Why Do We Have an Income Tax?

Civics 101

NHPR

Education, History, Supreme Court, American History, Elections, Democracy, Society & Culture, Government, Civics, Politics, Social Studies

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most Americans need help to file our tax return each year - about 90% of people use technology like Turbo Tax, or hire a human tax preparer. Why does it feel like it takes a degree in accounting, or the money to pay someone with a degree, or computer software, just to comply with the law?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Civics 101, I'm Hannah McCarthy.
0:02.8	And I'm the Capitice, and I guess we're just jumping in.
0:06.3	No warm up, no archival.
0:08.0	Just going right into this?
0:09.6	Well, I do have a question for you, but it sounds a lot like a question we might ask at the beginning of an ad,
0:16.5	which this is not. This is a real show.
0:19.4	We are not trying to sell you on anything, but we are going to talk about something that you're probably hearing a lot of ads about right now.
0:28.5	And that is taxes.
0:32.0	Oh dear.
0:33.0	They say everybody's got different problems, well maybe so, but I've got a song about one problem that every one of us have.
0:39.5	That's taxes.
0:44.0	So I solemnly swear I'm not about to sell you a tax service, but I do want to ask to any of these questions sound familiar to you.
0:52.8	How many kids do you have?
0:54.2	Do you work from home? Did you say for retirement? Did you pay tuition?
0:57.6	How about student loans? Did you get money from an inheritor?
0:59.6	Did you buy an electric fee? Did you donate to a chair?
1:01.6	Did you buy a house? Sell a house? How big is your office?
1:04.4	Yeah, I'm familiar with all those questions, Hannah, because I answer them when I file my taxes.
1:09.5	And Nick, if you don't mind me asking, how did you do your taxes last year?
1:15.7	Well, after I put them off, I used an account.
1:19.2	Right, like you, most Americans need help figuring out how much money we owe the government each year.
1:25.5	About 90% of people use technology like turbo tax or hire a human tax preparer to do their tax return.
	...

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