We’ve been dumbed down. Around tax time, I over-hear lots of young people talking about how big their ‘tax refund’ was...people working behind a cash register for example. These morons have no idea whether or not they paid taxes, or what the definition of a refund is. Odds are they got ‘work-fare’ in the form of EIC.
I’ve long thought that high schools should teach kids how to fill out a 1040EZ.
Oh - and automatic withholding dumbs people down even more...especially in an era where paper pay stubs are rare. Eliminate it, and have people pay every month. That way they at least have some notion of what they pay.
It was the ever popular FDR who started withholding in c. 1943. And the American people loved it. They thought it was “helping” them and “hurting” the big guys.