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Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

swissinfo.ch

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Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#61

Post by dbrgn »

pheggs wrote: post #55
dbrgn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> This is the status quo for ordering alcohol online, or if you want to open a bank account. 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 bette…

Fair, this may be a legal option for ordering alcohol. I really don't see the pure cryptographic hash "is older than 18y" as a big privacy issue though, as long as it is properly salted, does not provide other information on my identity and is unlinkable (i.e. multiple such signed claims are different).

The last time I opened an account for a financial service, as well as when creating an account with a service for digital document signatures, I had to do a video ident process with a private third party company. There was no other option, and I felt quite uneasy about it. I would have preferred the E-ID by far in both cases.

Both companies will inevitably store information about me to provide their service, independently of the identity verification. That is legitimate and inevitable for their service. That other, third party company storing a video of me holding my ID and my face into the camera is now not inevitable anymore.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#62

Post by RhysU »

tomp wrote: post #24
savingsPossible wrote: post #19

not rental tax. Rental tax on the house you own, if you live in it At least according to phind https://www.phind.com/search/cmg40zr9i00002a6lqddmuyxt I suppose that would count as a progressive tax (as opposed to regressive, like VAT)

It’s actually “imputed rental value tax”. The point is fairness, not progressiveness. The idea is, if you live in your own house, you’re no better off than if you lived in another property and rented out your property, and paid the tax on the rent you get. It’s supposed to reduce friction / bias in the market (though you could also obviously argue the reverse).

Suppose you buy bread, meat, and cheese and pay sales tax for each of them. You make a sandwich. You eat the sandwich.

Do you now owe the government the difference in sales tax on the market price of a pre-assembled sandwich versus on the market price of the individual bread, meat, and cheese?

Is it "fair" to owe the government the incremental sandwich sales tax? Should someone who can buy separate bread, meat, and cheese ingredients get such marginal sales tax benefits relative to someone who only can buy pre-made sandwiches? Or does owning the bread, meat, and cheese mean that whatever marginal value you extract from the ingredients' use is fully yours?

Supporting imputed rent seems consistent with supporting my hypothetical sandwich marginal sales tax. It's ridiculous.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#63

Post by Lukas_Skywalker »

dbrgn wrote: post #53
Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Quite a few actually do require ID-scan-through-email (which is horrible). Or, they simply delegate to a third party video ident service, often in another country (because cheaper). 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"?

The status quo is that companies which are required by law to have this information (banks, telecommunication providers etc) do require an ID scan (and often video identification as well).

All the others don't really care and just let you register with whatever name and birthdate you want, because the ID scan method is too cumbersome and expensive to them.

I expect those to move to eID, effectively requiring people to have an eID, with no way to provide false information.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#64

Post by elric »

cool_cherry wrote: post #38
elric wrote: post #32

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…

So the short answer is that you're shit out of luck and have to trust the voting system, the server, the javascript, and the vendors that produce them? Presumably all of this source code is available somewhere for auditing?

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#65

Post by brainwad »

RhysU wrote: post #62
tomp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually “imputed rental value tax”. The point is fairness, not progressiveness. The idea is, if you live in your own house, you’re no better off than if you lived in another property and rented out your property, and paid the tax on the rent you get. It’s supposed to reduce friction / bias in the market (though you could also obviously argue the reverse).

Suppose you buy bread, meat, and cheese and pay sales tax for each of them. You make a sandwich. You eat the sandwich. Do you now owe the government the difference in sales tax on the market price of a pre-assembled sandwich versus on the market price of the individual bread, meat, and cheese? Is it "fair" to owe the government the incremental sandwich sales tax? Should someone who can buy separate bread, meat, and c…

Switzerland doesn't have property taxes, so it's better to think of the imputed rental tax as a more progressive implementation of a property tax. Low earners pay less tax on a home of the same value than high earners. And the tax is less distorted by asset price bubbles, since you're taxing the imputed rent instead of the market value.

Now it's abolished, owner-occupied homes will mostly go untaxed, while investor owned ones will be taxed just as before. This is distortionary, but it seems politically infeasible to also abolish income tax on investment income.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#66

Post by tomp »

RhysU wrote: post #62
tomp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually “imputed rental value tax”. The point is fairness, not progressiveness. The idea is, if you live in your own house, you’re no better off than if you lived in another property and rented out your property, and paid the tax on the rent you get. It’s supposed to reduce friction / bias in the market (though you could also obviously argue the reverse).

Suppose you buy bread, meat, and cheese and pay sales tax for each of them. You make a sandwich. You eat the sandwich. Do you now owe the government the difference in sales tax on the market price of a pre-assembled sandwich versus on the market price of the individual bread, meat, and cheese? Is it "fair" to owe the government the incremental sandwich sales tax? Should someone who can buy separate bread, meat, and c…

It’s not a really good analogy because it’s mostly labour (whereas housing is mostly an investment) but yeah, this argument of “fairness” is common, e.g. by feminists (“housework should be paid or at least accounted for pension”) and governments (e.g. in Slovenia, it’s illegal to help neighbors for free).

I think it’s mostly ridiculous, though on other grounds than “fairness”.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#67

Post by tempodox »

lqet wrote: post #33

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…

This must be one of those rare cases where a tax actually gets abolished. That happens almost never, regardless of country.

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#68

Post by [deleted] »

brainwad wrote: post #65
RhysU wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose you buy bread, meat, and cheese and pay sales tax for each of them. You make a sandwich. You eat the sandwich. Do you now owe the government the difference in sales tax on the market price of a pre-assembled sandwich versus on the market price of the individual bread, meat, and cheese? Is it "fair" to owe the government the incremental sandwich sales tax? Should someone who can buy separate bread, meat, and c…

Switzerland doesn't have property taxes, so it's better to think of the imputed rental tax as a more progressive implementation of a property tax. Low earners pay less tax on a home of the same value than high earners. And the tax is less distorted by asset price bubbles, since you're taxing the imputed rent instead of the market value. Now it's abolished, owner-occupied homes will mostly go untaxed, while investor o…

[deleted]

Re: Swiss voters back e-ID and abolish rental tax

#69

Post by xorcist »

cool_cherry wrote: post #59
xorcist wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Love the questions! > 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 serve…

There have been plenty of suggested online voting schemes over the past several decades, yet the prevailing theme is that the ones that actually see practical use don't even try to solve the problem.

The reason why we have public elections is to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. I believe each and every scholar of political science would agree with this statement.

What's important is that there must be no reason to sow distrust into the process. No party should be able to claim their votes weren't properly counted, or that the process is somehow suspicious. The voting process could be mathematically perfect, but if people doesn't trust that votes can't be bought and counters can't be bribed then it's all for nothing.

That's why we need transparency. Not because of some higher theoretical lofty ideas, but because the basis for peaceful transfer of power between parties mutually suspicious of each other is not there.

If trust gets broken then society gets broken. Elections will continue, but in a generation or two they will cease to be able to fulfill their intended goals, and that's when we see the outcome. Not next year. That's what scares me.

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