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[Micro102]

Oooo, a use for my evolutionary biology degree!

I would say pills are natural in the same sense that bird nests are natural, or gorillas using sticks are natural. An animal learned to use tools to increase it's chances of survival, and evolved to use them more efficiently. Humans just took it to an extreme degree and learned to use everything in every way. It's hard to say that anything we do isn't natural, as we are a product of nature.

[McTraveller]

So what are other countries tax systems like? Do you not have the morass of deductions, credits, and the like, which are the sources of all the complexity in the US system?

The US system is likely straightforward to simplify from a technical standpoint, even keeping all the silly additions and subtractions, but simplifying the other parts would be an impressive political feat.

[scriver]

So what are other countries tax systems like? Do you not have the morass of deductions, credits, and the like, which are the sources of all the complexity in the US system?

The US system is likely straightforward to simplify from a technical standpoint, even keeping all the silly additions and subtractions, but simplifying the other parts would be an impressive political feat.

The government sends us a bunch of documents every year, you check the sum to see if you get a deficit or a return, then you sign off on the documents by sms or internet code (I don't know what people who don't have access have to do, hopely there might still be mail-in options). If you've got extra, super secret incomes or deductions you are supposed to add them the documents before you sign off, but nobody I know have to do that, the tax office has pretty good insight into relevant things already.

[MorleyDev]

In the UK, if you aren't self-employed then your employer handles your taxes for you. They just put the your post-tax pay straight into your bank every month and your paycheck lists every deduction for you to review.

The only other taxes we have to pay ourselves are council tax and I guess VAT counts.

Council Tax is just a monthly fee. The amounts you'd pay is sent to you every year, and you can pay online, by post, by bank transfer (which can set up as a standing order in your bank to automatically pay it every month). Overpaid Council Tax is deducted from the next year.

VAT is included in all prices at almost every store, so you usually don't even need to think about it. If it says £9.99 on the product, you pay £9.99 at the till.

[nenjin]

You really are playing both sides of the fence. "Ah well it's not normal but I wouldn't call that BAD. Oh but I don't take them and they're useless. But I'm not calling them BAD. Oh and it has an environmental cost but I didn't use the word BAD." You're splitting hairs to try and buttress the strong opinion you rolled out with that a lot of people obviously disagree with. We're not misunderstanding you.

Hold on.

Oh but I don't take them and they're useless.

When did I say this? Chapter and verse? Be specific.

Yeah, studies have shown that, at least for healthy people, those aren't even meaningfully absorbed. It's a non-thing.

Which, others have shown that healthy people do absorb additional nutrients and minerals from vitamins. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest the entire supplement industry from top to bottom is, to use your words specifically, a "non-thing." I'm sure vegans who need additional supplementation to support their life style choices would disagree with this hot take.

[MorleyDev]

Isn't it that if you're getting what you need from your diet, the excess is just passed out, so if you're already eating the healthy balance it's a waste. If you aren't, like are missing a section from your diet due to lifestyle (Vegan) or your body struggles to absorb them (Health issue) then suppliments are useful?

So comes down to what you define as "healthy person" there. The non-thing is suggesting they're generally useful to take, rather than being useful in specific circumstances.

[martinuzz]

So what are other countries tax systems like? Do you not have the morass of deductions, credits, and the like, which are the sources of all the complexity in the US system?

The US system is likely straightforward to simplify from a technical standpoint, even keeping all the silly additions and subtractions, but simplifying the other parts would be an impressive political feat.

The government sends us a bunch of documents every year, you check the sum to see if you get a deficit or a return, then you sign off on the documents by sms or internet code (I don't know what people who don't have access have to do, hopely there might still be mail-in options). If you've got extra, super secret incomes or deductions you are supposed to add them the documents before you sign off, but nobody I know have to do that, the tax office has pretty good insight into relevant things already.

Basically the same over here in the Netherlands, except we don't get any documents sent, it's all digitalized.
We log into our personal page of the tax service's database once a year using our DigiD, our digital identity provided to us by the government.

[MorleyDev]

DT saying he'll be arrested on Tuesday and calling on his supporters to stage mass protests.

"Look at all how the liberals protest when things with the legal system they don't like happen, shameful. They should just accept people being needlessly killed by the police like good little citizens!"
"Wait, something that affects MEEEEE!?!?! PROTEST VIOLENCE RAGE DESTROY!"

[anewaname]

...
Why is this not freaking more of you out?

Like I get the trans folks freaking out, but those of you who AREN'T trans and are just casually discussing this shit as opposed to why we aren't hunting down nazis? What the fuck?

Primarily, it isn't legal to hunt them. Secondary, joining a group to hunt these guys would require me to do the thing I despise them for wanting to do.

[Maximum Spin]

Yeah, studies have shown that, at least for healthy people, those aren't even meaningfully absorbed. It's a non-thing.

Which, others have shown that healthy people do absorb additional nutrients and minerals from vitamins. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest the entire supplement industry from top to bottom is, to use your words specifically, a "non-thing." I'm sure vegans who need additional supplementation to support their life style choices would disagree with this hot take.

...
Dude, I was talking about estrogens in foods. Look at the two posts immediately above that.
Why would you even think I meant vitamins when nobody, most especially me, had said anything about vitamins? At least read.

What a very odd circle jerk.
Maybe because i'm no english speaker there's something i'm missing, but "taking pills is not normal" in the context of the

I mean, I don't think taking any kind of pills can ever be called "normal", in that it's not part of the normal biology of a human body.

seems to mean that it's not -natural- as obviously pills are manufactured and not obtained in nature (like barks and roots are)

But i don't see a point in Maximum Spin posts in which he means pills are always bad, don't take them, go eat barks and roots and probably die from a lack of specific vitamin or die from a disease that modern medecin pills would have healed while nature would have let you die or killed you faster like in prehistory ?

That's pretty much it, yes. I wouldn't have said "natural" because I agree with the person immediately below that making things is natural for humans to do, but I said they aren't normal because the vast majority of organisms, including almost all humans, globally and historically, haven't had them. But yes, other than that quibble, you interpreted it exactly right. So thank you.

[Lord Shonus]

In the UK, if you aren't self-employed then your employer handles your taxes for you. They just put the your post-tax pay straight into your bank every month and your paycheck lists every deduction for you to review.

That's how it works in the US. The filing bit that's under discussion is that every year, your workplace gives you documents showing precisely how much you paid along with your final income. You then have to use a worksheet where you input your final pay and apply any deductions (there's a universal amount, or you can use the sum of a wide number of things such as charitable donations, business expenses, various tax incentive credits) to compute how much tax you actually owed that year. You then compare that number to what you paid, and the difference is settled. If you paid too much the government sends you a check, if you paid too little you have to pay the government. Note that it is very possible for your final tax rate to be negative - you receiving more in refunds than you paid in taxes in the first place. This is a feature, not a bug.

The intent of this is that your employer may have worked under incorrect assumptions when they applied the tax (it is, for example, not unheard of for overtime pay to lead to a higher tax rate being applied incorrectly if you're on the margins of an income bracket - this is where a lot of the "losing money" misconceptions about tax brackets come from), you might have additional income that isn't reported, or you might have a bunch of tax credits.

The core argument is that the government should already know 90% of this, and the process of filing could be massively simplified with no loss of function in order to eliminate filing (or "reduce the form to a postcard") for the vast majority of people. There is solid documented evidence that one of the big obstacles to doing so is lobbying from the tax prep industry, that makes enormous amounts of money from people who can't do it themselves, who "can't" do it themselves, or are perfectly capable of doing it themselves but feel better if there's somebody else to take the blame if something goes wrong.

[EuchreJack]

You want to talk hot take time: The entire Nutritional Supplement industry is 100% unregulated.

Oh nevermind.

https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplements

https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/WYNTK-Consumer/

[Maximum Spin]

You want to talk hot take time: The entire Nutritional Supplement industry is 100% unregulated.

That's actually not true! They are substantially regulated, just not for efficacy. They still have to follow — ah, never mind, I see you seem to have just discovered that too.

As you can see, they're still regulated for labelling, for facility cleanliness and safety, and basically to the same extent that foods are. They just don't go through the process that drugs go through.

[Starver]

Taxwise, an old friend of the family was a scrupulously exacting fellow, in all ways, and as a sole-trader/handyman had to do all his tax/accounting to present to the (UK) taxman. Every year he claimed so-and-so for reasonable work expenses (clothing, materials/etc) and every year the paperwork allowed him maybe 80% of that. Which he took as normal.

I forget how, perhaps he made a query about something that attracted the attention of the tax-enforces, or maybe it was a random spot-check, but suddenly one year he was faced with a thorough audit of the "show me the receipts  for everything, show me the invoices for everything, show me your entire set of books..." kind.

At the conclusion of which, they conclusively proved that... he was owed that 20% back in tax refunds, over the last however-many-years! Unlike others, he had not overclaimed, but he'd still somehow been penalised by the system meant to normalisre 'standard' overclaiming.


(Anecdotal, some of this, as a family tale, but I could indeed believe that he was so straightforward and straight-laced, though I've got no idea how/if "pre-emptive anti-fraud" actions happen at the tax-office end. For all I know, it was a rogue beaurocrat somehow skimming funds, or the true story was more like he hadn't been told that certain expenses were includable. Can't even go andcheck with anyone, as nobody who really would know is around any more.)


I have always rather trusted in my PAYE tax-code to do the heavy-lifting for me (with a few rare exceptions, it covered my actual income from employment/blah-de-blah) and I don't believe there's much I could have shaved back from the system by discovering some sort of expenses loophole.  Which maybe is what fuels the economy, such passive belief in the system, or maybe it just saves me time/energy/money in getting a better outcome but at some cost (e.g. hiring an IFA, registering as a charity or getting a Cayman Islands holding account - any or all as applicable) such that anybody but me ultimately wins out.

[MorleyDev]

In the UK, if you aren't self-employed then your employer handles your taxes for you. They just put the your post-tax pay straight into your bank every month and your paycheck lists every deduction for you to review.

The filing bit that's under discussion is that every year, your workplace gives you documents showing precisely how much you paid along with your final income.

In the UK self-assessment Tax Returns only are required to be filled out if:
* You were self-employed as a ‘sole trader’ and earned more than £1,000 (before taking off anything you can claim tax relief on)
* You were a partner in a business partnership
* You earned £100,000 or more
Source

Also if you have untaxed income, like money from renting out a property, tips and commission, income from savings, investments and dividends or foreign income. In practice pretty much all working people won't fill one of these out and just let the PAYE system employers use handle it all. Employers are audited to make sure they're following the rules.