Is there a grammatical reason for people saying “I pay my taxes” instead “I pay the taxes”?
Generally “my taxes” refers to income tax, which is figured out individually, so they are literally paying their taxes. It’s also a linguistic quirk, like saying “my cold got better”.
The origin of taxes is back in roman society, and the rich would pay all the taxes as a flex, a sign of strength and goodwill. It was a competition between them to be the most influential. Then taxes got shifted to society as a whole,and now they are being shifted to the poor only.
Crazy how it went from only the elites paying taxes, to now just the poors.
yes because they are refering to the particular taxes they owe that is specific to them and their income and decutables and such. when someone mentions sales taxes they don’t say my taxes. they only say it for ones where its different for the individual and situation like income and property.
Do you wear “your” shoes or “the” shoes?
Does the government fuck “my” asshole or “the” asshole
“Taxes bad" - boomer
Yeah I mean my taxes are being put to good use for sure.
The world is literally run by pedophilic idiots that would happily skin your first born child alive in front of you if it gave them another yacht (except they would just hire someone to do it for them and watch)
US defaultism strikes again.
Income taxes - I do “the taxes” at year end not “my taxes” because we file as married. But when I was single I did “my taxes”
Sales tax, never. That’s just “the sales tax”
Property tax, also I say “the property tax”
I do use “my taxes” or “our taxes” (the collective group of taxpayers) when complaining, like “why are my taxes used to blow up little kids and siphoned into the pockets of people who don’t need the money?” Because it’s money we earned and being used in ways most of us would strongly object to.
Because your taxes are the taxes you specifically pay and are specific to you and you alone.
While the taxes are the ones everyone pay. Like, taxes on buying groceries, products and services.
That particular phrasing would be in response to something they feel they should be getting but are not getting, defending the right to services, pointing out unfairness in the tax system, or confirming their contribution.
Yet another person assuming this perspective.
That may be the case for some people - no one I know thinks that way.
Interestingly, in my language, it’s an uncountable noun, thus we say “pay the tax”, even though it contains all the subcategories of the various types of taxes.
That’s an interesting linguistic point - so tax in your language would use “less/more” being uncountable.
Technically, in English, taxes should be fewer/greater (being a countable dollar thing), but we often say “less”. Prescription vs description in action!
That’s right! We say “pay more/less tax” and “have you declared the tax?”, for instance. Although, I am not speaking from a standardized or school grammar perspective. This is just how I - as a native speaker - would use our equivalent of the word “tax”. This brings me back HARD. To times when I used to join various panel discussions to fiercly defend the/my stance on “correct language” - my vague stance being that the ruling classes need to let the actual spoken word and its usage to be reflected back into the academic discourse. End of off topic discussion.
I’d say because the amount is personnalized to you. “My taxes” are not equal to “your taxes”.
Grammatically you are spot on, numerically you are missing a bit of nuance. In a society where everyone paid the same equal and fair amount, the ills we see simply would not exist.
This is pedantic, but I don’t think an equal tax would be fair at all. I take equal to mean everyone pays the same absolute amount, eg $10 a year. It wouldn’t be fair to make a newborn baby with $0 to their name pay $10. Similarly, it wouldn’t be fair to make a multi billionaire only pay $10, because they relatively cost more and benefit more from the infrastructure, institutions, economy and every other part of society; taxes of course contribute to funding that society. Sorry the paragraph where a sentence might’ve sufficed. Think that all the semantics I’m allowed to argue about on the internet for this week.
Our friend below details this fairly well, but in a society where “my” taxes are a sign of ownership of debt, do you really think that’s healthy? How about the alternative where everyone has the same investment and therefore the same access to public goods and services? Feel free to double down, but I just don’t see the point of people arguing the necessity to own debts incurred on them from a structurally unsound social and economic system. It’s weird and has the aire of Stockholm Syndrome.
I disagree with his point, but to be fair, I think he is envisioning the communist utopia, where everyone has equal access to everything and there is no inequality of ownership. So the baby would have exactly as much as the billionaire (making them no longer a billionaire).
If we had a mandated wage that everyone got, regardless of job, that would mean a flat tax makes sense, in his defense.
Do I think a society where everyone gets paid the same regardless of job would actually function though? No.
Thank you for giving a real world example of a rational human who can disagree with the premise while also understanding its intent and origin. All these other numpties downvoting me didn’t bother to do the 2 minutes of critical thinking, so good on you mate!
Because it’s my money they’re paid from.
Interesting, I’ve never seen the tax part of the money which I’m getting as “my” money, I’m just a steward who takes it and moves it to the owner, I just hold them for practical reasons so that it’s easier to administer it (otherwise you’d need a parallel way of doing it).
You could also class it as a debt in your name.
I’ve paid my debts.
I’ve paid my taxes.you usually go in debt financially from spending on things you actually use
eg: I am in debt regarding to my house, I still have a few years of loan to pay. I was in debt regarding to my car. I am in debt for the camera gear I bought on a 4 month spread.
I do not get to use 90% of the shit my taxes go to. Vast majority of it go to other people, the military, and subsidies for rich people. That’s not a debt, that’s an involutary charity.
I don’t mind the concept of taxes, as I understand why they exist. I just wished they weren’t mostly used to build bombs and make rich people richer.
“Hey, can we give each homeless person $2000? It’ll pull 90% of them out of poverty. Then they’ll become contributors to the tax pool!”
“No, I’d rather spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on hostile architecture and hostile police. Also we pay jails to house and feed them.”
They removed all benches from the bus stops in my town a few months ago.
It’s not like we have a homeless problem in the town. It’s a smaller town on the outskirts of a bunch of larger cities. I don’t think I ever seen one homeless person since I moved here decades ago.
Thanks for making me miserable when i’m waiting for the bus, I’m sure it was worth it you absolute cunts.
“Yes we’ve made life harder, especially for the elderly and pregnant. But you must understand we needed to impart more misery on the homeless!”
You only pay the taxes that apply to you. You don’t pay all the taxes.
“My taxes” being short for “my share of the taxes.”
Because I only pay mine, not everyone’s.
I’ve got bad news for anyone renting.
Because in America people are more concerned about “MY taxpayer money!” than the collective good.
Language differences always have deep cultural explanations and aren’t just due to minor historical contingencies. Once a language change has locked into place, the associated cultural connection infects future users.
Next up: Why do Americans say things like “I wash my hands” while Spanish speakers say “Lavo los manos” (meaning wash the hands)? Probably something to do with end-stage capitalism and ownership.
Definitely a thing in the US, and the subtext is “so I am deserving of whatever government services I use”.
The subtext to that is that if you’re poor enough to not have to pay income tax (never mind sales tax, fuel tax, property tax, etc.), that you don’t deserve the government services you use, and that you are a freeloader at best, criminal at worst.
It’s the kind of phrasing assholes use.
Not sure why you’re assuming that subtext.
The taxes one pays are the obligation one has, therefore “my tax obligation”.
Not yours, not another person’s, mine.
