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Lobbying is a way for the rich to legally shortcircuit democracy. It’s legal corruption and as bad for democracy as the illegal counterpart. In Denmark we have

by flexie 9y ago

Lobbying is a way for the rich to legally shortcircuit democracy. It’s legal corruption and as bad for democracy as the illegal counterpart. In Denmark we have had prefilled tax forms for I don’t know how many years. More than two decades. Nowadays its online. You log on and see your taxes and edit when necessary. It’s still unnecessarily complicated if you are not an employee, but for the 90 percent who receive salary as their only income and only have ordinary deductions it’s somewhat bareable although it can be hard to check if the tax authorities calculated the tax correctly.

Karishma1234 9y ago
Lobbying is an excellent way for small groups to be heard in political corridors. Lobbying happens in any large democracy and when it is illegal it often happens through backdoors creating a chain of unimaginable corruption. It is much better for Intuit and HR Block to openly lobby for complex tax code rather than paying bribes through backdoor. Secondly, why are people re-electing the politicians who suck up to Intuit then ? It is because people do not care as much.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  You don't explain why it is supposedly better than the alternative.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Lobbying is an excellent way for small groups to be heard in political corridors. “Lobbying” is literally any effort a person or group makes to influence a government decision-maker.
  - Karishma1234 8y ago
    So ? Are you saying people or group should not be allowed to influence government decision making ? Do you want your government to do X ? X => Ban Guns/Allow people to bear arms X => Make abortions simple/Ban abortions totally X => Enforce net neutrality/ Let markets handle it Every person will always have a stand on this issue and will try all in his power to influence the government. Would you rather want it to be legal and open or underground black market is the question.
- simion314 9y ago
  >Secondly, why are people re-electing the politicians who suck up to Intuit then ? In US you have less choices AFAIK, just seen yesterday that one party owns a big TV network and some HNer commented that the other party should also buy a similar big network, there is no consideration that maybe there should me more then 2 choices, from what I see from outside US is that it is impossible to have a 3rd or 4rd option so you have to chose between 2 bad options each cycle. If I am wrong please correct me, again this is how the things appear from us outside US (I never heard of a 3rd party or 3rd president candidate with a real chance)
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    In the U.S., the major parties compete with each other. Over the decades, what they actually do varies a lot. As one party has success generally or on particular issues, the other party will adjust to attract voters. Positions held by (relatively) successful third parties are quickly absorbed to some degree by one major party or both. The net result is a weird mishmash of positions on either side of the aisle that no individual would actually choose. It also means disproportionate benefits for things that intensely benefit small portions of the population with mild downsides for the rest. Despite all the concern, the national legislature has been fairly evenly divided over the last 25 years or so, giving control back and forth. This is even more true of the presidency. It's exceptional that a party will hold the presidency for more than two terms of office. All that being said, I do think there could be some national consensus about things with little more explicit horse-trading. I could see a carbon tax passing, for instance, if it were attached to a bill requiring a balanced budget. But no major party could propose something like that without angering its base.
  - Amezarak 9y ago
    It's worth keeping in mind that the party system works differently in the US than it does in most other countries. Almost anyone can up and announce they're running as a Republican or a Democrat regardless of their prior actions or current beliefs, and vote however they want with few consequences. Consider that Bernie Sanders was a member of a third party as a senator, but ran as a democrat for president without changing any of his positions. Similarly, Trump had little relation to the modern Republican party and essentially took it over anyway. When Ron Paul, Donald Trump, and John McCain are all in the same party, you're talking about a pretty big tent. In the USA, "parties" are more analogous to coalitions in parliamentary democracies. The party primaries play a tremendous and oft-overlooked role in the actual elections.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I will vote in the election in November. In each race, I will have (if I’m lucky) a choice between a couple of people who will only get a tiny percentage of the vote, a person from the party who thinks Donald Trump should hold the presidency, and one other person who might possibly win instead of that one. My choice is all but predetermined. The question of which ones suck up to Intuit basically doesn’t come into it.
on_and_off 9y ago
France, same. I have moved to the US very recently. I have actually filled my 2017 French revenue form today. It took me 10 minutes and that's because I had to find how much I had paid home cleaning services (home employment is deductible), it could have been done in 2. Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours. The 2 jobs are comparable and should be just as easy to declare for.
- dominotw 9y ago
  Why was it more complicated compared to France. Curious whats different for you.
  - on_and_off 9y ago
    Most of it is prefilled in my french declaration. I had to check a box saying that I don't own a TV (so I don't have to pay that tax) I also had to connect to my home cleaning service website in order to know exactly how much I paid them in 2017. That's pretty much it, everything else was already filled. Since my employer has declared that I worked for them (I mean .. that's the case for most people except black market), the FISC (french IRS) already knows how much I made that year. If you are freelancing, or another regime different from full time job in a company, it might be more complicated. but for 90% of the people, you connect to the gov website, approve your taxes and that's it. US has federal and state taxes. Both are obscure. AFAIK, there is no government website to do your taxes. No prefilling either of course. So I had to google a lot, look for my w2, etc. I used hr block since it looked easier than figuring out everything myself. It was still more of an headache than my french taxes and I don't think that it was only because of my expat status.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      > there is no government website to do your taxes. i was curious about your comment > Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours. I used turbotax for both state and federal it imported and prefilled my adp w2 and imported my tax account from etrade.com. It took me 10 minutes to finish it.
make3 9y ago
in most industrialized countries lobbying is heavily regularized.
IkmoIkmo 9y ago
Same in the Netherlands, there's even a phone app that a lot of people use. Filing takes minutes.
- my123 9y ago
  In France too, the paper is prefilled, and if there are no changes, you just scan the QR code and it's done.
- rocqua 9y ago
  I've heard (so this is a weak second hand story) that here in the Netherlands we also have a lot of lobbying, but the less strict laws around campaign financing make it less evident. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's something to think about. At the very least, it suggests that the strong laws on campaign financing in the US help pull lobbying into the light.
Angostura 9y ago
I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. I have friends who have successfully lobbied in the the U.K. to get bills introduced to curb climate change. I support the Alltrials people, lobbying to ensure that the results from all medical trials are published whether ‘successful’ or not. Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. It’s when the convincing them comes in the form of personally enriching the legislators that it turns into bribery and the problems occur.
- flexie 9y ago
  Agree
- ivan_gammel 9y ago
  Not necessarily personally - all sorts of exchanges here should be banned, including contributions to the election campaigns, which in true democracy should be funded solely from public money. Being allowed to bring the case does not mean that you have to or should be allowed to pay for that.
  - anovikov 9y ago
    Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? I'll say the opposite - any kind of public money involvement into elections should be banned. Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. 'Opinions' of ordinary people are not important because they effectively, don't exist: propaganda decides what their opinions will be.
    - vvillena 9y ago
      Funding campaings from public money is widespread in Europe. Sometimes the opposite argument is made: public funding ensures a level field, in which no one has a disproportionate advantage. Of course, this has the effect of displacing the battle to the real battlefields, one of them being propaganda, as you said.
pjc50 9y ago
I think we need to distinguish between "lobbying", which is basically just talking to politicians, and campaign funding which is so close to legalised bribery. The big question is "why does America seem to have no effective consumer lobbying groups"?
- adventured 9y ago
  That's not a big question, the US does have a lot of large, effective consumer lobbying groups. Most of the consumer protections and product labeling the US has, is thanks to them, going back more than a century. The US has a consumer lobbying group for pretty much every topic and demographic you can name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumers_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumers_League http://www.fraud.org/ http://www.fraud.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Public_Interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Publ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_Califor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Citizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Citizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Financial_Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Financial_Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumer_Law_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumer_Law_Center
  - oblio 9y ago
    You forgot the NRA :)
    - rocqua 9y ago
      I believe the NRA is largely funded by firearms corporations as opposed to its (very large) member base.
dustingetz 9y ago
this will blow your mind but what if lobbying is the purpose of american democracy?
travmatt 9y ago
>Lobbying is a way for the rich to legally shortcircuit democracy. It’s legal corruption and as bad for democracy as the illegal counterpart. Lobbying is the lifeblood of American democracy, and the system was expressly designed for it, so its a little odd hearing you instead posit that it’s actually not. Maybe you’re thinking of modern campaign financing?
ransom1538 9y ago
"Lobbying is a way for the rich" Let's say you want to build a road (to nowhere really) in Mississippi. Your company builds roads and you are pretty damn sure you will win the contract if it happens. You want Senator Cindy Hyde Smith to ear mark some federal cash for the project (s). How much would it cost? Answer: not much. She only has 200k of cash on hand. If you donate $50K you got a new best friend. If you give her 2k, you will probably land a dinner. https://www.scribd.com/document/370443725/Cindy-Hyde-Smith-2018-Campaign-Finance https://www.scribd.com/document/370443725/Cindy-Hyde-Smith-2...
gok 9y ago
In practice, many Americans don’t have to do much more work than that. If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The big problems with US tax preparation seem truly hard to solve. A huge number of Americans take deductions which are fundamentally hard to automatically report. It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Another trouble is that tax laws at federal, state and local levels are weirdly different and sometimes incompatible. The latest federal tax law eliminates the use of itemized deductions for about 90% of tax payers, however. This may nudge us closer to prefiled taxes.
- lern_too_spel 9y ago
  > If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The only tax preparers that do this charge quite a bit if your AGI is above a certain amount. The others make you do manual data entry. If you have a brokerage account with a lot of trades, it's over — you pretty much need to use a tax preparer that can import that information. This is true even though the government already has that information from your employer and your brokerage. In GP's country, he doesn't have to do anything at all in these cases.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Every payer files 1099s and sends the payee a copy. It would be no hardship for charities to file analogous forms and send analogous copies to donors, although I suppose the chance of false filing would increase. To prevent that, just issue charities some secret identifier they write on the form that goes to IRS and don't write on the copy they send to the payer.
chiefalchemist 9y ago
Lobbying / lobbyist are nothing more than a polite euphemism for influence and corruption. I think it's worth adding that non pre-filled (i.e., the status quo) is also in the IRS's best interest. A person's mistake(s) allow for fines, interest, etc. The policing + enforcement also increases the IRS's head count. Layoffs by the fed gov never play well politically; to say nothing of lawyer and/or accountant fees incurred by the accused. Bottom line: Everyone wins, except for the average American citizen. He / she is screwed. Again.

by flexie 9y ago

Karishma1234 9y ago

Lobbying is an excellent way for small groups to be heard in political corridors. Lobbying happens in any large democracy and when it is illegal it often happens through backdoors creating a chain of unimaginable corruption. It is much better for Intuit and HR Block to openly lobby for complex tax code rather than paying bribes through backdoor. Secondly, why are people re-electing the politicians who suck up to Intuit then ? It is because people do not care as much.

on_and_off 9y ago
You don't explain why it is supposedly better than the alternative.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Lobbying is an excellent way for small groups to be heard in political corridors. “Lobbying” is literally any effort a person or group makes to influence a government decision-maker.
- Karishma1234 8y ago
  So ? Are you saying people or group should not be allowed to influence government decision making ? Do you want your government to do X ? X => Ban Guns/Allow people to bear arms X => Make abortions simple/Ban abortions totally X => Enforce net neutrality/ Let markets handle it Every person will always have a stand on this issue and will try all in his power to influence the government. Would you rather want it to be legal and open or underground black market is the question.
simion314 9y ago
>Secondly, why are people re-electing the politicians who suck up to Intuit then ? In US you have less choices AFAIK, just seen yesterday that one party owns a big TV network and some HNer commented that the other party should also buy a similar big network, there is no consideration that maybe there should me more then 2 choices, from what I see from outside US is that it is impossible to have a 3rd or 4rd option so you have to chose between 2 bad options each cycle. If I am wrong please correct me, again this is how the things appear from us outside US (I never heard of a 3rd party or 3rd president candidate with a real chance)
- humanrebar 9y ago
  In the U.S., the major parties compete with each other. Over the decades, what they actually do varies a lot. As one party has success generally or on particular issues, the other party will adjust to attract voters. Positions held by (relatively) successful third parties are quickly absorbed to some degree by one major party or both. The net result is a weird mishmash of positions on either side of the aisle that no individual would actually choose. It also means disproportionate benefits for things that intensely benefit small portions of the population with mild downsides for the rest. Despite all the concern, the national legislature has been fairly evenly divided over the last 25 years or so, giving control back and forth. This is even more true of the presidency. It's exceptional that a party will hold the presidency for more than two terms of office. All that being said, I do think there could be some national consensus about things with little more explicit horse-trading. I could see a carbon tax passing, for instance, if it were attached to a bill requiring a balanced budget. But no major party could propose something like that without angering its base.
- Amezarak 9y ago
  It's worth keeping in mind that the party system works differently in the US than it does in most other countries. Almost anyone can up and announce they're running as a Republican or a Democrat regardless of their prior actions or current beliefs, and vote however they want with few consequences. Consider that Bernie Sanders was a member of a third party as a senator, but ran as a democrat for president without changing any of his positions. Similarly, Trump had little relation to the modern Republican party and essentially took it over anyway. When Ron Paul, Donald Trump, and John McCain are all in the same party, you're talking about a pretty big tent. In the USA, "parties" are more analogous to coalitions in parliamentary democracies. The party primaries play a tremendous and oft-overlooked role in the actual elections.
mikeash 9y ago
I will vote in the election in November. In each race, I will have (if I’m lucky) a choice between a couple of people who will only get a tiny percentage of the vote, a person from the party who thinks Donald Trump should hold the presidency, and one other person who might possibly win instead of that one. My choice is all but predetermined. The question of which ones suck up to Intuit basically doesn’t come into it.

on_and_off 9y ago

France, same. I have moved to the US very recently. I have actually filled my 2017 French revenue form today. It took me 10 minutes and that's because I had to find how much I had paid home cleaning services (home employment is deductible), it could have been done in 2. Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours. The 2 jobs are comparable and should be just as easy to declare for.

dominotw 9y ago
Why was it more complicated compared to France. Curious whats different for you.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Most of it is prefilled in my french declaration. I had to check a box saying that I don't own a TV (so I don't have to pay that tax) I also had to connect to my home cleaning service website in order to know exactly how much I paid them in 2017. That's pretty much it, everything else was already filled. Since my employer has declared that I worked for them (I mean .. that's the case for most people except black market), the FISC (french IRS) already knows how much I made that year. If you are freelancing, or another regime different from full time job in a company, it might be more complicated. but for 90% of the people, you connect to the gov website, approve your taxes and that's it. US has federal and state taxes. Both are obscure. AFAIK, there is no government website to do your taxes. No prefilling either of course. So I had to google a lot, look for my w2, etc. I used hr block since it looked easier than figuring out everything myself. It was still more of an headache than my french taxes and I don't think that it was only because of my expat status.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    > there is no government website to do your taxes. i was curious about your comment > Even after paying 180 dollars to HRBlock, my US taxes were way less straightforward and took me hours. I used turbotax for both state and federal it imported and prefilled my adp w2 and imported my tax account from etrade.com. It took me 10 minutes to finish it.

make3 9y ago

in most industrialized countries lobbying is heavily regularized.

IkmoIkmo 9y ago

Same in the Netherlands, there's even a phone app that a lot of people use. Filing takes minutes.

my123 9y ago
In France too, the paper is prefilled, and if there are no changes, you just scan the QR code and it's done.
rocqua 9y ago
I've heard (so this is a weak second hand story) that here in the Netherlands we also have a lot of lobbying, but the less strict laws around campaign financing make it less evident. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's something to think about. At the very least, it suggests that the strong laws on campaign financing in the US help pull lobbying into the light.

Angostura 9y ago

I don’t think lobbying per se is a problem. I have friends who have successfully lobbied in the the U.K. to get bills introduced to curb climate change. I support the Alltrials people, lobbying to ensure that the results from all medical trials are published whether ‘successful’ or not. Groups of people or interest groups should be allowed to bring their case to legislators to try to convince them. It’s when the convincing them comes in the form of personally enriching the legislators that it turns into bribery and the problems occur.

flexie 9y ago
Agree
ivan_gammel 9y ago
Not necessarily personally - all sorts of exchanges here should be banned, including contributions to the election campaigns, which in true democracy should be funded solely from public money. Being allowed to bring the case does not mean that you have to or should be allowed to pay for that.
- anovikov 9y ago
  Isn't funding election campaigns from public money a quick and sure route to totalitarianism? I'll say the opposite - any kind of public money involvement into elections should be banned. Don't get fooled with 'democracy' thing. Election and democratic process are the way for the elites to decide matters between themselves without resorting to civil wars/violence, in an orderly, regulated manner. They were invented for that purpose in the middle ages England which got tired of civil wars and serve that purpose perfectly. 'Opinions' of ordinary people are not important because they effectively, don't exist: propaganda decides what their opinions will be.
  - vvillena 9y ago
    Funding campaings from public money is widespread in Europe. Sometimes the opposite argument is made: public funding ensures a level field, in which no one has a disproportionate advantage. Of course, this has the effect of displacing the battle to the real battlefields, one of them being propaganda, as you said.

pjc50 9y ago

I think we need to distinguish between "lobbying", which is basically just talking to politicians, and campaign funding which is so close to legalised bribery. The big question is "why does America seem to have no effective consumer lobbying groups"?

adventured 9y ago
That's not a big question, the US does have a lot of large, effective consumer lobbying groups. Most of the consumer protections and product labeling the US has, is thanks to them, going back more than a century. The US has a consumer lobbying group for pretty much every topic and demographic you can name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumers_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumers_League http://www.fraud.org/ http://www.fraud.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Public_Interest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Science_in_the_Publ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Watchdog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Federation_of_Califor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Citizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Citizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Financial_Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_for_Financial_Reform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumer_Law_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Consumer_Law_Center
- oblio 9y ago
  You forgot the NRA :)
  - rocqua 9y ago
    I believe the NRA is largely funded by firearms corporations as opposed to its (very large) member base.

dustingetz 9y ago

this will blow your mind but what if lobbying is the purpose of american democracy?

travmatt 9y ago

>Lobbying is a way for the rich to legally shortcircuit democracy. It’s legal corruption and as bad for democracy as the illegal counterpart. Lobbying is the lifeblood of American democracy, and the system was expressly designed for it, so its a little odd hearing you instead posit that it’s actually not. Maybe you’re thinking of modern campaign financing?

ransom1538 9y ago

"Lobbying is a way for the rich" Let's say you want to build a road (to nowhere really) in Mississippi. Your company builds roads and you are pretty damn sure you will win the contract if it happens. You want Senator Cindy Hyde Smith to ear mark some federal cash for the project (s). How much would it cost? Answer: not much. She only has 200k of cash on hand. If you donate $50K you got a new best friend. If you give her 2k, you will probably land a dinner. https://www.scribd.com/document/370443725/Cindy-Hyde-Smith-2018-Campaign-Finance https://www.scribd.com/document/370443725/Cindy-Hyde-Smith-2...

gok 9y ago

In practice, many Americans don’t have to do much more work than that. If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The big problems with US tax preparation seem truly hard to solve. A huge number of Americans take deductions which are fundamentally hard to automatically report. It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Another trouble is that tax laws at federal, state and local levels are weirdly different and sometimes incompatible. The latest federal tax law eliminates the use of itemized deductions for about 90% of tax payers, however. This may nudge us closer to prefiled taxes.

lern_too_spel 9y ago
> If you work for an employer that uses a major payroll system, tax prep software can often directly import your paycheck information and for the most part you’re done. The only tax preparers that do this charge quite a bit if your AGI is above a certain amount. The others make you do manual data entry. If you have a brokerage account with a lot of trades, it's over — you pretty much need to use a tax preparer that can import that information. This is true even though the government already has that information from your employer and your brokerage. In GP's country, he doesn't have to do anything at all in these cases.
jessaustin 9y ago
It would be hard for every charity to talk to every tax authority. Every payer files 1099s and sends the payee a copy. It would be no hardship for charities to file analogous forms and send analogous copies to donors, although I suppose the chance of false filing would increase. To prevent that, just issue charities some secret identifier they write on the form that goes to IRS and don't write on the copy they send to the payer.

chiefalchemist 9y ago

Lobbying / lobbyist are nothing more than a polite euphemism for influence and corruption. I think it's worth adding that non pre-filled (i.e., the status quo) is also in the IRS's best interest. A person's mistake(s) allow for fines, interest, etc. The policing + enforcement also increases the IRS's head count. Layoffs by the fed gov never play well politically; to say nothing of lawyer and/or accountant fees incurred by the accused. Bottom line: Everyone wins, except for the average American citizen. He / she is screwed. Again.