5 ms·

Couldn’t a program just do this automatically?

by jmercouris 5y ago

beckingz 5y ago
Taxes? Yes. No reason that most people shouldn't have the government do their taxes for them.
- briandear 5y ago
  Not sure why it makes sense to have a group with a financial incentive to take more of your money be the ones doing the calculating. The IRS can be a nasty, evil organization — In 2013, then Acting Director of Exempt Organizations at IRS, Lois Lerner, apologized to a room of tax lawyers for the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of conservative political groups. If the IRS is in charge of doing people’s taxes, there is a non-zero chance that the IRS will not be completely trustworthy. The real conversation should be about moving to a consumption tax and eliminating the political power that comes from income taxes. The current system is intentionally complex — designed to give politicians power to favor and disfavor behaviors and industries.
  - beckingz 5y ago
    The IRS currently receives almost all the information needed to do taxes for most people. There are not technical reasons why they could not share their calculations with you and give you the option of accepting them or doing them yourself and submitting them anyways. But I agree, the current system is intentionally complex and should be simplified.
  - Shacklz 5y ago
    Seems to work perfectly well in other countries, why should it not in the US? Just make it so that it's only already 'prepared', you still have to sign them off or correct them if there's something wrong.
  - jfim 5y ago
    The consumption tax is something that sounds like a great idea, but in practice isn't. For taxes to be fair, people who have more means should pay more, as it's less of a burden on them than people of lesser means. If you think of someone who's not too well off, their entire paycheck is going to food and rent, and not savings. For wealthy people, some part of their paycheck is spent on consumption of things, but a larger part of it goes to savings and investments. There's a reason why rich people go to tax havens that have no income tax and only sales tax.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    Your example of the IRS being evil is their director publicly apologizing for overstepping the line? Wow, I wonder what you think of the other 3 letter agencies then..
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kevingadd 5y ago
The amount of code necessary would be pretty significant, even the software used by CPAs is somewhat complex and changes every year. But yes, software could do all of this - especially if the tax code were not intentionally convoluted in order to satisfy greedy lobbyists
jonny_eh 5y ago
I'm convinced dang is at least part-machine.
- dang 5y ago
  I did the hard work once and now just cons the latest thread onto the head of the list.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
Do you mean build a list of related threads? One would think so, but it wouldn't be simple. You'd need to choose keywords, figure out relevancy. This case is a good example of the difficulty—the only word that (sort of) appears in all these titles is "tax", but searching on that alone would cast too wide a net. My sense is that we'd be better off writing software to allow the community to collaborate on a list of related URLs. That's the plan anyhow.
formerkrogemp 5y ago
Due to lobbying from primarily Intuit and others, no, the IRS cannot legally file for you.

Couldn’t a program just do this automatically?

beckingz 5y ago

Taxes? Yes. No reason that most people shouldn't have the government do their taxes for them.

briandear 5y ago
Not sure why it makes sense to have a group with a financial incentive to take more of your money be the ones doing the calculating. The IRS can be a nasty, evil organization — In 2013, then Acting Director of Exempt Organizations at IRS, Lois Lerner, apologized to a room of tax lawyers for the IRS’s inappropriate targeting of conservative political groups. If the IRS is in charge of doing people’s taxes, there is a non-zero chance that the IRS will not be completely trustworthy. The real conversation should be about moving to a consumption tax and eliminating the political power that comes from income taxes. The current system is intentionally complex — designed to give politicians power to favor and disfavor behaviors and industries.
- beckingz 5y ago
  The IRS currently receives almost all the information needed to do taxes for most people. There are not technical reasons why they could not share their calculations with you and give you the option of accepting them or doing them yourself and submitting them anyways. But I agree, the current system is intentionally complex and should be simplified.
- Shacklz 5y ago
  Seems to work perfectly well in other countries, why should it not in the US? Just make it so that it's only already 'prepared', you still have to sign them off or correct them if there's something wrong.
- jfim 5y ago
  The consumption tax is something that sounds like a great idea, but in practice isn't. For taxes to be fair, people who have more means should pay more, as it's less of a burden on them than people of lesser means. If you think of someone who's not too well off, their entire paycheck is going to food and rent, and not savings. For wealthy people, some part of their paycheck is spent on consumption of things, but a larger part of it goes to savings and investments. There's a reason why rich people go to tax havens that have no income tax and only sales tax.
- namdnay 5y ago
  Your example of the IRS being evil is their director publicly apologizing for overstepping the line? Wow, I wonder what you think of the other 3 letter agencies then..
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kevingadd 5y ago

The amount of code necessary would be pretty significant, even the software used by CPAs is somewhat complex and changes every year. But yes, software could do all of this - especially if the tax code were not intentionally convoluted in order to satisfy greedy lobbyists

jonny_eh 5y ago

I'm convinced dang is at least part-machine.

dang 5y ago
I did the hard work once and now just cons the latest thread onto the head of the list.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

Do you mean build a list of related threads? One would think so, but it wouldn't be simple. You'd need to choose keywords, figure out relevancy. This case is a good example of the difficulty—the only word that (sort of) appears in all these titles is "tax", but searching on that alone would cast too wide a net. My sense is that we'd be better off writing software to allow the community to collaborate on a list of related URLs. That's the plan anyhow.

formerkrogemp 5y ago

Due to lobbying from primarily Intuit and others, no, the IRS cannot legally file for you.