The Massachusetts Software Tax • Hacker News Board

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#171

Post by sophacles » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 3:31 AM UTC

thecodeore wrote: post #151

jrockway wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see today was your 15th birthday and your parents finally let you onto the Internet. Congratulations. That said, there are a number of externalities that you're not thinking of. The simplest is: without a government, what's to stop someone from walking into your house and killing you? Every incentive says they should: free money, no consequences. Another is: if we privatize everything, then only the wealthy get the…

Why is that the every statist I encounter always believe those that want to live a life free of coercion and institutionalized violence must be a teen? I am more than likely your Senior, it is infact youth that believes that government is required for a functional society, that government some how makes society better with age comes the wisdom to understand the true evil of government >That said, there are a number o…

Its not that they are statists. Its that you present everything in hyperbolic absurdities. You want to make everything you do voluntary yet think that it will somehow lead to a world where everything is rainbows and unicorns, because like a teen you refuse to accept the world doesn't give a shit about you, nor does everyone think or act as you pretend you would in such a fantasy land

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#172

Post by cinquemb » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 4:46 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #154

cinquemb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are spot on. I've been searching, and mostly coming up with PDF's (that do give the overall numbers) with very little break down for cities. It's a pity that with all the hand waving over Open Gov initiatives that things like this are still buried, while I can easily find out all the different colors of street lamps implemented for the past 10 years for xyz neighborhoods…

Feds probably could use the power of federal grants (or withdrawal of such) to make much more order in this area, but I guess politicos are busy with more interesting things than getting some data in order.

Well it could help with getting a sense of spending budgets and allocating resources to states/cities more appropriately, but I guess we have the Federal Reserve for that.

Well I had an idea to convert the PDF's to text, so now i'm working on structuring it and filtering so maybe i can extract some values using some kind of financial dictionary/ statistics techniques.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#173

Post by millstone » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 4:57 AM UTC

brokenmusic wrote: post #10

Until people realize that all taxes are theft, they're doomed to have new taxes imposed on the most productive of them. It's really a simple test to see whether taxes are theft or not: if there was no way for IRS to find out how much money anyone made, would people still be paying taxes? My guess is that 90% of people who preach about the social contract and helping the poor would keep the money.

> It's really a simple test to see whether taxes are theft or not: if there was no way for IRS to find out how much money anyone made, would people still be paying taxes?

This "test" is hilarious!

If stores could not determine how much merchandise you had in your cart, more people would shoplift. So prices in stores are theft! If you could not determine if someone else drove your car, then your neighbor might sneak a joyride. Your owning a car is theft!

> My guess is that 90% of people who preach about the social contract and helping the poor would keep the money.

And if we replaced the social contract with private contracts, nobody would ever cheat on those, right?

An unenforceable law is a bad law. Good laws are designed to solve problems like free riders or production of public goods in a way compatible with rational self-interest. It is not hypocritical to act in your self-interest while simultaneously supporting the rule of law.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#174

Post by jeremybencken » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 5:00 AM UTC

arohner wrote: post #111

mjn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with the macro point, but if you don't like this particular tax, Texas would be a poor choice of alternatives, because it already applies sales tax to an even broader class of software services than MA is now doing. For example, even hosted services like SaaS are covered under the Texas taxable-services definition, in cases where Texas has sales-tax jurisdiction (e.g. your business has an Austin offi…

I disagree, because in Texas, the sales tax is significantly more clear who is affected. "You have an office in Texas, you pay tax" is pretty simple.

'data processing' is still unclear for many. I'm in Austin and last month I had a graphic designer/front-end programmer add sales tax to an invoice because he thought he had to.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#175

Post by millstone » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 5:12 AM UTC

thallium205 wrote: post #92

crazygringo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If taxes are theft, then your use of roads, police, courts, eating at restaurants approved by health inspectors, and much more -- that's all theft of your own. Sorry, but taxes are not theft in any general way, by any stretch of the imagination.

It takes some seriously deep-seeded, institutionalized indoctrination assaulting your mind through most of your life to believe taxation is not theft. If you do not pay your tax, violence is threatened and will be brought upon you if you do not comply. This is theft. It does not matter if the thief uses it for altruism. It does not matter if the thief forces roads and other services upon you by outlawing competition.…

The usual rebuttal to this line of argument is that property is theft. If I attempted to peacefully enter your house against your will, you would physically prevent me, or worse. By what right? I never agreed that you should have exclusive use of that land or structure. And yet you deprive me of its use through threats of violence.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#176

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 6:04 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #141

yason wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply increasing taxes will educate the decision makers about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve eventually. Taxing spending on harmful things is better than to tax work and activities because what you tax will diminish.

My country had a top tax rate of 85% at one point (with a 10% premium for unearned income). Society didn't collapse; in fact many of us remember that as a golden age.

Are you referring to the US in the 1950s, as tellers of this particular just-so story usually do? If so, that prosperity came about because we had just finished shooting, bombing, nuking, and in general pounding the living daylights out of the rest of the industrialized world.

WWII wasn't about who was right, it was about who was left. To the victor went the spoils. Meanwhile, there was a war to pay for, hence the high tax rates.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#177

Post by marvin » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 7:24 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #160

marvin wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to go off-grid and live in the woods, free from the shackles of taxed services like roads, police protection and tap water. If you still make enough money to pay tax, you'll still technically be breaking the law - but I doubt anyone is going to come into the forest to put you in jail. So in practice you'll be free and clear. You could also go to a nation in sub-Saharan Africa where there is in effect no…

I'm sure glad I don't get all the police I pay for.

If you're dissatisfied with the level of service you get from the police, imagine how things would look if there were no courts, no prison system, no laws and no police.

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#178

Post by tempestn » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 7:39 AM UTC

hqsavvy wrote: post #26

I ran a consulting business in Ontario Canada from 1999-2004 Today the provincial sales tax is included (harmonized) with the federal sales tax as the HST (8% + 5% = 13%) but back then they were charge separately as PST and GST. Each tax act treated software and software services differently. When we started we were compatriots with many such contractors in the city. They said, confirmed by our accountant, that our s…

Your customer voluntarily offered to give away $700k out of the kindness of their hearts, to help the officers of a failed former vendor? Regardless of the size of the corporation, that's pretty incredible. Any idea why they agreed to do that?

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#179

Post by dalke » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 9:39 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #163

dalke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social Darwinism is a misreading of Darwinism to draw the conclusion you just stated, as applied to interactions within the human species. For example, "murder" is nearly always defined within the context of human-human interactions, but "apex predator" is usually thought of on the species level, as in "humans are apex predators" not "David Hasselhoff is an apex predator." It's disingenuous for you to change contexts…

No, social Darwinism is the misapplication of Darwinism to societies. But in not talking about interactions in the state of nature. And you're right, killing isn't always the most efficient way to go, buy when it is we don't call it murder, we call it advantageous behavior. And as humans, we project respect onto apex predators, who have adopted an evolutionary route of expensive killing, not honeybees.

I don't accept your statement "we project respect onto apex predators."

We tend to "project respect" onto animals that could kill us, certainly, and some apex predators fall into that category. But some apex predators do not, and other non-predators do, and my observation is that size and danger to us are more important to our sense of respect than for the species being an apex predator.

Electric eels, largemouth bass, and loggerhead sea turtles[1] are apex predators, within their respective environments. Do we respect as much as we do polar bears? No, we respect them less. Do we respect them as much as we do a rhinoceros? Again, no, despite rhinos not being a predator.

We respect horses, elephants, and rhinos, which are herbivorous and definitely not a predator, apex or otherwise. How is our respect for these large and potentially dangerous animals any fundamentally different than for an apex predator? I certainly place a rhino higher than electric eels on my list of animals to stay far away from. I get no sense that there are different categories of respect based specifically on being an apex predator.

Gorillas are mostly herbivorous but sometimes eat meat, and adult gorillas have no natural predators - are they apex predators, and do we respect them for their 'expensive kills'? No.

We certainly respect the Andean Condor, that being a national symbol of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Adults have no natural predators, but it's primarily a scavenger and not a predator. Your thesis, however, is that our respect for the condor is fundamentally different (and lesser?) than that of the bald eagle. I don't agree. Can you elaborate?

Nor do I accept your use of the term "advantageous behavior." You focus on its use for killing, but advantageous behavior also applies to vultures scavenging from a carcass, for squirrels eating seeds, for dung beetles which consume feces, and for the phototropic effect in plants.

That is, you correctly said that 'in the state of nature killing is morally neutral'. My complaint is that the better statement is 'in the state of nature everything is morally neutral.' Focusing on the narrow topic of killing reveals more your own fascination for that one issue than anything else.

[1] Loggerhead turtles are an apex predator in Florida Bay http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/sferpm/fy02/Schroeder02_abstrac...

Re: The Massachusetts Software Tax

#180

Post by thecodeore » Mon, Aug 12, 2013, 10:29 AM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #171

thecodeore wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the every statist I encounter always believe those that want to live a life free of coercion and institutionalized violence must be a teen? I am more than likely your Senior, it is infact youth that believes that government is required for a functional society, that government some how makes society better with age comes the wisdom to understand the true evil of government >That said, there are a number o…

Its not that they are statists. Its that you present everything in hyperbolic absurdities. You want to make everything you do voluntary yet think that it will somehow lead to a world where everything is rainbows and unicorns, because like a teen you refuse to accept the world doesn't give a shit about you, nor does everyone think or act as you pretend you would in such a fantasy land

Statism is the belief that a government should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree. Statism is believe the state should exist, any person that support the state, even a minimal state is a Statist.

>You want to make everything you do voluntary yet think that it will somehow lead to a world where everything is rainbows and unicorns,

Not at all, infact it is statists that believe in Utopia, believe that if they use "just enough violence" they can force everyone to behave as they want.