why it's hard to get a tax refund

[Kurt#1]

Of the150,272,157 tax returns filed for the 2016 tax year, 50,219,667.  33.4 percent were classified by the Internal Revenue Service as “nontaxable returns,” meaning the people who filed them paid $0 or less.

Hard to get a refund when you never paid into the system.

At the same time 80 percent of all income taxes paid were paid by tax return filers who had adjusted gross incomes of $100,000 or more.  So the tax burden in the USA falls primarily on people who only have adjusted incomes of $100,000 a year, not exactly filthy rich, not rich at all. 

Meanwhile 50 million people pay no federal income tax or to put it another way people that don't support the country financially at all.

[rsbs]

The founding fathers never envisioned a country where people without any means would be voters. I would argue that on matters that affect people in non financial ways, such as wars and social laws, everyone should indeed have the right to vote. A country should not be able to draft or execute people that are too poor to be voters, if voting is only for the people actually paying the taxes, without giving those same people a voice in who is elected to make those decisions.

On the same token, just as taxation without representation is inherently wrong, so is representation without taxation.

[gh2002gh]

Income taxation is wrong, and everything afterward.

[bruce MN]

Holy crap.

Get out a succession of plat books going back 75 years for your County/Twp, do a little charting and then reconsider your statement about “wars” as a non-economic issue to individuals.

[Katzenjammer12]

It's illuminating that any tax that looks like a user tax, like if you drive on a road you ought to pay to fix it, is immediately labeled as regressive.

Well, of course rich guys should pay for my roads.  They drive on them, don't they?

And, of course my 80,000 pound grain cart should go over county bridges without paying anything extra.  I'm a farmer, aren't I?

[schnurrbart]

So poor citizens shouldn’t have the right to have a say in how they are governed??  How are you able to look at yourself??

[rsbs]

If you read what I wrote, you will comprehend that I am saying that people should have a right to vote on how they are governed, but NOT on how to spend someone else's money. Basically I am saying that the one third of America that pays the income taxes should be the group that votes on how that money is spent, not the two thirds that do not pay any tax.

If you out in a restaurant, would you want the people at the table next to yours to order an expensive meal and then put it on your tab?

[rsbs]

the 80 acres where I have my grain system, and a house that is no longer in use, is being taxed for 2019 at over $85 per acre. I believe that I am paying for that county bridge that I go over with my 50000 lb grain cart, but I can see the argument. Actually, few people go down any road with a fully loaded grain cart, that  is something we usually use 80000 lb semi trucks and trailers for, and we do pay over 50 cents a gallon for road maintenance on the fuel we use in them, too.