what is taxation with/without representation?

19 comments

1. “Taxation without representation” means the government body that makes taxes should be assembled by a vote of the people. Basically, you should have a vote in the government entity that decides how much to tax you.

   It’s a concept that stems from the colonial era, when England was imposing taxes on American settlers, but Americans could not vote in England. It was a primary impetus for us rebelling and fighting for our independence.

   Re: payment of taxes, unless you have a lot of complicated assets, paying taxes is relatively simple. You get a piece of paper from your job with a breakdown of what you were paid, you use a free service to enter that into a website, and it calculates what you owe.

   You can also estimate what you’ll owe at the end of the year and instruct your employer to hold that money back in a separate account for you, so you’re not tempted to spend it and then owe more than you have at the end of the year. This is what most people do. Then, at the end of the year, the calculation I mentioned above will take that into account and inform you of any difference.

   When people have more complicated assets, or, for example, if they run their own business, taxes get very complicated and it’s wise to have an accountant. This costs money and is a private arrangement between you as a customer and an accountant as a business. But the kind of person who needs this is _typically_ making a good deal of money or has a good deal of wealth already. A middle class worker or working class worker is unlikely to need one.

2. Its what we complained about to King George. That we were getting taxed. We were subjects of the crown, but our grievances were ignored.

   Most people’s taxes aren’t hard to calculate. You don’t need to hire anyone to do them, but if your taxes are complicated it can be worth it.

3. “No taxation without representation” was a political slogan used during the Revolutionary War. The idea was that the American colonies were upset that they paid taxes to Britain, but didn’t get any political influence in Parliament. That they were giving taxes to the British government but had no voice at all in it.

   So during the Revolutionary War where the American colonists fought for independence, “No taxation without representation” was a slogan used to help encourage people to support the cause of rebellion against the British Empire.

   Nowadays, the US has a federal income tax. Everyone who has a job generally has to pay income tax based on how much money they made. Generally, when Americans get jobs, they fill out a paper that tells their employer to set aside a percentage of each paycheck to be sent to the government to cover their tax needs.

   Then, at the end of the year you are given a paper from your employer that lists exactly how much money you made and how much was sent to the US to cover your taxes per your request. You have until the middle of April to fill out paperwork that confirms that you sent sufficient tax money to cover how much you owe.

   Theoretically you don’t need someone to help you with this paperwork if you have a very simple economic situation. But if you have investments in stocks or real estate, children who depend on you economically, or other issues that make your finances more complicated, hiring a professional to assist you with your taxes, or paying to use an online service that will calculate the optimal way for you to get the proper form is filled out is recommended.

   In general though, if the amount of money that had been set aside by your employer was sufficient, or more than was necessary to pay after you have gone through your paperwork and figured out exactly how much you owed, the government will send you the excess money as a tax refund. If the amount of money that was set aside by your employer wasn’t sufficient, or you opted out of having them set money aside for you, or worked independently and weren’t an employee of a company, you then have to pay the government the amount of money your taxes are determined to require.

4. It’s a phrase dating back to our pre-independence history. As british subjects we wanted representation in British parliament to help reverse colonial laws specifically designed to extract money from us, much as various new world Spanish colonies asked for the same. That obviously didn’t happen so we launched a tax boycott, imperialist politicians in the UK responded by cracking down/escalating, and here we are

   Paying annual tax usually takes about 1 hour & a separate form per income source you have (even $13 in interest on your bank account requires you to find and fill out separate paperwork), so it’s easy for most but it can get complicated if you have a weird livelihood

5. “[No]Taxation without representation” is a slogan from colonial times that referred to the imposition of taxes on colonists without their being entitled to elect a representative in the British parliament.

   It is still used as a rallying cry by residents of the District of Columbia who are also not able to elect a representative to congress.

   For most salaried workers and hourly workers, a portion of each paycheck is withheld by your employer for taxes. In or around April, you are required to reconcile the amount withheld with the actual amount owed, which can be affected by literally thousands of factors ranging from mortgage interest paid to whether one is a volunteer firefighter. Most people will receive a refund, though some will owe more.

   For most people this is extraordinarily easy and can be accomplished in less than an hour with simple forms or a web-based tool at No or relatively low cost. It can be much more difficult if you have a variety of non-employment income streams (rental properties, contract work, investments) or if you own your own business, and many of these people hire an accountant.

6. When the US was a colony, they complained to England about “taxation without representation”: the fact that they were being taxed without having a say in how the place they were paying taxes to was being governed.

7. It was a rallying cry during revolution, opposing idea that England could imposed taxes but colonists had no say/choice in governing.

   It’s continued to stand for taxes only being fair is constituents can elect those imposing the taxes.

8. I don’t know how state income taxes work because I’ve never worked in a state that had one. Paying federal taxes is easy for most people, no accountant needed. People can fill out their own tax forms but it’s much easier to just pay TurboTax and do it online. If you have a complicated financial situation it is probably smart to have an accountant.

   Paying property taxes is easy too, I just go to the county tax website and input my bank information, they withdraw it.

9. Skilled immigrants from China and India are stuck on an endless queue for green cards. They pay all the taxes a citizen pays but don’t have representation and do not get the benefits such as unemployment, social security, medicare, etc.

   Other countries such as Canada, the UK, etc. have modern immigration programs that provide a clear path for these immigrants to become citizens and enjoy the benefits for the taxes they pay. Canada provides benefits such as healthcare as soon as the immigrant gets there as a permanent resident.

   I see this as “taxation without representation” today. I see this as a threat to America’s competitiveness as attracting and retaining top talent in STEM fields is crucial to America’s success.

10. “No Taxation without Representation” was a rallying cry in the years leading up to the American Revolution in the 1770s.

    Before the American Revolution, the American colonies/Provinces of the United Kingdom were, by and large, largely left to do what they wanted so long as they passed money along to the UK (a policy called “salutary neglect” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salutary_neglect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salutary_neglect)).

    As a result, the colonies/Provinces in America had their own self-elected governments, which wrote laws and levied their own taxes on the population without much (if any) interference from Great Britain. This meant the Americans largely ruled themselves, and if they had issues with how their own self-elected governments were doing things, they could either vote them out, protest, riot, or any other thing that would disrupt governance and make their displeasure known.

    After the French and Indian/Seven Years War, that changed. Since the British took a major economic hit in defending the American provinces from the French, they decided to take a more active role in accruing money from the Americans. They often levied taxes directly (such as the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, the Townshend Acts, the Intolerable Acts, etc) on the American population from Parliament (and since the Americans didn’t have representation in Parliament, this was largely where the “No Taxation without Representation” slogan came from), in an effort to raise funds.

    *However*, the British also directly interfered with the governance of the American colonies/Provinces, such as abolishing colonial charters, disestablishing the locally-elected governments, shutting down ports (such as Boston), putting regions under martial law, etc.

    The American Revolution was caused by more than taxes

11. Not yet in the thread: Taxation Without Representation is on the license plates issued in DC. They added “End” to the front a few years ago.

12. Oversimplified did a video on the American Revolution, but one scene in particular spells out how crazy the taxes levied on us were…
    [The Stamp Act](https://youtu.be/d4ATT0Pm76s)

    Highly recommend watching the whole vid..

13. Paying taxes depends on the tax.

    I don’t know what an account service is.

    Sales taxes and user fees are collected at the point of service. The business that collects it will have to file with the local/state government depending on local/state laws.

    Property taxes are collected by the local or state government.

    Income taxes are deducted from your paycheck if you are an employee. Income taxes for self employed, contractors, and business owners can be a bit more complicated.

    Those are the three big ones, but there are others.

14. It’s like in the UK where I currently live and they take 40% of your income and scream at you WE HAVE FREE HEALTHCARE and you try and make a doctors appointment and the next available is in two weeks time.

    Or when they make driving so difficult and expensive and scream at you WE HAVE PUBLIC TRANSPORT, STOP POLLUTING THE PLANET and then cancel all the trains on Sundays for six months and every other train service randomly during normal times, including, sometimes, the last train home, and then they lie to you and say they didn’t.

    Yeah. Fucking that.

15. This refers to the fact of history that residents of British America were taxed by the Crown but had no representative in Parliament, which was one reason for our ultimately-successful fight for independence.

    In modern usage this is most commonly seen on license plates from Washington DC, whose residents pay taxes and can vote for POTUS (after the Twenty-third Amendment was passed) but have only a non-voting Delegate in the House of Representatives and zero Senators for over seven hundred thousand Americans.

16. “No taxation w/o representation” was one of the rallying points during the founding of the country in the rebellion against the British crown.

    In the 18th century, the only eligible voters in the UK where landowning males who paid taxes to the Crown. What did we do after overthrowing the Crown? Made it so that only landowning white males who paid taxes could vote.

    As you can see, it’s more of a meme.

17. Without would be a king or some other absolute ruler taking whatever he wants from his citizens… you know… 90% of societies in human history.

18. The American colonists long ago considered themselves to be Englishmen. As such, they thought that if they paid taxes to the Crown then they should have representation in Parliament like other Englishmen. They had no representative to speak for them in England, but were expected to pay taxes nonetheless. For their part, the British government thought that the Colonists owed taxes to the Crown as Britain and just paid for a long and bloody war to protect the Colonists from the French and the Indians. The Colonists, the British reasoned, should pay for the cost of their own defense.

    It didn’t help matters that Parliament passed the Stamp Tax, which fell partly on newspapers, basically taxing the people who were best positioned to make trouble for the government and stir up the rabble.

    I’ll point out that the Americans didn’t much care for paying taxes even with representation, since the first upheaval in the new nation was the Whiskey Rebellion, in which angry farmers revolted against a tax on whiskey that was duly passed by an elected Congress, and President George Washington had to call out the Army.

19. Them’s fightin’ words apparently