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Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

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Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#51

Post by carbocation »

Poiesis wrote: post #48
hugh3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the pdf from the think tank which came up with it, you'll see that one of their arguments for doing it this way is that "An educated taxpayer is a progressive's best customer", leaving no doubt what their political agenda is. Somewhat disingenuous from a think tank called the "Third Way", which was originally intended to imply centrism. Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think…

Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank". I don't really have a dog in this fight, but a quick search suggests you may be mistaken. [site:npr.org "right-wing think tank"] os 8 results; [site:npr.org "think tank"] has about 2380. Nothing funny in robots.txt. But you never know, maybe there aren't that…

And 4 results for [site:npr.org "left-wing think tank"]

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#52

Post by grandalf »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #28

The late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan supported sending people statements of what was in their social security. His idea was that if people never saw what was in there, they'd never miss it when it was gone. I think this is a logical extension of that idea, and its great. I'd also like to see the flip side of the receipt contain a guess for how the same tax amount would break down the following year based on curre…

To be fair, the statements we get from Social security suffer from the following very serious problems, which actually have the opposite effect of the one you describe:

1) They aren't redeemable for the promised amount if congress lowers benefits, as it has many times already. We all know that benefits will be lowered significantly (or removed) by the time most of us here reach retirement age. Anyone under 40 should consider the money deducted for Social Security flushed permanently.

2) They are not in projected inflation adjusted dollars. The $1500 per month someone read on the piece of paper is actually in 2060 dollars (for example) not 2010 dollars; if shown in 2010 dollars it would be laughably small.

These sorts of numerical tricks would never be tolerated if a private firm was perpetrating them.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#53

Post by mattm »

JeffJenkins wrote: post #35

I've always liked the idea of a receipt to be given to Canadians at the end of every year telling them what healthcare benefits they got and how much they cost. It seemed like it would make people grateful that they had that service, but it also might make the people who pay disproportionately more than they use angry (and the nature of insurance is that most people put in more than they get)

If you are under 60, chances are you are paying disproportionately more in healthcare than you are getting. But this is how it goes. A large percentage of your lifetime's healthcare spending occurs in the last 6-12 months of your life.

Given the choice, I would much rather pay more for healthcare than I am using. It means I am healthy. My health is more valuable than money.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#55

Post by hugh3 »

Poiesis wrote: post #48
hugh3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the pdf from the think tank which came up with it, you'll see that one of their arguments for doing it this way is that "An educated taxpayer is a progressive's best customer", leaving no doubt what their political agenda is. Somewhat disingenuous from a think tank called the "Third Way", which was originally intended to imply centrism. Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think…

Still, it's a general law of NPR reporting that a left-wing think tank is called a "think tank" and a right-wing think tank is called a "right-wing think tank". I don't really have a dog in this fight, but a quick search suggests you may be mistaken. [site:npr.org "right-wing think tank"] os 8 results; [site:npr.org "think tank"] has about 2380. Nothing funny in robots.txt. But you never know, maybe there aren't that…

Or perhaps they rarely quote right-wing think tanks?

Still, a bit more googling:

7 hits for "right-wing think tank" vs 4 hits for "left-wing think tank", so apparently they don't use either term very often.

1200 hits for "liberal think tank" vs 285 for "conservative think tank" vs 447 for "libertarian think tank" (all of which seem to be Cato) vs 6 for "moderate think tank".

3 for "Republican think tank", 345 for "Democratic think tank" and 57 for "non-partisan think tank"

I take your point, though. What you'd really need to do in order to analyze bias would be to check out "think tank" is used without an adjective and figure out what kind of think tanks those are.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#56

Post by smokeyj »

jonursenbach wrote: post #14
sportsTAKES wrote: post #7

Love this idea - Would also like to see: Return policy - don't like how much the government spent on Amtrak, get a refund (no questions asked). Customer loyalty program - earn points towards postage stamps or a national park pass. Discounts from partner programs - i.e., paying, loyal customers of the US government get discounts with China, GM, Goldman Sachs and other US 'partners'.

If there's a return policy then most people are going to be asking for a return on everything .

Which begs the question, why are we forced to pay for something we would just return anyways?

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#57

Post by ssp »

hugh3 wrote: post #2

Not a bad idea. But why does it say "selected items"? I haven't added the numbers up myself, but one of the comments says that the listed things add up to only sixty-something percent of the total. Where's the other money gone? One might almost think they're trying to make a political point with their careful selection of items (eg. "Combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" somehow got to fifth place on the list wh…

The break-down is certainly important. They could choose to lump all military expenses together, or to break down social security into tiny bits. The results would look very different.

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#59

Post by stuaxo »

ssp wrote: post #57
hugh3 wrote: post #2

Not a bad idea. But why does it say "selected items"? I haven't added the numbers up myself, but one of the comments says that the listed things add up to only sixty-something percent of the total. Where's the other money gone? One might almost think they're trying to make a political point with their careful selection of items (eg. "Combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan" somehow got to fifth place on the list wh…

The break-down is certainly important. They could choose to lump all military expenses together, or to break down social security into tiny bits. The results would look very different.

They need to be grouped and have subtotals. (The items on the left, the subtotals on the right).

Re: Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

#60

Post by taxreceipt »

dkasper wrote: post #54
aresant wrote: post #19

Nice viral night's project would be building a simple yourtaxreceipt.com website, reverse engineering those numbers and making a calculator.

Your wish is my command: http://www.incometaxreceipt.com

I built one too. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745574
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