Hacker News Reader

Comment by crooked-v | Hacker News Reader

It's literally explicit Republican policy to make filing taxes difficult and unpleasant, so that people hate the government more.

View on HN

Can we aspire to some baseline level of truth seeking where a phrase like “literally explicit” requires even the slightest bit of evidence?

In this case, it wouldn’t have even been hard to find that evidence, though you are assertion is oversimplified:

“ for the vast majority of the population, most of the pain of tax compliance could be eliminated by a few keystrokes at IRS headquarters. So why don’t we do it? Two reasons. One is lobbying by the tax preparation industry to discourage states and the feds from developing easier tax-paying systems, as California recently did. The second is lobbying by anti-tax conservatives. When the Golden State implemented its ReadyReturn system, it did so over the objections of Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pressure group Americans for Tax Reform, which fears that if taxes become less annoying voters might be less unhappy about paying them.” https://slate.com/business/2012/04/grover-norquist-and-h-r-b...

All of this took me 120 seconds with Perplexity AI. As we strive towards being a better nation, or at least a better community, I beg that future micro-polemicists invest that much time before hitting “post”

Explicit policy stances like this should be well known by most adult Americans, but this is an international forum so people are going to mention such basic differences without citations.

I don’t think anyone should need to give sources for such basic political stances as where each party takes on Abortion etc. This isn’t controversial, the parties are trying to get their message out so people will vote accordingly.

This case is a bit different, because it's not merely a policy preference, but an accusation of a bad faith metagame strategy of "intentionally breaking government and wile complaining that it's broken".

That's the entire game of the GOP. Well, that and catering directly to funders. It's obvious.

You may disagree with a policy, but that doesn’t mean the party isn’t completely upfront about it.

Meta game stuff does well in fundraising and the primaries even if not the general election because everyone already shares most of the party’s core beliefs. It’s all about convincing people your strategy will get those core ideas in place. Voter disenfranchisement being a popular example.

Also, many positions seemed stupid to many voters. That doesn’t make them useless as long as there is some perceived net benefit.

I'd argue most folks that pay attention to the space know this, and the ones that don't would nod in agreement as it conforms to biases. Do you agree?

To be fair I think the conservative objection is not quite that filing taxes needs to be annoying. The concern is more that automated tax calculation makes it easier for people to be blissfully unaware of how much of their money is going to taxes. Even now most people have minimal awareness of their tax burden thanks to automated tax withholding.

This conservative’s objection is to building the IRS data collection and analysis infrastructure needed to support “one click” tax returns for even just the most important parts of our absurdly complex tax code. Many here seem to think this is only constrained by tax software lobbying, and I think that’s naive.

Take the EITC: It’s one of the most important redistributive/anti-poverty components of the tax code. It’s also a massive source of fraud, much of which is potentially unintentional, as the eligibility requirements are complex.

Do we want the IRS tracking whether a supermarket cashier living with her boyfriend and her child is contributing more than 50% to the household’s total income? What if they break up 9 months into the year and he moves out? Does she need to send the IRS a notice?

I think aspiring to a baseline level of truth seeking is harder than initially thought. Watchdogs like allsides.com consider slate a pretty left-leaning publication[1], especially in 2012[2] when this article was published. At least they were aware of it though.

What has changed in the republican party's stance on taxes in the last 22 years? Maybe nothing, but the point is that it actually is hard to assume that it's an explicit part of the Republican platform to make taxes difficult to file by referencing an old article from a left-leaning magazine that actually doesn't mention the word "republican" once.

[1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart [2] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/is-slate-magazin...

One doesn't have to belabor the obvious unless someone asks for a cite. Stating the non-obvious/unintuitive/controversial does requires citations, or you're going to get downvoted.

Some exercises are ok to leave for the reader.

Some might turn to hate but in most cases the ambiguity and intentional half-ass'ery of the process breeds fear. As in, fear Big Brother.

Geez you can get audit for a filing up to 7 years ago (I believe). This is a bipartisan Fed level effort to keep the punters in line and obedient.

It goes both ways though. You can also get something corrected in your favor.

You can. But that's not the way fear has been weaponized.

How do you know that fives years down the road received a cheque from the IRS for a mistake the IRS made?

That has happened to me and my dad in separate cases, but each time it took about a year and a half, not five.

So they refund is 1.5 yrs but threaten audit for seven? And that's not a fear-base paradigm?

Those are apples and oranges. You can submit corrections for much longer than 1.5 years. Why be afraid if you filed correctly? Just have some confidence.

In the context of fear, no they are not apples and oranges.

"Why be afraid if you filed correctly? Just have some confidence."

LOL. Or seven years down the road...get audited? Why can't the IRS have some confidence in its collection process? Why can't the window close are two or three year?

If you think confidence is what gets you through an IRS audit, you're a fool.

Huh? I very clearly said what would get you through the audit is not breaking the law. Are you ok?

I think if this is the case one should hate the Republicans (policies) more, as being the ones explicitly breaking stuff, but yeah it's easier to generalize.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com