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The line I've heard a few times is about forcing people to confront how much they're paying in taxes. If you have to do the numbers (or pay someone to do so), y

by ixwt 7y ago

The line I've heard a few times is about forcing people to confront how much they're paying in taxes. If you have to do the numbers (or pay someone to do so), you will confront how much you're having to pay. Rather than just glancing at a form, and passing it on. I don't agree with that reasoning. It feels that we just look at the numbers, and punch them in. There were many people that were surprised that they had to pay extra taxes this year.

jcranmer 7y ago
The Norquist anti-tax block wants people to have pain filing taxes so they can militate against it, or at least complain about how much they're being taxed. That said, my sense is that most people don't know what their total yearly tax is, nor their tax rate is, only their refund/tax payment that's due in April 15. As the Republicans found out recently, a lot of people complain about their "tax increase" when they don't don't get a refund, even if their actual tax rate went down.
- cannonedhamster 7y ago
  Yup this is Republicans once again acting on behalf of a company instead of their constituents. It's not just federal either California had their Ready Return product a while back. We're the only country that does taxes this way. There's no reason to do it either. The IRS already knows how much you owe. Having the ability the revised statements is important and there should be an allocation table of where your tax money went provided with details available publicly.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Honestly, I don't think the free tax filing software companies have enough pull here. There are other constituencies who are against the IRS telling you what you owe: * Special interest groups who have won tax credits/deductions--most of these don't get reported to the IRS, so it makes it easier to kill these off since fewer people will take advantage of them. * The anti-government crowd, who is a) afraid that the IRS could abuse this power to tax people more (if people get used to signing the dotted line, they might not notice if the IRS stops accounting correctly for some reason); b) adamant that people know just how much the government is "stealing" from them in taxes and so form a ready constituent for lower taxes; and c) generally don't like the idea of the government telling them what to do anyways, so the government just sending them a bill is the ultimate anathema. * People who are underreporting certain classes of incomes who might be afraid that there will be a push for broader mandatory reporting to help make taxes even simpler. Given that the political power of the second class I've mentioned is quite vast, they are sufficient to prevent the sensible implementation of the IRS-sends-you-a-bill even if TurboTax and the like were to stop lobbying the government.
xoa 7y ago
At least personally (and with a few friends) my experience is that not merely is that argument wrong, it's literally backwards. Taxes are frequently painful enough that by the time I'm finished I'm ready to pay anything the computer tells me to so long as it's just over with. This year TurboTax had my taxes go up about 27% despite my income going down and no extra write-offs and I have no idea why, but I just paid it. I don't really have any interest in revisiting it and trying to dig through things either, because even if I had the free time (which I don't) I'd much rather spend it on other things, and anyway I figure taxes are normally too low in America anyway. Some friends now just pay a professional to do it (which I'm considering for next year), but that still means that now you have to pay even more money for something the IRS could and should just be doing for us all anyway by default. It'd make more sense in the normal scheme of things to only have to pay more to investigate if something seems off. I mean even in general it's hardly an uncommon strategy by shadier companies to get people to pay more: make the process so convoluted and tiresome that people will pay whatever just to make it all go away (hell, see most of the medical industry for a big current events example). It seems like even if someone did want to embark upon an anti-tax strategy it'd make way more sense to increase transparency and ease, just have a big number in an envelope of "We calculate you must pay $X this year, which is $Y (more|less) then last year". Then if it's significantly more people can just focus on that while fresh, rather then arriving to that result after hours of going through stuff with nebulous "you may be audited by the IRS you potential criminal!" hanging over it all and thus being exhausted. So even taking Norquist's goal as a given (which I don't) the strategy seems pretty damn stupid to me at least. The primary result has been that I now hate Norquist and every single person who goes along with him, and would cheerfully support higher, easier taxes not just because easy would be nice but also to piss him off.

by ixwt 7y ago

jcranmer 7y ago

The Norquist anti-tax block wants people to have pain filing taxes so they can militate against it, or at least complain about how much they're being taxed. That said, my sense is that most people don't know what their total yearly tax is, nor their tax rate is, only their refund/tax payment that's due in April 15. As the Republicans found out recently, a lot of people complain about their "tax increase" when they don't don't get a refund, even if their actual tax rate went down.

cannonedhamster 7y ago
Yup this is Republicans once again acting on behalf of a company instead of their constituents. It's not just federal either California had their Ready Return product a while back. We're the only country that does taxes this way. There's no reason to do it either. The IRS already knows how much you owe. Having the ability the revised statements is important and there should be an allocation table of where your tax money went provided with details available publicly.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Honestly, I don't think the free tax filing software companies have enough pull here. There are other constituencies who are against the IRS telling you what you owe: * Special interest groups who have won tax credits/deductions--most of these don't get reported to the IRS, so it makes it easier to kill these off since fewer people will take advantage of them. * The anti-government crowd, who is a) afraid that the IRS could abuse this power to tax people more (if people get used to signing the dotted line, they might not notice if the IRS stops accounting correctly for some reason); b) adamant that people know just how much the government is "stealing" from them in taxes and so form a ready constituent for lower taxes; and c) generally don't like the idea of the government telling them what to do anyways, so the government just sending them a bill is the ultimate anathema. * People who are underreporting certain classes of incomes who might be afraid that there will be a push for broader mandatory reporting to help make taxes even simpler. Given that the political power of the second class I've mentioned is quite vast, they are sufficient to prevent the sensible implementation of the IRS-sends-you-a-bill even if TurboTax and the like were to stop lobbying the government.

xoa 7y ago

At least personally (and with a few friends) my experience is that not merely is that argument wrong, it's literally backwards. Taxes are frequently painful enough that by the time I'm finished I'm ready to pay anything the computer tells me to so long as it's just over with. This year TurboTax had my taxes go up about 27% despite my income going down and no extra write-offs and I have no idea why, but I just paid it. I don't really have any interest in revisiting it and trying to dig through things either, because even if I had the free time (which I don't) I'd much rather spend it on other things, and anyway I figure taxes are normally too low in America anyway. Some friends now just pay a professional to do it (which I'm considering for next year), but that still means that now you have to pay even more money for something the IRS could and should just be doing for us all anyway by default. It'd make more sense in the normal scheme of things to only have to pay more to investigate if something seems off. I mean even in general it's hardly an uncommon strategy by shadier companies to get people to pay more: make the process so convoluted and tiresome that people will pay whatever just to make it all go away (hell, see most of the medical industry for a big current events example). It seems like even if someone did want to embark upon an anti-tax strategy it'd make way more sense to increase transparency and ease, just have a big number in an envelope of "We calculate you must pay $X this year, which is $Y (more|less) then last year". Then if it's significantly more people can just focus on that while fresh, rather then arriving to that result after hours of going through stuff with nebulous "you may be audited by the IRS you potential criminal!" hanging over it all and thus being exhausted. So even taking Norquist's goal as a given (which I don't) the strategy seems pretty damn stupid to me at least. The primary result has been that I now hate Norquist and every single person who goes along with him, and would cheerfully support higher, easier taxes not just because easy would be nice but also to piss him off.