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How would you even know if it is right? This is such an obvious fox guarding the henhouse situation. The government would have a clear incentive to not offer yo

by pfisch 8y ago

How would you even know if it is right? This is such an obvious fox guarding the henhouse situation. The government would have a clear incentive to not offer you the deductions you are eligible for, and taxes are complex, so it would be easy to hide the deductions. It would only be a matter of time before the perverse incentives of the government would take over the process. The main result of this would be the government stealing from poor and middle class people who should've spent less than $100 on a 3rd party tax preparer that is incentivized to act in the interest of the taxee.

Duckeh 8y ago
The whole idea of the government stealing from people makes no sense to me. You live in a democracy, the people choose their government and it does what it's elected to do. If the government starts actively stealing money from its people, the problem isn't the way in which you file your taxes. The problem is that the government brought by your democracy isn't working as intended. For what it's worth, in the Netherlands it takes most people 5 to 10 minutes to flip through an app that has all your tax info filled in already. If you need to add anything that isn't already filled in, you get every chance to do so. It doesn't stop you from getting an accountant to do it for you either, if you'd prefer. > How would you even know if it is right? Because it's still the same tax system you had before they made it easier by filling it out for you already. It doesn't get automatically filed, you still have to check it yourself and approve it.
- pfisch 8y ago
  It doesn't make any sense to compare the Netherlands to the US on any metric. The Netherlands doesn't have the population or gdp of just Texas or California by themselves. The sheer magnitude of the difference between the US and the Netherlands is crazy, and it is like comparing a house to a town. Communism works on a small scale, the bigger the scale, the less you can just trust everyone is doing the right thing. The bureaucracy of the IRS has every incentive to maximize tax revenue, and that is what they will eventually do.
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    True, the size difference would mean the time/effort saved would be tremendous. I detest the hours and hours of my life I've given to the IRS simply because they are stuck in a time warp. My UK tax return took me under 2 hours last night (and only because they keep getting the student loan wrong - but it's simple to correct). But yes, it does require investing in a suitable computer system. I seem to be giving them the benefit of the doubt and attributing it to an infrastructure issue but that's probably not the real problem, is it.
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    I see this sort of sentiment repeated over and over in different contexts both here and on Quora; but the poster never explains why scale is relevant. Most people in both the US and the Netherlands work for one employer, own or rent one house, have a few credit cards, and a car. In most cases they have no complicated investments or debts. So how does the simple fact that one population is larger than the other have any effect? In a larger community you simply need proportionally more computer power to process proportionally more data, but the data types and business rules are the same for all the individuals.
    - pfisch 8y ago
      It isn't about the person. It is about the scale of government. Running a small business is not the same as a large business. Ok, have you ever played civilization? In civilization corruption goes up as you build more cities and the farther those cities are from the capital. That is to reflect the reality of managing larger and larger groups of people. Solutions that can work on the state level don't necessarily work on the federal level. The Netherlands are basically the size of a state with an extremely homogeneous population, and a far less cut throat culture than the US. In small groups of 10-20 people communism works very well. It doesn't work in bigger groups though. The bigger the group the more perverse incentives are acted upon. Even beyond that though the US is a cut throat competitive culture. Eventually the person in charge of treasury will want to show that the democrats/republicans before them did a bad job of collecting tax revenue. They will realize by not offering deductions a lot of people will just pay and this will end up with them looking like they did a really good job. Or maybe it will be someone lower on the totem pole that wants to move up and can show that they did a better job at collecting tax revenue. Also, solutions that work in the US probably won't work in China or India because the population is so much larger that US solutions won't scale properly.
jedberg 8y ago
Most filers in the US have a single income from a single employer that is reported on a W2, and then take the standard deduction. And a lot after that have maybe a bit of income via 1099 forms and a mortgage deduction. All of those the government already has. If they filled out a return with all that info, it would take just a couple of minutes to review it if it were already pre-filled out. And worst case, you have other income and deductions, such that you've saved a bunch of time entering information the government already knows. If anything, it would be the upper middle class who would lose out because they would just be lazy and click "ok" instead of doing their own taxes.

by pfisch 8y ago

Duckeh 8y ago

The whole idea of the government stealing from people makes no sense to me. You live in a democracy, the people choose their government and it does what it's elected to do. If the government starts actively stealing money from its people, the problem isn't the way in which you file your taxes. The problem is that the government brought by your democracy isn't working as intended. For what it's worth, in the Netherlands it takes most people 5 to 10 minutes to flip through an app that has all your tax info filled in already. If you need to add anything that isn't already filled in, you get every chance to do so. It doesn't stop you from getting an accountant to do it for you either, if you'd prefer. > How would you even know if it is right? Because it's still the same tax system you had before they made it easier by filling it out for you already. It doesn't get automatically filed, you still have to check it yourself and approve it.

pfisch 8y ago
It doesn't make any sense to compare the Netherlands to the US on any metric. The Netherlands doesn't have the population or gdp of just Texas or California by themselves. The sheer magnitude of the difference between the US and the Netherlands is crazy, and it is like comparing a house to a town. Communism works on a small scale, the bigger the scale, the less you can just trust everyone is doing the right thing. The bureaucracy of the IRS has every incentive to maximize tax revenue, and that is what they will eventually do.
- kingosticks 8y ago
  True, the size difference would mean the time/effort saved would be tremendous. I detest the hours and hours of my life I've given to the IRS simply because they are stuck in a time warp. My UK tax return took me under 2 hours last night (and only because they keep getting the student loan wrong - but it's simple to correct). But yes, it does require investing in a suitable computer system. I seem to be giving them the benefit of the doubt and attributing it to an infrastructure issue but that's probably not the real problem, is it.
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  I see this sort of sentiment repeated over and over in different contexts both here and on Quora; but the poster never explains why scale is relevant. Most people in both the US and the Netherlands work for one employer, own or rent one house, have a few credit cards, and a car. In most cases they have no complicated investments or debts. So how does the simple fact that one population is larger than the other have any effect? In a larger community you simply need proportionally more computer power to process proportionally more data, but the data types and business rules are the same for all the individuals.
  - pfisch 8y ago
    It isn't about the person. It is about the scale of government. Running a small business is not the same as a large business. Ok, have you ever played civilization? In civilization corruption goes up as you build more cities and the farther those cities are from the capital. That is to reflect the reality of managing larger and larger groups of people. Solutions that can work on the state level don't necessarily work on the federal level. The Netherlands are basically the size of a state with an extremely homogeneous population, and a far less cut throat culture than the US. In small groups of 10-20 people communism works very well. It doesn't work in bigger groups though. The bigger the group the more perverse incentives are acted upon. Even beyond that though the US is a cut throat competitive culture. Eventually the person in charge of treasury will want to show that the democrats/republicans before them did a bad job of collecting tax revenue. They will realize by not offering deductions a lot of people will just pay and this will end up with them looking like they did a really good job. Or maybe it will be someone lower on the totem pole that wants to move up and can show that they did a better job at collecting tax revenue. Also, solutions that work in the US probably won't work in China or India because the population is so much larger that US solutions won't scale properly.

jedberg 8y ago

Most filers in the US have a single income from a single employer that is reported on a W2, and then take the standard deduction. And a lot after that have maybe a bit of income via 1099 forms and a mortgage deduction. All of those the government already has. If they filled out a return with all that info, it would take just a couple of minutes to review it if it were already pre-filled out. And worst case, you have other income and deductions, such that you've saved a bunch of time entering information the government already knows. If anything, it would be the upper middle class who would lose out because they would just be lazy and click "ok" instead of doing their own taxes.