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Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

nytimes.com

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Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#121

Post by dragonwriter »

harryh wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think intentional infliction of pain on those not convicted of some wrong as a tool for getting those people on whom pain is thereby inflicted to side with one faction's political view on a policy issue is an illegitimate use of government power irrespective of whether or not it might in some cases actually work, and, to the extent that "it works in some cases" is at all relevant to its legitimacy, don't think its…

Well, you started off dismissing the tactic as ineffective, but now you've switched to dismissing it as illegitimate. I might very well agree with your latter assertion. I was just pointing out that you were wrong on the first. Most people aren't as homo economicus as you claim to be.

> Well, you started off dismissing the tactic as ineffective

I don't think the tactic is ineffective at what it is designed to do -- including where that comes to eliciting a certain emotional response among a substantial segment of the population.

I think that the upthread description of what that intent is is completely wrong, though, and that it would be ineffective at what was described upthread.

> I was just pointing out that you were wrong on the first.

No, you were asking if I would admit the possibility of variation in emotional response, which isn't the same thing as "pointing out that I was wrong". If you want to actually pose an argument that I was wrong, go ahead.

But I still don't agree that it is effective at making people notice the money paid in taxes any more than they would without it (nor do I in fact think that that's what any of the powerful interests backing the policy actually want), which was the claimed reason it was necessary.

I think it may be effective at getting some people angry at the IRS and government in general, irrespective of the actual level of taxation or any awareness of the actual money involved. Which, I think, is a lot more likely what the political actors involved actually want than reminding people of the actual money involved in taxes is.

(I also think it is illegitimate either for that purpose or the purpose posited upthread, for similar reasons.)

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#122

Post by rmxt »

harryh wrote: post #120
rmxt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesn't respond to the issue regarding why it is Intuit's TurboTax, and not a free solution provided by the government. I mean free, both in terms of cost to the end user, and cost to the government to implement. (I would imagine that long-term, it would even have negative cost to the government.)

Because the US government isn't capable of building software at this level of complexity.

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or a sarcastic one, but I'll bite.

This is blatantly false. I'm not asking them to replicate the full features of TurboTax. These low-income households do not need a full-featured free program. They pretty much just need a single field filled in on their 1040EZ from their W-2, with maybe some questions about child support, local taxes, and the like. This is well within the reach of the US government. For example, both Federal and State governments are able to automatically link household names and addresses together with tax returns to automagically populate college financial aid forms. [1]

[1] https://fafsa.ed.gov/help/irshlp9.htm

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#123

Post by harryh »

rmxt wrote: post #122
harryh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the US government isn't capable of building software at this level of complexity.

I can't tell if this is a serious comment or a sarcastic one, but I'll bite. This is blatantly false. I'm not asking them to replicate the full features of TurboTax. These low-income households do not need a full-featured free program. They pretty much just need a single field filled in on their 1040EZ from their W-2, with maybe some questions about child support, local taxes, and the like. This is well within the re…

It was serious. I agree with you here though about simpler tax filers. They should be able to make it easy and free for 1040EZ filers. State taxes make it a bit more complex but whatever.

I'm not holding my breath though.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#124

Post by sobkas »

maxerickson wrote: post #85
sobkas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they need contributions(direct and indirect) to get (re)elected or even able to be a candidate? And there are other ways to use money to influence this?

The 2008 presidential election certainly showed the impact that pulling in the right electorate can have on the result of an election (in some literal sense, the Obama campaign got more people on their side to care enough to vote). I think that is the most powerful effect money can have on an election. I don't think campaign dollars have such a big impact on the elections of Senators and Representatives. Maybe Senato…

Shapes maybe indicate that Democrat or Republican wins, but doesn't indicate with one. With enough money you can outdemocrat any Democrat or outrepublican any Republican. After election they better play ball or next time no one will give them any money.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#125

Post by _asummers »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #75
_asummers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America was built because we rebelled from our government via violent revolution. The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Whether this attitude should be so pervasive is another discussion, but that's where the seed is from.

> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Alright quick pet peeve: First off I agree that the constitution was specifically written to make it hard for a dictatorship and or tyrannical government. But my pet peeve is: You cannot use the 2nd amendment as an example of that. It was written four years later and by almost a completely different set of people…

That's a fair criticism of my post. However, do you believe the mindset just four years later was any different? The second amendment very explicitly mentions militias, which implies the same fear of government.

Re: Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

#126

Post by _asummers »

dragonwriter wrote: post #103
_asummers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America was built because we rebelled from our government via violent revolution. The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). Whether this attitude should be so pervasive is another discussion, but that's where the seed is from.

> The Constitution was clearly written by people fearing a new tyrannical government (see 2nd amendment). The original text of the Constitution was written by people tired of the failings of a weak government and wanting to replace it with a much stronger one. The bill of rights, including the 2nd Amendment, was written to mitigate the fears of a significant but somewhat less prominent faction that feared that withou…

Yes, they were responding to the impossibly weak Articles of Confederation. The framers put several checks in place to prevent the federal government from becoming too powerful:

1) Enumerating the powers of the executive. There will be no King George in America!

2) Designing the checks & balances system such that (in theory) no one of legislative, executive, judicial could become too powerful to override the other two.

3) As you mentioned, the inclusion of the second amendment (and third, fourth, eighth) were all designed to prevent repeating problems the colonists faced before the war.

4) Tenth amendment was added to further strip the federal government of its non-enumerated powers.

The framers wanted something stronger than AoC, but they were very clear in their desire to limit the power of the federal government. They wanted a weak executive, and the legislative, particularly the Senate, was designed to be the main "doer of things".

The executive was initially quite powerless on purpose. When Jefferson tried to do the Louisiana Purchase, people challenged whether the executive had this power. Andrew Jackson then came along and began the journey of expanding the powers of the executive, followed by Lincoln suspending habeus corpus, and more modern figures such as FDR with the internment camps and New Deal all continuing to expand these powers. While this is obviously only a partial list of expansion, it contains several notable examples.

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