4 ms·

Many Republicans don't want filing taxes to be easy so that they can continue to use it as an attack on taxes in general.

by guelo 8y ago

WhompingWindows 8y ago
What is your evidence for that claim? As I recall, it was Ted Cruz who wanted taxes so easy they'd fit on a postcard.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Right, but that actually is part of what GP is describing. They want tax filing under the status quo tax calculation system to be as difficult as possible so that they can use simplification of filing as the sales pitch for changes to the calculation method which decrease nominal, and even moreso effective, progressivity.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    This. As long as most people have to grind out their own calculations, you can't have both easy taxes and progressive taxation. It's all the bits and bobs that have been done to maintain and (over, arguably) refine the regime of progressive taxation that make the math complicated. The math is only truly easy under a flat tax.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > The math is only truly easy under a flat tax. The actual calculation of the amount due from the taxable income uses a lookup, which is equivalent difficulty under any scheme other than a flat capitation, where the table reduces to a single value, and even the GOP hasn't proposed a capitation. Getting from a collection of other information to the final taxable income is most of the complexity, as are things like credits that apply after the initial application of the rate. But there is nothing inherent about the flat vs. progressive rate distinction which drives practical calculation complexity, they are just orthogonal concerns where the popular one (simplification of calculation) is used as a tool to sell the one that is less compelling to the broad public on its own.
      - bunderbunder 8y ago
        Bracketing isn't the only mechanism for progressive taxation at play. There's also EIC, child tax credit, AMT, and a whole zoo of other exemptions and credits and deductions, etc. Not to mention that the only reason a lookup is being used is to reduce opportunity for error in hand-calculating one's tax obligation. And it's also another big reason the current tax system doesn't fit on a post card: A pretty big chunk of the instruction booklet is those tax tables.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      Tax complexity is mostly unrelated to bracketing (progressive or otherwise); it's mostly due the difficulties of computing "income" against the torrent of schemes out there to obfuscate it.
chc 8y ago
This might sound like one of those "the people I disagree with are evil" kind of exaggerations, but it is not. This is a real position that is fairly common among Republican thought leaders. For example, Ronald Reagan literally said "Taxes should hurt." The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them and will accept tax rates that would irritate them in a system with more direct participation. (On the flip side, this seems to assume that the taxes are being used to create a good enough quality of life that people are generally satisfied and not poor, so if that's happening, it might actually be a more realistic perspective than if people focused on the tax rate more.)
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  > The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them This basic idea seem patently ridiculous to me. I've more-or-less made a career of doing math and managing complicated procedures, yet still, I find the current tax prep process to be such a mind-numbing grind that, by the time we get to the point where I've calculated how much tax I actually owe, I've long since quit caring to calculate what percentage of my income that is. By that point, the only number I care to see is how much I owe or will be refunded, so that I can just be done with the whole mess. It's hard to imagine that someone who's got a more typical level of comfort with math is going to be any more prepared to do that one extra calculation. If the GOP really wanted me to be aware of how much tax I'm paying, they'd reduce the whole process to a simple report they send me, with everything already calculated, that has "your calculated income tax in dollars" and "your calculated income tax as a % of net income" listed in big bold print at the very top. It seems much more parsimonious to me to suppose that the logic is, "If we make income tax a hateful process, people will come to hate income tax." (Which, incidentally, is a line of reasoning that would play very well to the position of those who want to get rid of progressive taxation. Most other forms of tax we have in the USA are either flat or regressive.)
- throw_away 8y ago
  And yet it seems the majority of Americans don't understand marginal tax rates nor how refunds represent interest-free loans to the government. If the point was to educate the public about how taxes are applied, it's not working.

Many Republicans don't want filing taxes to be easy so that they can continue to use it as an attack on taxes in general.

by guelo 8y ago

Many Republicans don't want filing taxes to be easy so that they can continue to use it as an attack on taxes in general.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

What is your evidence for that claim? As I recall, it was Ted Cruz who wanted taxes so easy they'd fit on a postcard.

dragonwriter 8y ago
Right, but that actually is part of what GP is describing. They want tax filing under the status quo tax calculation system to be as difficult as possible so that they can use simplification of filing as the sales pitch for changes to the calculation method which decrease nominal, and even moreso effective, progressivity.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  This. As long as most people have to grind out their own calculations, you can't have both easy taxes and progressive taxation. It's all the bits and bobs that have been done to maintain and (over, arguably) refine the regime of progressive taxation that make the math complicated. The math is only truly easy under a flat tax.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > The math is only truly easy under a flat tax. The actual calculation of the amount due from the taxable income uses a lookup, which is equivalent difficulty under any scheme other than a flat capitation, where the table reduces to a single value, and even the GOP hasn't proposed a capitation. Getting from a collection of other information to the final taxable income is most of the complexity, as are things like credits that apply after the initial application of the rate. But there is nothing inherent about the flat vs. progressive rate distinction which drives practical calculation complexity, they are just orthogonal concerns where the popular one (simplification of calculation) is used as a tool to sell the one that is less compelling to the broad public on its own.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      Bracketing isn't the only mechanism for progressive taxation at play. There's also EIC, child tax credit, AMT, and a whole zoo of other exemptions and credits and deductions, etc. Not to mention that the only reason a lookup is being used is to reduce opportunity for error in hand-calculating one's tax obligation. And it's also another big reason the current tax system doesn't fit on a post card: A pretty big chunk of the instruction booklet is those tax tables.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Tax complexity is mostly unrelated to bracketing (progressive or otherwise); it's mostly due the difficulties of computing "income" against the torrent of schemes out there to obfuscate it.

chc 8y ago

This might sound like one of those "the people I disagree with are evil" kind of exaggerations, but it is not. This is a real position that is fairly common among Republican thought leaders. For example, Ronald Reagan literally said "Taxes should hurt." The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them and will accept tax rates that would irritate them in a system with more direct participation. (On the flip side, this seems to assume that the taxes are being used to create a good enough quality of life that people are generally satisfied and not poor, so if that's happening, it might actually be a more realistic perspective than if people focused on the tax rate more.)

bunderbunder 8y ago
> The basic logic is that if filing taxes is too easy, people will not have a good grasp on how much the government is asking of them This basic idea seem patently ridiculous to me. I've more-or-less made a career of doing math and managing complicated procedures, yet still, I find the current tax prep process to be such a mind-numbing grind that, by the time we get to the point where I've calculated how much tax I actually owe, I've long since quit caring to calculate what percentage of my income that is. By that point, the only number I care to see is how much I owe or will be refunded, so that I can just be done with the whole mess. It's hard to imagine that someone who's got a more typical level of comfort with math is going to be any more prepared to do that one extra calculation. If the GOP really wanted me to be aware of how much tax I'm paying, they'd reduce the whole process to a simple report they send me, with everything already calculated, that has "your calculated income tax in dollars" and "your calculated income tax as a % of net income" listed in big bold print at the very top. It seems much more parsimonious to me to suppose that the logic is, "If we make income tax a hateful process, people will come to hate income tax." (Which, incidentally, is a line of reasoning that would play very well to the position of those who want to get rid of progressive taxation. Most other forms of tax we have in the USA are either flat or regressive.)
throw_away 8y ago
And yet it seems the majority of Americans don't understand marginal tax rates nor how refunds represent interest-free loans to the government. If the point was to educate the public about how taxes are applied, it's not working.