51–60 of 69 posts
For those unfamiliar with this "rental tax": If you own a house in Switzerland, the tax office assumes that you are your own landlord and rent your house to yourself. It estimates the fictitious rent you charge yourself, and you have to pay income tax on it. The Swiss German name for this estimated rent is "Eigenmietwert" ("self-rental value") and this is what will now be abolished. What makes this strange tax even m…
A sad development. At least in the US, the fact that rent is taxable income to the landlord but imputed rent is untaxed is a regressive tax break for property owners (and was apparently a mistake of the original Form 1040; see Lawrence Zelenak, “The Early Income Tax and the Imputed Rental Income of Homeowners” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108377157.008 ). I wonder what convinced majority-renter Swiss voters to enact s…
Wages are taxable income to workers but imputed wages are untaxed. That’s a regressive tax break for people who cook their own food and care for their own children.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with e-ID, it can be mighty useful, especially when implemented thoughtfully. The real problem is when it’s imposed despite widespread societal opposition and refusal (which obviously is not the issue here, but is in other countries).
I agree that it can be useful, but I fear that in the future, we will have many more online platforms that require an ID than we currently do. In the past, things like age verification required users to upload a scan or photo, and someone had to verify it. Because that was too much work for the platform operators, they didn't do it (or only with the banner "Are you over 18?"). With the e-ID instead, this will be much…
How exactly is the status quo not much worse than "I give you a cryptographic hash proving that I am over 18, but nothing else, and without the state knowing that this transaction happened"?
For those unfamiliar with this "rental tax": If you own a house in Switzerland, the tax office assumes that you are your own landlord and rent your house to yourself. It estimates the fictitious rent you charge yourself, and you have to pay income tax on it. The Swiss German name for this estimated rent is "Eigenmietwert" ("self-rental value") and this is what will now be abolished. What makes this strange tax even m…
In English this is called imputed rent, it's used in US for CPI calculations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they did advertise it in a way to make people believe they could still do their things online without an E-ID, which will not be the case. It's not optional online.
Companies can already request and will still be able to request a PDF scan of your ID. Or worse, video ident through a private third party. This is the status quo for ordering alcohol online, or if you want to open a bank account. The new E-ID based on SSI (self-sovereign identity) is so much better than the status quo from a real-world privacy perspective towards companies that must verify your identity or age.
I just ordered alcohol yesterday and they only checked it up on delivery. There's no obligation to check it online.
> The new E-ID based on SSI (self-sovereign identity) is so much better than the status quo from a real-world privacy perspective towards companies that must verify your identity or age.
While I agree it's better than scanning your documents, it probably will become more popular since it's easier to check and integrate. That will in my opinion become a net negative for privacy
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do any of these schemes ensure that votes can't be traced back to individuals? Secrecy is an important part of voting.
Different systems have different approaches. If you're a voter, you can use your web browser's developer tools to see what's going on, and part of my research is essentially doing that with systems like this. With one Ontario online voting system used by dozens of municipalities, your choice is sent via a form submission (POST) to the server. The POST contains your choice in its body (in plain text) and your browser…
How do you override a previously cast vote in that system?
(Overriding a vote is a popular solution to vote buying/intimidating which is otherwise a problem with mail-in votes and e-votes.)
For those unfamiliar with this "rental tax": If you own a house in Switzerland, the tax office assumes that you are your own landlord and rent your house to yourself. It estimates the fictitious rent you charge yourself, and you have to pay income tax on it. The Swiss German name for this estimated rent is "Eigenmietwert" ("self-rental value") and this is what will now be abolished. What makes this strange tax even m…
It is not that absurd, we have the same in The Netherlands (eigenwoningforfait). And yes, we also have the property interest deduction, we literally call it mortgage interest deduction (hypotheekrenteaftrek, HRA).
They reason this is done is because it allows tax systems to tax main residencies differently from regular real estate tax measures, which is usually in the wealth section of tax policy.
It stems from the 1890s in The Netherlands, I assume it'll be around the same era for Switzerland and Germany.
And for other readers, yes it is as terrible a tax policy as it sounds. It is highly regressive, favoring home owners over renters, and the more expensive your house the bigger the deduction. In The Netherlands the current election cycle has it as one of the subpoints of our housing crisis, and it seems the battle won't even be about if it should be abolished, but rather if the timeline should be 30, 15, or 8 years.
Switzerland is transitioning to online voting, and having a digital ID for authentication is helpful for that. I hope it is used as part of the voting process. My understanding is that the current approach for e-voting in Switzerland works with voters being sent a PIN in the mail [1]. Then the voter uses the PIN to log into the system and vote. Unfortunately that means that insecurely discarded letters from non-voter…
As always, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2030
When critical vulnerabilities were found with the previous implementation done by a private vendor, they dropped their vendor and restarted from scratch, doing everything in-house [2,3].
Not all jurisdictions are so careful. Over 200 municipalities in Ontario do voting online, despite no legislated standards (though a voluntary standard was recently developed). The voting systems are offered by private vendors, no organization is responsible for certifying these systems, and many systems do not offer any cryptographic verification of the results. It's quite interesting [4].
[1] https://digital-solutions.post.ch/en/e-government/blog/volls...
[2] https://openprivacy.ca/assets/knightsandknaves.pdf
[3] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/swiss-post-set-to-rela...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different systems have different approaches. If you're a voter, you can use your web browser's developer tools to see what's going on, and part of my research is essentially doing that with systems like this. With one Ontario online voting system used by dozens of municipalities, your choice is sent via a form submission (POST) to the server. The POST contains your choice in its body (in plain text) and your browser…
So bascially you log in to the login server, which passes a token to the vote counting server that the vote is valid but with no identifying information? And there is some way to verify that these two entities do not cooperate? How do you override a previously cast vote in that system? (Overriding a vote is a popular solution to vote buying/intimidating which is otherwise a problem with mail-in votes and e-votes.)
> So bascially you log in to the login server, which passes a token to the vote counting server that the vote is valid but with no identifying information? And there is some way to verify that these two entities do not cooperate?
With the Ontario system I described (first example), no. You can't ensure this. In fact, the server that receives your authentication credentials is the same as the server that receives your vote.
How things work:
1. You send a POST with {"DOB":"1995-01-01", "PIN":"12345678"} to server.
2. Server responds with a session cookie. That cookie is included with all subsequent requests in order for the server to know you are authenticated. This is a typical authentication scheme for web applications.
3. Eventually you make a selection and cast your vote. This will send your vote, and the cookie, to the server.
4. The server verifies the cookie is valid and records your vote.
It is definitely possible for the server to connect the identification information you provided in your initial login with the cookie, if it chooses to log that data. There's no way for the client to know if it's happening or not.
It's also a proprietary system, and because it's owned and operated by the online voting vendor (and not a government body) it's exempt from freedom of information legislation, so you wouldn't be able to see any information about the system's design even if you really wanted to. We do know steps 1-4 exist though, because we can infer all of it from the browser's development tools when interacting with the website.
With this type of system, there is also no meaningful way for a municipality to verify the count is correct, beyond the testimony of the vendor. The system is a black box, where votes go in and a result comes out. The vendor reports the result, and the municipality then declares candidates elected.
To be clear: Not a hypothetical. This is a real system! Used by 49 municipalities in 2022!
> How do you override a previously cast vote in that system? (Overriding a vote is a popular solution to vote buying/intimidating which is otherwise a problem with mail-in votes and e-votes.)
You don't! To the best of my knowledge, no vendor/municipality offers this feature in Ontario.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different systems have different approaches. If you're a voter, you can use your web browser's developer tools to see what's going on, and part of my research is essentially doing that with systems like this. With one Ontario online voting system used by dozens of municipalities, your choice is sent via a form submission (POST) to the server. The POST contains your choice in its body (in plain text) and your browser…
I really enjoy these detailed answers