I’ve lived off of 1099 income before.  I’ve made estimated-tax payments.  If more people had to cut checks periodically to pay their taxes, perhaps there would be more enthusiasm for reining in Leviathan.  After all, if you never see your money in your account, you never really miss it:

Ban Tax Day

Today is Tax Day, when all of us collectively send our necessary tithe to the church of the almighty bureaucracy, peace be upon them. It’s also a day to consider one reform that would be very positive for the country: reversing the 1943 law making withholding mandatory. It is a dangerous, disruptive, and absolutely necessary step to end the current tax regime.

The overwhelming majority of Americans pay their taxes by having them extracted from their paychecks before they ever see the money. Operating under the fiction that the government is giving you money as opposed to returning what it has already taken is damaging to the psyche of the nation’s taxpayers. The primary argument against such a move – that millions of irresponsible Americans in the income tax-paying classes won’t save up enough to write a giant check to the government come April 15th – encourages a viewpoint of the role of government as an entity that must constantly protect us from ourselves.