Stanford Professor Loses Political Battle To Simplify Tax Filing Process • Hacker News Board

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

#331

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 12:59 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #302

dragonwriter wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>equivalent ballots have different meaning Isn't this just a fundamental problem with voting? In FPTP, one voter might not like the candidate they vote for as much as someone else, or in a ranked system, someone might like their 1st and 2nd choices a lot more than their 3rd choice. We give everyone's vote equal weight, and they can decide how to use that. Within that constraint Range Voting gives people the most free…

> Isn't this just a fundamental problem with voting?

No, it's not.

> In FPTP, one voter might not like the candidate they vote for as much as someone else,

Yes, but the ballot doesn't carry and the voting method doesn't use information about how much the voter likes the candidate; for honest ballots, the information contained in the ballot (limited though it is) has the same meaning.

> Within that constraint Range Voting gives people the most freedom to express their true preferences

No, it doesn't, because range ratings have no consistent, even in theory, mapping from internal preferences. They don't represent any answer to a consistently meaningful question about internal preferences (again, approval has the same problem.) Both bullet (as used in FPTP) and ranked ballots do (in the former case, the question is "if you could dictate who wins the election who would that be"; in the latter, the same question at first, with "and if they were not an option, who would you choose?" repeated until the ranking is complete.)

As noted before, the lack of consistent information problem goes away in social choice scenarios where a concrete meaning can be attached to the markings. examples:

In hypothetical non-secret ballot system where a range voting ballot represents exactly how much the voter commits, in some unit of currency, to contribute to the group if their chosen outcome is selected, the lack of consistent meaning is resolved.

Likewise for approval with a non-secret ballot, in the case where a an activity is chosen by ballot, and an "approve" mark is a binding commitment to participate in the activity if it is selected (or a non-approval is a binding commitment to opt-out.)

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

#332

Post by Certhas » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

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…

Making government more efficient is not what you want if your goal is to reduce government, and government inefficiency is one of your major arguments.

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

#333

Post by wkz » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:05 PM UTC

aldanor wrote: post #324

wkz wrote: post #305

I live in Sweden. Just a few days ago I audited and filed my returns for 2016, it took me about 2 minutes. 1. Go to skatteverket.se (IRS), enter your "personnummer" (SSN). 2. Open the BankID app on my phone, which contains an X509 certificate identifing me, issued by my bank. Enter my password to decrypt the cert's private key and sign the authetication ticket from skatteverket.se. 3. Audit my pre-filled returns. Con…

I live in Ireland. I don't file any returns since I have a single source of income, my company/government figure it out for me => 0 time wasted.

Interesting. I would think that they at least would want a signature from you.

Seems harder to argue cases of tax evasion if you as an individual have not officially stated that you have no additional incomes other than the ones your gov knows about.

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

#334

Post by RobertoG » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #323

RobertoG wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh dear oh dear. Private banks create money. If only it were state lead.

Sure, but there is money and there is money.

Banks create an asset in their balance, but they create a liability at the same time. Only governments spending create net financial assets in the economy (that is not the same that real assets, of course).

https://fernandonogueiracosta.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cu...

(If it's too long, see 'vertical transactions')

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

#335

Post by narag » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:08 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #83

narag wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They prefer regressive taxes, like sales tax I don't buy that. Yes, I know it seems logical, but in practice it's not so clear cut. With deductions, rich people end up paying very little for income tax. With sales tax (or VAT) the person spending more pays more, and it's more difficult to escape. This issue is very unintuitive and numbers tend to hide reality. Let me put an example on how numbers can fool us. In my c…

> With deductions, rich people end up paying very little for income tax You're utterly wrong. The wealthiest 0.001% paid 17.6% of their income in taxes in 2012[1]. That's not "very little" -- it's likely in the tens of millions per person . The top 1% paid even more than that. Some corporations will avoid income tax altogether, as will some small-business owners, but individuals still pay substantial amounts of incom…

You're utterly wrong. The wealthiest 0.001% paid 17.6% of their income in taxes in 2012[1]. That's not "very little"

So you say I'm wrong and you say it's not very little and in the middle of both sentences you say that richest people pay less than 20%. WOW!!!

To put it in perspective, in some european countries the nominal rate for the highest income is about 40%, approaching 50%.

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

#336

Post by SamBam » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:18 PM UTC

yazan94 wrote: post #330

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…

Tangential question: If the government sends you a tax form pre-filled, and they missed something to tax you on somehow: what incentive would you have to fix it?

Probably the same incentive you have right now not to omit something: if they do an audit, and find that you never told them about your self-employed second job, or whatever, you'd have to pay up.

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

#337

Post by basseq » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:24 PM UTC

I did some work for the IRS several years ago to explore the same idea. There are many benefits, including simplicity and accuracy of filing (closing the $500B tax gap), as well as better fraud protection (another $25B).

Protectionism of the tax return industry is common, but not the primary reason. Instead, the biggest pushback is from taxpayer advocacy groups. The issue is this: for many Americans, particularly low income Americans, their tax refund is the largest check they receive all year. Delaying that refund in order to receive all tax information (e.g., from banks and employers) and pre-populate a tax return would push back initial refund checks by 1-2 months. This is tantamount to political suicide.

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

#338

Post by ishi » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:28 PM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #43

bmajz wrote: post #29

I was pretty surprised to see Zoe Lofgren's name pop up as an anti tax filing simplification advocate. She's the rep from CA's 19th District which covers San Jose (but not the rest of Silicon Valley) and generally a straight down the line liberal. This is not even Intuit's core district -- that would Anna Eshoo's 17th (previously 14th) district which covers Mountain View and Palo Alto. As a resident of this district,…

According to open data[1] the largest contributor to her campaign is Intuit and it's employees. [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N000...

This list just screams "corruption". How can it be legal for companies such as Facebook, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, Apple, etc. etc. to donate directly to a politician? Isn't it obvious that these corporations think they have something to gain from it? That's bribery in plain sight.

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

#339

Post by andyspicer » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:32 PM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #334

branchless wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear oh dear. Private banks create money. If only it were state lead.

Sure, but there is money and there is money. Banks create an asset in their balance, but they create a liability at the same time. Only governments spending create net financial assets in the economy (that is not the same that real assets, of course). https://fernandonogueiracosta.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cu... (If it's too long, see 'vertical transactions')

Don't cryptocurrencies break that model? They are financial assets in the economy that are not created or presently controlled by governments.

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

#340

Post by ep103 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 1:33 PM UTC

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...

Starve the beast has never been about making federal agencies work better. Its been about creating a path to privatization