Govt Employee's and Taxes

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Ford SportTrac Forum

Help Support Ford SportTrac Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
J

Jacob Dryer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2005
Messages
2,988
Reaction score
1
Location
Oxnard, CA
Anyone have a good reason why Govt employees are still taxed on income? Doesn't it seem like they could just pay less?



t-minus 2 posts for off topic on this one :smile0007:
 
?what?

Working for the Gov't is essentially just like working anywhere else in the private sector except generally you get paid less and have to deal with angry citizens, but you trade that for job security which would be nice right about now. You get paid and then you pay your taxes... so no a govt worker is essentially loosing as much money to AIG bonuses as anyone else.



had to interject that last point:smile0003:

-Don D.
 
That deals with Federal pay. From my state/local government standpoint ......... it just aint so! :smile0008:



Guess I should'a went with the Feds!:smile0001:
 
My brother-in-law is an IT support leader for the Dallas area offices of the IRS. He told me that every IRS employee gets audited every year.
 
JDBoxes,



I'm not sure what you mean. Did you mean to say:



"Instead of paying taxes couldn't they instead just be paid less?"



If that's what you meant to say, then I can only assume that your rationale is that since their employer is the government, and since when they pay taxes they just pay the taxes back to the goverment (their employer), why not avoid the "back and forth", and just pay them a lesser amount; less by the amount they would pay in taxes?



Is that what you are asking?



TJR
 
I believe JDBoxes was kidding. (See the :smile0007:)



It's kind of like asking "Why do we park on driveways and drive on parkways"? (Stolen from George Carlin, I think) It doesn't really require an answer, just a silly observation.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
My comments where regarding state and local govt that generally gets most of the flack anyway. I do not know much about the rig-amoral of the Feds other than what the internets and fox new tells me... and we all know that's about as accurate as a blind man with no arms playing darts.

-Don D.

 
I believe what he was saying was...



Essentially, working for the GOV you pretty pay yourself. By that, the GOV pays me, takes taxes, which is what they use to pay me with.



In theory, to charge us less taxes and pay us slightly less does make sense, it would all work out to the same dollars.



I have been a Fed employee for 9 yrs now, ABSOLUTELY the VERY best thing I ever did in regrids to employment. I did 23 years in the Military first, so I don't feel to guilty about my paycheck...
 
I hated working for local government. They never took out enough in federal or state taxes and I ALWAYS ended up paying in a hell of a lot more at the end of the year. No matter how I tweaked the W4, it was always screwed up.



Working for private companies was much more "stable." I always got a little bit of a refund from feds and state.
 
JDBoxes,



Yeah, I thought that's what you were trying to say. I figured you missed a word ("...could just GET PAID less.")



Anyway, folks, see how well it works when you see someone post something that doesn't quite make sense, and instead of jump on it and starting a big stink instead you simply ask the person to restate what it is they are trying to say...as I did?



TJR
 
I still don't think that the post was really a mistype, even though the poster said so, since I read it to the correct intention, that the "they" meant the Government from the git-go.



...though perhaps that is because I lament the same thing being an esteemed employee of the state government of the Peoples' Republic of Maryland.



:smile0015:
 
Government pay outpaces private sector pay according to the CATO institute...
Click to expand...



I can speak as a retired Fedral Gov't. employee, that the rank and file DO NOT outpace the private sector - PERIOD. Most all Fedral civil service employees are at the mercy / whim of congress as to how much they get paid and we never have kept up with inflation!!! I do know for fact that the Army Corp of Engineer Districts that are unionized get more pay than the ones that are not. That is how the Sacramento District kept their costs down and were more competitive for a long time, but that for some unknown reason is no longer true.



I totally agree with what coastiejoe said above.

 
Tom,

I would also. I paid enough taxes this year to literally pay for an employee working at a fair per hour price for the entire year...
 
But then numerous IRS personnel would lose their jobs/functions if government employees did not have taxes withheld from their pay :smile0001:
 
There's already a solution for this:



Repealing the 16th Amendment and passing the FairTax Act would eliminate all Federal taxes (income, payroll, FICA, Medicare, etc.) for every American, no matter whether you're employed by the private or public sectors.:smile0017::smile0006:
 
Actually, about 20+ years ago, the IRS had to crack-down on government employees who where not paying all their taxes. Government employees are for the most part exempt from having their pay garnished by anyone including the IRS. It became fashionable to just not pay any taxes owed and the IRS was powerless to collect the money.



As a retired military man, I receive a monthly retirement pension from the Army. The first time I found out about this IRS problem was when I did my tax returns and owned them some money. I sent them they tax return but not the check for the amount I owed.



About a month later I got a letter from the IRS stating what I owed including pentalties and interest, which I expected. The letter indicated that because I was a government employee (actually a retired goverment employee) I had to send them full payment for the taxes I owed, or I had to make arrangements with my employer to deduct payments from my pay so that the amount would be paid in full by January 1st of the next year. If I failed to do either of the above, they would begin to seize assets. Gee, I only owed them about $900 !!



Anyway, I sent them a check and paid off what I owed, but I was annoyed at their strongarmed tactics and looked into why my being retired military had anything to do with why I was treated like a tax dodger?



It turns out that most of the unpaid taxes that the IRS was unable to collect was due from people who were government employees or retired government employee...not just military.

Unable to ganish wages of government employees or their retirement pensions, the IRS could not force them to pay taxes unless they threatened them with seizing of their assets.



At the time the IRS had a very poor success rate for ever collecting back taxes. They lost nearly 9 out of every 10 cases they took to court, often due to poor wording of the tax laws the left them open to interpretation. And the real tax dodgers were able to find so many loop-holes to conceal their assets that the IRS only collected about 10 cents for every dollar of taxes owed.



Of course this was back in the day when the IRS was infamous for seizing childrens bank accounts because their parents owed back taxes. I think George H W Bush changed that by stating that he wanted a "Kinder and Gentler" IRS.



Now the IRS is much more willing to settle for less money immediately since they can spend a lot of money fighting court cases, and still not get the money owed



...Rich
 

Latest posts

Top