> Norquist considers a public filing option a tax increase by stealth and opposes it automatically.
When phrased that way, it sounds ridiculous. But those are the author's words, not Norquist's or ATR's.
What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. In their words (from the article): "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance."
And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier):
> ATR [Norquist runs Americans for Tax Reform] is institutionally skeptical of withholding, because they believe that withholding allows one to increase taxes by stealth. I don’t think it is excessively partisan to say that, if one phrases that claim a bit more neutrally as “withholding increases tax compliance by decoupling public sentiment and policy changes,” the people who designed the withholding system would say “I’m glad the National Archives makes our design documents so accessible. We wrote them to be read!”
> And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier)
How on earth is this possible? Instead of not having any clue, you actually get to see everything. My taxes have been automatic for years and I still have to approve every step of them along the way and I get to see and approve everything which had been filled in. The big difference is I now not have to spend hours researching everything if it remains the same as it was last year and only check if it changes.
Two psychological mechanisms I can think of for this:
It's one of the reasons why every company in the world wants you on auto pay. It's a lot easier to keep you as a customer through the price hikes if it's only a line item on your bank statement rather than an explicit payment you're making every month. If most people are the same every year, then a small increase from one year to the next barely gets noticed because people are going to be looking for changes to their records, not changes on the bottom line, so the fact that the bottom line is 0.5% more this year will be more likely missed in the face of answering "are the records the IRS claims they have about me the right ones".
The other is related to the concept of "price anchoring". Approving pre-filled numbers becomes more about validating that your information is correct, rather than determining (and looking at) the tax value for the year. It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is.
Whether it actually plays out in reality and tax payer behavior is up for debate. but certainly there's a reason why so much of sales and financing tactics throughout commercial world tries very very hard to steer you away from the actual math when you pay for something.
> It pre-assumes the amount owed is correct (in both the calculated and the policy sense) and sets the expectation that you probably owe whatever the pre-calculated amount is.
Considering the penalties for getting it wrong. Simply no. You assume it is correct if it matches the data you have, not by default.
What it does do is stop you from having to calculate the nitty whitty parts of the statements when the data from the tax agency matches the ones you got from the bank, your employer etc and you have the partial coverage of having been provided wrong data. You are still wrong but -most likely- you can amend if there are discrepancies outside of your control.
You get an extra point of reference, not a -get out of filing for free card-. Since the system I'm part of also forces companies to provide specialized summaries it's a lot easier to get the right data as well. Correctly filing (which includes ALL deductables) should never be so complicated you require a special degree or a leeching company to do it for you.
>Considering the penalties for getting it wrong. Simply no. You assume it is correct if it matches the data you have, not by default.
We live in a world where people routinely borrow from "tribal lending services" at 500% APR. Where they buy a car on the monthly payment value without consideration for APR or loan term. Where an entire financial crisis was caused in large part by people taking out bad loans they knew (or should have known) were impossible for them to service properly despite the consequences. Where people don't review their own pay stubs only to discover their employer has been cheating them for years or has improperly withheld taxes. And a world where despite the existence of both the 1040EZ and e-filing people still find tax paperwork confusing and too hard.
Forgive me if I don't share your optimism on whether most tax payers would assume the answer the government got was correct or not, regardless of the consequences. It's also not an unreasonable assumption either, why in the world would you want a system where you couldn't assume the result was correct most of the time?
> [...] I don't share your optimism on whether most tax payers would assume the answer the government got was correct or not [...]
Rephrasing your response, it sounds like you would say you expect most tax payers lack the ability (or interest) to compute their taxes correctly under any circumstances.
Review has nothing to do with it.
I believe that providing people the correct numbers is just going to increase compliance. They don´t want to audit anything. They want to pay what they have to pay and get on with the rest of their lives.
I can't speak for "under any circumstances" but I suspect the vast majority of tax payers already outsource their tax computations to either one of the major software vendors, one of the major tax services or their own financial institutions / private accountant. I assume this because otherwise I would not expect "IRS makes a self service portal" to be headline news or a game of politics.
Beyond that though, the thread discussion was about whether there are any mechanisms by which the government pre-filling people's taxes could '[make] "tax increases by stealth" easier'. I proposed there were, though with no claims to the degree to which that actually had real world impact on tax payers and their behavior.
If we assume as you say that people "want to pay what they have to pay and get on with the rest of their lives", then it seems reasonable to think that anything which reduces the amount of effort and thought necessary for the process also has potential to '[make] "tax increases by stealth" easier', simply by the fact that it reduces the amount of thought one needs to afford to the concept of taxes in the the first place.
The alternative would be to propose some mechanism by which the government pre-filing people's taxes would increase the degree to which they pay attention to their taxes. Or at a minimum one needs to argue that people would pay exactly as much attention as they do now and thus it would be a net-zero change in focus on taxes, but if that's the case, then any compliance increase would be a function of making it easier to be in compliance at all, which is tangental to whether or not it '[made] "tax increases by stealth" easier'
> The big difference is I now not have to spend hours researching everything
I think you've answered your own question. If it weren't automatic, you would spend hours learning about tax policy, what is taxed, what is deductible, and what credits exist.
Personally, I learned most of what I know about taxes while preparing my own.
Norquist don't want people to be aware of taxes. They want to not pay taxes; and believe that if taxes would be citizen friendly, people would be more welcoming to pay them. By making it as obnoxious as possible, they hope to have a society that provides them services by the magic of fairy dust.
> What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes.
Norquist is entirely disingenuous. Nothing would stop a tax payer from looking into the details of taxes assessed just because the government prepared something for them. (In fact, nothing would prevent a tax payer to continue to use TurboTax to verify and understand the taxation.) On the flip side, nothing about the current system actually makes tax payers more aware of the taxes they’re paying. Half the marketing of TurboTax is to allow you to finish your taxes quickly by basically just clicking through and adding basic information.
Speaking for myself, I would definitely be _more_ aware of taxes I’m paying if the government would prepare taxes for me. When comparing my filing of taxes in the US to the filing in Sweden that’s definitely the case. Sweden sends me information which I can then verify and correct if necessary. The grunge work is done and I can focus on details. In the US, I need to waste a bunch of time duplicating work and the go through the details later (and hopefully have enough time and energy to do so).
P.S. I keep using TurboTax as an example but they’re obviously not the only one. I chose them since they’ve parasitically attached themself to the current system and lobbied government to keep it from making things more efficient at a detriment to their bottom line.
> "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance."
A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth.
> A perfect world would have people writing a check for their entire annual tax just before stepping into the voting booth.
That would definitely be a horrible idea. No, I won't vote for drivable roads because I just payed my taxes, potholes be damned. And afterwards complain about the potholes anyway.
I think most people would still vote for drivable roads, and that there are a lot of government policies that could be eliminated before drivable roads are even on the table.
There are places in US where the firefighters won't respond to a fire in buildings where owners haven't specifically paid the bill for their own coverage, because the local voters like it that way (those that haven't had their house burn down while the coverage lapsed, anyway).
My experience in Omaha suggests drivable roads get sacrificed much sooner than one might expect. (And no, not for something nice like bike paths or even like, functional sidewalks.)
I never said you don’t get to vote if you don’t pay your taxes. Nor that you have to pay taxes to vote.
I’m saying those that do pay taxes should have the totality of the amount of their income that is going to the government in mind when they head to the polls.
And the large number who get a net payment instead would get a check right then?
I don’t think that will accomplish what you expect.
One of the main reasons conservatives and libertarians want filing to be hard is to confuse people into thinking the income tax hurts them, when in reality it benefits many of them.
Taxes in the US are not due annually. They are due on an ongoing basis.
You do not get a net payment. You paid your taxes throughout the year every paycheck. Your employer likely files quarterly.
At the end of the year, if you tally up your taxes and figure out you’ve given too much of your money to the government, you get some of your money back.
It’s called a refund. Not a payment.
I’d put those ongoing taxes throughout the year into the bucket of “shadow taxes” GP refers to. I suspect many people do not view their refund checks as a no interest short term loan they floated to the government. Their refund check came from their paycheck.
What in the libertarian nonsense is this? Why not make people ride public transportation or use a public restroom or sit in a park or read about the history of the interstate system or visit a national park just before voting?
When phrased that way, it sounds ridiculous. But those are the author's words, not Norquist's or ATR's.
What Norquist and ATR want is for people to be aware of taxes. In their words (from the article): "More than any other public policy, the way the government raises revenue—how much, at what rates, under what circumstances, from whom, and for whom—has the greatest impact on our economy’s performance."
And even the article admits that making taxes easier to file has the side effect of "decoupling public sentiment and policy changes" (that is, making "tax increases by stealth" easier):
> ATR [Norquist runs Americans for Tax Reform] is institutionally skeptical of withholding, because they believe that withholding allows one to increase taxes by stealth. I don’t think it is excessively partisan to say that, if one phrases that claim a bit more neutrally as “withholding increases tax compliance by decoupling public sentiment and policy changes,” the people who designed the withholding system would say “I’m glad the National Archives makes our design documents so accessible. We wrote them to be read!”