91–100 of 181 posts
What was the vendor selection process for ID.me? Their UX, privacy, and security practices seem terrible. What’s the real story on how ID.me became so pervasive in the public sector with such a terrible product?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN has a lot of "both sides are the same" centrists and libertarians. They don't realize there there is still a tiny thread of pro-worker pro-middle-class democratic action in the US government. I have no idea how much longer it can survive, but people like Wyden, AOC, Bernie, etc fight the good fight and that goes against everything centrists and 3rd party types believe. Everyone is a republican to them and when sho…
You pick AOC and Bernie as examples of people fighting for the middle class. AOC's Green New Deal would've destroyed the middle class. She probably means well, but she really is just a useful idiot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really good point - if the tax code were a few dozen pages for the common case instead of a few hundred , then you might not even need tax-prep software in the first place. "The best program is the one that doesn't exist", to quote a popular refrain. Ongoing software projects require periodic refactoring to reduce complexity and increase comprehension - why would the law be any different?
I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. Having citizens exposed directly to the mechanics of it during the filing process is a policy choice and the way to fix that is to change the policy, not try to reinvent the tax code from first principles. This is a complex set of laws yes but it is also detail…
This is true often, but not always. Examples just off the top of my head:
* Had large medical bills compared to your AGI? How does the IRS know that?
* Paid for college tuition? How does the IRS know that?
* Deducting state sales taxes? How does the IRS know what those were for you?
* Paid for daycare? How does the IRS know how much?
I'm sure I could find more examples if I went and looked at the actual tax forms right now. And while these are all things that don't affect everyone every year, they do affect a large fraction of people at some point in their lives. They certainly affect everyone who pays for college or has kids.
Note that this is not getting into anything too esoteric here, and completely ignoring anything involving self-employment or consulting, or running a small business or whatever. I _think_ those are rarer than having kids anyway.
Now could we have a more streamlined filing process that did the easy bits when possible and asked more directed questions to find out whether people might be in edge cases that might need more handholding or professional help? Absolutely. Could we get rid of the edge cases I listed above with a simpler tax code? Perhaps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a really good point - if the tax code were a few dozen pages for the common case instead of a few hundred , then you might not even need tax-prep software in the first place. "The best program is the one that doesn't exist", to quote a popular refrain. Ongoing software projects require periodic refactoring to reduce complexity and increase comprehension - why would the law be any different?
I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. Having citizens exposed directly to the mechanics of it during the filing process is a policy choice and the way to fix that is to change the policy, not try to reinvent the tax code from first principles. This is a complex set of laws yes but it is also detail…
I must admit I've always sort of blindly believed the same thing, but here I am year after year accumulating and submitting my own absurd set of turbo-tax button smashes.
Honestly I have trouble figuring out how much I owe myself. I would believe that they have some core set of data linked to my SSN, and every time I submit they run some sort of markov-chain statistical model that says - "meh, looks pretty close. No need for further review. Please pay the refund to the latest identity scam." or "red flag for actual review".
100% chance the IRS is understaffed, running legacy spaghetti, managed by folks just trying not to be the next scape-goat so they can go home to their family and watch the next episode of what everyone at work is talking about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What lesson do you think organizations learned from that breach? (As it relates to this article.) The pattern I see is: 1. Company collects and stores private consumer info. 2. Company gets hacked. 3. Company share price unaffected. 4. Company sued in class-action lawsuit. 5. Company settles by offering discounted/free products to victims of the hack. ("A $50 value!") Lawyers make a few million. Result: company gets…
> Sounds like a good deal if the company is too big to fail. I don't know why Equifax is too big to fail. But then again, I don't know why Goldman Sachs was too big to fail either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN has a lot of "both sides are the same" centrists and libertarians. They don't realize there there is still a tiny thread of pro-worker pro-middle-class democratic action in the US government. I have no idea how much longer it can survive, but people like Wyden, AOC, Bernie, etc fight the good fight and that goes against everything centrists and 3rd party types believe. Everyone is a republican to them and when sho…
You pick AOC and Bernie as examples of people fighting for the middle class. AOC's Green New Deal would've destroyed the middle class. She probably means well, but she really is just a useful idiot.
What was the vendor selection process for ID.me? Their UX, privacy, and security practices seem terrible. What’s the real story on how ID.me became so pervasive in the public sector with such a terrible product?
Gov cyber security, financial services cyber security, and anyone else who puts on their home page how they “take your security seriously”, all want to buy from ex mil execs. Must be to manage all that military grade encryption between your browser and their web site.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. Having citizens exposed directly to the mechanics of it during the filing process is a policy choice and the way to fix that is to change the policy, not try to reinvent the tax code from first principles. This is a complex set of laws yes but it is also detail…
> I think we've fairly well established that the complexity of the code isn't the problem. The IRS knows what you owe and could just tell you if they wanted to. The IRS has no way to know which of your expenditures are tax-deductible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN has a lot of "both sides are the same" centrists and libertarians. They don't realize there there is still a tiny thread of pro-worker pro-middle-class democratic action in the US government. I have no idea how much longer it can survive, but people like Wyden, AOC, Bernie, etc fight the good fight and that goes against everything centrists and 3rd party types believe. Everyone is a republican to them and when sho…
You pick AOC and Bernie as examples of people fighting for the middle class. AOC's Green New Deal would've destroyed the middle class. She probably means well, but she really is just a useful idiot.
AOC introduced a resolution (text here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolutio...) which if passed, would have basically just affirmed (in a non-binding way) the interest of the house to create a "Green New Deal". The actual legislation itself would, if the house agreed to do so, need to then be created, debated, and voted on before being passed.
"House resolutions are not binding law, but rather express the collective sentiment of the House on a particular issue, person, or event."
The actual resolution itself is pretty short, and I find most of the statements and goals in it pretty tame and agreeable. But again, it is not as if this resolution being passed means that all of those things necessarily must end up in the actual Green New Deal to be passed or even that it gets created at all.
Could you elaborate on how this would destroy the middle class? I might have missed something but there was never even any policy proposed, because the Green New Deal was never created to be voted on. I don't understand how you can make an evaluation like that without examining the actual policies to go into effect.