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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

The steelman case for opposing "auto-filing" or having the IRS provide tax preparation is that the intention of requiring everyone to file is that all citizens should be directly aware of the amount of taxes being assessed and the complexity of the tax code itself, with the objective of making people oppose legislative increases in the complexity of the tax code, and to make tax increases more intrusive so that legislators cannot increase taxes without people noticing.

I think, though, that this philosophy does not accomplish its ends -- people are mad at the IRS for making them do this work, not at the legislators for creating and maintaining a byzantine tax code. Ideally we would all choose politicians that favored removing complexity and reducing the amount of taxes, but the reality is that this is not usually a politically viable strategy.

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> The steelman case for opposing "auto-filing" or having the IRS provide tax preparation is that the intention of requiring everyone to file is that all citizens should be directly aware of the amount of taxes being assessed and the complexity of the tax code itself

That's a very weak case when they could just send me a letter telling me how much they took and why, which would accomplish the same thing but better and without saddling me with a bunch of unnecessary labor and/or expense.

> That's a very weak case when they could just send me a letter telling me how much they took and why, which would accomplish the same thing but better and without saddling me with a bunch of unnecessary labor and/or expense.

Furthermore, the amount of money that people pay is not very strongly correlated with the time or effort (or frustration) involved in filing the taxes.

In fact, there's often (though not always) a correlation in the other direction: most of the "optional" complexity in the tax code comes from the various tax deductions that people are able to file for, making it more effort and frustration not to overpay - this is essentially the opposite of what GP is saying would be the "steelman" argument.

I don't feel like this is the opposite. The feeling that you are overpaying taxes because of all the boxes you have to leave blank is part of the same theory. Every time you're asked "are you using any of your land for agricultural purposes" or stuff like that, you think "why is there an exclusion for that? Can I buy a chicken and qualify? This is stupid, we should get rid of that deduction and make this faster for everyone", except that nobody acts on that last thought, and every year they bring in new exemptions and credits and deductions that apply so narrowly that all they do is add complexity without benefit for the vast majority of tax payers.

Nonetheless, seeking a legislative cure for this is something that people are just not interested in doing, making most of this moot.

The only remaining argument is that maybe legislatures HAVE been limiting the complexity and rates of taxation out of caution for the backlash, and if you get rid of it, then they'll go hog-wild and before you know it you find more and more of your earnings disappearing into taxes.

The unnecessary labor and expense is the point in this model. The argument is that taxes are bad and people should be a strong check on the government that is attempting to tax them. The more explicit and painful the process is (the theory goes) the more people will support limitations on taxes, rather than allowing them to expand unchecked.

The theory makes sense, and the ends are laudable, but it doesn't work. Other ways of doing taxes do not even attempt to provide the benefit of this sort of built-in check on government excess, If you're willing to forgo that (or acknowledge that making people feel pain is not an effective policy tool in this case) then auto-filing solutions like the one in the article make a lot more sense.

> The theory makes sense

Regardless of how one feels about arguments against taxation, that theory for how to achieve it does not make sense. It is belligerent sleight of hand from people who want to preserve the status quo of a sheltered income funnel for the tax preparation economy at the extremely inefficient labor expense of everyone else.

Here's the problem...

You're literally creating something entirely unrelated (paperwork) for people to get mad about instead of getting mad about the thing that your argument claims they should be mad about (taxes). This is what we call in layman's terms a smoke screen.

The only reason for not just sending an itemized receipt is to hide from people where their tax dollars go and to bury them in arduous paperwork so that they have less energy to focus on the actual issue of spending allocation.

If your argument is earnestly and honestly that taxes are bad and people should attempt to limit government imposing new taxes, it does not matter one whit how painful the paperwork process is, because the paperwork process is not what you claim you seek to limit.

If your argument is earnestly and honestly that taxes are bad and people should attempt to limit government imposing new taxes, JUST SEND AN ITEMIZED RECEIPT so that people can see the waste.

If you earnestly and honestly think that taxes burden people more than they help, by not just sending an itemized receipt all you've done is hide that burden behind an obfuscated wall of secrecy and toil, which goes completely against what your argument claims it wants.

It seems your line of reasoning is predicated on the idea that people are rational about these things. I think that can be quite mixed, in reality.

A counterpoint might be: if you earnestly and honestly want to change people's behavior via whatever means necessary, then non-logical correlation/causation associations, appeals to emotion, and other smokescreens as you mention are effective tools and may get you there faster than logical sequences would.

That's just been my experience; YMMV.

The old "trick people into doing what you want, not what they want, by repeatedly lying to their faces" model of governance.

There's certainly that, but in truth, I didn't mean it that way. More like: "trick people into doing what's in their own best interests, because their hearts may not swayed by logic, even if their minds are."

Opponents of progressive taxes lobby hard against auto-filing. They want the Americans to conflate the complexities of the US tax code with the complexities of filing and so they fight to keep the filing process complex and they tell us it's the tax code that's the problem.

True but the rubber met the road and people are upset about the bullshit work of tax filing and not the taxes themselves. So anyone who is arguing this way really should have given up and moved on to another strategy to make taxes painful.

If you want people to hate taxes end and ban automatic payroll deductions and make them pay it all at once. More than half the country will be unable to pay and the whole system will collapse under crushing tax debt.

Or it won't because of how little the average person actually pays that we could literally just have the top %15 of wage earners pay income tax as "the cost of winning capitalism" and we wouldn't even notice.

In the UK how much tax is taken is stated on our payslips. Nothing hidden about it, it's stated right there with your pay and your take-home

Sure, but how often does one look at one's payslip? The money gets deposited in your account. I don't know about the UK, but the amount that gets deposited tends to vary because of small issues, so a different number on my bank statement doesn't trigger alarm bells.

It would be very easy to change my taxes without my knowledge as a result, if the only feedback we had on taxes was what was deducted from our payroll. In the US, there are deductions taken from the paycheck directly, including anticipated federal income tax (called "withholding" here) but also many other miscellaneous taxes.

The withholding, in particular, represent an advance payment on your annual income tax, which you still have to calculate and file. If you withheld more than you owe, then you get a refund, if less than you owe taxes. But regardless you have to compute how much you owe and how much you paid on an annual basis so that you can see it all at once.

Once again, I do not think this method works, but the theory behind it is that this will make it hard to quietly raise taxes, and hard even to maintain current levels of taxation, because it will be a painful process that will make it clear what the current situation is.

I also don't believe the people that say they want a simple tax code. This is the same country that loves coupons, discounts and promo codes. You really think they're gonna give up the tax breaks in the name of elegance and simplicity?

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