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Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

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Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#91

Post by legolas2412 »

kenning wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but the point is correct. Progressive tax rates are fine, but there are tons of weird deductions/tax breaks that can be applied

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#92

Post by rockstartech »

noobermin wrote: post #20

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.

In our current system, people with money will always have outsize political power. The only coherent solution to this problem is to abandon capitalism.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#93

Post by rhino369 »

kenning wrote: post #56
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wouldn't be regressive, it just wouldn't be progressive either.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#94

Post by aianus »

pilom wrote: post #76
lsaferite wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why is it batshit-crazy?

The biggest argument against it is that it is incredibly regressive. Poor people generally spend higher percentages of their income on stuff where rich people save higher percentages of their incomes. So for example, Joe makes 51k/year but spends 50k/year. At the 23% tax rate that FairTax proposes, he pays $11.5k - a $2.5k "prebate". This works out to an effective tax rate of ~18% (with today's tax plan Joe's effecti…

> We basically are subsidizing investing and rich people are the biggest investors.

What's wrong with subsidizing investing? Without investment in capital we'd all be subsistence farmers tending the fields for 12h a day.

If some rich guy wants to make $100 billion and spend 1% on himself and 99% on improving the world for future generations through investment, that's great, no?

I guess it comes down to whether you believe the government can invest those same dollars more productively than rich individuals.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#95

Post by ryandrake »

The problem I have with the popular "simplify" US tax proposals is that they mostly do it by repealing whole sections of the tax code, ending up super regressive and/or hurting the poor and middle class and helping the already rich.

Flat tax @ a high rate: Neutral or slightly helpful to the rich, crushing to the poor and middle class

Flat tax @ a low rate: Windfall to the rich, the resulting gutting of government programs hurt the poor and middle class

Eliminate taxes on dividends: Windfall to the rich, neutral to the poor and middle class who don't benefit from dividends

Eliminate many deductions and loopholes and reduce top tax rate (one of Trump's proposals): Rich are likely better off, no help to the poor and middle class

Reform AMT: Helpful to the rich and people with stock options, no effect for the poor and middle class

Eliminate income phaseouts: Helpful to the rich, no help to the poor and middle class

Eliminate estate or gift taxes: Helpful to the rich, no help to the poor and middle class

Eliminate income tax in favor of sales tax or VAT: Windfall to the rich, crushing to the poor, probably negative for the middle class

The ability to file your taxes on a postcard isn't worth it if it means advantaging the already advantaged.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#96

Post by javajosh »

thinkloop wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Candidates need to be able to reach voters in the best way they see fit. Online favors candidates that appeal to younger voters. This includes giving speeches, debating, advertising, etc., which takes funding. So we allow candidates to collect donations up to a reasonable limit. Unrelated to that there are private citizens, unaffiliated with the candidates, that want to exercise their free speech by publicly endorsin…

In terms of speech, advertising on network television excludes a lot of people (those without a TV). Making phone calls excludes a lot of people.

They are all different channels. Online is the ultimate channel because it is ultra-democratic: anyone can grow a following. Moreover, it's the ultimate channel because it's bidirectional - you can begin to form your own personal platform just off of your reactions (passive and active) to what you view. Personal platforms can be used to locate candidates, causes, like-minded individuals, and specific policy fights, protests and other tasks and actions that ultimately make the world closer to how you want it to be.

This is what politics should be like. This is what the polity should be like.

>How do you suppress that without suppressing free speech?

You don't suppress personal endorsements. Insofar as a person embodies your own views (or close enough) then a personal endorsement is quite valid. Even with this system a candidate will endure far more scrutiny (and endure far more ignorance flung in their direction) so finding a "moral clone" in the world with thicker skin is a good thing.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#97

Post by cortesoft »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #69
KZeillmann wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok, I will not donate to a political candidate.

I will, however, make an ad that talks about how horrible the opponent to my candidate is.

Ok, then. Let's block political advertising. Ok, we will make direct mailers that say bad things about the other candidate. Ok, we aren't allowed to send mailers. That means you can't start a grass roots campaign on an issue you care about, though.

I am not sure how you regulate your way out of this one.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#98

Post by ghouse »

ryandrake wrote: post #95

The problem I have with the popular "simplify" US tax proposals is that they mostly do it by repealing whole sections of the tax code, ending up super regressive and/or hurting the poor and middle class and helping the already rich. Flat tax @ a high rate: Neutral or slightly helpful to the rich, crushing to the poor and middle class Flat tax @ a low rate: Windfall to the rich, the resulting gutting of government pro…

But this isn't that.

The government already has enough information for the majority of US taxpayers to complete their tax return. W-2 income only? Or other income that's already reported to the government? Government sends you a tax return to sign. If you have more complicated taxes or don't fall into the 1040EZ, then do continue to do as you do today.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#99

Post by javajosh »

icebraining wrote: post #87
javajosh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a candidate makes a speech in the woods... You proposal is a recipe for electing only celebrities, who don't need money to be amplified.

Perhaps. But my hope is that such a system would help individuals discover and articulate their own personal principles, and then connect them with others with similar views. I suspect that with a little help everyday voters would far prefer to vote for the candidate that does the right thing than the candidate that they merely recognize. (I might be wrong about that but it's a worthy experiment).

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#100

Post by tracker1 »

klenwell wrote: post #85
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To follow up on this with a point that's been made here on HN before: the problem with the tax is not so much the backend complexity as the user interface. Dealing with the kind of situations @rayiner describes above explains why we are where we are. But that's inevitable with a progressive tax code. The UI problem itself has largely been solved by TurboTax. It could be solved by government itself with a simple free…

> 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.

Not necessarily... if taxes were mainly on import, export and currency exchanges. All those HFT trades would have tax implications.

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