I had the thought of, what happens if millions of Americans just stopped paying taxes as a form of protest? I can’t imagine the IRS could actually handle it.
I had the thought of, what happens if millions of Americans just stopped paying taxes as a form of protest? I can’t imagine the IRS could actually handle it.
Federal tax money doesn’t work like that.
The federal government just invents the money that it issues; your (federal income) tax dollars don’t go into a large account that they pull from or something (although I think that social security does). Federal Taxes are used to control the amount of currency in circulation so that inflation doesn’t become a problem. When used correctly, they should also prevent billionaires from acquiring too much power over society via hoarding of wealth.
This is why we just had no problem coming up with 40 billion for Argentina, or funding ICE as the largest law enforcement agency in America.
So while ideally the taxes will offset the spending to prevent inflation, it doesn’t prevent the government who wants to fuck around from doing anything - they can just do it anyway.
This is different than state and local governments, who have to balance their budget because they cannot issue currency.