81–90 of 405 posts
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I disagree on one point. Block and Intuit are also lobbyists against all sorts of code simplification programs. Anything that makes the filing process easier, and having fewer deductions and penalties available makes it easer, they are against.
The business of H&R Block and Intuit came about in response to tax code complexity, they did not create it.
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In new zealand, we got rid of having to do tax returns for salaried/wage earners a number of years ago. Makes life easy for a vast majority of people. You can still do a return if you want to though. For the tax department it cuts down on how much infrastructure they need.
I think that's optimizing the wrong thing; people should be aware of the amount they are paying in taxes.
At the end of the tax year you get a P60 form that tells you how much tax you paid over the last year.
Instead of opting for the deductibles route, goods are subsidised at point of sale, so e.g. if you're buying solar panels, you don't need to cover the whole thing up front, or whatever financing deal you get, then claim money back in your tax return; instead the price you buy the panel at already has the subsidy baked in.
There is a slight difference between the UK and US, though, in that there is no per-state/county income taxes. Only UK wide. Individual counties use property tax to raise what revenues they need (counties are also responsible for a lot less things than States)
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Wealthy people are against that. They prefer regressive taxes, like sales tax, that will be shift much more of the burden to the poor. In fact, there's a whole batshit-crazy tax plan called FairTax that proposes changing all taxes to a simple sales tax.
They prefer regressive taxes, like sales tax I don't buy that. Yes, I know it seems logical, but in practice it's not so clear cut. With deductions, rich people end up paying very little for income tax. With sales tax (or VAT) the person spending more pays more, and it's more difficult to escape. This issue is very unintuitive and numbers tend to hide reality. Let me put an example on how numbers can fool us. In my c…
You're utterly wrong. The wealthiest 0.001% paid 17.6% of their income in taxes in 2012[1]. That's not "very little" -- it's likely in the tens of millions per person. The top 1% paid even more than that.
Some corporations will avoid income tax altogether, as will some small-business owners, but individuals still pay substantial amounts of income tax. The "deductions" you mention aren't structured to eliminate most people's tax bills, and the loopholes don't work for everyone.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/04/as-th...
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In new zealand, we got rid of having to do tax returns for salaried/wage earners a number of years ago. Makes life easy for a vast majority of people. You can still do a return if you want to though. For the tax department it cuts down on how much infrastructure they need.
I think that's optimizing the wrong thing; people should be aware of the amount they are paying in taxes.
Just for thought: suppose the tax system became so simplified that only goods X, Y,and Z were taxed at rates a,b,c. You pay aX+bY+cZ in taxes per year. It would be easy for voters to campaign their politicians to lower tax rates and easily verify. Obviously in the real world there aren't 3 levers to adjust: there are probably thousands or tens of thousands. Apart from the lobbying, politicians may themselves desire t…
That's exactly why we have a proliferation of taxes and tax breaks instead of a simple tax system. Perform a thought experiment. Say we just have a straight 35% income tax. Now, say you need to raise additional revenues. Do you (1) raise the single tax; or (2) impose a new tax on some specific part of the economy? Option (1) gets everybody mad at you. Option (2) gets only a tiny number of people mad at you. Same thin…
The UI problem itself has largely been solved by TurboTax. It could be solved by government itself with a simple free web interface but that's not how America works, for better or worse.
And, on review of the article itself, I see it's about simplifying tax filing, not the tax code itself.
I'm not against the idea of cleaning up the tax code, removing the outdated cruft and making it more transparent, if that's possible. But simplifying taxes in the way flat-tax-proponents want will only make sure the rich get richer.
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That's exactly why we have a proliferation of taxes and tax breaks instead of a simple tax system. Perform a thought experiment. Say we just have a straight 35% income tax. Now, say you need to raise additional revenues. Do you (1) raise the single tax; or (2) impose a new tax on some specific part of the economy? Option (1) gets everybody mad at you. Option (2) gets only a tiny number of people mad at you. Same thin…
Yeah but a flat tax would be extremely regressive. If you had a simple equation like tax% = x/4 + 10, where x is your tax percentile, politicians could loudly say that they wish to increase or decrease the slope of the line and people would know that increasing slope would mean a more progressive tax.
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We put all candidates online, for free. They are not allowed to spend money on getting elected - although they can spend their time (generally speaking, sometimes studying, a particular problem, history, how other countries do it, etc). Citizens subscribe to individuals, and groups of individuals, that best reflect their views. Additionally, citizens will be exposed to views that are slightly or significantly differe…
Right speech is independent of its volume. Money can only increase volume, so get rid of it. Money isn't speech, it's amplification of speech, and as such should not be protected.
You proposal is a recipe for electing only celebrities, who don't need money to be amplified.
I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face: fix money in politics, and half of these issues will no longer be intractable.
How can you fix money in politics without making the whole system worse?
2) Every candidate gets a (small) fixed budget, paid for by tax-payers. (This is already the practice in some countries.)
3) Ads are subject to the same laws that govern ads for products: say whatever you want, but you can be sued for lying.
Any of those ideas sound good?
I wish there were more information about what, specifically, the pilot program included. The main detail I got from the story is that the tax returns were pre-filled with income information. I think that's useful, but I see no reason to expect a priori that the government would end up doing a better job with that than the private companies (like Intuit and H&R Block) whose revenue depends on doing that well. The comm…
They have lobbied for a variety of anti-tax payer causes. Namely stuff like: https://psmag.com/h-r-block-and-intuit-are-still-lobbying-to....
There is a really good reason to think that the government would do a better job -- most peoples tax situation is dead simple. Even if H&R block found deductions every once and a while that the IRS didn't -- which I doubt would happen realistically -- H&R block charges something like 200 dollars. It seems incredibly unlikely that they would save more than 200 dollars on average.
And if that was the case, let the market sort it. H&R block could say bring in the returns, and if the IRS messed up we'll find it and split it with you in some fashion.
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How do we "fix money in politics" without chilling free speech?
One of the simplest I've heard is a limit on how much any one person can donate to a politician's campaign in any form. And only individual voters can donate. No corporations. Make it a high-end felony to forge that. Make banks track it. That would be a start. In this case, it would've blocked Intuit from buying a politician mentioned in the HN comments. That might have prevented opposition by that politician. Amplif…
That said, allowing only individual entities to donate would be an improvement. But money would still find its way through, in unlimited amounts, through
1. SuperPACs, which are not allowed to communicate with a candidate, technically, but can receieve an infinite amount of money to further interests that are functionally identical to the candidate's interests (i.e. running pro-candidate ads), and
2. Lobbying. TurboTax can still spend millions to hire people to engage with politicians and bribe/convince them to see it TurboTax's way.