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Why would people spend money on something like this “for funsies”? You don’t even take your own idea seriously or provide a credible reason other than “why not”

Why would people spend money on something like this “for funsies”? You don’t even take your own idea seriously or provide a credible reason other than “why not”. Intuit and H&R Block have a specific goal and target it with specific dollars each year. Over time that builds influence and control. Grover Norquist absolutely has an interest in keeping taxes complex, it’s his entire basis for influence and power. His fight is about lowering taxes anyways, not complexity. Here’s the flip side to your stance. If lobbying has no influence, why do privately held businesses spend so much on it each year? Wouldn’t these rational actors stop wasting money if there was no ROI?

rayiner 8y ago
You can’t build influence and control with $5 million a year in lobbying. It’s just not very much money. There are a lot of public interest organizations and concerned individuals who could spend that kind of money (and do). They spend it on other issues instead because they know this tax filing issue won’t go anywhere. You’re missing the point of the Grover Norquist example. Why is tax filing something Grover Norquist cares about? He’s rich—this doesn’t affect him directly. And he doesn’t make any money off tax preparation. He campaigns against tax filing simplification because it taps into a very large anti-tax movement that he’s part of. It is that movement that keeps tax filing complicated. Intuit and H&R Block don’t create that movement through lobbying; they lobby to tie their issue into the larger movement. As to the amount of lobbying: private companies don’t spend much money on lobbying every year. Total US lobbying expenditures is $3.5 billion, out of a $20 trillion economy (and a $4 trillion federal budget). (And that’s not just companies, but includes public interest organizations.) If lobbying had direct, non-speculative impacts on legislation, companies would do a lot more of it. Look at the tax filing example. H&R Block makes more than $3 billion in revenue each year. If lobbying had direct results, they wouldn’t be able to protect that cash cow with less than $3 million a year in lobbying. A competitor would come in and outbid them for legislation. (Indeed, corporation versus corporation lobbying is probably the most typical kind. E.g. all the money Google spends on copyright lobbying is best seen as a proxy war with Hollywood over whether copyrights should be weak, which favors distributors like Google, or strong, which favors Hollywood.) Of course lobbying is important enough that companies do it. But it’s not transactional like people make it out to be. Lobbying involves hiring professionals to make presentations to staffers about specific issues, tying them into general platforms that politicians already believe. Tax filing is a great example. Intuit and H&R Block aren’t going in and spending $5 million to convince people who love taxes to oppose automatic tax filing. They’re using that money to lobby legislators who already want Americans to be outraged each year in April 15. They connect their specific issue to the larger platform the politician already supports. “Simpler tax filing is the first step to Danish style 60% tax rates.” Then, they educate the legislator about relevant pending legislation. “Elizabeth Warren has introduced an automatic tax filing bill.” And they arm the legislator with arguments and white papers they need to oppose the lesilation. “Making deductions opt-in will result in a $45 billion effective tax increase on seniors, who will be to scared to challenge the ‘bill’ sent by the IRS.”
- moorhosj 8y ago
  ==You can’t build influence and control with $5 million a year in lobbying. It’s just not very much money.== You still haven’t provided any evidence. Your comments in this thread are mostly ideological arguments. From the article about them directly lobbying against bills on this issue: ==The disclosures show that Intuit as recently as 2011 lobbied on two bills, both of which died, that would have allowed many taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free. The company also lobbied on bills in 2007 and 2011 that would have barred the Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, from initiating return-free filing.==
  - nielsbot 8y ago
    those with rayiner’s naïveté are part of the problem. glad they are in the minority. bribery is the only possible explanation for congress refusing to do what their constituents plainly want.
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    The article doesn’t establish that the lobbying was the cause of the death of the bill. You did not refute rayiner’s central assertion.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      To believe his assertion you must first admit that the market competition is apparently broken and we have numerous profit-seeking companies who invest heavily in lobbying while seeing no benefit. There will never be a direct link made because no politician will say, “I am voting against this bill because Intuit took me to a nice dinner and contributed $100k to my re-election campaign.” We do have evidence that constituents want taxes simplified, bills have been presented to fix this problem, companies lobbied against the bills, and the bills died. What’s your theory?
      - 1123581321 8y ago
        He was not saying that lobbying was completely ineffective. He was saying that lobbying rode supported an ideological belief that taxes should not be simplified, and the cost to lobby against the combination of the 5MM in lobbying plus the ideology is a lot more than 5MM. His evidence was that the relatively low value of 5MM hasn’t been outspent by an interested party, there being so many such people who could afford it. I don’t know if that is the case but I would like you to address the central claim. I don’t have a theory of my own.

rayiner 8y ago

You can’t build influence and control with $5 million a year in lobbying. It’s just not very much money. There are a lot of public interest organizations and concerned individuals who could spend that kind of money (and do). They spend it on other issues instead because they know this tax filing issue won’t go anywhere. You’re missing the point of the Grover Norquist example. Why is tax filing something Grover Norquist cares about? He’s rich—this doesn’t affect him directly. And he doesn’t make any money off tax preparation. He campaigns against tax filing simplification because it taps into a very large anti-tax movement that he’s part of. It is that movement that keeps tax filing complicated. Intuit and H&R Block don’t create that movement through lobbying; they lobby to tie their issue into the larger movement. As to the amount of lobbying: private companies don’t spend much money on lobbying every year. Total US lobbying expenditures is $3.5 billion, out of a $20 trillion economy (and a $4 trillion federal budget). (And that’s not just companies, but includes public interest organizations.) If lobbying had direct, non-speculative impacts on legislation, companies would do a lot more of it. Look at the tax filing example. H&R Block makes more than $3 billion in revenue each year. If lobbying had direct results, they wouldn’t be able to protect that cash cow with less than $3 million a year in lobbying. A competitor would come in and outbid them for legislation. (Indeed, corporation versus corporation lobbying is probably the most typical kind. E.g. all the money Google spends on copyright lobbying is best seen as a proxy war with Hollywood over whether copyrights should be weak, which favors distributors like Google, or strong, which favors Hollywood.) Of course lobbying is important enough that companies do it. But it’s not transactional like people make it out to be. Lobbying involves hiring professionals to make presentations to staffers about specific issues, tying them into general platforms that politicians already believe. Tax filing is a great example. Intuit and H&R Block aren’t going in and spending $5 million to convince people who love taxes to oppose automatic tax filing. They’re using that money to lobby legislators who already want Americans to be outraged each year in April 15. They connect their specific issue to the larger platform the politician already supports. “Simpler tax filing is the first step to Danish style 60% tax rates.” Then, they educate the legislator about relevant pending legislation. “Elizabeth Warren has introduced an automatic tax filing bill.” And they arm the legislator with arguments and white papers they need to oppose the lesilation. “Making deductions opt-in will result in a $45 billion effective tax increase on seniors, who will be to scared to challenge the ‘bill’ sent by the IRS.”

moorhosj 8y ago
==You can’t build influence and control with $5 million a year in lobbying. It’s just not very much money.== You still haven’t provided any evidence. Your comments in this thread are mostly ideological arguments. From the article about them directly lobbying against bills on this issue: ==The disclosures show that Intuit as recently as 2011 lobbied on two bills, both of which died, that would have allowed many taxpayers to file pre-filled returns for free. The company also lobbied on bills in 2007 and 2011 that would have barred the Treasury Department, which includes the IRS, from initiating return-free filing.==
- nielsbot 8y ago
  those with rayiner’s naïveté are part of the problem. glad they are in the minority. bribery is the only possible explanation for congress refusing to do what their constituents plainly want.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  The article doesn’t establish that the lobbying was the cause of the death of the bill. You did not refute rayiner’s central assertion.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    To believe his assertion you must first admit that the market competition is apparently broken and we have numerous profit-seeking companies who invest heavily in lobbying while seeing no benefit. There will never be a direct link made because no politician will say, “I am voting against this bill because Intuit took me to a nice dinner and contributed $100k to my re-election campaign.” We do have evidence that constituents want taxes simplified, bills have been presented to fix this problem, companies lobbied against the bills, and the bills died. What’s your theory?
    - 1123581321 8y ago
      He was not saying that lobbying was completely ineffective. He was saying that lobbying rode supported an ideological belief that taxes should not be simplified, and the cost to lobby against the combination of the 5MM in lobbying plus the ideology is a lot more than 5MM. His evidence was that the relatively low value of 5MM hasn’t been outspent by an interested party, there being so many such people who could afford it. I don’t know if that is the case but I would like you to address the central claim. I don’t have a theory of my own.