>Visit a park for free

> Realize that you're theoretically owing everyone in town roughly $0.01 for your "free" stay

wait til you hear about bank accounts

Yeah you could have made $1.35 in interest!

As an accountant I've listened to several colleagues talk for hours about dialing in their W-2's, some even under withholding and making quarterly payments to make up the difference. Calculating exactly what they are saving and investing that into a seperate account.

Probably spending more in fees than they're saving. Let alone the time invested. I'm perfectly fine with the government slowly accumulating 1% of my income extra over the course of a year and sending it back later personally.

My employer sells "stocks" to employees that don't show anywhere and you can only sell them back to the company after two year. Exchange also isn't immediate. Company chooses the date.

They really want people to buy those things and are heavily campaigning for it.

They also give a small amount of these stocks as bonuses to people that have performed well.

When I say to people that buying those "stocks" just gives the company free loan, they look at me weird.

While this might be correct, I disagree with this as a philosophy.

A) most people in this country don’t have cash reserves to pay an underpaid tax bill.

B) most people don’t have the investment acumen to properly invest monies not withheld on taxes to benefit from not paying as much on their income.

C) They just spend the money because most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and because A and B.

So for most people I would say that judicious overpayment of tax on the W4 resulting in a minor or modest tax refund is probably better all-around. That money will go right back into the economy or pay off some debt.

Reminds me of one of the 'warnings' they gave us in basic training - tldr is that the folks in finance are just as dumb as the rest of us, and invariably there are a couple recruits in every batch that have their first paycheck MAJORLY fucked up.

Like, instead of the $400 we're supposed to get, we'd get like $40,000 cuz of some fat-finger fuckup in Excel.

The warning was "DO NOT TOUCH a single cent of money you're not supposed to have, cuz they WILL notice and you WILL have to pay it back!"

...which in my mind translated to: "If you win the finance fuckery lottery, all your loans just became 0% interest!!"

I was not one of the lucky ones. Q_Q

Same with everything we invest; RRSP, TFSA, even our own money from our accounts is used by them

So I’d make a few bucks in interest off it. I’d rather give it to them for a nice little payday around March and to not have the stress of trying to hit close to zero without owing.

You could have just estimated your income taxes ahead of time and saved enough to pay it before the due date, but why risk jailtime when there is automatic tax withholding available to you?

It's worse when you're operating a business and you have to pay quarterly estimated taxes.

Surely the list of countries/governments that don't ever even bother to give their citizens a tax return is much longer than the ones that do.

This assumes tax return is because of over-withholding. If you're like me with a young family and low-ish income you pay $0 in federal taxes and get a bunch back for EIC, child tax credits, etc. I'm just excited because I'll be able to fully pay off some of the debts that have been hanging over me and largely not shrinking at all next month

Doesn't matter. You'd have spent it on bullshit, anyways, but now you have a nice chunk to blow all at once!

If the government is going to use that interest free loan to give people healthcare, then I'm fine with it.

Not much different than having it in a chequing account except that I'm less likely to spend it on something stupid.

1 year GIC rates are pretty good (4-5%) but considering that 50% of people under 55 can't afford a $1000 surprise expense it's not really a question of getting a handful of dollars from interest that the government could have given you to invest.

Me:

• Gets a bill for my tax return.
• Pays said bill.
• 3 months later; government refunds me the interest from that bill.

Am I winning?