Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

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> The IRS themselves need to provide this "auto tax" service.

Interestingly, they now can: under the Free File program, tax prep companies would offer free filing (for taxpayers below 72k AGI) and the IRS would not compete with their service.

After a ProPublica investigation in their dark pattern shenanigans (leading to about 3.5% of taxpayers to use the program when 70% are eligible) confirmed by the HSGA Senate Committee and NYS DFS, the IRS both updated its rule to preclude e.g. hiding Free File programs for search engine, and removed the rule which prevented them from competing.

Sadly the IRS has been hamstrung time and again by the GOP, both financially and politically. They can't even do their core jobs of collecting tax and auditing the taxpayers they need to, so it's unlikely they'll have the clout and funds to set up a free filing program any time soon, let alone one properly integrated with their likely antiquated and in dire need of updates computer systems.

> the GOP

We now have an opportunity to test your hypothesis- for at least two years there will be single party rule by the other party.

Single party rule would be true only if the Senate was not encumbered by the filibuster.

The majority party can remove the filibuster rule anytime it likes, as they have done for several special cases in recent years.

The current majority party has just enough DINOs to prevent that from happening.

That might be a notion too drenched in game theory.

The filibuster itself is not some sort of switch that gets flipped. The parties need to be careful how often they use it and for which reasons. It's just a part of the procedural possibilities and its effectiveness is not some sort of set-in-stone rule.

In our particular case right now, the reason the Senate does not allow us single-party rule is due to the makeup of the senators themselves. It only takes a few to not vote down the party line to negate single-party rule. We've seen this a few times already since the start of the new administration.

This is incredibly naive of the current way the filibuster is employed. There is no care in how it's used because the line in the sand has gone from "did you vote on bill" to "did you block bill from being voted on" for attack ads. How can you say we're "careful" when it's tripled in usage.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/20...

The current reason we care about a few senators is because we are looking at budget reconciliation where you only need 50 votes. Outside of that you need 60 votes or you get filibustered.

Your own article proves my very point:

> Note that, in some cases, filibustered bills were eventually passed but with substantial concessions to the senators blocking the original bill.

We have clearly seen over the past many decades an evolution in the kinds of bills we pass, and I think it's quite easy to observe that controversial bills are front-loaded specifically to combat this. The negotiations have changed to meet the needs of the new battlefield.

Perhaps this is "naive," of me but the kinds of bills the Senate has passed recently have me surprised its use has only gone up 3x.

I can find no way to read this comment generously.

Your original point was that use of the fillibuster was judicious. The article goes on, at length, about exactly how the use of the fillibuster has only substantially increased over time.

And then here you plucked out a single sentence from the article used as a good-faith caveat before presenting data to say the article "proved your point."

I sometimes feel surreal that US Congress people get paid to professionally kill time.

While true it's not too often that filibusterers actually happen. The threat of doing it is usually enough to kill a vote.

And Senate Majority Leader Joe Manchin has stated that he is unequivocally against removing the filibuster.

Chuck Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader.

That’s the joke

Joe Manchin can thwart or shape any legislation that has only Democrat support, which is a large amount of de facto power to wield, hence the joke.

I love it when people still have faith in either party cleaning up the tax code (aka reducing the size of government). Ain't happening.

> I love it when people still have faith in either party cleaning up the tax code (aka reducing the size of government).

“Cleaning up the tax code” and “reducing the size of government" aren't really the same thing; the former could very easily serve the opposite purpose of the latter.

But it would put some people in the tax department out of work, so even if hypothetically a more efficient tax scheme would let you grow the government as a whole, the current people in the tax department have an incentive to not let that happen.

> But it would put some people in the tax department out of work

Or, not; alternatively, it would allow the IRS to be more responsive in its supportive activities and more effective in its enforcement activities.

Cutting staff is a separate decision from streamlining the rules; the IRS hasn't had staffing expanded to keep workload constant when we weren't simplifying, there is no inherent reason it would ha r to cut staff and keep workload constant if we were simplifying.

Ah yes, the Democrats, who will do nothing because:

- Many of them will virtue signal on Twitter but are uninterested in actually challenging oppressive power structures as they exist.

- They have the slimmest of majorities, requiring either bipartisan support (lol) or the support of “moderate Democrats” whose positions are at best center-right. Republicans were in this position for the first two years of Trump, and they couldn’t get any signature legislative achievements but their tax bill passed. The same is likely to be true for Democrats this time around (a watered down stimulus bill passed through budget reconciliation).

- The American system of government is a vetocracy that leads to resentment over government’s inability to govern/keep promises made when campaigning.

- The complication of being beholden to corporate cash. Great ROI for Intuit and every other company that benefits from nothing substantially changing in America. Being beholden to corporate cash is the strongest form of bipartisanship in America.

Would the time until October 2022 be a conclusive test? There are many priorities and limited amount of legislative time. It’s very possible that no laws are passed with respect to the IRS, not because of a lack of desire or unwillingness to change, but because of lack of time and competing issues.

It might look that way to you but it's not that way. Two Democrats in the Senate are against almost every progressive idea (IMHO). Even if all of the Democrats except for those two want something they have to convince a couple of Republicans to go their way. Those 2 sensare basically the most powerful people in the Senate.

Who’s the other one, Synema?

yes, Sen Sinema (I had to look up that tough spelling...)

That part of the Senate is working as it was designed.*

Those two Senators are from more conservative states and they know if they don't toe the line their constituents will likely throw them out for GOP alternatives.

*In fact, the Senate was originally appointed by each state's legislators and the House was the only Congress elected by popular vote.

except the power the D's have in the senate is more about setting agenda since the vast majority of things they need to pass requires more than just a simple majority that they have.

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