4 ms·

There is no reason for pushing tax accounting into businesses to be better than for it to be on the citizens. It does not make it a better tax, it does not mak

There is no reason for pushing tax accounting into businesses to be better than for it to be on the citizens. It does not make it a better tax, it does not make necesarily make it cheaper to manage, and it has the gravest of dangers of misaligning the incentives between the net tax payer and the net tax consumer.

imtringued 6y ago
Here is a simple example. You buy 10 stocks from Robinhood for $50. You sell them for $75. You now have to pay taxes on this. The broker can just inform the government of this taxable event and thus automatically deduct the tax for you. One argument in favor of filing taxes yourself is that you can transfer the stocks to a different broker. No single broker knows what you have been doing with your stocks. However, the government already exists as a central entity and it can simply receive a full record of all taxable events from all brokers. Where do you see this misaligning the incentives between the net tax payer and the net tax consumer? If anything, it would make cryptocurrency based credit cards viable as a means of payment because the taxation problem is no longer intractable for the individual tax payer.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  You buy a bottle of wine at 10bucks with your income that pays 10%, meaning that it cost you 11 bucks. Know you know you paid taxes and got your fine bottle. You switch it to the store. Now the store charges you 11 dollars for the bottle of wine. It looks like you paid no taxes, but you did. Now you dont know your tax rate, you dont see it, and they can be raised without your approval as it is hidden from you. VAT taxes work like that and have reached sometimes 30%+. Furthermore, it doesnt make taxes simpler, the business still has to do tax handling for you, which means you also pay that company accountant.

4 ms·

There is no reason for pushing tax accounting into businesses to be better than for it to be on the citizens. It does not make it a better tax, it does not mak

by conanbatt 6y ago

imtringued 6y ago
Here is a simple example. You buy 10 stocks from Robinhood for $50. You sell them for $75. You now have to pay taxes on this. The broker can just inform the government of this taxable event and thus automatically deduct the tax for you. One argument in favor of filing taxes yourself is that you can transfer the stocks to a different broker. No single broker knows what you have been doing with your stocks. However, the government already exists as a central entity and it can simply receive a full record of all taxable events from all brokers. Where do you see this misaligning the incentives between the net tax payer and the net tax consumer? If anything, it would make cryptocurrency based credit cards viable as a means of payment because the taxation problem is no longer intractable for the individual tax payer.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  You buy a bottle of wine at 10bucks with your income that pays 10%, meaning that it cost you 11 bucks. Know you know you paid taxes and got your fine bottle. You switch it to the store. Now the store charges you 11 dollars for the bottle of wine. It looks like you paid no taxes, but you did. Now you dont know your tax rate, you dont see it, and they can be raised without your approval as it is hidden from you. VAT taxes work like that and have reached sometimes 30%+. Furthermore, it doesnt make taxes simpler, the business still has to do tax handling for you, which means you also pay that company accountant.