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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

If we were to try to assess fairness, wouldn't it make sense to also take effects and side-effects into account? Say a disproportionate amount of poor families cheat, but also end up on the street after an audit, either not able to pay any outstanding taxes, or having paid them and no longer being able to afford a roof over their head. At the same time, while breaking the law should be the same for everyone else, wouldn't it also be more fair for small time violators to be treated less harsh, for example not having paid 100 dollars in tax vs. not having paid 1M.

At the end of the day, the enforcement is there for one reason: to make sure everyone pays for the shared facilities of society. If you catch someone who was supposed to pay 250.000 or catch 1000 someones who all had 100 outstanding tax, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on the big fish first?

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> wouldn't it make more sense to focus on the big fish first?

Of course, but the reason they don't is that the tax system is a psychological control mechanism disguised as "doing good" (I make that assertion by looking at the utter amount of careless, unaccountable waste in government despite the endless gaslighting about "muh roads").

Why? Because if you can keep the majority in the psychological bracket of being the property of their government (purely via suggestion), you guarantee some percentage of cash flows. The "big fish" are smart and financed well-enough to circumvent (legally, in many cases) the system, while the little fish are ripe for catch and require far less worms/fishing poles to track down.

This is why a flat tax rate with a floor is necessary. If you don't make above a certain amount per year (e.g., at or just above the poverty line), you don't pay any taxes. Everyone above that pays 10%. The government, as they should, adjusts their budget accordingly instead of treating citizens like an ATM. What the money gets spent on is transparent, itemized, and readily available for you, me, and everyone else. This would solve all of the unnecessary red tape and procedure, fearmongering, etc. And that's precisely why it will never happen.

> Everyone above that pays 10%.

I hope you mean 10% of the amount of the part of their income that's above the line, and not 10% of their total income. Otherwise, this would cause a horrible welfare cliff.

You wouldn't need welfare in this scenario and that's the point. Let people keep all or the majority of their money (thus enabling more potential for prosperity if the individual is responsible).

If the point of tax dollars is to fund some form of socialism (e.g., for the disabled or others who can't care for themselves), then allocate the majority of tax revenue to that and strip down the federal government to bare essentials (as it should be). Also offer tax credits to people who offer amounts above 10% for allocation to such costs.

There's plenty of ways to take care of others without letting it burn up in the hands of the unproductive class (edit: meaning the government, not people who can't care for themselves).

By "welfare cliff", I meant a situation where slightly increasing your gross income could significantly reduce the money you actually have available to spend. You don't actually need a welfare system for that to happen.

> Welfare cliffs are an unfortunate feature of the American welfare system. They occur when a family’s breadwinner, or an individual, discovers that his or her family will become worse off economically by earning more money. It sounds paradoxical, but it happens whenever the loss in welfare benefits exceeds the additional take-home pay.

Had to double-check...what I said still stands. If people are retaining more of what they earn (nationally, not just on an individual basis), market dynamics should play out that costs are lower, too, meaning you're not chasing increasing prices all the time with the same money (if we were on a Bitcoin standard, that would be even more true as there'd be no means for manipulating the money supply).

yes, basically flat tax of say 10% on everything above a reasonable cutoff, say 100k and then maybe states can get a similar 5%. a beautiful dream

There's a big difference between acknowledging that you owe taxes but not paying them, and lying that you don't owe taxes when you really do. I can only sympathize with people who do the former, and these audits are all about catching the latter.

The audits also catch a lot of cases where people don't know how to file anything beyond their basic employer withholdings. If a poorer, less educated person gets a 1099 for a side job or does an early withdrawal from their IRA, they are likely to fail to report it properly, or pay the required taxes. This is not usually intentional, they just don't know better. Even if they know they have to pay taxes on the money, they don't realize that the IRS didn't already take their cut just like they do from a paycheck.

True, and the IRS is fairly reasonable about understanding when something is intentional or unintentional when levying fines and setting out payment plans.

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