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Comment by deafpolygon | Hacker News Reader

This is going to hurt the lower-to-middle class more than the wealthy. I bet a lot of Americans had to make some extra side income to combat inflation and a difficult few years. Lowering the threshold from $20k to $600 seems like a shitty thing to do.

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Perfect timing. It is wrong. Period. While the wealthy have the cash to be able to WRITE THEIR OWN LOOPHOLES, this is happening.

People don't have money to even survive. This is why many people turned to selling stuff online. JUST TO GET BY. They are using credit cards, just to get by. And now they will be in debt to the government because I'm sure a fraction of the people receiving a 1099 actually saved for taxes.

So pathetic they put out this "warning" as if it's going to help anyone. People will have the warning when they receive their 1099s in the mail.

They put taxes on online sales a few years ago. Now this? When the US is in massive debt and seemingly operates without any need for taxes. They just keep raising the debt ceiling. At this point, it's impossible to pay down the debt. Interest payments soon to be higher than GDP. The only solution they seem to be pushing towards is hyperinflation.

Yep, I’m one of the lower/poor class that stopped selling my old stuff on eBay on 12/31/21 as I would have jeopardized my Medicaid status as well as my ability to be used as a deduction.

> ...a lot of Americans had to make some extra side income to combat inflation and a difficult few years...

The impetus does appear to be because of corona, a lot of people might of got used to working or doing business from home and/or freelancing. You know, the true enemies, of not generating enough tax revenue. Why hassle billionaires and millionaires, when you can chase down some struggling people who might have made over $600 dollars.

Looks like some really smart people in high places felt they might be missing out on some cash, somewhere, so needed to step on, squeeze, flip over and shake the lower to middle class as much as possible. The unwashed lower classes might be hiding some loose change under a cushion, so need to make sure to get first dibs on it.

Trying to make ends meet, pay rent, or eat? Don't worry about that, if you made a buck, make sure you know who gets the first cut. And at $600, they might as well go the full monty, and bring it to $0. Any of those with thoughts of extra "side income" or "side hustles", outside that cushy minimum wage job, may need to give that up or enjoy the extra headache. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

If CBDC legislation is passed by the upcoming Congress, the implicit threshold would be $0, since all transactions would be centralized, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32777875

So, closing the wealth gap means ensuring the middle-to-lower class is taxed as much as possible?

The article mentions "closing the tax gap", not "wealth gap"?

If we lose all financial privacy via CBDCs, taxes may be the least of our worries. See history on the lessons of absolute power.

Oops, sorry - yes, I meant the tax gap but the wealth gap was implied (in my opinion). Guess we really are going to need some form of bitcoins in the future.

Reducing tax evasion has nothing to do with how much a certain income/wealth percentile is taxed.

Marginal income/wealth/sales/property tax rates determine how much a given income/wealth percentile is taxed (including effects of deductions/credits/allowances).

It has always been against the rules to cheat on your taxes. "We need to let people cheat more easily" is definitely not the right way of addressing financial insecurity.

We started a revolution in this country over tax on tea. Pinching the lower class like this might not end well for the government in the current socioeconomic climate. Personally, I look forward to the revolution.

>We started a revolution in this country over tax on tea.

That is not the full story. "American colonists objected to being taxed by the Parliament of Great Britain, a body in which they had no direct representation. "[0][emphasis added] It was taxation without representation that was the issue.

Today in America, we have a similar issue for example with the citizens of California, who are woefully underpresented in Congress and the electoral college (because they only get the same two Senators as Wyoming despite having something like 60 times the population).

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

Why did you intentionally omit the house of representatives where the number of seats is tied to population? The Senate's entire purpose is a balance of power between small states and larger ones where the people are represented in the house. Your post feels ignorant or deceitful.

It is also interesting that US senators used to be selected by each state legislature as opposed to by popular election because their original purpose was to represent the state as a sovereign entity as opposed to the people directly.

>citizens of California, who are woefully underpresented in Congress

You don't know that Congress includes the House of Representatives? I did not "intentionally omit" anything. And I also mentioned the electoral college, which you "intentionally omitted".

Except you did. You framed it as in totally congress is unbalanced because of the senate. To someone not from the US that distinction isn’t a material one and you used that to make it seem that there is no population balancing mechanism. So while you may not believe you were intentionally dishonest, it comes off that way to everyone else.

>congress is unbalanced because of the senate

Yes, that is exactly correct. Not only can laws only pass with the approval of both houses (they each have veto power over the other), but the Senate has extra privileges such as judicial and cabinet appointment approvals that do not allow direct representation. And stupid rules like the filibuster just amplify the effect.

Ironic, isn't it, that while the American revolutionaries did not like taxation with representation, they deliberately created a system which, with the passage of the 16th amendment, enables just that.

Your view, deceitfully presented, is flawed and obtusly (seemingly purposely) ignores every component of the legislative branch in favor of your narrative. Your view of the filibuster is subjective and your stated irony is just a blatent falsehood crafted to sensationally push your agenda's daft poetic imaging.

I stand by my criticism of your post.

>Today in America, we have a similar issue for example with the citizens of California who are woefully underrepresented in Congress and the electoral college.

Oh please. California has the most seats in the House of Representatives, the most electoral college votes, and the 2 senators per state was purposely done so that large states like California couldn't bully smaller states through their sheer size. Claiming that California is "woefully underrepresented" is just absurd and purposely ignorant.

Yes, and now the majority of the country is bullied by the minority. Because that's better somehow?

That was the agreement required to get the little states to join the union.

>> Yes, and now the majority of the country is bullied by the minority.

Can you provide a couple of examples of this?

Best example is how representation in the federal government is diluted for the more populous states, States with more people have proportionally less say in the house than less populous states. If I live in California, my house representative represents more people than say montana

So have them propose legislation where they get rid of states and just have single government. Could even move all of the decision making in this single body. And for best democracy have all candidates in single pool and top vote winners get elected. Perfect and fair democracy where everyone has equal vote.

Technically you could even get rid of all elected members and just run some blockchain or something and vote for laws that way...

Modified Tendermint consensus where each state is a validator

the problem is that enforcement is already applied unevenly… for example, the IRS audits low income people at a much higher rate than the rich (https://trac.syr.edu/tracirs/latest/679/)

So to me this sounds like the IRS continuing to pinch pennies from low and middle income americans instead of going after the people who twist the tax code to hoard wealth

The IRS not going after bigger tax cheats or not having the resources to is a separate problem.

funny how the “separate problems” that get solved first mostly affect poorer people

A 1099k doesn't mean you owe taxes. All this change means is the IRS is going to waste a lot of money on useless information request notices to catch a few people who weren't reporting taxable income while causing stress for millions who already have enough forms to deal with.

This, gonna be a huge waste of time for everyone, since 99.99999999% of those things will involve people selling their used crap on ebay.

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