for a second that California isn't a fucking expensive place to live. I was born and raised here, I've lived elsewhere, and I am not leaving, but absolutely California is pricey.

I absolutely did care when I was a single mom just barely getting by, and the state and federal self-employment taxes took such huge bites out of my income. Often, I couldn't pay them and still eat and pay rent, so I racked up interest charges and penalties.
The self-employment tax system in the USA is royally fucked for people who can hardly support themselves even without it.

I don't really have control over it, I just take into account that about 40% of my net income is going to funding war and genocide. I wish there was a way to at least select what you were funding

In general, I didn't much. I did occasionally wish the money was not taken because I needed it, but I'm fine with the point of taxes. We all chip in for stuff we all use. No big deal.
I definitely have objected to what the taxes were used for, and definitely cared about tax disparities, but I never minded paying my share.
I have objections to how property taxes are assessed, though I'm okay with the fact of them for the same reason I'm okay with income taxes. In a monetary world, there has to be some degree of shuffling the money around to keep roads usable, in essence.
Even now, when property taxes are a much bigger proportion of my income, the numbers make sense to me based on the tax valuation of the property. I disagree with that valuation, but not so much I would complain about it. I could, in a perfect world, sell for the price they think it's worth, so I'm not storming city hall.
But, I have heard people complain about their tax amounts rather than the fact of them. Particularly here in the US when someone moves to a new tax bracket, it can be a very upsetting thing to realize that your raise isn't going to all go into your pocket.

Nope. Some people do care though. I'm more concerned with the interest rate as it makes a big difference to my mortgage.

I'm happy to pays tax cause it means I have enough money to pay tax.

Yes, I hate giving white supremacists money

I purposefully moved to a state with no sales tax. It is far superior having all my taxes deducted from my paycheck, rather than playing the constant game of “how much does this purchase actually cost.”
I die every time I need to make a purchase out of state on a work trip/vacation.

I've personally never cared too much. It's what it costs to have society. I agree with others where I don't like half of it going to the military, but other than that I view it as a good thing. I'm doing okay, I can afford to help others get by a bit. I also get benefits, I get our local transit, we get roads, I like fire departments, parks, walkways, it's just paying my share so I get to enjoy those things. And if for some reason I wasn't doing okay, I would feel okay using those safety nets too

My experience is every person in the US who enters the workforce and gets their first paycheck is always surprised. Since here in the us salary is given in pretax dollars, you never get the amount you'd expect for your first one.
Otherwise, some complain scout sales tax in the us for a similar reason, especially going from a state with none to a state with a high rate

Income tax? No.
Sales tax? Yes.

Yes. As taxes are put on the price of my labour which I sell to the owing class, I do not just loose out on the surplus value, which the owning class extracts from the value I created with my labour, but also on part of the value which the capitalist uses to buy my labour. Taxes should be abolished and the surplus value should be used to improve society. This is only possible if the owning class is abolished and socialism is construced of course.
- This reads like another libertarian reinventing taxes and government as usual.
  
  It is called scientific socialism and was invented over 100 years ago.