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Comment by MisterMower | Hacker News Reader

Congress authorized a study, not a full blown system, or even a working prototype. No taxpayers should have ever been allowed to use it to file a tax return.

Despite Congress appropriating only $15M to do the study, the program managed to blow through at least $41M, likely more.[1] This included advertising costs in some states to encourage taxpayers to use the system.

This would be like your boss asking you to send him an email about the pros and cons of adding a feature, and you going and implementing the feature, pushing it to production, and then asking customers for feedback on it.

Whether or not the feature was a success is 100% irrelevant. That’s not how things should be done. We are a nation of laws, and even if the program was a smashing success, there needs to be accountability.

1. https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/Report-Replacemen...

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> No taxpayers should have ever been allowed to use it to file a tax return.

I see why blowing too much money on the study is a problem. Though this needs to be compared against the norms around this kind of thing. If we wanted these limits to be strict, we would make it actually impossible to spend more.

But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem.

"We believe the best way to get this information would be to build a prototype and see how popular it will be" makes perfect sense to me.

> this needs to be compared against the norms around this kind of thing

Because other government programs waste money, it must be okay that this one did too?

Congress put $15M in the Inflation Reduction Act for the purpose of a study. If they wanted to spend $41M or $400M, don't you think they would have written that number into the law instead?

> But I do not understand why creating a system and letting people use it would be a problem

I don't know how to say this in any other way: it's because it was not authorized by law. That reason alone is sufficient.

This attitude of "well it was for a good cause, I suppose we can just ignore the law in this instance" is the root of many of our problems in this country. At its root it's really just "the ends justify the means" thinking.

Today it may be something you support. But tomorrow it's deportations or illegal recess appointments or unlawful searches and seizures. When you allow certain laws to be enforced and others to be ignored you set the stage for tyranny.

In many ways we are reaping the harvest of this lax attitude toward how laws are executed in this country. I hope this program serves as an object lesson in why complying with the law may seem tedious but is actually the bedrock of our constitutional order.

> Because other government programs waste money, it must be okay that this one did too?

No, but it's unfair to single out one program when they all do that.

> This attitude of "well it was for a good cause [...]"

That is not my argument. I don't see why a study cannot include a product being built and used by the public. Unless there's a legal argument where "study" is a specific legal term, not "we'll do things to learn about this topic".

They are two different things, and you are being disingenuous by assuming they are the same.

> We are a nation of laws

Have you considered doing stand-up comedy?

> We are a nation of laws

Yeah sorry but to be out here defending the actions of this administration while trotting out that phrase, you either have no self awareness or are a craven liar. Nation of laws SMH…

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