A more common way to file the taxes is the internet-based portal altinn.no , which’ll also give you an updated calculation of how much you owe (or the state owes you) when you deliver the forms. Works pretty well, actually. =)

Conduct national polls via tax forms. You can bubble in for candidates listed on a given years 1040. Then voters will really feel the pain.

http://users1.wsj.com/lmda/do/checkLogin?mg=evo-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB117668220910270761.html%3Fmod%3Dopinion_main_commentaries

The one thing I do remember is that when they asked the people who received the new form what they thought, it was among the highest-rated ideas the state had ever tried out. They were going to make it a more permanent fixture, IIRC, but all the tax-preparation companies complained and said that this was no different than the government doing their job for them, and the lawmakers folded right away.

So, even if this does enter national political discourse, expect those same companies to invest a whole lot more in lobbying and campaign-funding, and a whole lot of Congressmembers to suddenly develop strong opinions against it.

Also, is anyone else concerned with the issue this raises á la identity theft? It seems to me that this creates way too many opportunities for this information to get somewhere it shouldn’t be.

Second, speaking of “taxes” and “pain”:

The worst school *killings* were committed by a guy protesting *taxes* back in 1927, and he used bombs and not guns. More importantly, *he blew himself up*! He was one of our first “suicide bombers”! This is something to throw at arrogant righties complaining about Cho’s gripes against rich kids, or that if everyone there had a gun they could have stopped him (our local ex-marine talk show host at WNIS 790 pointed out that many could die in a cross fire from untrained kids at that time, and in fights before such a tragedy), or Cho’s having an Islamic-themed “Ismael Axe” tattoo on his arm, etc, although I don’t think the general public should give up basic gun rights:

http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~bauerle/disaster.htm

On May 18, 1927, 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew Kehoe dynamited the new school building in Bath, Michigan out of revenge over his foreclosed farm due in part to the taxes required to pay for the new school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

The Bath School disaster is the name given to not one but three bombings in Bath Township, Michigan, USA, on May 18, 1927, which killed 45 people and injured 58. Most of the victims were children in second to sixth grades attending the Bath Consolidated School. Their deaths constitute the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in U.S. history. The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the school building. He blamed the additional tax for financial hardships which led to foreclosure proceedings against his farm. These events apparently provoked Kehoe to plan his attack.
…

Ultimately not one dollar, not one tenth of a dime, goes unspent along its path back into the corporate largesse, and in most cases these are becoming non-US based companies (Stanley tools is now a Caribbean enterprise for gawd sakes). So complain all you want, but it really comes down to which companies get the money first. It is always sad when i read about people who complain that there are too many people receiving too much money from governments, because eventually all that money goes right back to the same happy greedy corporate enterprises. The complainers are merely expressing their own selfish jealousies. Every dollar you spend goes into the system (extracting most of the real value and returning promised bets against a future that no one can nor will pay off), every dollar you save goes them, every dollar you assume you have invested in real estate or hedgefunds is theirs to do with as they see fit (how many subprimes are going under??).

http://thebudgetgraph.com/forums/index.php?topic=6.0

These apparently bring the total to $2.8T = $2,800B, and the percentage of Andy’s taxes spent on stuff he likes to 4%.

Here’s a great place to see where the money goes:

http://thebudgetgraph.com/

So, Andy, the things you like:

Department of Education = $54B
Federal Highway Administration = $42B
NIH = $28B

Out of a total budget of… $983B

So about 12% of your taxes are going towards things you like.

But this is misleading. Most of the money that goes into the DoEd, FHA, and NIH goes towards restricting these areas, not producing in them. Do you think education, roads, and health advances wouldn’t happen were it not for these government agencies? Ha!

America is a nice place to live because Americans are a great, fantastically inventive, entrepreneurial, and productive bunch, living in an area rich in resources. The government mostly just slows us down.

Sure it would be more convenient for the IRS to fill out people’s tax forms for them. Heck, why not maximize the convenience by having them slurp the money out of our checking accounts — that way we wouldn’t even need to be bothered with writing a check.

I also think there needs to be a better way to manage deductions. Once you buy a house, you generally dump the standard deduction and start itemizing. At that point there are a ridiculous number of options that no one ever seems to be able to keep straight. I always wind up kicking myself that I didn’t keep a reciept for some large item I bought last January that I just found out now I could write off. I think we should dump most specialized deductions and find a better way to lessen the burden.

-EDT

BTW Garrett, if you get a refund, it just means you’ve been giving the government a free loan.

And for the “taxes are evil” bunch, nobody likes paying taxes, but the system should be fair and transparent. I quite like having schools and highways and the NIH. There are places in the world with no central government and no taxation, but they aren’t very nice places to live.

Also, you don’t have to fill out a full tax return for simple things, e.g. they have a special form if you only worked in the UK for part of the year. These forms are much friendlier than a full tax return – they just ask a series of simple questions and then the tax office does all the arithmetic for you once you have submitted the form.

Coming from this system, it is hard for me to understand why anyone would complain about simplifying the tax situation in the US.

This isn’t a flat tax. It has nothing in common with a flat tax. It’s just a simplification of the April tax forms, designed to save time for people whose income streams have already been reported to the IRS.

I don’t think the point of the economy is maximum efficiency. I think the point of the economy is to generate the maximum amount of commerce. Maximum commerce occurs when a maximum number of companies with the maximum number of employees make the maximum number of transactions.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The Dutch traded tulips to generate commerce. We made tax forms complicated, and created tax preparers.

I’ll give Edwards and his ill concieved idea the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is proposing this soley for mass political comsumption, and not serious discussion.

Many similar ideas have been floated in the past, e.g. the flat tax etc.

And, I am sure the democratic special interests would vigorously oppose such changes as much as the republican special interests…and politicians of every stripe would have trouble resisting the enormous amounts of money poured into the opposition to such a plan…

it would be great if everything were simpler, much more efficient, but the real trick how to get it done…

People who budget monthly know when their taxes have increased. Seriously, yo.

I know I’ve been taxed. I don’t mind being taxed, really. I like having a police department and military and paved roads and social services. I like a great many things that come from my taxes. The stuff that makes me nuts is stuff I vote against. Rinse, repeat.

What I mind is filing them. This year I’ve had an assload of issues trying to figure out deductions because of the book, and it all makes my head hurt.

The Edwards thing sounds solid to me. It reminds me of when I was in college, filling out Stafford Loan forms was a bitch on wheels. And then there was an overhaul, so all I got was a form that read, “Is all your shit the same?”

And I could reply, “Yep.”

And that was that. Easy peasy. Instead of having to fill out the same twenty pages of crap every year.

And I would just looove to see people argue to the electorate, “You’re life should be harder so that you don’t get complacent.” Uh huh, that’ll sell.

I ended up owing a boatload to the IRS this year due to some income that didn’t have taxes withheld. I knew it was coming, though, so I saved enough to make sure I could pay it then did. I grumbled a bit, but don’t have any serious complaints since I still came out ahead of where I would be without the untaxed income.

Oh, and it’s not like people won’t look at their earning statements and say, “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if some of that money stayed in my pocket.” Not to mention the very real reductions in income from tax increases will make people scream more than consistently than having to do taxes each year.