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Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neith

Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neither should it be acceptable for companies. It may technically be legal (which I would argue is something that should be changed) but that does not mean that it is automatically good. Yes, TurboTax will make more money thanks to their incredibly effective lobbying efforts, but the price is that all Americans have a somewhat worse experience filing their taxes each year. This compounds over hundreds of millions of taxpayers and most importantly, is completely unnecessary. If I managed to somehow convince the government to pass a law that everyone has to pay me 1$ every year, that would clearly be in my economic interest, but nobody would argue that that would be a good thing. Lastly I highly doubt that TurboTax is employing hundreds of thousands of people.

slg 6y ago
>Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neither should it be acceptable for companies. It may technically be legal (which I would argue is something that should be changed) but that does not mean that it is automatically good. The point of my post isn't to excuse the lobbying. It is to blame the lobbying on the people who could actually curtail it as well as recognizing that almost everyone would do the exact same thing that the tax prep industry is doing given their situation. >Yes, TurboTax will make more money thanks to their incredibly effective lobbying efforts, but the price is that all Americans have a somewhat worse experience filing their taxes each year. This compounds over hundreds of millions of taxpayers and most importantly, is completely unnecessary. Almost every law is going to make someone worse off in some way. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that every lobbying organization needs to weigh every possible outcome. Even if they did, they are inherently biased. Judging the ultimate outcomes is the job of the politicians being lobbied. >Lastly I highly doubt that TurboTax is employing hundreds of thousands of people. I was speaking about the industry as a whole and not specifically TurboTax. H&R Block itself balloons up to over 90k employees during tax prep season. [1] You can maybe nitpick depending on what exact definition you use for "job", but there is little double that hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the tax prep industry over the course of the year. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block#Corporate_affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block#Corporate_affairs
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  One wonders if one solution to the problem of unemployment caused by an improved tax system would be for the federal government to figure out a plan in which the existing industry converts into government contractors. Might be easier for the IRS to get Intuit to create their free public tax reporting software rather than try to build it themselves.
- lsiebert 6y ago
  If the government had a free filing system that showed you what you owed, that would probably be less costly for everyone. Then they could hire everyone at turbotax to go after people dodging taxes. The fact that we've continually shrunk the IRS, you know, the one part of the government that explicitly is meant to fund the government, is deeply problematic, and has led to less audits for wealthy people, and more for poor people.

slg 6y ago

>Acting in your self-interest does not excuse you from the consequences of your actions. That is not a justification one would accept from individuals and neither should it be acceptable for companies. It may technically be legal (which I would argue is something that should be changed) but that does not mean that it is automatically good. The point of my post isn't to excuse the lobbying. It is to blame the lobbying on the people who could actually curtail it as well as recognizing that almost everyone would do the exact same thing that the tax prep industry is doing given their situation. >Yes, TurboTax will make more money thanks to their incredibly effective lobbying efforts, but the price is that all Americans have a somewhat worse experience filing their taxes each year. This compounds over hundreds of millions of taxpayers and most importantly, is completely unnecessary. Almost every law is going to make someone worse off in some way. I don't think it is reasonable to expect that every lobbying organization needs to weigh every possible outcome. Even if they did, they are inherently biased. Judging the ultimate outcomes is the job of the politicians being lobbied. >Lastly I highly doubt that TurboTax is employing hundreds of thousands of people. I was speaking about the industry as a whole and not specifically TurboTax. H&R Block itself balloons up to over 90k employees during tax prep season. [1] You can maybe nitpick depending on what exact definition you use for "job", but there is little double that hundreds of thousands of people are employed in the tax prep industry over the course of the year. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block#Corporate_affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%26R_Block#Corporate_affairs

Apocryphon 6y ago
One wonders if one solution to the problem of unemployment caused by an improved tax system would be for the federal government to figure out a plan in which the existing industry converts into government contractors. Might be easier for the IRS to get Intuit to create their free public tax reporting software rather than try to build it themselves.
lsiebert 6y ago
If the government had a free filing system that showed you what you owed, that would probably be less costly for everyone. Then they could hire everyone at turbotax to go after people dodging taxes. The fact that we've continually shrunk the IRS, you know, the one part of the government that explicitly is meant to fund the government, is deeply problematic, and has led to less audits for wealthy people, and more for poor people.