The Massachusetts Software Tax

> this concept that we should leave everyone to fend for themselves and should simply ignore those who are less fortunate borders on sociopathy.

Actually, it borders on something we call "nature." Whatever position we take about nature, what we can't do is ignore it.

The antipode of nature would be a society in which there really is a social safety net that isn't temporary and discretionary, absolutely reliable, and not means-tested. Such a thing would collide with reality, the collision would be spectacular, and reality would prevail.

> I, for one, take comfort in knowing that even if everything in my life falls apart, there are some basic social safety nets in place to keep me from starving to death of the streets.

But there is no such thing, not in the way you seem to think. If such a net existed as more than a limited approximation, it would be destroyed by overexploitation.

Human societies live in nature, and nature is in charge. Nature doesn't waste anything. The human reproductive capacity is limited only by available resources and premature death.

> The number of essential government services that you use everyday, even without leaving your house is surprisingly high.

Yes -- and the number of ways that government can misuse or waste tax revenues is surprisingly high.

I recommend a skeptical attitude toward government and hypothetically perfect social safety nets.

You're young -- you'll figure it out. “Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” ― Winston Churchill

>I invite you, sometime, to think about which services you really use, and try to figure out how much it would cost to purchase each of them if you were doing so on your own. Don't forget: police protection, fire protection, military protection, paved roads, functioning traffic signals and signs, groomed parks, trash collection (some places), up to sixteen years of education, enforcement of workplace safety standards, financial protection if you become suddenly disabled, a legal system in which to resolve disputes. I don't know what your specific situation is, but just about everyone benefits from those government services in the U.S., and you personally may benefit from many others. I'm guessing that purchasing the first three alone, as an individual on a private market, would probably outrun the total you pay in taxes.

First of all the comment he was replying to was talking about services like housing, transportation, and healthcare, which already are provided by the market and aren't really things the government has any advantage in. As for all the stuff it does pay for, at best it costs exactly the same amount as you have to pay in taxes. But the government spends money on a lot of other things with your taxes that don't really benefit you. So you would save a decent amount of money. And with no competition, the services they do provide cost a lot more then they probably could.

>You could lower the individual costs to you of a lot of these by finding a bunch of other people who also need these services, and pooling your money to buy them together. That's just how democratic government begins.

This applies to any service. Anything from food production to software development. A lot of people need those things, and they could cut costs if they pooled their money together for them.

>This is a dishonest characterization of the authority of a democratic government to levy taxes. Yes, if you don't pay taxes you owe, someone might come and take your property, and those people might have weapons or threaten you with imprisonment. But that is a measure of last resort, which will surely only be taken if you fail to respond to a long line of more reasonable measures. It does a great injustice to people who actually live under oppressive regimes to compare the collection of taxes under a democratic government to the kind of arbitrary, might-makes-right authority those people are subject to.

He was definitely using words with bad connotations, but technically it is true. Everyone pays their taxes to avoid having their property stolen or going to jail. The fact that force isn't applied unreasonably doesn't mean it isn't there.

>Like the government's other kinds of authority, it derives (most people think) from the consent of the governed.

There are people that don't consent. At best you could say the majority consent. You can justify it by saying it's better than any other system we know of, but not that people consent to it.

He's not trolling, it's just a kneejerk libertarian comment. There's a strong thread among the more vehement economic libertarians of taxation being theft enforced by the government's monopoly on force. It's a bit silly, but it's also a sincerely held belief.

Holy crap, everyone here needs to take a deep breath. And, preferably, look at the law itself (not just this article). Despite the author wringing his hands and clutching his pearls about how this law is soooooo hard to understand, it's really not that complicated. It's a sales tax. It works like sales taxes tend to work, with similar distinctions between industrial product (sold as a good) and bespoke construction (sold as a service), and with similar handling of inter-state purchases (if you have a nexus in MA and sell to someone there, you collect, and if you don't have a nexus in MA, they're responsible for use tax).

Let's not mistake the fact that people don't like taxes for some sort of deep, abiding flaw in the legal situation.

(Now, the complaint that implementation was too sudden, that's totally valid. They should have had a several-month gap between passing the law and the tax kicking in.)

Apples and Oranges. I'm talking rates, you're talking dollars. People in MA make and spend more money than people in Alabama, so you'd have a higher per-capita tax burden even with lower rates in MA.

Per capita income minus dollars taxed or the ratio of the two might be a better measure than either of ours for what you're trying to get at.

Point being, the rates are low and could easily be added to without dumb-ass industry specific things like this.