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Comment by rmk | Hacker News Reader

Clearly you are not familiar with bureaucracies and how they grow. You do not need to file your taxes explicitly, or at any rate, rehash the information that's already known to the government, such as your taxes withheld and so on, every year. But if you do that, then a lot of people will lose their cushy government jobs, and vested interests, such as corporations and unions that feed at the government trough will end up on the losing side as well. That's why you end up doing these things repeatedly. Yes, there's software, but that is only an aid for the bureaucrats to do less actual work.

Politicians are of course complicit and key enablers of these schemes. They gain leverage when this type of pork is in their constituencies.

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> You do not need to file your taxes explicitly, or at any rate, rehash the information that's already known to the government, such as your taxes withheld and so on, every year.

That’s a terrible example because that’s strictly a US thing. In most place I have lived the government send you a pre-filled form and the only thing you have to do for your taxes is validate that the form is correct.

And to be fair I pretty much had the same experience with visa. As a European the last time I had to go to Canada everything was online, quick and easy. I think sadly the only reason it remains cumbersome to do if you are citizen of a poorer country is to dissuade people to actually come.

Also it’s only a US thing because tax filing companies lobbied Congress to force the IRS not to do it. The IRS is doing it anyway so could easily send citizens a pre-filled form for 80%+ (at least?) of cases.

Why would a poor country want to dissuade rich tourists from coming to their country?

The commenter is saying that rich countries dissuade visa applicants from poorer countries by putting up hurdles.

> Clearly you are not familiar with bureaucracies and how they grow. You do not need to file your taxes explicitly, or at any rate, rehash the information that's already known to the government, such as your taxes withheld and so on, every year. But if you do that, then a lot of people will lose their cushy government jobs, and vested interests, such as corporations and unions that feed at the government trough will end up on the losing side as well. That's why you end up doing these things repeatedly. Yes, there's software, but that is only an aid for the bureaucrats to do less actual work.

> Politicians are of course complicit and key enablers of these schemes. They gain leverage when this type of pork is in their constituencies.

This "bureaucratic inefficiency" strawman is conveniently brought to your by your local super-capitalist overlords[0], btw.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

Humbug. It's not as if Unions are pure as the driven snow. They are also equally nefarious, perhaps more, considering that many of their heads have been repeatedly caught putting their hands in the till and many extract compulsory dues. The majority of the CA legislature is basically owned by the CTA, to such an extent that representatives literally await instructions on key votes from these people.

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