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IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

nytimes.com

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Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#291

Post by Qwertious »

sensanaty wrote: post #182
crazydoggers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we still have the income tax system that we do. It’s a $14 billion a year industry. I’ve talked to people who work the lobbying system very hard. There’s lots of wining and dining to make sure no one messes with the complexity of the system. We need more people who are immune to lobbying in government positions. We’ll see how this goes.. depending on the next election cycle this will either get quashed qu…

I will never in my life comprehend how lobbying isn't just bribery with extra steps. The only distinction between bribing a cop to get out of a speeding ticket and a megacorp lobbying random politicians is that the megacorp has much deeper pockets, absolutely ridiculous

1. It's like how networking isn't cronyism

2. Politicians need to know how the businesses they're regulating work, and theoretically they gain a lot from being able to talk it over with the businesses themselves (the existing ones, mind you - not the future ones which might be stifled, and currently have $0)

3. Lobbying is another word for talking with your local politician, what megacorps do (and what basically everyone means when they say "lobbying", really) is paid lobbying, i.e. run the "lobbying" errand on your behalf. Banning the former type of lobbying is impossible, and banning the latter is hard to do when it's a legitimate service for people who have more money than time (and also might violate free speech laws, and also is hard to actually stop)

4. Fuck paid lobbying, it does more harm than good

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#292

Post by int_19h »

ksenzee wrote: post #262
int_19h wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that in many cases there isn't any substance behind the talk. Yet the single largest state-to-state flow of people is from California to Texas, not the other way around; surely there's something objective that is driving that. And, given the time and effort required for such a move, it's not something most people would do on a whim without doing at least some research.

Hm. We have plenty of Washington-to-Texas migration from the suburbs, and there's no serious contention that, say, Auburn and Kent are mismanaged by Democrats. I know multiple families who have left for Texas in the last few years, and it wasn't "this place has crap government," it was "this place is woke." That is, they wanted more "traditional values" in their kids' schools and fewer BLM and pride flags. To me that…

There are certainly people leaving for these reasons. Yet polls also show that there are also plenty of left-leaning folk who move.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#293

Post by int_19h »

joshuamorton wrote: post #287
int_19h wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that in many cases there isn't any substance behind the talk. Yet the single largest state-to-state flow of people is from California to Texas, not the other way around; surely there's something objective that is driving that. And, given the time and effort required for such a move, it's not something most people would do on a whim without doing at least some research.

"why is the largest single state transfer from the largest state by population to the second largest state by population" is perhaps not that surprising a result.

Perhaps, but look at the entire people. California is losing people; Texas is gaining them. And it's not just California that has a net outflow to red states; New York and Illinois are also seeing an outflow.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#294

Post by ack_inc »

gigel82 wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

What would be awesome is if the IRS software would automatically prefill all the data and forms sent to it. It would be nice of your W-2, 1099s etc were all included and all you had to do was verify the information and enter any income not already reported.

You mean like they do in ... every other country on earth?

Not in India

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#295

Post by int_19h »

rayiner wrote: post #261
int_19h wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that in many cases there isn't any substance behind the talk. Yet the single largest state-to-state flow of people is from California to Texas, not the other way around; surely there's something objective that is driving that. And, given the time and effort required for such a move, it's not something most people would do on a whim without doing at least some research.

An even better comparison in California to California. The year Apple IPOed, Reagan handily won California. Santa Clara County only voted a democrat for President twice between 1948 and 1987–LBJ (who won 20 points nationwide), and weirdly enough Hubert Humphrey. In the founding and golden ages of Silicon Valley, it was a red suburb in a red state. It was like what Florida is now.

Yeah, no. GOP today has very little semblance to GOP of Reagan times (although the seeds of the present insanity have been sown then, and even earlier - Trumpism is a perfectly logical end result of Birchers, "moral majority" etc). And there's nothing "golden age" about Florida today; certainly not when it comes to quality of governance.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#296

Post by andirk »

My taxes are kind of complicated. I'm happy to do them. It's a little walk down memory road of the past year. Most people do 1040-EZ, and the "EZ" stands for "easy" because it takes 5 seconds to do. Turbotax is one of the best pieces of software I have used. I don't understand the issue.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#297

Post by AnthonyMouse »

smsm42 wrote: post #276
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the free-filing system designed to maximize your return? The solution to this is for the government to publish the source code in the public domain. Then anyone who can do better can fork it and sell it, which will make that market more competitive when it's cheaper to enter because the government has already done 80% of the work, but there will only be a market for this if the government isn't maximizing your r…

You don't need the code even - though the code, as being already paid for by the taxpayers, should be available to them anyway - the rules are public, the data should be available to the public, so you can just reimplement the rules and see if you get the same answer. They key here to make the data a) available b) portable c) every decision the system takes be documented and having the audit trail.

You do need the code because if the public system gets it right for (or is otherwise used by) 90% of the taxpayers, a private system for the remaining taxpayers would have to cover its costs with only 10% of the revenue. Releasing the code reduces their costs because they don't have to duplicate the parts the government already got right, they only have to fix what it got wrong.

"The rules" in this case is the tax code, which is thousands of pages and written in lawyer. You can imagine how converting that into computer code is a non-trivial undertaking notwithstanding that it's public information.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#299

Post by mlrtime »

rayiner wrote: post #278
hiddencost wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Look, I’d love it if there were American cities like Copenhagen. But there aren’t any, and it’s some serious cope to blame that on republicans, seeing as how a republican couldn’t get elected dog catcher in these places.

I'm with you. The Republicans are the cause of all problems for liberals, and when you point out issues with an entire City->State government chain of Democrats it's still the other parties fault.

I love living in a large city, but in the last 5 years it has not become worth it with all the political fighting, high taxes, drugs, homeless, crime, etc... I found peace in a small city, low taxes and a government I don't think about because they stay out of my way.

Re: IRS to begin trial of its own free tax-filing system

#300

Post by rayiner »

int_19h wrote: post #295
rayiner wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An even better comparison in California to California. The year Apple IPOed, Reagan handily won California. Santa Clara County only voted a democrat for President twice between 1948 and 1987–LBJ (who won 20 points nationwide), and weirdly enough Hubert Humphrey. In the founding and golden ages of Silicon Valley, it was a red suburb in a red state. It was like what Florida is now.

Yeah, no. GOP today has very little semblance to GOP of Reagan times (although the seeds of the present insanity have been sown then, and even earlier - Trumpism is a perfectly logical end result of Birchers, "moral majority" etc). And there's nothing "golden age" about Florida today; certainly not when it comes to quality of governance.

In terms of tone, it’s quite different, but in terms of governance Trump’s term was a pretty standard GOP term with the exception of immigration and foreign policy—which aren’t issues at the state level. Tax cuts, bootstraps, etc.

Calling Trumpism an extension of Bircherism is a coping mechanism, seeing as how the GOP is winning record shares of minorities under Trump. Instead, the Trump GOP is a hybrid of the Reagan GOP and Jacksonian/Jeffersonian populism. The opposition to immigration given the prospect of cultural change also appeals to many immigrants who left those places for good reasons. My parents immigrated to Ronald Regan's America, not Kamala Harris's America.

Florida is a tremendously well governed state. It has great schools, low taxes, low debt, a booming economy, etc. I know multiple families that moved there from Illinois and New York in the last couple of years.

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