4 ms·
While this could help with the mechanical calculations and preparation of returns, the wider point about ‘verbosity and ambiguity of human language’ can’t be ne
by andylynch 4y ago
While this could help with the mechanical calculations and preparation of returns, the wider point about ‘verbosity and ambiguity of human language’ can’t be nearly so easily dealt with outside the simplest cases, and would likely make the tax code /harder/ for people concerned to interpret and reason about, which is probably the opposite of the desired result.
Firstly the actual text of the law must be as legislated.
Secondly, law and most certainly tax law is necessarily nuanced in interpretation and the consequences for taxpayers and the government are material (to use a relatively simple and well-known British case, a machine-executable model would be unhelpful in determining whether Jaffa Cakes should be taxed for VAT as biscuits, or exempt as cakes. Then ask about chocolate chip cookies (zero rated) vs chocolate digestives (taxed!)). Stuff like this and more is argued about all the time.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoThat's why you should keep things as simple as possible and avoid exceptions and special cases, which legislators are experts at creating in tax codes. In your example this is because someone argued that staple food should not be taxed. Right, what is staple food? Obviously they decided that biscuits were but not cake. Pandora box is opened as soon as you allow any special cases.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoHow would you encode trillions of possible permutations of special cases?
- BlueTemplar 4y agoWell, there's also that law which mandates that any algorithm used in an administrative decision must be explained in simple language upon request... but I am not certain that "administrative decisions" also covers the tax code ? (Though frankly, it should.)
- klabb3 4y ago> a machine-executable model would be unhelpful in determining whether Jaffa Cakes should be taxed for VAT as biscuits, or exempt as cakes. You can have these definitions remain vague and still have an algorithm that is well defined over pre-labeled data. The purely mechanical steps based on arithmetic could (and should!) be defined as machine-parseable code or formulas.
- hugh-avherald 4y agoThere's considerable complexity in working out, for example, Australian personal income tax given a person's tax return (and assuming no dishonesty or error in it). I've seen mere approximations reach thousands of lines of C.