14 ms·

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 Read

• jkaptur 10y ago
  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".
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • fnordsensei 10y ago
    Right! We can't make the government less awful, because happy people might not show us the support we need for our cause to make the government less awful.
    • angry_octet 10y ago
      it is not about the government being objectively awful, it is about the government regulating. A great deal of the tax code is about giving certain groups tax breaks while preventing other people from using those to create loopholes to avoid taxes. The conservative tax lobbyists actually want to reduce the effectiveness of taxation not its complexity.
      • kakapupu 10y ago
        > it is not about the government being objectively awful, it is about the government regulating. Well, the government is no more awful than any other Mafia. Think about it. If you don't pay protection money / taxes, you get kneecaps busted / imprisoned. Neither is something you want to happen, so you pay up. Government is essentially just a vehicle for exploiting people on a massive scale. Your average mafia couldn't possibly pull off extorting 300 million people, but a government can and does, because people believe it's necessary "for the common good".
    • ksdale 10y ago
      While I completely agree that the incentives seem absurd on their face, a counterpoint I have is that while I worked in a CPA office for several years, I came to realize that a lot of people really have no idea how much they pay in taxes. Many people seem genuinely grateful to have received a refund, not realizing that it was money previously removed from their paychecks. I have no idea what the correct policy would be, but I think a lot of people would feel very differently if they had to write a check for their taxes every time they received a paycheck instead of not thinking about it for 12 months and then getting a refund (which makes them feel like the government is doing them a favor). I'm not sure we can just dismiss out of hand the idea that the way people interact with their government affects their opinions on policy. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say we should make filing taxes painful, I'd personally just as soon never have to file a tax return, even if that meant my taxes weren't quite as optimized, but I know a lot about my tax situation. I guess it feels somehow more... honest (I'm not sure if that's the right word) if people viscerally feel how much they're paying in taxes, just like they feel how much they spend on utilities or groceries.
• dragonwriter 10y ago
  I suspect he failed mostly because he tried to get the legislature to adopt it after the initial budget-centered rollback (which was before recent changes to the budget process which made budget impasses of the type exploited to kill it initially unlikely), rather than using the initiative process. While money certainly effects the initiative process, it's usually a much better way to get something whose benefits are simple and easy to understand to the average person and broadly distributed but where there is entrenched narrow institutional opposition passed in California. It's not cheap, but it would be dirt simple to raise the money necessary to get this on the ballot and get a decent campaign for it. (Intuit/Norquist would still fight it, but convincing voters is different than convincing politicians.)
• slg 10y ago
  If this system is so popular, why can't it be introduced as a proposition in California? Take the lobbyist and politicians out of the equation and it should win easily.
  • tempestn 10y ago
    It was popular among people who got to try the pilot program. That doesn't necessarily mean it would be popular among the general public, especially opponents campaigning heavily against it.
    • fattire 10y ago
      It doesn't necessarily mean that, but it's the strongest evidence I could possibly imagine that it would.
      • tempestn 10y ago
        It's strong evidence, yes. And I certainly support the change. I'm just saying I don't think it would be a given just because the pilot program was popular among participants. People vote against their interests all the time when campaigned in the right way. Edit: Also I noticed my previous comment was missing a word. Should have been, "Especially with opponents campaigning heavily against it."
  • MBCook 10y ago
    According to the story it's still available in California as an option for paying your state taxes, it's simply never became the default/only option. If you're in California and want to go find it and use it, it seems you can.
• bingomad123 10y ago
  > taxes already on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded. I agree with Grover Norquist. It might be counter intuitive but I would rather leave it to Turbo-tax to figure out the details than signing the form sent to me by IRS. Let IRS do the extra work of catching me if they think I am filing fraudulent taxes. Grover Norquist's view might be counter-intuitive but I a agree with him.
  • hyperbovine 10y ago
    That's it, blame TurboTax.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    You can refer to TurboTax all you like, but you just basically admitted that you're committing tax fraud and challenging society to catch you.
    • jnordwick 10y ago
      I think the point is that there are many grey areas, and the IRS is likely to come down the side of more taxes while the third party is likely to try more on your behalf.
    • bingomad123 10y ago
      Tax fraud is a super gray area. I will be surprised to find any person who has not violated IRS regulation.
  • socialist_coder 10y ago
    Ok, is anything in this proposal preventing you from using Turbo-tax, your accountant, or just doing it yourself by hand? No one is forcing you to use the IRS pre-filled form. What is the problem? Let the "idiots" pay extra taxes if they want and smart guys like you can spend extra time and money doing your taxes the old way.
• acranox 10y ago
  Thanks for giving me yet another reason to hate Grover Norquist. Ugh.
• sandworm101 10y ago
  Norquist's tax pledge is very literally the creation of a child. He came up with it as a kid and hasn't felt any need since to revisit the matter. It is the immature and radical thinking of a teenager not tempered by age or experience. That he is still trumpeting it speaks to his character too.
  • ryanwaggoner 10y ago
    This is a weird critique. It's been phenomenally effective and is consistent with his worldview, so what difference does it make when he thought of it?
    • sandworm101 10y ago
      That he was a child is immaterial to the immature and radical nature of his idea. It is backstory, colour, to describe the stereotypical nature of the idea. That a child creates an idea doesn't mean that it is bad per se, but should give adults pause before signing up to it themselves. That the young are always more extreme than the old should be common knowledge.
      • ryanwaggoner 10y ago
        I think that you just disagree with the idea, which is fine, but you might consider attacking it on its merits from the perspective of the people who agree with it, not have a meta-discussion about when it arose in his mind, how "immature" it is, etc. Norquist, the Republicans who sign the pledge, and the voters who demand it all apparently think that it's a good idea, it's been effective from their perspective, and it's ideologically consistent, so having someone who doesn't like its outcome call it "extreme" and "immature" doesn't really mean anything. It's just another flavor of ad hominem attack.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• imgabe 10y ago
  If people might pay taxes they were unintentionally evading, might they not avoid taxes they were unintentionally paying when they didn't have to? It seems the latter would be more likely, given how arcane the deduction/credit system can be. Just today I had to convince my girlfriend that no, just because she lives in one state and works in another she doesn't have to pay taxes twice to two states. This requires finding a different credit form for one state to claim a credit for the taxes paid to the other state. It's not exactly intuitive.
  • spoonie 10y ago
    I suppose it comes down to who you trust more: your tax preparer to get as many deductions and credits as possible for you, or the government to give them to you.
• accountface 10y ago
  Jesus fucking christ fuck Intuit and Grover Norquist.
  • Cacti 10y ago
    prerty hard to make a living selling tax software if the taxes are easy to do!
• thaumasiotes 10y ago
  > When he wanted to convince someone he'd start paging through it and ask the person he was talking to to say "stop", to ensure he wasn't cherry-picking. Maybe using a standard stage magician's force isn't the best way to convince people that you aren't cherry-picking.
• meddlepal 10y ago
  I'm nearing the point of being completely convinced nothing is actually improvable anymore in the US. If you touch anything, even the most broken or inhumane thing, you'll find someone defending it until the death either because of vested interests or ignorance.
  • chetanahuja 10y ago
    Yup. US system of passing laws through congress is now broken to such an extent that the only things that can pass unmolested are esoteric bills that (usually) shift money from the taxpayer to big corporate lobbying group in such a way that the common person can't (or isn't bothered enough) to understand. That's one of the reasons most of a President's power is expressed through executive orders directives to federal agencies selectively enforce or ignore laws passed by congress. That is also why passage of Obamacare will forever be remembered as a huge legislative accomplishment the likes of which will probably not be replicated again in our lifetimes.
  • rootlocus 10y ago
    It reminds me of this story: "Connecticut bishops fight sex abuse bill" [1] [1] http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/11/connecticut.abuse.bill/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/11/connecticut.abuse.bi...
  • jonnybgood 10y ago
    I wouldn't stress too hard. US politics has always been like this. Slavery and then later civil rights are the two biggest examples. As long as there are those who keep up the Good Fight change does happen.
    • Arizhel 10y ago
      Sure, as long as you don't mind waiting a century or two. Meanwhile, in other nations they fix things far faster.
• pbh101 10y ago
  >since taxpayers might end up paying taxes already on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded. To take the charitable explanation of this position: studies have shown that prices go up when the payer gets more separated from the actual payment process: credit cards, automated tollbooths, and further open-road tolling have all been shown to significantly (statistically) correlate to higher prices. Automated billing is another great example of this. As much as I want a simpler tax code and system (while I lived in Amsterdam I could literally calculate my own taxes in a spreadsheet. It was simple... but very expensive), given this data I don't think it unreasonable to think that putting lessening the cognitive burden of the payment process will lead to higher taxes.
  • avmich 10y ago
    On the other hand, simpler taxes would lead to less expensive tax filing process. You don't need to buy an updated software, pay a professional or spend some hours - if not days - of your life doing something like that. Are you sure people should keep this inconvenience as a reminder of government expenses?
    • pbh101 10y ago
      Believe me, I would love a simpler system, if not only for my own life but because the rent-seeking of Intuit et al is infuriating. Though I think almost any tax increase would dwarf the marginal reduction of filing process price (and probably time for many too). What I wanted to specifically notr is that this is also an effect I think it valid for Norquist to point out, not only that treating unintentional tax evasion reduction as a tax hike, which I think is a silly argument.
  • spoonie 10y ago
    How is easy filing for those who only earn income through employment any different from people who pay for tax prep every year? The people who pay for tax prep probably aren't thinking much about it either.
  • IanCal 10y ago
    On the other hand, confusing pricing can be used to get people to spend more. My local supermarket sells lots of produce as £X/kg and £Y/item. People buy a bag with three onions in for 65p instead of picking up three onions from the box right next to it at 75p/kg.
• Tloewald 10y ago
  Actually I think Grover Norquist's position is that making the tax easier to pay would make it less easy to notice it rising and less unpopular. It's a horrible position but not quite so bizarre.
  • egoine 10y ago
    You are correct. But I find his argument to be BS. 1) if it is a simple number, it will be _easier_ to notice it rising. 2) For sure most people using software have no clue what it does. If the software told them they owe 1k more, they would pay it. So when he says that making it simpler would mean people wouldn't notice change to the tax code etc... well, I have a hard time believing they would notice in today's system! I think he is full of s__t. He should be for a simpler system were the focus is not on detailed expenses and what not but on a simple number. This actually makes it easy to know if they went up. Intuit can then provide a software "why did my taxes go up" if it feels like it :)
• mtgx 10y ago
  That's got to be one of the dumbest arguments I've heard against something. So I wonder if the politicians really "fell for it", or they were just looking for an excuse that sounds good enough that they can use to tell their constituents as the reason they voted that way, and not because they took all that money from the lobbyists.
• cel1ne 10y ago
  It this not usual in the US? :O
• mfukar 10y ago
  > Grover Norquist, the well known promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" took the counterintuitive view that just making the process easier equated to a new tax, since taxpayers might end up paying taxes already on the books that they might have previously unintentionally evaded. I just fail to understand the logic exercised by some US residents. Norquist's argument is insane, and if you're not only trying to be kind to it and not call it as such, your stance towards it seems insane to me too.
  • mannykannot 10y ago
    Welcome to Alternative Rationality, in which an argument is taken to be a sound one if it has the style of one. Like Alternative Truth, it has probably been around forever, but what seems to be changing is that the users of these techniques are no longer embarrassed by saying the most ridiculous things, and there is effectively no downside for a politician or lobbyist in doing so. I have heard that the US SAT essay test scoring guidelines progressively reduced emphasis on judging content (to avoid cultural bias) in favor of judging style (to be fair, this may have changed in the 2016 overhaul.) If so, then, as teachers do teach to the test, this could only have harmed critical thinking.
    • mfukar 10y ago
      Does embarrassment really have to do anything with it? Whatever motivates somebody to lie is obviously stronger than shame.
• Beltiras 10y ago
  I'm a resident of Iceland. We have had this for our tax returns for at least a decade. We have had electronic returns for longer than that. All I had to do this tax season was add undeclared income and the expenses they incurred and sign with an electronic "key" password. Very soon they will mandate signing with our recently installed smart-phone enabled identity system (private key on a SIM).
  • sddfd 10y ago
    We have the same thing here in Germany. It is good, but it could be much simpler, still.
• yazan94 10y ago
  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?
  • SamBam 10y ago
    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.
    • logfromblammo 10y ago
      Except if your return has no deviations from what the tax authority sent you, why would the computer flag it for an audit? You're essentially going to be in the randomly-selected pile, and the auditor won't see anything at all suspicious. Besides that, unless you have income above $1M per year or so, it usually costs the government more to audit you than they will get from you as a result of the audit. So unless you're evading so egregiously that it makes sense to prosecute you criminally, pour encourager les autres, it's better to let little cheats slide. Like over-declaring the value of the clothes you dropped off at the thrift shop as charitable deduction. There's no way those jeans are worth $20 now, you cheater. But as long as your total charitable deductions are under $500, no one cares enough to nail you for it. Most of the people who would sign and return the pre-filled forms probably haven't ever filed a schedule A, anyway, as it would turn out to be less than the standard deduction. Unless you really care about how much you pay in taxes, there is a huge incentive to just sign and return the form the instant you get it, without even looking at it.
• Certhas 10y ago
  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.
• logfromblammo 10y ago
  The taxes I find most burdensome are those that take from me my time, rather than my money. Forced bureaucratic form-filling is thus the most burdensome tax of all. Grover Norquist can go stick his head in a pig... then stick the pig in a hydraulic press.