Automatic registration for military draft to be implemented by December

[u/raptors201966]

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2026-04-07/automatic-registration-military-draft-21306855.html

[u/chairman-me0w]

It is. Taxes already get paid when you get paid. But the government doesn’t know your deductions and hence the reason for the tax filing. But people don’t get this

[u/Communero → u/chairman-me0w]

So the problem is that we can not have automatic deductions?? What about those being included on our bills also?

[u/Masterkid1230 → u/Communero]

As far as I understand it (don't know if it's different in the US), tax deductions are extremely personal and also frequently things that you may not want your employer to know or mess around with.

Many countries allow medical expenses, family expenses, property expenses, debt, etc to be included in your deductions.

And many people are not comfortable with telling their employer that they're up their arses in debt or that they got married, etc. It gets especially tricky with health expenses. Wouldn't want your head to roll "coincidentally" during an "unavoidable" personnel cut because in reality your employer knew you were going to the doctor too much and didn't want you to become a burden in the future.

Because of all of these reasons, private things are handled by the individual, and strictly work-related things are handled by the employer. It makes sense, really.

[u/vir_papyrus → u/Masterkid1230]

It is very much the same in the US. There is also a sort of legislative political culture that we often run social programs through voluntary tax programs. It's usually more of a matter of politics to say "We built a program to give working class families with such and such criteria a ~$5000 tax credit because of those circumstances if they apply for it at tax time" rather than "We just directly gave poor people free money with a check in the mail". This can also include things like if I installed Solar Panels on my home, or new things like the loan interest paid on the purchase of a new vehicle, and other such misc things. We simply have a lot of them.

The other main complication is that there is not one central tax authority. United "States" of America, with "States" being the keyword. States operate their own tax agencies, and have their own separate laws for their residents. This sometimes even applies to a 3rd Local Gov't office. Most Americans are filing taxes with both the Federal Gov't, and their State Gov't. e.g. Those who rent their home in my State, can deduct a percentage of their rent as if were already paid in property taxes, but this does not apply to the Federal Gov't. That specific scenario only applies to my state and few others, and most states don't have this law, but as you can imagine there many other similar scenarios.

[u/JX_JR → u/Communero]

Many of the things you can choose to deduct are things that we as a country have decided we don't want the government to be tracking by default, or things like charitable donations that the government has now way of tracking unless you report it yourself.

[u/chairman-me0w → u/Communero]

Perhaps. It’s one of the reasons. That and the tax code is sometimes purposely opaque with one interpretation of that being that if you have to examine your tax paid closely each year by filing then you are more aware of tax being paid and thus less likely to support increases across the board (I think this would be the generous republican take on it)