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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

> Putting perfect laws as code is essentially a humanlike-AI-complete problem. That is, the necessary code would also have to implicitly and completely implement our intuitions about morality, and the mechanisms behind emotions and suffering.

I don't think this applies to all areas of law. Take tax law, for instance. Is there any moral or ethical or otherwise well-founded argument in favour of having tax laws interpreted less strictly than a machine would?

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There have been multiple tax tribunal cases in the UK over what constitutes a cake or a biscuit. We have seen multiple cases over the distinction between an employee and a self-employed contractor. Even if you have an ultra-minimalist flat tax code, you're still going to have disputes over what constitutes earned income and what is or isn't a legitimate business expense. Tax is hard.

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/vat-food/vfood6260

The US Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes are legally considered vegetables for tax purposes, even though scientifically they're classified as fruits.

And the funny thing is, this sounds entirely reasonable. As they say, knowledge is knowing that tomatoes are fruits; wisdom is knowing that you should not put them in a fruit salad.

> scientifically they're classified as fruits

Honestly this is just blatant sophistry, given that other 'fruits' include blueberries, pumpkins, cucumbers, avocados, peanuts, lima beans, raspberries, and arguably pinecones.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit#Table_of_fruit_examples et al

Well, are Pringles "potato chips" ("crisps")? The legal answer has changed over time and there are taxes to be paid in one case that's not paid in the other.

http://www.taxgirl.com/pringles-successfully-argues-that-the...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7490346.stm

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/ma...

Jaffa Cakes, Budweiser, and other products have had similar cases in different places as to what they are or are not. They impact taxes, product labels, advertising, and more.

At one time there were customers who couldn't get budget room for a computer, so Digital Equipment Corporation sold them the Programmable Digital Processor because automated processing was fine. They made 14 minicomputers in the PDP line, and the PDP-11 was manufactured until 1996, just two years before the acquisition by Compaq. While this probably didn't save them or their customers taxes anywhere, it did help their customers the wiggle room to actually be customers in the 1960s. https://digital.com/about/dec/

Never underestimate the value of a good technicality or shrug off a negative one. They can be make-or-break details.

Not sure how deep you're intending to go on "tax law", but from my cursory knowledge I'd wonder if in judging eligibility for tax deductions related to disadvantaged status in society, or disability, we might be influenced by our moral compass, though I know not enough to validate if this wiggle room exists or not. I suppose the question further up is if it should exist, which is another matter entirely.

Yes - presuppose you fall seriously ill right before a filing deadline. The IRS actually covers such cases under a one time abatement policy.

IIRC, Liberace was once involved in a tax case where the question was if his on-stage costumes were "clothes" or a business expense.

Ethical questions can take weird forms.

I could see it - a willful and deliberate disregard for the law can be treated differently to a simple mistake.

To my knowledge, even in existing legal systems financial laws are given much more leeway than other areas of the law. This is generally due to the well-founded belief that people working in the financial industry are going to find loopholes, and therefore many tax laws are non-specific. Compare to how some internet forums have rules along the lines of "don't be a jerk".

I am under the impression that Canada, for instance, has a law that basically says "if you do something just for the tax benefit we reserve the right to call you out".

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