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

GSA Eliminates 18F

nextgov.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 495 posts

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#91

Post by stouset »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #73
miltonlost wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You support DOGE's mission, but not a fan of this decision? Destroying 18F entirely consistent with DOGE's mission and Trump's goals. Why this decision then and not all their other ones? You wrote a lot of words saying very little.

I'm just an outsider here but it seems very obvious to me that someone could both 1) support the (stated) mission of saving taxpayers' money and reducing the US national debt, and 2) disagree with a specific cut

The stated mission is unavoidably at odds with the implementation.

The gains to be had are pointlessly minuscule in comparison to the federal budget and the actual cost to Americans is extreme.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#93

Post by tootie »

dralley wrote: post #8

Stupid, pointless destruction. No part of this is efficient. 18F and the USDS were effective tools for modernization.

Also they worked as a shared service taking fees from agencies that required their services and did not have any specific appropriation in the federal budget. This was pure spite and not cost saving at all.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#95

Post by xyst »

dralley wrote: post #8

Stupid, pointless destruction. No part of this is efficient. 18F and the USDS were effective tools for modernization.

Got to make room for the trillion dollar tax cuts. Trickle down economics, right?

Can’t wait for the pitchforks to rise up against the billionaires that created this mess.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#96

Post by Kamq »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #59
moomin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heaven forbid if the US catches up with the U.K. in the 1990s.

Hell any country except the USA. I've lived in both the USA and Australia. In Australia it's been digital for a long time. As in you go to file and the equivalent of all your W2 information is pre-filed by the employer, retirement and investment systems. You're just running through a government provided site to check off any special exemptions and you're done. It's a huge efficiency win. Think of the hours you spent…

> I hear outright wrong arguments for why the USA has not moved to a modern filing system.

The argument I always hear from the right about this is that they worry that making taxes more efficient will allow them (and government action in general) to increase. The right is explicitly committed to reducing that, so it's not in their interest.

Same reason I've heard from people on the right about ending withholding. They think that if people had to cut an actual check to the government every year (or quarter) that people would realize how much it's costing them and be more amenable to reducing it.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#97

Post by kccqzy »

stouset wrote: post #81
Reason077 wrote: post #41

Amazing how the idea of being able to file tax returns online, without paying for a commercial service to do it, is considered far-left extremism in the US. You’d think that simplifying tax returns and reducing costs in the taxation system would be something the right could get behind?

The right wants everything related to taxes to be as difficult and painful as possible, in the hopes it will encourage the government to lower them.

I have heard of this argument many times but it doesn't make sense to me. Most often, the ways to lower taxes come from things like finding new deductions and credits that you didn't know apply to you. This is what the difficult part is. Otherwise, taxes are simple if you just have some W-2 and 1099-INT or 1099-DIV, and claim the standard deduction.

Indeed if taxes are too difficult or painful, a reasonable person would demand that the government simplify taxes, and that's not the same as reducing taxes. But then again maybe they are banking on the masses conflating simplifying taxes and reducing taxes.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#99

Post by acdha »

nsxwolf wrote: post #55
slater wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intuit and their lobbyists, because.. you guessed it! Money.

So not right wingers? I don’t know many right wingers that enjoy filing tax returns.

These are related: the rich backers of right-wing media have for decades pushed the idea that taxes are this scary, hard process where one mistake can ruin your life. That is not, and has never been, true (the average person audited by the IRS roughly breaks even because they usually weren’t claiming every possible deduction) but it’s in their interest to promote that belief because it supports lowering the rates they pay and the consequences people suffer for cheating (rich people do this in much larger amounts because most of us don’t have the flexibility to engage in creative accounting or enough inventive to do so).

Intuit wants everyone to think it’s so scary that you need to pay them, and the company is run by rich people who would want to pay less in taxes no matter what industry they’re in.

The combination is how you get people arguing for their boss to get a tax cut even if they personally will pay more, because as long as the IRS is a fabled bogeyman they have been told that’s the price of freedom. It took the better part of the 20th century and billions of dollars in funding to teach the point where enough people believed it, but they were patient.

Re: GSA Eliminates 18F

#100

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

xyst wrote: post #90
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal is to make government as dysfunctional as possible (beside the part that enforces corruption [for your side]), so people want it to get smaller and smaller (except for the corrupt parts that benefit exclusively them), so that it costs less, so that they pay less taxes, so that they have even more money (that they don't need). They definitely do not care if this "makes things worse". Often, it's intended.

[flagged]

No, absolutely wrong.

Neoliberalism is about a big, functional government that is utopian and takes care of everything for you.

"You own nothing, and you'll be happy."

You can argue in practice it's terrible (subjective, no one really cares about your opinion). But it's hard to argue its GOAL is to be small.

Post reply on HN