Hacker News Reader

Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

> It's a shame that we don't have open formulas in code form published by the government.

I completely disagree. Then you're just handing them a mechanism to make this as complicated as they possibly can. Taxes should be simple enough to be fully understood by the people paying them.

I'm not some algorithmic tool for the government to abuse when it's failed to balance it's budgets and I should not _need_ software to figure out something so basic as a deduction in wages.

> doing this by hand is quite painful and error-prone.

It's a shame there isn't a law forcing the government to make this possible.

View on HN

I don't understand what you mean. You're beholden to the law regardless of whether you understand it. The government ought to be required to create a reference implementation if for no purpose other than to prove that it is indeed possible to implement.

the government should be barred from implementing a law or regulation that requires "reference implementation " to prove it is "possible to implement"

If it needs such a thing it is too complex and should be repealed

Over in The Netherlands we're seeing the opposite happen. Seemingly trivial laws are getting rejected because the responsible Ministry considers it "too difficult". In reality it's most likely just politically inconvenient.

For example, it was deemed "impossible" to adjust student loan interest rates, because the software would take two years to modify. Either they are completely incompetent, or they are deliberately lying for political reasons.

So yeah, refusing a law because it is "too complex" won't work either.

Lots of our dutch bureaucracies have comprehensively failed and are barely treading water. There is no capacity to do the current job, let alone any new changes.

The only way out is by accepting that the current state is unacceptable, and working on a long and slow fix, during which we don't say "this is unacceptable therefore we require immediate changes". This will fuck people over. But not making those changes properly will fuck people over even more.

We might be on an administrative brink. That takes a radical approach to fix.

OK, well, in spirit I can see how that sentiment arises. For practical purposes, though, no matter how simple a calculation, if a government requires that I do it, I want to see precisely what it's demanding. It is unreasonable to be put in the position of guessing.

You are speaking about different objectives. Quite apart from the basic "(how) does it work logically" which published formulas address, simplicity can be an objective in itself.

For example, Germany has one of the most complex income tax codes in the world, with an average compliance burden of 136 hours[1]. That's a hit to national competitiveness and GDP, and worth addressing in its own right.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/germany-tax-g7/

You're right, and it's extremely hard to undo.

Once you have that complexity, you'll always be taking away something from somebody by simplifying.

So all simplifications end up as additional "if" clauses, defeating the purpose.

Ah yes, because the current system is incentivising them to keep it simple... otherwise we'll vote for the simple taxes party... which party is that again?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com