Sure, if you actually pay taxes and not get a refund every year. This requires filling out one of the long forms. You can divert your taxes to a wide variety of charities and orgs that are approved by the IRS. You can get that list and each organization’s ratings online at Charity Navigator
I think that’s a bad idea personally. I mean, I may not like my tax dollars going towards funding endless military operations, but neither would I want millions of folks deciding that the military gets no funding.
I would like all my tax dollars to go into a study to determine whether gays or straights have bigger penises. The government may have already done this, I’m not sure.
We live in a country where we spend billions on fighters and warships (that we don’t actually need) but won’t spend millions on basic things like bridge inspections and repair. You bet I’d like a say on how that money is spent.
I would. Or I’d at least like to have some input. At the moment, my country needs to give our tax system a serious overhaul. Sadly, neither of the major parties have the balls to take that on. Instead, at the moment, the government is fighting about how to cut costs so it can give people an income tax cut. I’m almost certain most reasonable Australians would say, “keep the tax cut”, put the money into Medicare, education and looking after social welfare initiatives. However, the government would rather try to buy votes. I’d rather see them making the big boys of business pay their fair share of tax. It’s just ridiculous that a small business can be made to pay their tax and penalised if they don’t while companies like BHP can owe millions in unpaid tax and they get to do a deal and only have to pay back a fraction of their debt. The same argument is true in the UK I believe.
Sure I’d like to but it’s the other people deciding that would bother me. Right now I suspect a lot of people would use their taxes to find a new hairdresser for Donald Drumpf.
@NerdyKeith Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to have the very free health care system many here in the US are clamoring for…in what way does your health care system need to be better?
@Cruiser It’s not free, it is affordable for everyone, and the Government loves to cut back at it when ever they can get away with it.
And for affordable if you don’t get it through your work the average person pays about a $100 a month for it.
But it also goes if you are in extreme poverty, and can prove it then for those it is free.
As for choosing where my tax money goes, I would freakin love that, first would be better winter maintenance on our highways, followed by more money into our healthcare system.
Direct all of my tax money toward an Autobahn quality revamping of the Interstate system.
This includes allowing the states to open speed limit free zones where appropriate.
Pressure the states to get their traffic enforcement agencies off their doughnut filled asses and enforce against motorist behaviors that make high speed travel more dangerous than necessary.
There’s already such a list. You get one every election cycle where the would-be government produces a policy manifesto, detailing more or less how they propose to allocate spending.
You then get to vote for the one you like the best.
The flaws are that almost no one reads the list, the list isn’t even the most important variable in people’s minds anyway, and the elected government isn’t even obliged to spend the way it promised to do so before it got elected.
I would like to, but the power doesn’t lie with the citizen outside the legislative body.
Historically, my country has always been a centralized-governing type so I if I have a saying in this matter then I would want infrastructure advancements outside the capital. Or else, I wouldn’t care if there are many separatism acts from different regions.