The first year that I was an online teacher, I thought, “I’m a reasonably intelligent college-educated person. SURELY I can figure out my own taxes!” I can’t even think of how many hours I must have spent figuring them out, and the next year when I decided to hire a professional, he redid them for me from that year anyway and actually got me some money back. I’m sure there are ways to pay less, but at least *I* wasn’t really smart enough to figure out how while still contributing to social security and Medicare, which I’ll presumably want access to one day.

So I think you are right, there ARE ways to pay less, as in — they exist. Figuring out how, at least for me, was the hard part. Also, I’m not against taxes as a concept, and would be happy to pay more for things like universal health care and parental leave. My beef with the IC system is that it’s set up assuming that we’re all highly-paid engineers doing projects on our own terms, not just low-paid de facto employees with no job security or benefits.

Thanks for your comment! :-)