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Please leave partisanship aside on HN. Besides they shoot any attempts down because it's the solution they disagree with: i.e. letting the IRS do it for you. Fo

Please leave partisanship aside on HN. Besides they shoot any attempts down because it's the solution they disagree with: i.e. letting the IRS do it for you. For a small government conservative, this is a mortal sin. For me it's a big no-no on a common sense level. Why am I going to let the office responsible for taking my money decide how much they get to take if it is at least somewhat in my control now? If government offices charging you money have taught me anything in my short life on earth, is they always charge you more, and expect you to go through the motions to get that price adjusted. Your property not really worth 208,000 dollars, but 196,000? Sorry, gotta pay at least 2 people to come and assess the value on top of having the tax assessor come out. Have a nice next 6 months. By the way, you need to pay the higher rate now, and wait for us to refund you. You might get it next year. Yeah, no thanks. The irony of it all is our taxes are complicated because we want them to be complicated. To quote a famous The Atlantic article, "The irony is that the tax code is complicated because we want it to be complicated. Home owners want to be rewarded for their home ownership. Parents want to get money for their kids. Everybody wants a subsidy for health care. Poor people appreciate the extra cash. Break by break, tax breaks are popular. Hugely popular. Come-and-take-this-from-my-cold-dead-hands popular. But in the aggregate, they make people furious about the tax code. They push up rates, distribute money to the rich, and make it look like people aren't paying their fair share. That's democracy for you."

tanderson92 9y ago
Nobody is talking about changing one's ability to file their own taxes. But even modest proposals like having the IRS fill in all information it already knows are shot down by politicians, many conservatives. Coincidentally, many of them receive substantial campaign donations from tax prep industry.
- treehau5 9y ago
  > Coincidentally, many of them receive substantial campaign donations from tax prep industry. So an industry that would essentially be wiped out, and an entire academic field invalidated (or left with few options for work, one of them being the IRS themselves), so they organize and lobby politicians to ensure their industry's survival? Color me shocked.
  - tanderson92 9y ago
    Their (the industry's) behavior is entirely rational, I am not criticizing them. However, that does not imply that the current system is best for society. And since politicians are nominally elected to represent society's best interests, I am criticizing the politicians and the system that enables that.

tanderson92 9y ago

Nobody is talking about changing one's ability to file their own taxes. But even modest proposals like having the IRS fill in all information it already knows are shot down by politicians, many conservatives. Coincidentally, many of them receive substantial campaign donations from tax prep industry.

treehau5 9y ago
> Coincidentally, many of them receive substantial campaign donations from tax prep industry. So an industry that would essentially be wiped out, and an entire academic field invalidated (or left with few options for work, one of them being the IRS themselves), so they organize and lobby politicians to ensure their industry's survival? Color me shocked.
- tanderson92 9y ago
  Their (the industry's) behavior is entirely rational, I am not criticizing them. However, that does not imply that the current system is best for society. And since politicians are nominally elected to represent society's best interests, I am criticizing the politicians and the system that enables that.