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Couple of notes. 1) The IRS itself gets most of the tax advice wrong that it gives out to taxpayers 2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationsh

Couple of notes. 1) The IRS itself gets most of the tax advice wrong that it gives out to taxpayers 2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear. 3) There is a difference between a simple tax system and a tax system that is simple to operate. Taxpayers deserve a simple tax system. Continuing to automate the byzantine monster we already have is a terrible, terrible idea. How would reform ever take place? 4) Think for a minute what this implies: that a government agency that is responsible for collecting money should also be the sole source for computing how much money is owed. Where else would you allow such a conflict of interest? Should the police come by your house to determine what crimes might have been committed? Would you want inspections by the local health department of your private cookout? Right now we have administrative courts and such, but the principle is fairly clear: reporting by the citizen, oversight and acceptance of reporting by the government, and the court system to sort out problems. You don't start putting everything in one bag under the name of ease-of-operation. That's whacked. 5) I do not believe these candidates campaigned on this. What I believe they said (or meant) was that the system should be simple enough to eliminate the burden on the taxpayer, not that compliance with a bad system should be automated. As a side note, have any of these people ever created software or worked for a project inside the IRS? The guys I know that have could tell you horror stories. Testing alone should give anybody who knows programming and the IRS nightmares. This is a tremendously bad idea, both from an execution and a structural standpoint. When something doesn't work, the answer isn't to just do it harder or throw computers at it. Having said all of that, having the IRS give you the information that's already been entered once so you don't ever have to re-enter things? Excellent idea. ADD: Completing taxes is not hard because we don't have technology applied in the correct manner. It's hard because the tax code is a complex, unintelligible POS. The only people benefitting from continuing to hide the POS that the tax code is are those folks who made it complex in the first place (And will continue to add to its complexity the more that we ignore it)

ellyagg 14y ago
"2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear." Yep. My brother resists giving his credit cards to businesses to keep on file because it makes it much easier for them to get your money habitually, unconsciously, accidentally and by sleight of hand. There should be a little friction at every transaction wherever possible. Frankly, this goes double for the government, which has way more power than any business. I like the government. It does lots of good stuff for me. But I like it at the right price, and I know that just like any other powerful entity, it will take more than its best share given a bad dynamic. In the same way that unconscious eating habits make people obese, unconscious tax policies makes the government obese.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  You should love paying your taxes because you love your government. That means that you and the government should have some sort of transactional relationship. I give the government 100 bucks every payday, and I see the things it provides for me. Then, every election, I get to vote for folks to make adjustments based on my desires. We have a relationship. I understand and am reminded on a regular basis that there is a trade-off I can't emphasize how much that making this relationship go away is a tremendously bad idea. Yes, tax paying can be easy -- if the tax code is easy. But you should do something on a regular basis to think about the agreement you're part of, even if it's just sending an SMS every week to transfer your funds. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the person responsible for making sure the Social Security agency sends out statements to show how much you've paid into the system. He felt, and I agree, that government systems for which there's no interaction eventually become perceived as either magic or worthless -- and either choice was really bad for a democracy over the long term. You shouldn't run a government the same way you'd run one of those companies that wants to automatically deduct money from your account every month -- hoping you'll never miss the charges once the benefit goes away and then they can continue billing. It just won't work.
  - SilasX 14y ago
olau 14y ago
To me, it seems you're attacking a strawman sauced up in government-is-evil hyperbole. The tax system in Denmark is 100% automatic for almost everything. Most people don't have to do anything at all. Once a year, you get a letter or email asking you to check the numbers, you can then go in and add extra information if needed, and that's it. If you discover an error back in time, you can fix that too and get money back or use a credit card to pay if it's in the other direction. Despite this level of automation, the Danish government manages to change the tax rules almost every year.
- talmand 14y ago
  Are we saying that since the system apparently works in Denmark it therefore works everywhere and that there never be any government-is-evil considerations?
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    What a bizarre exaggeration of the parent comment. The comment about Denmark appears to serve as an existence proof, demonstrating that there isn't any inherent property of tax systems that means they must necessarily be convoluted and evil.
    - talmand 14y ago
      I would agree with you if it weren't for the "government-is-evil hyperbole" line. I took that as an example of saying "that person must be wrong about their experience because this other thing I experience is actually good." That line says to me "you are wrong" with a description that tries to explain why. I admit I could be mistaken but that's the way I read it. I saw nothing in the comment along the lines of this is how it could be if some things were different.
forgingahead 14y ago
Thank you -- very well written. It would be incredibly interesting to have employees write their own withholding cheque to the government every month, as opposed to having the employers do it automatically. There is absolutely a need for us to be more aware of our relationship to the government and the power dynamics involved.
scdoshi 14y ago
"4) Think for a minute what this implies: that a government agency that is responsible for collecting money should also be the sole source for computing how much money is owed." Did you even read the article? All they are saying is the IRS could "pre-fill" your forms. If you don't agree, you can change the values, or get a CPA and do the whole thing completely independently. Where did you get the 'govt would be the sole source' argument? Baseless fear-mongering like this doesn't do any good for any one (except Intuit maybe)
guelo 14y ago
1) Source? 2-3) The idea that it should be painful to pay your taxes so that people won't want to pay their taxes is a political idea, not a technocratic idea. But I don't give a shit about your politics. Keep your politics out of my government services. Political meddling by ideologues is what makes government services so awful. Whatever the government is required to do after the law is passed should be done in as friendly and efficient manner as possible. Advocating for the most painful possible experience for millions of people is evil in my opinion. 4) Nobody said anything about "sole source". You could still get your taxes prepared by whoever you want. The rest of this paragraph doesn't make sense.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- talmand 14y ago
  He's not quite correct in saying "most", but they do give bad advice a large amount of the time. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7492730#.UVHtJBkuF7c http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7492730#.UVHtJBkuF7c I would agree with your statement about politics and whatnot. As for "sole source"; yes, you can have anyone prepare your taxes but the IRS still says yes or no to what they were provided. If the IRS decides that your preparer was wrong then that's where it might get interesting. I read it as saying there are possible issues with having one agency having both judgement and collection powers. It's much like the complaint lately about prosecutor offices benefiting from seizure laws leading to obvious abuses, such as the attempted hotel seizure in NY I believe.
datasage 14y ago
Even though the tax code is complex, a large number of people just need to file a 1040EZ and don't get to experience the complexity of the tax system. There is no reason why these filings can't be automated to start while the tax code is simplified to include more people in automated filings.

ellyagg 14y ago

"2) Paying taxes is one of the few transactional relationships you have with your government. If you ask me, a government representative should come to your office and you should pay him in cash, not hide and automate taxes so that they disappear." Yep. My brother resists giving his credit cards to businesses to keep on file because it makes it much easier for them to get your money habitually, unconsciously, accidentally and by sleight of hand. There should be a little friction at every transaction wherever possible. Frankly, this goes double for the government, which has way more power than any business. I like the government. It does lots of good stuff for me. But I like it at the right price, and I know that just like any other powerful entity, it will take more than its best share given a bad dynamic. In the same way that unconscious eating habits make people obese, unconscious tax policies makes the government obese.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
You should love paying your taxes because you love your government. That means that you and the government should have some sort of transactional relationship. I give the government 100 bucks every payday, and I see the things it provides for me. Then, every election, I get to vote for folks to make adjustments based on my desires. We have a relationship. I understand and am reminded on a regular basis that there is a trade-off I can't emphasize how much that making this relationship go away is a tremendously bad idea. Yes, tax paying can be easy -- if the tax code is easy. But you should do something on a regular basis to think about the agreement you're part of, even if it's just sending an SMS every week to transfer your funds. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the person responsible for making sure the Social Security agency sends out statements to show how much you've paid into the system. He felt, and I agree, that government systems for which there's no interaction eventually become perceived as either magic or worthless -- and either choice was really bad for a democracy over the long term. You shouldn't run a government the same way you'd run one of those companies that wants to automatically deduct money from your account every month -- hoping you'll never miss the charges once the benefit goes away and then they can continue billing. It just won't work.
- SilasX 14y ago

olau 14y ago

To me, it seems you're attacking a strawman sauced up in government-is-evil hyperbole. The tax system in Denmark is 100% automatic for almost everything. Most people don't have to do anything at all. Once a year, you get a letter or email asking you to check the numbers, you can then go in and add extra information if needed, and that's it. If you discover an error back in time, you can fix that too and get money back or use a credit card to pay if it's in the other direction. Despite this level of automation, the Danish government manages to change the tax rules almost every year.

talmand 14y ago
Are we saying that since the system apparently works in Denmark it therefore works everywhere and that there never be any government-is-evil considerations?
- nitrogen 14y ago
  What a bizarre exaggeration of the parent comment. The comment about Denmark appears to serve as an existence proof, demonstrating that there isn't any inherent property of tax systems that means they must necessarily be convoluted and evil.
  - talmand 14y ago
    I would agree with you if it weren't for the "government-is-evil hyperbole" line. I took that as an example of saying "that person must be wrong about their experience because this other thing I experience is actually good." That line says to me "you are wrong" with a description that tries to explain why. I admit I could be mistaken but that's the way I read it. I saw nothing in the comment along the lines of this is how it could be if some things were different.

forgingahead 14y ago

Thank you -- very well written. It would be incredibly interesting to have employees write their own withholding cheque to the government every month, as opposed to having the employers do it automatically. There is absolutely a need for us to be more aware of our relationship to the government and the power dynamics involved.

scdoshi 14y ago

"4) Think for a minute what this implies: that a government agency that is responsible for collecting money should also be the sole source for computing how much money is owed." Did you even read the article? All they are saying is the IRS could "pre-fill" your forms. If you don't agree, you can change the values, or get a CPA and do the whole thing completely independently. Where did you get the 'govt would be the sole source' argument? Baseless fear-mongering like this doesn't do any good for any one (except Intuit maybe)

guelo 14y ago

1) Source? 2-3) The idea that it should be painful to pay your taxes so that people won't want to pay their taxes is a political idea, not a technocratic idea. But I don't give a shit about your politics. Keep your politics out of my government services. Political meddling by ideologues is what makes government services so awful. Whatever the government is required to do after the law is passed should be done in as friendly and efficient manner as possible. Advocating for the most painful possible experience for millions of people is evil in my opinion. 4) Nobody said anything about "sole source". You could still get your taxes prepared by whoever you want. The rest of this paragraph doesn't make sense.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
talmand 14y ago
He's not quite correct in saying "most", but they do give bad advice a large amount of the time. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7492730#.UVHtJBkuF7c http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7492730#.UVHtJBkuF7c I would agree with your statement about politics and whatnot. As for "sole source"; yes, you can have anyone prepare your taxes but the IRS still says yes or no to what they were provided. If the IRS decides that your preparer was wrong then that's where it might get interesting. I read it as saying there are possible issues with having one agency having both judgement and collection powers. It's much like the complaint lately about prosecutor offices benefiting from seizure laws leading to obvious abuses, such as the attempted hotel seizure in NY I believe.

datasage 14y ago

Even though the tax code is complex, a large number of people just need to file a 1040EZ and don't get to experience the complexity of the tax system. There is no reason why these filings can't be automated to start while the tax code is simplified to include more people in automated filings.