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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

#221

Post by repsilat »

lacampbell wrote: post #115
beachy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're still absolutely aware of how much we pay (it's on your payslip). There's just no end of year filing process.

Painfully aware one might say, given how insanely high they are. They at least usually shield the daylight robbery GST from us. Probably so we can sleep at night.

As a Kiwi living in California at the moment, income taxes as a proportion of income are much higher here than in New Zealand. Effective NZ income taxes are way down the low end for the OECD, lower than the US, the UK, Australia, the list goes on. IIRC only Chile is lower, though I may not recall correctly.

GST is a pain, but no capital gains tax is also a big win for many (and many states in the US, including California, have one of those too.)

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

#222

Post by gech »

smt88 wrote: post #83
narag wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> With deductions, rich people end up paying very little for income tax 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 incom…

>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.

So what? How much did they have left? How much utility do they have with what they have left?

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

#223

Post by paulddraper »

barrkel wrote: post #125
paulddraper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing flat tax (proportional) with poll tax (constant).

No, I don't think he is at all. Linearly proportional taxes are regressive both because of the declining marginal utility of income, and the lower proportion of income that's discretionary at the bottom end of the income distribution.

I guess I don't know what regressive means anymore.

It doesn't mean the poor pay more. It doesn't mean the poor pay more proportionally to income...

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

#224

Post by Cacti »

accountface wrote: post #220
avar wrote: post #110

This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1]. Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most peopl…

Jesus fucking christ fuck Intuit and Grover Norquist.

prerty hard to make a living selling tax software if the taxes are easy to do!

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

#225

Post by sjy »

cortesoft wrote: post #97
nickpsecurity wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Perhaps you could consider the regulatory schemes in place in Canada, the UK and EU? Many countries have reduced the influence of money on politics without bringing an end to freedom of speech. The US is a clear outlier.

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

#226

Post by quadrangle »

fnordsensei wrote: post #138
jkaptur wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a major component of Norquist's thinking is that the more painful people find taxes (including the process of calculating them) the more they'll support his agenda of "a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub".

Right! We can't make the government less awful, because happy people might not show us the support we need for our cause to make the government less awful.

The goal of those types of politicians isn't to make the government less awful. Their goal is to make "the government" out to be the enemy so that the citizens don't start thinking that they can use government to actually offset the power that corporations have (through plain capital and through regulatory capture).

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

#227

Post by 7171u »

keithnz wrote: post #26
gamblor956 wrote: post #14

Correction: this proposal would not have simplified taxes (i.e., the California tax code). It would merely have simplified the filing of tax returns for the most common case, salaried workers receiving all of their income from a single source. Very big difference. HRBlock and Intuit are heavily vested in maintaining the current tax filing system. They are not, however, meaningful players in the attempts to rewrite th…

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.

In India also we get form from employer with information on tax paid in that financial year. You just need to copy paste the values to tax dept. website and submit. So simple.

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

#228

Post by quadrangle »

Radim wrote: post #195
Aloha wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My source of ire is that as someone who makes much much less, I paid closer to 22% of my income in taxes - how is that fair?

Perhaps because in the end, you pay for stuff with dollars, not with percentages? That whole game of playing with abstract fractional numbers is already massively progressive. I think people fail to appreciate how very bizarre this "accepted norm" actually is.

The goal of all taxing and spending must be related to political goals. They aren't goals in and of themselves. What is the political value of taxing a flat percent instead of a progressive percent (let alone taxing a flat dollar amount)?

The political value of progressive percentages is that it keeps the money supply stable without taking too much spending power away from the lower and middle income people where their spending power relates directly to things like seeing children cared for well with good education, time with parents, and other opportunities etc. There's a huge social value in maximizing the number of people who have spending power enough to live reasonably stable, healthy lives, as long as we avoid perverse incentives and allow healthy market mechanisms to keep the economy running smoothly.

So, what's the policy objective of going the other way (away from progressive percent tax rates)?

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

#229

Post by thaumasiotes »

avar wrote: post #110

This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1]. Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most peopl…

> When he wanted to convince someone he'd start paging through it and ask the person he was talking to to say "stop", to ensure he wasn't cherry-picking.

Maybe using a standard stage magician's force isn't the best way to convince people that you aren't cherry-picking.

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

#230

Post by meddlepal »

avar wrote: post #110

This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1]. Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most peopl…

I'm nearing the point of being completely convinced nothing is actually improvable anymore in the US. If you touch anything, even the most broken or inhumane thing, you'll find someone defending it until the death either because of vested interests or ignorance.
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