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Comment by conanbatt | Hacker News Reader

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You're catching a lot of flak and downvotes for your comment. I'm Canadian yet your general sentiment, made famous by Thomas Jefferson, seems pretty reasonable to me: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Yet now it seems people think it's reasonable to fear an elected government (and its civil servants) as if we were subjects instead of citizens.

Back on topic ... the effort involved in tax preparation here is also ridiculous. Millions of man-hours wasted every year on this. !!? Reform is needed.

"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country" -- Thomas Jefferson (12 November 1816)

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0...

The original sentence is:

> I hope the tax prep industry is scared out of their minds

I am pretty comfortable with an elected government putting the general interest before Inuit's. I am pretty confident that Thomas Jefferson would have agreed.

Intuit is not the owner of the IRS filing process.

The cause of liberty will probably be better served if you distinguish aptly between general categories like "citizens" vs tax preparers lobbying against the state providing some margin of built-in tax prep services.

Public defenders do not preclude private defense in the courts, they provide an option for people who don't have other options or don't like the ones they have. Public tax prep would probably work much the same. Mostly this expands liberty rather than taking it.

Well that's a bigoted attitude. As long as we acknowledge that taxes are necessary for the functioning of a country, I'd rather our tax agency be calm, professional, and boring.

I think there are kind of two sides barking at each other when both largely agree on the same things. While there are a handful of people on some extreme of anti/pro tax stuff - perhaps anarcho-libertarians or communists - nearly everybody falls somewhere in the moderate middle. And here I think everybody would obviously agree that some taxation is necessary for the functioning of a country.

The question is how much? Federal revenue in 2022 was $4.9 trillion. That's more than $37,000 per household in America. The median household income in the US is $71,000. [1] So I think these sort of data are what "really" draws the dividing line. Is $37,000 per household enough to ensure the functioning of a country? Is the problem more with a lack of money, or more with how that money is being spent?

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Splitting the federal revenue across household doesn't make sense since a lot of these taxes are collected from companies as well. Also, in the presence of a progressive taxation rates splitting it across the number of households makes it even worse.

You're misunderstanding the point. When the government collects an average of $37,000 per household, that means they are also spending an average of $37,000 per household (actually substantially more, but let's stick to ideal scenarios for now). Ought that be enough money ensure the functioning of a country?

That's hard to tell without comparisons to other countries. Also, my gut feeling is that most of that spending trickles down back to those households. A lot goes into social security, healthcare, and defense, which drive huge part of the US economy and maintain competitive advantages for it across the world.

My point still stands that the $37k per household are just an illustration, as the tax base are not just households, and that a lot of what US foreign policy achieves is to the benefit of a very few of those households.

Your figures are meaningless in a world where the top 1 percent of households control half the wealth. The median household is not paying anywhere near $37,000 in federal taxes. My household is in the top 5-8 percent and didn't pay that much.

This is all irrelevant. If more funding for the IRS increases tax revenues (which it does, at a rate of $7 for each $1 last I checked) then that's revenue coming from taxes which are legally owed and not being paid.

If you are paying taxes as you legally are required too, then they are higher then necessary because other people are cheating the system.

Rob? Is that you?

Bigotry against tax collectors is a new one. Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community?

> Are tax enforcers an oppressed or marginalized community?

Well, historically, yes. But in my dictionary, bigoted means "obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic toward a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group". So you can certainly be bigoted against the IRS and its employees. No need for the "oppressed or marginalized" part.

> Well, historically, yes.

Are we talking about the same people here? Cause when I hear tax collector I think sheriff of Nottingham lol. I feel like something has gone way off the rails here.

The "well historically, yes" was a silly quip, but I was thinking about the story of Saul in the bible, who was despised and endangered due to his career as a tax collector.

I met a guy in Cornwall who told me there are locals who won't drink in the same pub as him because his grandfather was the local customs man.

That's them deciding for themselves not to associate with him on a personal basis.

Though personally I wouldn't blame the kid for the sins of the father or grandfather.

I'm not sure if you mean it this way, but your comment reads as if you presume that taxes on income are the only way the provide for "the functioning of a country".

I prefer wholesale deprecation of the state - also to advance functioning of the country - but even during the time period where the state continues to exist, I think that income tax is specifically unjust (compared to taxes on gains and consumption, for example).

> your comment reads as if you presume that taxes on income are the only way the provide for "the functioning of a country".

Did I say income?

Maybe I'm missing a piece here, but the entire discussion (and indeed the thread in question) is regarding the filing of income taxes.

If that's your jam why wait, book your flight to Somalia today and start living the dream.

There's no need, you can do it today from within any country by living with cash.

Why do people always used a collapsed socialist state as their "gotcha" against libertarian type arguments?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Revolutionary_Sociali...

because all of the libertarian ideals apply in any collapsed state (no governmental controls, unfettered free market, etc). What that state started as before it collapsed isn't relevant.

Somalia doesn't lack a state though, it has competing warlords fighting for control of the remains of the socialist state.

And you presume in the absence of a state, no force will attempt to fill the power vacuum?

Arguably the various insurgencies and federal government of somalia all form a state. The communities over which they rule have little say in the governance. If the OP is arguing for anarchy or communism, Somalia isn't a good example.

The country ran just fine with 0% income taxes until 1913.

We were almost 150 old as a nation then. We had already become a superpower, as WW1 and WW2 would shortly confirm.

> The country ran just fine with 0% income taxes until 1913.

Sure, apart from that whole Civil War fracas in the mid-1800s and the ensuing decades of reconstruction.

The Civil War was a fight over the efficiency and ability of the country to run itself via taxes or not?

My point is that regardless of the tax regime, America pretty clearly did not run "just fine" in that era.

It seems that you could also say it didn't run fine if there were an invasion, for much the same reasons, but that wouldn't, in most cases, make it a valid critique of the way things were being run, especially with regard to the actual subject here, which regards the tax regime.

There were income taxes before 1913.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1861

He means permanent. In times of urgent need, such as in times of war, the government would raise money as necessary. The federal government assessing a permanent tax on people was a huge deal and required a constitutional amendment, the 16th, passed in 1913. The act you're referencing was in response to the Civil War (which started in 1861), and would be allowed to ultimately expire about a decade later.

What liberty are we protecting here, exactly?

Liberty to forget the "without representation" part of that rallying cry, apparently.

I pay taxes in the US and I am not allowed to vote, so the phrase applies specially to me and 25% of the California population.

Ironic, isn't it? The party that hates taxes the most is also the most aggressive in the pursuit of disenfranchisement.

1. Corporations are not citizens.

2. From reading this thread, it seems US citizens are scared out of their minds. Scared of making a mistake, when filing their taxes. And it appears that Biden's proposed reform aims to alleviate that fear.

They said tax preparation industry. That's not citizens, that's the major ruling class in the united states, directly and indirectly responsible for many laws at the federal and local levels. Sometimes various branches of the government even consult them to write policy directly, skipping the lobbying step.

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