Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 405 posts

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#291

Post by aninhumer »

ericd wrote: post #205
scythe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that people are capable of getting to "FPTP is kinda bad", and they have heard enough about experiments with instant-runoff and scoring (incl. approval) methods, where some election had a weird result, that they realize a single-winner system won't fix things, but everyone's conclusion is: "some kind of proportional system" You can't implement a real government with a metasyntactic electoral sy…

Interesting link, but don't you think it's a bit complicated? I think the opacity of the determination method could lead to a lot of mistrust from the general public. What's the problem with just assigning a number 0-10 for every candidate that you care to, and summing up the points? Or just instant runoff?

>What's the problem with just assigning a number 0-10 for every candidate that you care to, and summing up the points?

That's Range Voting, and it's my preference, but the main problem is that it's complicated both for the voters, and in implementation. Approval Voting is a simplified form (reducing the range to just 0 or 1 vote per candidate) that has many of the same advantages, but has the benefit that people understand it more easily.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#292

Post by smt88 »

twoodfin wrote: post #160
smt88 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Campaigning is restricted to a short time period, perhaps 6 months. 2) Every candidate gets a (small) fixed budget, paid for by tax-payers. (This is already the practice in some countries.) 3) Ads are subject to the same laws that govern ads for products: say whatever you want, but you can be sued for lying. Any of those ideas sound good?

So the New York Times can only say good or bad things about elected officials and potential candidates for the six months before an election? If not, people with money looking to campaign outside your window will just buy media companies.

Media companies, by definition, are never considered to be "campaigning". They can say whatever they want. There legal definition of campaigning (ex. churches aren't allowed to campaign in many countries).

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#293

Post by dragonwriter »

ericd wrote: post #205
scythe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that people are capable of getting to "FPTP is kinda bad", and they have heard enough about experiments with instant-runoff and scoring (incl. approval) methods, where some election had a weird result, that they realize a single-winner system won't fix things, but everyone's conclusion is: "some kind of proportional system" You can't implement a real government with a metasyntactic electoral sy…

Interesting link, but don't you think it's a bit complicated? I think the opacity of the determination method could lead to a lot of mistrust from the general public. What's the problem with just assigning a number 0-10 for every candidate that you care to, and summing up the points? Or just instant runoff?

> What's the problem with just assigning a number 0-10 for every candidate that you care to, and summing up the points?

The problem with this (Range Voting) that there is no consistent mapping from preferences to 1-10 ratings, so that equivalent ballots have different meaning and equivalent preferences result in different ballots from different voters.

Approval has the same problem for normal elections.

This issue is overlooked in most analysis, which generally presume the existence of a simple quantifiable utility function and a consistent mapping from that function to ballot markings for these non-ranked-preference methods.

In social choice scenarios without secret ballots, you can tie concrete consequences to voting which eliminate this issue and make either method sensible.

Range and Approval (and IRV) are also single-winner systems and don't deal with the general problems with single-member district systems, as much as they may be marginally better means of electing in such districts than FPTP.

Schulze STV is a bit opaque, you are correct, and traditional STV (or STV without loser elimination) is more readily understandable and possibly practically better despite some theoretical deficiencies compared to the more opaque Schulze variantes, simply because it is more comprehensible.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#294

Post by ThomPete »

cookiecaper wrote: post #269
ccvannorman wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the correct answer to American's "That won't work because ..." on this thread. Turn your head to the right and take a look at Europe where it is plainly working just fine. Turn your head back left and look at how F'd up taxes are in the U.S. and it's pretty clear that objectively we have no excuse other than "some small minority of people are profiting from a broken system and are going to keep it that way."

First, what works in Europe is not necessarily portable. We could just as easily pick things that are better about the U.S. and badger Europeans about why they're not doing it that way when "it is plainly working fine". Second, everyone attempts to cast every policy decision they dislike as evidence of corruption, chicanery, etc., but I don't think that's typically the case. The fact that a corporation and an elected…

Im not badgering anyone i just know as a european luving in the us that it doesent have to be that difficult.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#295

Post by lend000 »

I find it troubling how many commenters here are so passive to automatic, mandatory payroll tax deductions, that they overlook how effective those payroll tax deductions actually are (and how Norquist is right, if for the wrong reasons).

Yes, government payroll deductions are convenient. Yes, all other things being the same, they make your average salaried worker's life easier. And yes, they absolutely mask how much you are paying in taxes, by softening the psychological impact of making an annual tax payment with money you earned, instead slowly pilfering the money from each paycheck. Most importantly, it ensures you never get to see that portion of the money you earned in the first place -- it doesn't hurt as bad to lose something you never really had.

I personally think this should have passed -- if nothing else, to force the IRS to reveal all the information it really has on you. However, the opposing argument has a point that shouldn't be dismissed as completely ridiculous, because a pretty indisputable side effect would be more apathy regarding taxes, which is not a good thing.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#297

Post by paulmd »

cookiecaper wrote: post #270
MaysonL wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, there are a lot of people and industries lobbying to keep the tax system complicated: real eatate agents and home builders want the mortgage deduction, oil and gas industries want the depletion allowance, hedge funds want carried interest, et cetera ad libitum. It's nowhere near 0.5% of the influential people in the economy, plus the people it benefits, it benefits a lot, while everybody else, it grinds…

Turns out that people want to pay less tax. You say this like it's unexpected. Most people are not going to have personal concerns over a pre-filled return as long as they are confident that they can modify it without repercussions. They may oppose it ideologically, on the basis that the government should experience as much friction as possible in its efforts to fleece the populace. Such an ideological position is a…

> They may oppose it ideologically, on the basis that the government should experience as much friction as possible in its efforts to fleece the populace. Such an ideological position is a valid reason to oppose this change.

Tax evasion is not a valid ideological policy. Tax minimization, fine, everyone is entitled to deduct as much as the tax code allows. Tax evasion is crossing the line into crime. That's literally always where the line has been drawn on taxes - "pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's".

If you don't like the tax policy, leave. It's part of the social contract - find somewhere to live where you agree with the social contract.

(and yes expatriation should be easier)

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#298

Post by RobertoG »

losoq wrote: post #213
jkaptur wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that a major component of Norquist's thinking is that the more painful people find taxes (including the process of calculating them) the more they'll support his agenda of "a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub".

Unfortunately "starving the beast" doesn't seem to actually work. Low tax revenues don't lead to lower spending, just fiscal indiscipline. I personally would prefer a leaner federal state but it's not clear how to get there. http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/04/starve_the_beas_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast#Economic_anal... https://niskanencenter.org/blog/cant-make-government-smaller...

When I read this "starve the beast" thing, I can't avoid to ask myself where this people think the money is coming from in the first place?

In order to tax, the government have to spend before.

Re: Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process

#299

Post by rootlocus »

meddlepal wrote: post #230
avar wrote: post #110

This whole thread is full of comments from people who obviously haven't read the article / listened to the podcast in question[1]. Joseph Bankman proposed ReadyReturn in California, which is the kind of tax return pretty much the entirety of the rest of the western world uses. I.e. instead of an empty return, it's pre-filled in with the details the government knows anyway. This vastly simplifies things for most peopl…

I'm nearing the point of being completely convinced nothing is actually improvable anymore in the US. If you touch anything, even the most broken or inhumane thing, you'll find someone defending it until the death either because of vested interests or ignorance.

It reminds me of this story: "Connecticut bishops fight sex abuse bill" [1]

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/11/connecticut.abuse.bi...

Post reply on HN