Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by save_ferris | Hacker News Reader

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> Perhaps energy should be directed at the actual tax code complexity rather than software built to help navigate filing.

It's hard to tackle the complexity of the tax code when the company you're defending here has spent millions to keep it complex and out of the hands of the government.[0]

The "tax complexity" argument is a red herring when talking about tax prep. The US government could absolutely offer free tax filing services to taxpayers without the help of private industry and also without needing to simplify the tax code. I'm not saying that the complexity of the tax code isn't a problem, but it's out of scope here. The idea that the complexity of the US tax code standing in the way of better filing options for taxpayers has absolutely no merit when companies are spending millions to fight legislation that gives the government the ability to offer its own tax prep software.

This is rent-seeking behavior on the part of private industry, plain and simple.

0: https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings.

That is because they could pre-populate much of the W2/1099/stock sales/etc data since its all being reported to the IRS from other organizations. For the vast majority of people it could be as simple as logging into a web site and clicking "no" to a bunch of questions like "did you have more than 20k of medical bills last year", and then "I accept" at the bottom where it prints your final tax. As I understand it, that is how some other countries handle their taxes..

>>>And just to add to this, the IRS software could be significantly easier to use than the commercial offerings.

Someone has never worked in government contracting or developing Software from Government Committee

a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets

Not a easy to use streamline system

If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it

Here’s the thing though: the IRS already has all the information they need for a majority of the population. Why does everyone need to fill out forms themselves only for the government a few years later to say you did it wrong?

Because some people are irrationally biased against government providing services or collecting taxes in general. These are ingrained belief systems being challenged.

Ridiculous thing to say. I am a small government person, and I believe taxation is theft. However, I am a realist and so I recognize that taxes are part of our reality. I am 100% in favor of the IRS making it as easy as possible for people to do their taxes, because they already have 99% of the info needed.

> I believe taxation is theft

> However, I am a realist

Choose one.

I have no idea how you see those two things as mutually exclusive.

If taxation is theft, so are the vast majority of jobs.

I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes.

> I have a choice of jobs, including working for myself. I have no choice in paying taxes.

You totally do have choice to not pay your taxes, just like you have a choice to not pay your rent or mortgage or renege on other kinds of private contracts. The making those choices may lead to outcomes that aren't good for you, but it doesn't mean you have no choice.

You can move to a place with no income tax. Now, you might argue that is impractical, but so getting a non-shit job for many people.

I happen to think the government should impose taxes, and tax evasion is a moral failing, but I also recognized people were born into a contract with the government, and I'm not going to argue that's fair.

The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

--Lysander Spooner

> The fact is that the government, like a thief, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

Yes, but I like civil society, infrastructure, paved roads and what little social safety net we have in this country, so...

So you see taxes as necessary. That's fine. It doesn't invalidate the point being made.

But are taxes really theft if I'm willing to pay them and I'm getting something of value back in return?

Maybe it's extortionate, but the entire premise of government and the social contract is extortionate to a degree.

Ahh yes, the running joke of "But who will pave the roads", this has be debunked so many times it is now a meme in libertarian circles yet people still bring it up anyone some mentions that income based taxation is theft.

Sad reality is most private roads are better maintained than the public roads which driving to my home everyday is like a obstacle course.

Then there is the fact the vast majority of Roads (in the US) are paid for not with Income taxes but with User Fee's such as Gas Taxes, Car Registration, Wheel Taxes, Tire Fee's, Sales Taxes on Cars, and many other sources

But hey let keep up with the narrative that with out income taxes we would all be driving on mud paths

> I believe taxation is theft

Then please stop using the things we fund with them. Roads, GPS, etc.

I'm funding them too, so no.

You may think it's a ridiculous thing to say, and I also think it's a ridiculous thing to say. But Grover Norquist uses this exact line of reasoning when arguing against the IRS pre-populating taxes - and Grover Norquist has enormous influence on what policy positions many Republicans take regarding taxes.

edit: transcript from an NPR interview where Norquist takes this position: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/521132960

> and I believe taxation is theft

Money, taxes, and the crime of theft are all creatures of the law. Taxes aren't theft because that would be a literal contradiction. Taxes are just part of the rules about how money operates.

I should also note that 1) the law isn't just what some individual or other feels is natural, 2) I'd imagine that primitive law that defines theft also defines obligations to the community (which are analogous to taxes).

What's the point of your belief if you know it can't happen?

> If you want something to be inefficient, have the government do it

Would you rather have a system that’s inefficiently built by a government or one efficiently built by a private company that illegally extracts fees from users, as the FTC alleges Intuit has done? What’s the point of being obsessed with “efficiency” when the company screws end users anyway?

That is a false dilemma, I know this will shock you, but it is possible to have private companies that do not illegally extract fees from users, and at the same time not have government created software....

I support the FTC's actions to go after intuit, but I have filled my taxes every year for many decades and not used Turbo Tax.

I have, and sometimes it goes well, but you don't hear about those cases.

OTOH, you have to remember that the IRS is already developing a fairly complex bit of software which allows the tax companies to "e-file" the tax returns. Then they are verifying those companies results in house against the data they already have. At which point, apparently the returns are either rejected, or assigned some kind of weight for a human inspector to come along and review for whether a formal audit should be undertaken.

So, its quite possible that cutting out the e-file portion and replacing it with a webUI actually simplifies things.

> a IRS Tax Software would look more than the universally hated Unemployment Systems, or the government healthcare markets

Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval.

> Following Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the summer of 2017, KFF Health Tracking Polls have found a slight uptick in overall favorability towards the 2010 health care law. The most recent KFF Tracking Poll shows over half of the public (52%) hold favorable opinions of the ACA while about four in ten (41%) hold a negative opinion of the law. [1]

> Some 55% of Americans support the ACA, a record high since the law went into effect a decade ago, according to a recent report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, while 37% of the 130,000 respondents in the nationally representative poll hold unfavorable views. [2]

> But the election of Donald Trump and efforts by Republicans to repeal the ACA have boosted the law’s popularity. Since November 2016, on average, 49.4% of the public has had a positive view of the law, compared with 41.6% who view it unfavorably. [3]

[1] https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/6-charts-abou...

[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-affordable-care-act-is...

[3] https://www.ajmc.com/view/how-has-public-opinion-on-the-aca-...

> Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume. Yours happens to be wrong. Overall the country views ObamaCare ~50% favorably, with some specific parts close to 90% approval

I support the ACA, but when you implement the benefits in a law and repeal or ignore most of the new taxes and mandates, that will happen.

Okay? There's no reason laws have to have good and bad parts, like a fundamental yin-yang. You can simply write laws without the bad parts.

The ACA must have good parts and bad parts because the mandate makes the numbers work. Guaranteed-issue insurance doesn't work if healthy people can opt out (because you can just buy insurance after you get sick which makes the risk-pooling idea of insurance not work).

Well, you can't, because of defined enrolment periods and coverage delay periods, and that it's impossible to tell ahead of time whether given insurance covers a given condition.

In addition, medical insurance makes no sense as a risk-pooling strategy, as everybody consumes some medical care annually, and the average cost of care consumed is greater than the amount most people can pay. There has to be something else going on.

There is, because we live in a finite world. Everything is about trade-offs. In the case of ACA, it’s benefits on one hand, and the taxes (and the mandate) that pay for those benefits on the other hand.

I thought just the individual mandate was struck down by the SCOTUS. What other pieces make up most of the new taxes and mandates that were repealed or ignored?

The individual mandate was upheld by the SCOTUS in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen...

Rather, the individual mandate was zeroed out in 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017

The Cadillac tax has been delayed, seemingly indefinitely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_insurance_plan

The employer mandate was delayed.

The Independent Payment Advisory Board was canceled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Payment_Advisory_B...

The nutrition labeling requirements were delayed from 2010 to 2018.

There are many other more technical provisions that have been delayed as well. It is easy to find many relevant sources online, though it's hard to keep them up to date because many delays just continue! https://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/ACA_Delays_at_a_...

Oh man, I was way off. Thanks for this.

>>Consider that your opinion on what is "universally hated" is mostly shaped by the sources of information that you consume.

Clearly I was not commenting on ACA but on the Websites people use to Sign up for Government Subsidized Plans under the ACA which have continually been reviewed poorly by the people needing to use them.

You mean those universally hated unemployement systems, the like one in Florida which was intentionally set up to fail and be as hard as possible to qualify for and interact with so that the real, hard-working Americans don't have to pay to support those deadbeat lowlifes who don't have a job?

The government is more than capable of accomplishing tasks. There is no inherent reason why government is incapable of doing anything but a corporation is capable of doing everything!

If you design a system to fail from the outset and it doesn't work, then they achieved the goal. So really, the government nailed it. And the better part is they nailed it for people who feel the way you do. It's literally a self-fulfilling prophecy of politically-motivated people who don't believe in the ability of the government to get anything done working as hard as possible to make sure that the government doesn't do a good job.

HMRC manage to do this just fine in the UK.

I'm sure many other governments around the world do the same.

I don't blame lobbyists for anything. I blame the politicians for doing what the lobbyists asked for.

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