Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes? (2015)

This is exactly the reason I do my taxes by hand on paper every year.

Also, the complex nature of the US tax code means that the people who've put effort into gaming the system and the dishonest also stand to lose if move to a more reasonable system.

So it's really not just about the campaign contributions but actual substantial interest groups.

I used to think it was Americans for Tax Reform, now I think Tax Policy Center is the closest thing, but while Bankman has worked a lot with them in the past, in this article they seem at least ambivalent if not opposed to it.

Any other suggestions of which nonprofit lobbying organizations can be used to offset the impact of Americans for Tax Reform, Intuit, and other organizations who favor tax complexification?

The lobbying is a big part, but the other part is anti-tax ideologues in Congress want to keep the tax process as painful as possible so that people are as angry as possible about taxes, to maximize support for and engagement on anti-tax policies.

Also note that the "pure flat tax" idea earlier in this discussion and the "universal basic income" idea discussed elsewhere on this website have the same problem: the promised simplification comes from eliminating a bunch of special programs, exemptions, benefits etc., which is impossible.

Also, IMHO, few people have messed up US tax policy like Grover Norquist. Even if you don't agree with that particular humble opinion, he is, at the very least, a figure with his own agenda to push. He's far from an unbiased source.

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/29/521954033/stanford-professor-...

This is one of the reasons i provide to Intuit recruiters when they try and get me to interview for them. I am not working for the company actively working against my best interests.

We in the tech community don't always have the luxury to work for a company who we absolutely love and respect, but I draw the line when it comes to companies that actively engage in this type of concerted effort against citizens.

The only non-trivial bits are things like capital gains, work expenses, donations, but these are all things that you should be tracking in a spreadsheet as they occur through the year, and you'll have a number at the bottom of that spreadsheet that you can just copy over to your return (like I did with my capital gains, for example).

Even as a contractor in the past (keep in mind, in Australia, a contractor is a sole proprietor business), filing my return was as easy as copying income/expense totals from my invoice/receipt tracking spreadsheets into the return, adding any new depreciating assets to the list (that persists on their servers and gets recalculated each year) and submitting.

I don't have any interest accounts or private health insurance, but these would be some of the other things that get automatically pre-filled. And it's been this way for well over a decade now.

I'd rather there were NOT any speed limit enforcement at all UNLESS there's another infraction.

Even more ideally self-driving cars would just save us. However until then I'd prefer that laws like Washington State's 'keep right except to pass' were strongly enforced.

My experience as a young lad with a high powered Nissan Skyline certainly reflected this many years ago. I had almost-daily "random vehicle and license checks"...

Q. Wouldn’t everyone drive faster if the speed limit was raised? A. No, the majority of drivers will not go faster than what they feel is comfortable and safe regardless of the speed limit. For example, an 18-month study following an increase in the speed limit along the New York Thruway from 55 to 65 mph, determined that the average speed of traffic, 68 mph, remained the same. Even a national study conducted by Federal Highway Administration also concluded that raising or lowering the speed limit had practically no effect on actual travel speeds

https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/speed-l...

There is no guarantee that a speed limit will have any effect on driving behaviors. The fact is, when driving, most motorists choose a speed in which they personally feel both comfortable and safe.

Luckily there are plenty of places that have done just that that we can learn from. WI just raised a lot of its highway speed limits to 70mph for example.

Anecdotally, people used to drive in the 75mph range before the speed limit was raised and would deal with the occasional ticket for 10 over. In the general case, the average highway speed seems to have stayed at 75mph after the change.

I've noticed something similar in South Dakota where the speed limit is 80. I rarely saw someone go more than 5 over, and would frequently encounter people driving at 75mph.

My personal anecdotal evidence on this, having recently driven cross country on I-80 (mostly 80MPH speed limits) and through Montana on I-90 (Again, mostly 80 MPH) shows that people drive at a speed that is safe for them. My car, and those that also seemed to drive a few MPH over the limit were all newer, highly capable vehicles, and the largest added risk was the chance of running into excessively slow moving traffic. When the visibility dropped, I slowed down, and when the visibility was clear, there was no additional risk in pushing it up a few MPH.

This is easily tested in the western U. S., where there exist states with speed limits of 75mph or higher. There's a point at which I quit getting passed, and start being the one doing most of the passing. That point is just a bit north of 80mph. Anecdotally, same point it was when speed limits were lower. IOW, when I'd ride the interstates of AZ or WY twenty years ago, my ratio of passed/passing at 90mph was about the same as it is now.

But surely someone has done an actual study on this.

Drivers mostly go the speed they are comfortable with, which is a function of the roadway’s design and conditions. Traffic engineers are learning that you can’t just slap a 30mph limit sign on something that feels like an interstate highway, but must instead use the road’s physical characteristics to slow drivers down.

I've driven in parts of the country where the speed limit is 75 or even 80 and that wasn't my experience. There were not a lot of people blowing past me doing 95.

Then again, MA speed limits tend to be lower than surrounding states.

Also, it goes against traffic design principles, even in the US. (see: 85th percentile)

So they only know your revenues, not your expenses. And this applies for business as well as personal.

It would be nice to get this streamlined! taxes are such a chore.

Too bad there's a multi billion dollar industry - tax preparation and accounting - supported by taxes. It will never happen.

Or heck, let me just tell the charity my email address, and then tell the IRS that all the donations for that email should be credited to me. People who want more privacy can "just" sign up for bespoke email addresses.

It would be really great if you can elaborate your point. For example, why do you think it is nonsense? What line of argument or examples can you provide to make your point?

Here’s an example:

@GP

Perhaps stating it as a fact sounds a bit too strong me. How did you come to realize this fact? Do you have any source or “experiential evidence” for stating it as a fact. Perhaps I misunderstood your analogy but I would be very happy to hear your full point.

You disagree that americans pay more than they should? [1]

[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/taxes/2018-tax-report/

Or you disagree that paying less than you should has consequences?

https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/irs/tax-responsibilities/...

People like you ruin this message board.

Which makes me think that it's not so much about people being informed as people being annoyed. I don't dread tax season because of what I owe, I dread it because of all the nonsense hoop jumping I know I have to go through on pain of massive fines and audit nightmares.

I'd be willing to be that a good many folks would shrug at their tax bill if it was laid out in simple terms with a sane user interface. Nobody can possibly shrug at the status quo form dance that they're subjected to year after year. It's practically guaranteed to cause discomfort and engender disdain.

I agree that most people who don't need to file Schedule C, who don't have investment gains or losses outside of tax sheltered accounts, and who don't pay for childcare while they work (Form 2441), and who don't have miscellaneous deductions (which include medical expenses and unreimbursed employee expenses if they exceed 2% of your income) could have the IRS correctly fill out their taxes for them. And thats a lot of people, and the IRS should do it. But the parent comment said "If you only have W-2 or 1099 income, the government already has all of the data," and my point is that unless they mean something weird by "1099 income," then thats wrong.

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040sc.pdf

Doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t have taxes, but we’d have a tight temporal and psychological link between what we pay and the selections we make at the ballot box.

How does that fit into their logic?

What happens if all the taxes are abolished and there is no need for that business? Will they start lobbying for more tax or lobbying against the final cut? Or lobbying for an income report system with the tax component stripped out, basically building what would have helped in the first place?

Starving the beast is a major policy aim.

Taxes include all the things. Not just Federal income tax. It gets frustrating comparing tax rates to say - European nations - when they typically will be quoting all-in tax rates other than sales tax (VAT) - where the US number will almost invariably list only the federal income tax rate which tells not even half the story in many cases.

social security, medicare, medicaid, local income taxes, state income taxes, federal income taxes, real estate taxes, sales taxes.

Adding those taxes together equals your total tax load. I think more people are closer to 50% than you'd suspect. Programs like social security and medicare are re-distributive in nature and indistinguishable from taxes - they simply were marketed differently for political reasons. But lets call them what they are.

> 401k contributions, pre-tax benefits like health insurance, transportation benefits, FSA's, etc.,.

Agreed that those are not taxes - in fact somewhat the opposite!

Edit: formatting

> People currently had any idea what they were spending on taxes.

This is precisely the opposition to IRS doing your taxes for you. Imagine you receive a bill every month that shows the clearly what all these payments are and you have to write separate checks.

If the IRS later notices, presumably any recipient who is impoverished and for whom there's no evidence of fraud wouldn't be charged penalties on any balance due, and might be eligible for some offer in compromise or installment plan. This is no different than now, except even less of a justification for penalty when self-reporting isn't the norm.

That said I'm sure US congress could find some interesting way to involve for profit companies in the process that makes everyone even more miserable than the current system.

This system would be way better since you get to see the error up front and deal with it immediately instead of waiting 8 weeks for the process to start and your refund to languish for another month or two before it is all sorted out.

The other upshot is that the expense and non-compliance from a tax perspective would probably drive more W-2 employees in situations where 1099 status is being abused. (ie. probably 40%)

At least we have the benefit of 14 aircraft carriers.

California's can be as high as 13 something percent, I believe (though, I think with the kind of numbers the other guy was talking about, it'd probably be like 6-7%). But, you're right that the property tax is a serious exaggeration. Like, expensive places like Austin are around 2%, from what I remember.

The US safety net is anything but. It barely exists and is extremely difficult to both qualify for and live off of.

You pay in tax bracket A up to $X, then the next tier is taxed at tax bracket B, and so on, and so on.

You need to add 12% to your marginal tax rate before £46500 per year for national insurance payments (and 2% after that), and 20% between £100k and £121k per year for the loss of the standard deduction. The real marginal tax rate for someone making £100k is 62%.

Also include 12% employer's NI (which by law isn't included in your salary, but must be paid by your employer), and a nice 20% sales tax levied on everyone except people with a significant amount of savings.

True, though so far, at least, I think that's still balanced by being able to deduct federal income tax when figuring what you owe the state. I recall that there's a move to get rid of that deduction.

Carrying up to one year of jail time under federal law. States usually have penalties, too.

> In cases where an overt act of evasion occurred, willful failure to file may be elevated to a felony

OP is bragging about willfully failing to file on the Internet. Something tells me proving this wouldn't take a sleuth.

Reminds me of this video I was watching on tiny homes. This guy converted a school bus into a home for him, his wife, and three children. And he was totally over-selling everything in it. Going on an on about how you can hang stuff here and there to save space. How the counters can be used for this and that and how multipurpose they are (like most flat surfaces). How everything is able to be cleaned. Etc.

And I'm like "Cool, it is a small space and you've managed to fit everyone inside to whatever degree of success you are comfortable with, but your 'dryer' is literally hanging clothes and turning on the heater."

I'm sure you can live like that. I'm sure you can manage living effectively homeless and with the barest of cash to buy whatever you need day to day. But that also requires a level of commitment and hustle I just don't want to deal with. I want to go home, watch Netflix, noodle on my guitar, build some Legos, whatever. Without having to think "Well, where should I sleep tonight that won't get me stabbed or dead from exposure"