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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

#321

Post by Beltiras »

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 a resident of Iceland. We have had this for our tax returns for at least a decade. We have had electronic returns for longer than that. All I had to do this tax season was add undeclared income and the expenses they incurred and sign with an electronic "key" password. Very soon they will mandate signing with our recently installed smart-phone enabled identity system (private key on a SIM).

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

#322

Post by Kurtz79 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #120
kenning wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's just have a 1% flat tax, and if government needs more, they can use lotteries.

Like the recent Obamacare repeal debacle has shown, a lot of people believe they have a simple solution to complex issues, until they actually try to implement it.

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

#323

Post by branchless »

RobertoG wrote: post #298
losoq wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately "starving the beast" doesn't seem to actually work. Low tax revenues don't lead to lower spending, just fiscal indiscipline. I personally would prefer a leaner federal state but it's not clear how to get there. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/starve_the_beas_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast#Economic_anal... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/cant-make-government-smaller...

When I read this "starve the beast" thing, I can't avoid to ask myself where this people think the money is coming from in the first place? In order to tax, the government have to spend before.

Oh dear oh dear. Private banks create money. If only it were state lead.

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

#324

Post by aldanor »

wkz wrote: post #305

I live in Sweden. Just a few days ago I audited and filed my returns for 2016, it took me about 2 minutes. 1. Go to skatteverket.se (IRS), enter your "personnummer" (SSN). 2. Open the BankID app on my phone, which contains an X509 certificate identifing me, issued by my bank. Enter my password to decrypt the cert's private key and sign the authetication ticket from skatteverket.se. 3. Audit my pre-filled returns. Con…

I live in Ireland. I don't file any returns since I have a single source of income, my company/government figure it out for me => 0 time wasted.

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

#325

Post by mannykannot »

mfukar wrote: post #301
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…

> Grover Norquist, the well known promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" took the counterintuitive view that just making the process easier equated to a new tax, since taxpayers might end up paying taxes already on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded. I just fail to understand the logic exercised by some US residents. Norquist's argument is insane, and if you're not only trying to b…

Welcome to Alternative Rationality, in which an argument is taken to be a sound one if it has the style of one.

Like Alternative Truth, it has probably been around forever, but what seems to be changing is that the users of these techniques are no longer embarrassed by saying the most ridiculous things, and there is effectively no downside for a politician or lobbyist in doing so.

I have heard that the US SAT essay test scoring guidelines progressively reduced emphasis on judging content (to avoid cultural bias) in favor of judging style (to be fair, this may have changed in the 2016 overhaul.) If so, then, as teachers do teach to the test, this could only have harmed critical thinking.

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

#326

Post by hundt »

gech wrote: post #214
hundt wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a stupid question at all. In practice the U.S. tax code is not quite as simple as "Here is the tax burden for your income level; tell us if you have any deductions." Right off the bat, you need to determine your "filing status" (single, married, head of household, and some less common options) from a list of five choices, each of which has different rules for all the calculations that follow. Furthermore, fo…

Can you answer the question of whether Intuit lobbying for their interest is in the interest of the public?

I mean it might be, right? Just like when anyone else lobbies the government, Inuit might be asking for something that is good or something that is bad.

In this case I think they are right.

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

#327

Post by rplst8 »

fjdlwlv wrote: post #260
toomuchtodo wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Social security is only taxed on your first $127,200 of annual income. Anything over that is not assessed social security tax. Medicare is 1.45% of your income with no limit, and an additional 0.9% on income over $200k/year. I'm unsure where you would get the idea that those rates increase as your income increases.

Parent did not say rates increase.

Not sure why you are getting down voted. The taxes are both rates, so they do increase in amount the more you make.

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

#328

Post by lagadu »

kakapupu wrote: post #285
quadrangle wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> they can use government to actually offset the power that corporations have (through plain capital and through regulatory capture) You're saying people can "use" the government to compensate for the government itself preventing competition with their cronies. Isn't that a bit of a fool's errand, even disregarding the fact that in reality we don't use the government - the government very much uses us.

>the government very much uses us.

No, we put the government and the rules it has to follow in place to ensure that it has our best interests and nothing else in mind. They are a tool we use to make sure the state is run the way we want it to be.

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

#329

Post by lagadu »

wkz wrote: post #305

I live in Sweden. Just a few days ago I audited and filed my returns for 2016, it took me about 2 minutes. 1. Go to skatteverket.se (IRS), enter your "personnummer" (SSN). 2. Open the BankID app on my phone, which contains an X509 certificate identifing me, issued by my bank. Enter my password to decrypt the cert's private key and sign the authetication ticket from skatteverket.se. 3. Audit my pre-filled returns. Con…

Same thing in Denmark, except using nemID for logging in. The whole process barely takes longer than the kettle takes to heat up my tea.

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

#330

Post by yazan94 »

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…

Tangential question: If the government sends you a tax form pre-filled, and they missed something to tax you on somehow: what incentive would you have to fix it?
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