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For anyone interested in why the system looks the way it does, I recommend patio11's insightful recent blog post, which is nominally about payroll systems but e

For anyone interested in why the system looks the way it does, I recommend patio11's insightful recent blog post, which is nominally about payroll systems but ends up discussing the history of taxation in the US because that's the origination of many of these systems: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/payroll-providers-power-respect/ https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/payroll-providers-pow... A relevant quotation for much of the discussion here: > And, relevant to the question of whether Intuit controls U.S. tax policy: it can’t, because that would imply they have wrested control from Norquist. Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically.

nvr219 3y ago
Norquist is so flipping ridiculous.
leereeves 3y ago
> Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically. When phrased that way, it sounds ridiculous. But those are the author's words, not Norquist's or ATR's. What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. In their words (from the article): "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier): > ATR [Norquist runs Americans for Tax Reform] is institutionally skeptical of withholding, because they believe that withholding allows one to increase taxes by stealth. I don’t think it is excessively partisan to say that, if one phrases that claim a bit more neutrally as “withholding increases tax compliance by decoupling public sentiment and policy changes,” the people who designed the withholding system would say “I’m glad the National Archives makes our design documents so accessible. We wrote them to be read!”
- koolba 3y ago
  > "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth.
  - consp 3y ago
    > A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth. That would definitely be a horrible idea. No, I won't vote for drivable roads because I just payed my taxes, potholes be damned. And afterwards complain about the potholes anyway.
    - koolba 3y ago
      I never said you don’t get to vote if you don’t pay your taxes. Nor that you have to pay taxes to vote. I’m saying those that do pay taxes should have the totality of the amount of their income that is going to the government in mind when they head to the polls.
    - leereeves 3y ago
      I think most people would still vote for drivable roads, and that there are a lot of government policies that could be eliminated before drivable roads are even on the table.
      - morelisp 3y ago
        My experience in Omaha suggests drivable roads get sacrificed much sooner than one might expect. (And no, not for something nice like bike paths or even like, functional sidewalks.)
      - int_19h 3y ago
        There are places in US where the firefighters won't respond to a fire in buildings where owners haven't specifically paid the bill for their own coverage, because the local voters like it that way (those that haven't had their house burn down while the coverage lapsed, anyway).
- consp 3y ago
  > And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier) How on earth is this possible? Instead of not having any clue, you actually get to see everything. My taxes have been automatic for years and I still have to approve every step of them along the way and I get to see and approve everything which had been filled in. The big difference is I now not have to spend hours researching everything if it remains the same as it was last year and only check if it changes.
  - tpmoney 3y ago
    Two psychological mechanisms I can think of for this: It's one of the reasons why every company in the world wants you on auto pay. It's a lot easier to keep you as a customer through the price hikes if it's only a line item on your bank statement rather than an explicit payment you're making every month. If most people are the same every year, then a small increase from one year to the next barely gets noticed because people are going to be looking for changes to their records, not changes on the bottom line, so the fact that the bottom line is 0.5% more this year will be more likely missed in the face of answering "are the records the IRS claims they have about me the right ones". The other is related to the concept of "price anchoring". Approving pre-filled numbers becomes more about validating that your information is correct, rather than determining (and looking at) the tax value for the year. It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is. Whether it actually plays out in reality and tax payer behavior is up for debate. but certainly there's a reason why so much of sales and financing tactics throughout commercial world tries very very hard to steer you away from the actual math when you pay for something.
    - consp 3y ago
      > It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is. Considering the penalties for getting it wrong. Simply no. You assume it is correct if it matches the data you have, not by default. What it does do is stop you from having to calculate the nitty whitty parts of the statements when the data from the tax agency matches the ones you got from the bank, your employer etc and you have the partial coverage of having been provided wrong data. You are still wrong but -most likely- you can amend if there are discrepancies outside of your control. You get an extra point of reference, not a -get out of filing for free card-. Since the system I'm part of also forces companies to provide specialized summaries it's a lot easier to get the right data as well. Correctly filing (which includes ALL deductables) should never be so complicated you require a special degree or a leeching company to do it for you.
- snotrockets 3y ago
  Norquist don't want people to be aware of taxes. They want to not pay taxes; and believe that if taxes would be citizen friendly, people would be more welcoming to pay them. By making it as obnoxious as possible, they hope to have a society that provides them services by the magic of fairy dust.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  > What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. Norquist is entirely disingenuous. Nothing would stop a tax payer from looking into the details of taxes assessed just because the government prepared something for them. (In fact, nothing would prevent a tax payer to continue to use TurboTax to verify and understand the taxation.) On the flip side, nothing about the current system actually makes tax payers more aware of the taxes they’re paying. Half the marketing of TurboTax is to allow you to finish your taxes quickly by basically just clicking through and adding basic information. Speaking for myself, I would definitely be _more_ aware of taxes I’m paying if the government would prepare taxes for me. When comparing my filing of taxes in the US to the filing in Sweden that’s definitely the case. Sweden sends me information which I can then verify and correct if necessary. The grunge work is done and I can focus on details. In the US, I need to waste a bunch of time duplicating work and the go through the details later (and hopefully have enough time and energy to do so). P.S. I keep using TurboTax as an example but they’re obviously not the only one. I chose them since they’ve parasitically attached themself to the current system and lobbied government to keep it from making things more efficient at a detriment to their bottom line.
neilkk 3y ago
patio11 has a huge and well known bias here, which is that he wants to claim, not necessarily with evidence, that all inefficiency is caused by governments and not by the private sector. A comparison of tax filing in the United States with other countries, including those where governments are much bigger and more interventionist, leads to a different conclusion.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Indeed! Japan’s system is very efficient, and he has lived there for some time, so he should be familiar. Similarly, it took the US forever to implement an instant payment system (commercial banks built Zelle via Early Warning Systems and RTP via The Clearinghouse, and the Fed finally built FedNow after Congress directed them to in order to ensure universal access) while India and Brazil rapidly rolled out their implementations (UPI and Pix, respectively). These are intentional choices. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/filing-taxes-in-japan-is-a-breeze-why-not-here.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/filing-taxes-in-j...
  - pezezin 3y ago
    Really? I live in Japan, last month I had to fill my taxes, and I found the process to be really convoluted and annoying compared to my home country (Spain). Likewise, banks feel really obsolete and inefficient here. I shudder to imagine how bad the American system is to make Japan look good :/
    - mcherm 3y ago
      My wife calculates and submits our taxes (here in the US). It typically takes her 40 to 60 hours to complete, and that's after spending around $100 USD on tax preparation software to make it easier. To be fair, our taxes are more complex than many people's (I live in a different state than my employer and we have some stock market investments), but it's still ABSURDLY difficult. And I'm not counting the time needed to respond to Federal or State follow-ups 9 months later where they question the values we provided. That happens to us about every 2-3 years. So far it has only once found a minor error on our part.

nvr219 3y ago

Norquist is so flipping ridiculous.

leereeves 3y ago

> Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically. When phrased that way, it sounds ridiculous. But those are the author's words, not Norquist's or ATR's. What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. In their words (from the article): "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier): > ATR [Norquist runs Americans for Tax Reform] is institutionally skeptical of withholding, because they believe that withholding allows one to increase taxes by stealth. I don’t think it is excessively partisan to say that, if one phrases that claim a bit more neutrally as “withholding increases tax compliance by decoupling public sentiment and policy changes,” the people who designed the withholding system would say “I’m glad the National Archives makes our design documents so accessible. We wrote them to be read!”

koolba 3y ago
> "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance." A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth.
- consp 3y ago
  > A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth. That would definitely be a horrible idea. No, I won't vote for drivable roads because I just payed my taxes, potholes be damned. And afterwards complain about the potholes anyway.
  - koolba 3y ago
    I never said you don’t get to vote if you don’t pay your taxes. Nor that you have to pay taxes to vote. I’m saying those that do pay taxes should have the totality of the amount of their income that is going to the government in mind when they head to the polls.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    I think most people would still vote for drivable roads, and that there are a lot of government policies that could be eliminated before drivable roads are even on the table.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      My experience in Omaha suggests drivable roads get sacrificed much sooner than one might expect. (And no, not for something nice like bike paths or even like, functional sidewalks.)
    - int_19h 3y ago
      There are places in US where the firefighters won't respond to a fire in buildings where owners haven't specifically paid the bill for their own coverage, because the local voters like it that way (those that haven't had their house burn down while the coverage lapsed, anyway).
consp 3y ago
> And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier) How on earth is this possible? Instead of not having any clue, you actually get to see everything. My taxes have been automatic for years and I still have to approve every step of them along the way and I get to see and approve everything which had been filled in. The big difference is I now not have to spend hours researching everything if it remains the same as it was last year and only check if it changes.
- tpmoney 3y ago
  Two psychological mechanisms I can think of for this: It's one of the reasons why every company in the world wants you on auto pay. It's a lot easier to keep you as a customer through the price hikes if it's only a line item on your bank statement rather than an explicit payment you're making every month. If most people are the same every year, then a small increase from one year to the next barely gets noticed because people are going to be looking for changes to their records, not changes on the bottom line, so the fact that the bottom line is 0.5% more this year will be more likely missed in the face of answering "are the records the IRS claims they have about me the right ones". The other is related to the concept of "price anchoring". Approving pre-filled numbers becomes more about validating that your information is correct, rather than determining (and looking at) the tax value for the year. It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is. Whether it actually plays out in reality and tax payer behavior is up for debate. but certainly there's a reason why so much of sales and financing tactics throughout commercial world tries very very hard to steer you away from the actual math when you pay for something.
  - consp 3y ago
    > It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is. Considering the penalties for getting it wrong. Simply no. You assume it is correct if it matches the data you have, not by default. What it does do is stop you from having to calculate the nitty whitty parts of the statements when the data from the tax agency matches the ones you got from the bank, your employer etc and you have the partial coverage of having been provided wrong data. You are still wrong but -most likely- you can amend if there are discrepancies outside of your control. You get an extra point of reference, not a -get out of filing for free card-. Since the system I'm part of also forces companies to provide specialized summaries it's a lot easier to get the right data as well. Correctly filing (which includes ALL deductables) should never be so complicated you require a special degree or a leeching company to do it for you.
snotrockets 3y ago
Norquist don't want people to be aware of taxes. They want to not pay taxes; and believe that if taxes would be citizen friendly, people would be more welcoming to pay them. By making it as obnoxious as possible, they hope to have a society that provides them services by the magic of fairy dust.
CogitoCogito 3y ago
> What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. Norquist is entirely disingenuous. Nothing would stop a tax payer from looking into the details of taxes assessed just because the government prepared something for them. (In fact, nothing would prevent a tax payer to continue to use TurboTax to verify and understand the taxation.) On the flip side, nothing about the current system actually makes tax payers more aware of the taxes they’re paying. Half the marketing of TurboTax is to allow you to finish your taxes quickly by basically just clicking through and adding basic information. Speaking for myself, I would definitely be _more_ aware of taxes I’m paying if the government would prepare taxes for me. When comparing my filing of taxes in the US to the filing in Sweden that’s definitely the case. Sweden sends me information which I can then verify and correct if necessary. The grunge work is done and I can focus on details. In the US, I need to waste a bunch of time duplicating work and the go through the details later (and hopefully have enough time and energy to do so). P.S. I keep using TurboTax as an example but they’re obviously not the only one. I chose them since they’ve parasitically attached themself to the current system and lobbied government to keep it from making things more efficient at a detriment to their bottom line.

neilkk 3y ago

patio11 has a huge and well known bias here, which is that he wants to claim, not necessarily with evidence, that all inefficiency is caused by governments and not by the private sector. A comparison of tax filing in the United States with other countries, including those where governments are much bigger and more interventionist, leads to a different conclusion.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Indeed! Japan’s system is very efficient, and he has lived there for some time, so he should be familiar. Similarly, it took the US forever to implement an instant payment system (commercial banks built Zelle via Early Warning Systems and RTP via The Clearinghouse, and the Fed finally built FedNow after Congress directed them to in order to ensure universal access) while India and Brazil rapidly rolled out their implementations (UPI and Pix, respectively). These are intentional choices. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/filing-taxes-in-japan-is-a-breeze-why-not-here.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/14/opinion/filing-taxes-in-j...
- pezezin 3y ago
  Really? I live in Japan, last month I had to fill my taxes, and I found the process to be really convoluted and annoying compared to my home country (Spain). Likewise, banks feel really obsolete and inefficient here. I shudder to imagine how bad the American system is to make Japan look good :/
  - mcherm 3y ago
    My wife calculates and submits our taxes (here in the US). It typically takes her 40 to 60 hours to complete, and that's after spending around $100 USD on tax preparation software to make it easier. To be fair, our taxes are more complex than many people's (I live in a different state than my employer and we have some stock market investments), but it's still ABSURDLY difficult. And I'm not counting the time needed to respond to Federal or State follow-ups 9 months later where they question the values we provided. That happens to us about every 2-3 years. So far it has only once found a minor error on our part.