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My Stripe Tax Story

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Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#281

Post by [deleted] »

fvold wrote: post #146
Fr3dd1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am sorry but in my eyes this just shows bad product quality, bad transparance and missing understanding of basic business stuff on the side of the product. The only reason for software to be existing is to NOT mandate users to check stuff manually.

As it happens, I'm reading this thread while taking a break from writing tax handling in a piece of e-commerce software. It relies 100% on the settings of the application in question, because tax codes and procedures vary greatly around the world, and it's internationally used software. There are even some stores using this software that sell items to and from different countries using the same website, so it can be…

[deleted]

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#282

Post by tomnipotent »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #214
Fr3dd1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am sorry but in my eyes this just shows bad product quality, bad transparance and missing understanding of basic business stuff on the side of the product. The only reason for software to be existing is to NOT mandate users to check stuff manually.

No disagreement at all that ERPs are generally garbage, especially for how much they cost. But this comments makes me think you have never dealt with international taxes. The rules are insanely complex, there is no global standard for communicating the tax, multiple systems have to be in sync with each other, and some systems even use different rounding algorithms... I'm all for blaming the software (which by the way…

> all that ERPs are generally garbage

I'd argue most ERP's are fine, it's the implementations that are garbage.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#283

Post by mrjin »

lbriner wrote: post #157
chrissnell wrote: post #41

My dad owns a successful chain of bicycle stores in Texas. He’s been in business for almost 51 years and he’s one of the largest bike dealers by volume in the country. He has nearly a hundred employees and a bookkeeper. Despite having a proverbial dozen balls in the air at any time and despite having people on the payroll to do bookkeeping, he sits down at his computer every night at home, logs into the ERP system, a…

I think this is an unfair comparison. There is a big difference between checking the work of multiple employees who might type stuff in wrong or credit card fraud compared to OP who has a fully integrated billing system provided by a very large and well-funded company who have failed to get some real basics right. The MINIMUM most people would expect would be a notification either by email or on the dashboard to say…

Agree. Such behavior is unacceptable for a paid service. I can understand there would be bugs etc., but leaving draft invoice dangling there without any alarms raised is beyond reasonable. Let invoices go out and help the client collect the money on time is vital for such products. It's eye-opening to see someone blaming the business owner instead of the software vendor.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#284

Post by wildmanx »

JackFr wrote: post #226
alistairSH wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the “TurboTax” lobby, but also a strong contingent of anti-tax conservatives. One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard. If taxes are hard, the general population will want less of them.

That's not fully true. There is also a contingent of people who like to use the the tax code as a mechanism of policy apart from efficient collection of revenue. Tax credits for education, clean energy, penalties, small businesses, mortage interest, each one of those one-off changes adds complexity, and in total ultimately can make the process dramatically more difficult.

> There is also a contingent of people who like to use the the tax code as a mechanism of policy apart from efficient collection of revenue.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Whether you do or do not agree is a different question.

It's interesting to look at different cultures:

The Swedish word for "tax" is "skatt", which literally means "treasure". Historically it was part of the treasure to be collected by the monarch and other people in power. So, not really a way to cover government expenses, but for somebody in power to enrich themselves further. Luckily, the country has moved on from that, just kept the word (and the king).

The German word for "tax" is "steuer", which literally means "to steer". That makes it clear that those fees are not just collected to finance government expenses but to even steer society in a certain direction, i.e., what you mean with policy.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#285

Post by wildmanx »

SkyBelow wrote: post #245
alistairSH wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just the “TurboTax” lobby, but also a strong contingent of anti-tax conservatives. One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard. If taxes are hard, the general population will want less of them.

One could make taxes very easy in a way that would definitely boost the popularity of the anti-tax crowd. Makes taxes a single bill sent out at tax time. No tax collections, not withholdings, etc. You get a bill, you log into an IRS website, enter in the information for donations, dependents, etc., and you get your final bill you have to pay. IRS can even prepopulate that data for you and just have you sign off or ma…

Given how bad people are with money, the number of people who can't pay their taxes would skyrocket if withholding is replaced with the scheme you are proposing.

Let's say somebody makes 100,000 USD a year and pays 40,000 USD in tax on it. Today, they see 5000 USD on their account every month. Sometimes it gets adjusted a little up or down, depending on what they did on the side, had some stocks, mowed the neighbors lawn, whatnot. But their lifestyle is generally adjusted to 5000 USD a month. Housing, utilities, entertainment, restaurants, hobbies. Now tomorrow we switch to a scheme where they instead get 8333 USD on their account every month, and a 40,000 USD bill every spring. You'd be surprised how many people would adjust their lifestyle, with direct consequences even for tax revenue. You can even imagine a new loan sector that offers you those 40,000 USD in spring that you then can pay off over time. Great, now the monthly payments essentially go through a bank before ending up as tax, but the bank takes their cut. Everybody loses. (Well, except the bank.)

Now you could argue that's the individuals' problem. Get better with money. Educate people, teach it to kids in school. (Really? The education sector is already overwhelmed as-is.) That's not how society works though. Even if the well-off educated elites would like (which is what the HN crowd is part of, no offense..). Humans are not rational agents. If they were, the world would look very different.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#286

Post by throwaway0a5e »

jjeaff wrote: post #276
deltarholamda wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard I'm not sure where you get this from. People on the right have been yelling about simplifying the tax code for a long time. Flat tax, "postcard-sized tax form," national sales tax, all kinds of ideas have been floated. Even eliminating the income tax altogether and going back to funding the government through tariffs, those the peop…

The only right wing proposals to "simplify" the tax code have been ridiculous proposals like the flat tax. You know, the one where a single mom with children to feed pays the same percentage of her income as the single billionaire that wants to buy a 3rd yacht. Look up Grover Nordquist. He has devoted his life to making sure paying taxes doesn't become too easy. And he ain't no lefty.

>You know, the one where a single mom with children to feed pays the same percentage of her income as the single billionaire that wants to buy a 3rd yacht.

And the proponents of a flat tax would say "so?"

There's a fundamental ideological incompatibility here and unless one side stops caring or puts the other in the ground the bickering will continue.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#287

Post by SkyBelow »

wildmanx wrote: post #285
SkyBelow wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could make taxes very easy in a way that would definitely boost the popularity of the anti-tax crowd. Makes taxes a single bill sent out at tax time. No tax collections, not withholdings, etc. You get a bill, you log into an IRS website, enter in the information for donations, dependents, etc., and you get your final bill you have to pay. IRS can even prepopulate that data for you and just have you sign off or ma…

Given how bad people are with money, the number of people who can't pay their taxes would skyrocket if withholding is replaced with the scheme you are proposing. Let's say somebody makes 100,000 USD a year and pays 40,000 USD in tax on it. Today, they see 5000 USD on their account every month. Sometimes it gets adjusted a little up or down, depending on what they did on the side, had some stocks, mowed the neighbors…

>Given how bad people are with money, the number of people who can't pay their taxes would skyrocket if withholding is replaced with the scheme you are proposing.

If I was optimizing my actions based on what would create the most anti-tax sentiment, this would be a positive outcome, not a negative one. What's worse than a bill from the government? One you can't afford to pay and that causes you to take on debt.

To be clear I'm not optimizing my behavior on such a metric nor advocating for others to do so. I was talking about the purposed hypothetical of lawmakers who were making such an optimization and what sort of laws they would, in theory, be supporting.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#288

Post by deltarholamda »

alistairSH wrote: post #273
deltarholamda wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of their approaches to gain sympathy to their cause is to keep making taxes hard I'm not sure where you get this from. People on the right have been yelling about simplifying the tax code for a long time. Flat tax, "postcard-sized tax form," national sales tax, all kinds of ideas have been floated. Even eliminating the income tax altogether and going back to funding the government through tariffs, those the peop…

Straight from the horses mouth. Grover Nordquist and other anti-tax conservatives have been staunchly against allowing the IRS to do any sort of tax prep for the public for fear that will somehow lead to more taxes (ignoring the fact the IRS doesn’t create tax policy out of thin air). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-taxes_b_30056...

You seem to recognize that "tax prep" and "tax code" are completely different things, so I don't understand how or why you are making this your argument. Simplifying the tax code is much more a right-wing thing, maybe even an entirely right-wing thing.

Very odd argument.

Re: My Stripe Tax Story

#289

Post by alistairSH »

deltarholamda wrote: post #288
alistairSH wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straight from the horses mouth. Grover Nordquist and other anti-tax conservatives have been staunchly against allowing the IRS to do any sort of tax prep for the public for fear that will somehow lead to more taxes (ignoring the fact the IRS doesn’t create tax policy out of thin air). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/grover-norquist-taxes_b_30056...

You seem to recognize that "tax prep" and "tax code" are completely different things, so I don't understand how or why you are making this your argument. Simplifying the tax code is much more a right-wing thing, maybe even an entirely right-wing thing. Very odd argument.

Because I was responding to a question specifically about government-provided tax prep solutions... why do governments not make a habit of funding/creating really high quality tax software

Nordquist can be both against improved tax prep software/procedures and for simplified tax laws. We know he's against the former; he's explicitly stated he doesn't want the US government producing tax prep software or doing any sort of additional legwork on the behalf of tax filers.

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