"You sit down, review a prefilled filing from the government. If it’s accurate, you sign it. If it’s not, you fix it or ignore it altogether and prepare your return yourself. It’s your choice. You might not have to pay for an accountant, or fiddle for hours with complex software. It could all be over in minutes."

This is exactly how it works in Chile...since 2005!

Something that is not clear to me - suppose that the government in one of these countries that makes it easy to file your taxes doesn't do it correctly and you sign it and file it. Who is liable?

If the taxpayer can relieve their obligation by filing a government provided return, with the option to correct it, that sounds great. But if the onus is on the taxpayer to correct mistakes by the government, then all that is really happening is free government provided tax prep which may have a value of zero or less.

Ugh. Last year HMRC (the UK's equivalent of the IRS) sent me half a dozen cheques correcting mistakes in taxes. My employer changed some details in their compensation package and messed up somewhere.

It's automatic. Some system or human reviewer goes "Hey, this item is wrong" and then the machine re-calculates that and issues a new statement, but it also queues up any subsequent re-calculates and those may take a few days extra.

If they owe you money you get either a direct credit or cheque, if you owe them a small amount it's added to your next year of taxes, if you somehow owe a large amount you have to arrange how you'll pay.

For me the goal is to minimise paperwork, not minimise amount paid. I have money, I don't want to spend time doing paperwork (and no I don't want to hire somebody else to do it). So the US system would be intolerable.

I still remember receiving a tax refund for my holiday work in first year of uni, the tax code had been wrong. It arrived some 4 years later when I was in full time employment.

I mean, it was a cheer-bringing cheque - but at the same time I found the timing somewhat sub-optimal...

In the UK you don’t have to sign anything unless you are going your own taxes. If you are charged too much you can claim a refund, not sure if there is a time limit but if so I think it’s pretty long. The revenue service is audited and there are independent consumer protection groups that can help people who need it.

Also the online tax forms are actually really good. The government has a web team that has radically simplified and unified all sorts of government web forms and made a huge difference.

Wrong thread, but so far as I’m aware, we don’t pay 75% tax in the UK.

That sounds reasonable. So if you are charged too little, the worst that can happen is they send you another bill?

It would have to be by a lot.

If they realise you owe say £500 they just send you a new calculation saying here's why you owe £500, we wouldn't tax X amount of your income by law, so, Y = X - £500 now we won't tax the first Y next year.

Pay As You Earn means most ordinary workers in the UK have all their income taxes collected by their employer automatically. The employer doesn't know why you pay the taxes you do, they just get told a code signifying how much to charge.

There's a cute trick to let HMRC verify that payroll accounting is legit without snooping personal bank details of people who aren't suspected of tax fraud. Basically there is a field with a blinded cryptographic signature in it in electronic payroll feeds, all the signatures should tie up to tax records without revealing who exactly was paid how much.

> If you are charged too much you can claim a refund

For me, it's always been automatic. But that might be because I've been under PAYE (via an umbrella company) rather than anything more esoteric that requires me to submit a tax return.

The actor most likely to make mistakes is the one reporting the numbers in the first place, i.e. the employer. And yes they would be held accountable for that just as the government, could you show that the numbers your employer reported is not what shows up on your tax report. This is how it’s like in many European countries and it pretty much just works.

In Norway, you these days don't even need to sign if you have nothing to amend (we started with electronic delivery many years ago, then SMS signing if you had nothing to change, up to some years ago when not doing anything is an implicit signing of the prefilled tax return). If you do change anything, what you sign is something akin to "These numbers and information are given to the best of my abilities". AFAIK, you basically have 10 years to correct mistakes, and this goes both ways.

Currently you're responsible for mistakes you make in your tax returns anyway, so not much would really change, except that it would be a lot easier and less stressful for the vast majority of people. Edge cases get treated like edge cases.

They don’t have rich people or corporations in Chile?

Not to be pedantic, but... both the US and Chile are representative democratic republics, not democracies.

Neither is an oligarchy, either. And while corporations and individuals of means have a disproportionate amount of influence in American politics, Chile is not immune from the same phenomenon; it just takes a different form.

But I agree with you in spirit - wealth should not be a factor in how much influence someone has in a democratic system.

This is not what anyone has meant by the term "democracy" for a thousand years.

To back you up, I can confirm that people who spend their time thinking a lot about this stuff (political scientists and those in related fields) spend zero time quibbling over the use of the term "democracy" as it's commonly used, and are likely to eye-roll and attempt to disengage from conversation should someone push their glasses up their nose and "well, actually..." the issue. In most contexts they use democracy as an umbrella term, the same way everyone else does. Doing otherwise marks one as an outsider to the field, or a novice—any in teaching positions get to correct plenty of "clever" freshmen on the issue every year.

I am an outsider to the field. I'll just disengage entirely from political discussion and leave it to the experts.

Yes, this is a failing of Democracy as it currently works in the United States, because the money of large corporations has more say that the will of the people.

Unfortunately, it's true of so many aspects of American society right now that are in desperate need of reform or rebuild - education, health, roads, public transport, safety, just to name a few.

There are so many hundreds of billions of private profits tied up in these things they will never be allowed to improve.

As far as I am aware this is a failing of representational democracy everywhere. It might be less or more pronounced in different countries or different areas, but it is endemic to democracy.

Or really, if you think of it, to any type of government. In every regime financial power translates to the ability to influence laws and government. Even direct democracies such as ancient athens were prone to the rich influencing or outright buying other voters

If your elected officials refuse to accept corporate PAC money, thank them.

If your elected officials accept corporate PAC money, tell them to cut it out because you'll be supporting a primary challenger who refuses all corporate PAC donations...and then support a primary challenger who refuses all corporate PAC donations.

Having elected officials who reject all corporate PAC money isn't a panacea all on its own, but it's a great start.

How would a candidate accept pac money since they're currently bared from doing so or (overtly) coordinating.

Candidates accept PAC money all the time. It has nothing to do with coordinating. These are donations to a campaign. Here's a list: https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs...

See how Kevin McCarthy, House Minority Leader, raked in almost $8mm in the last election cycle? That's because he'd have been Speaker if Republicans had held the House. Those $8mm in donations would've bought companies like Goldman Sachs, MetLife, Altria, and others plenty of phone calls with McCarthy. https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/contributors...

It is a great start. It also shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Vote for people who value their constituents over lobbyists.

I have seem this happening in many areas - GMO and ISP squashing well-fare schemes for farmers and internet users.

If only news agencies did proper job highlighting these issues, companies wouldn't date to indulge in acts like these.

There are three different things wrong with your argument.

1) Even if your premises were true, which they are not (see below), your theory of causation is simply unworkable. Intuit and H&R Block spend a combined $5 million a year on lobbying. If that were enough to even significantly influence tax policy, we could crowd fund opposition, not to mention some altruistic millionaire. Or all the tons of companies who would benefit from simplified tax filing? You don’t think there are enough forces opposed to complicated tax filing that they couldn’t muster up a measly $5 million a year to hire some lobbyists? That’s completely not believable.

2) You’re mixing up lobbying and campaign contributions. Intuit and H&R Block are not able to “contribute large sums of money” to any politicians. Lobbying is different—hiring people to tell politicians why they should support one policy over another; arm them with data and arguments to use against their opponents; draft proposed legislation; etc.

3) Citizens United doesn’t have anything to do with lobbying. It’s about companies spending their own money to air political ads. If Intuit and H&R Block were running ads trying to convince people to vote for politicians who support complicated tax filing, then Citizens United would be relevant.

>Citizens United doesn’t have anything to do with lobbying. It’s about companies spending their own money to air political ads. If Intuit and H&R Block were running ads trying to convince people to vote for politicians who support complicated tax filing, then Citizens United would be relevant.

While this is true in the literal sense of what the case was about, I find it disingenuous to claim that this is the only impact it had. The rise of 'Super PACs' is correlated directly with the decision. Here's an extract from Wikipedia for instance:

>Certainly, the holding in Citizens United helped affirm the legal basis for super PACs by deciding that, for purposes of establishing a "compelling government interest" of corruption sufficient to justify government limitations on political speech, "independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption".

SuperPACs can’t make campaign contributions, so that whole part of OP’s post is irrelevant. They can engage in political advertising. But I’ve never seen a political ad funded by Intuit or H&R Block. OP is mixing up two completely different and unrelated things.

> But I’ve never seen a political ad funded by Intuit or H&R Block

Surely you must be aware that Super PACs can agglomerate money from various sources that don't need to announce their participation at the end of every commercial. I do not know if this is the case for Intuit, but it would be supremely naive to believe that it isn't.

Reading your point #1, it looks to me like you are confusing "thing that really ought to happen" with "thing that automatically happens without anyone having to step up and act". Of course we could crowdfund opposition, so get to it already!

Diffuse Rewards, Concentrated Opposition.

Your comment reminded me of this study.

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

TLDR version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

That study is invoked for arguments that it cannot support. That study makes two main findings:

1) “Elites” and everyone else agree on policy the large majority of the time.

2) When there is disagreement, the policy tends to reflect the elites’ preferences.

However, they define “elite” as the top 10%. Basically, a typical HN reader. The study is often used to asset that the US is oligarchic. But there are numerous reasons why, in a representative democracy, there would be a thumb in the scale in favor of policies supported by the top 10%: professionals, business owners, property owners, etc.

==But there are numerous reasons why, in a representative democracy, there would be a thumb in the scale in favor of policies supported by the top 10%==

Can you share some? Why doesn’t it exist to such extremes in other representative democrcies (France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia, etc.)?

The study makes no conclusions about what happens in other representative democracies, and I don’t think there is a basis to just assume that the phenomenon doesn’t exist elsewhere. Let’s use taxes as an example. France has extremely low corporate tax rates (11%) and pays for its welfare state with a very high VAT (25%) that puts most of the burden of the tax burden on the middle class. Indeed, America has the most progressive tax system out of all those countries. Put differently, the US is overall a much lower tax country than those others, but the elite bear a larger share of the overall tax burden than in those other countries. Is that indicative of the elite in the US having more or less influence compared to those other countries?

As to your first question, we can use VAT as an example. Why would European countries rely so heavily on a sort of tax that falls mainly upon the lower income brackets? There is a lot of economic literature showing that VATs are more efficient than income taxes. So even if the majority might prefer an income tax borne primarily by the rich, the country adopts a VAT instead.

More generally, actual voters skew wealthier than the whole population. The top 10% of people might be the top 15% of voters. Who are these people? Well, me. I’m a married professional with a house and two kids in school. If I’m unhappy, I’m going to make a hell of a lot more noise than, for example, a single college student who might not even vote in the next off-cycle election, and certainly won’t vote in the primary or any of the local elections. The top 15% is a proxy for the most engaged voters with the most skin in the game (children in school, own homes, own businesses, etc.).

You still haven’t provided the reasons that this would be so in representative democracies. You focus only on tax policy and France. The rich can impact plenty of other policies (minimum wage, healthcare, overtime, unionization, parental leave, etc.) which impact how much income people make which directly impacts the taxes the pay.

Put differently, the rich have made sure that they collect so much of the country’s income That there isn’t much else left to tax. This is pretty clear in tables of income distribution.

Tax policy is a major policy choice, and France is similar to all the countries you listed in putting more of the tax burden on the middle class than in the US. Most of the countries on your list have lower corporate taxes than the US combined with a high VAT. That’s an example of elite preferences winning over mainstream preferences.

Incidentally, tax policy (rich should pay higher taxes) is the only category you mention where a clear majority (75%) of Americans supports the view.

As to your other example, the view among voters is in fact mixed. When Obama passed ACA for example, polls found public opposition to single payer to outweigh support. (It flipped only since then.) And that’s polls—actual voters notably skew older, richer, and more conservative than the general public sampled by polling. Even today, with 53% of people supporting single payer, it’s not clear whether that would be a majority of actual voters: https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/data-note-mod.... In particular, voters skew heavily older, and older folks are already covered by Medicare.

Also consider labor unions: https://news.gallup.com/poll/241679/labor-union-approval-ste.... Most Americans would prefer labor unions to have less influence than they do now or to maintain the status quo, by a large margin (see the second chart). Only 40% want expanded labor union influence. (See second chart.) And again, actual voters are more conservative than the general population.

As to minimum wage: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwij....

Most polled support a minimum wage of $15, by a 52-46 margin. But it doesn’t break down along “elites” and “non-elites” but rather at the middle class. Support is very strong among those with household incomes below $30,000, but for those whose household incomes are 30,000-75,000, there is net opposition 52-46. And of course, that’s among people polled. Households with less than $30,000 in income vote at far lower rates than everyone else. So it’s likely that the majority of actual voters oppose a $15 minimum wage.

Finally, addressing paid leave. People support paid leave by a large margin: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/03/23/americans-widely-s.... But the public is basically split on whether the federal government should force employers to provide paid leave. 48% oppose, 51% favor. (Again, the majority of voters probably oppose.) And if you scroll down to what models of government intervention people support, many more supported a carrot method that gives employers choice (offering tax credits to those who offer leave), than support the model European countries use (payroll taxes to pay for leave).

So in the US there is only narrow public support, or outright public opposition, to many policies adopted in European countries. On top of that is the double whammy the Northwestern study completely ignored. First, as mentioned above, voters skew older, richer, and more conservative than the public. So a 51-48 majority among those polled in support of government-mandated paid parental leave is probably not a majority at all among actual voters. Second, any legislation has to be approved by the House and Senate, where some voters have much more representation than other voters. But if we want to enact government-mandated paid parental leave, we have to get through the Senate, where Wyoming has two Senators just as California or New York. So even if the policy was supported by a majority of voters, that doesn’t mean a majority of Congress supports the policy, even if each Congressman votes exactly according to voter preferences in her district or state. The study completely ignores that factor, even though it’s a dominant force in American politics. If we just went by polls, we’d never have a Republican President or Congress. But even though Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the Republican President, Republicans just maintained control of the Senate.

==In particular, voters skew heavily older, and older folks are already covered by Medicare.==

Which is single-payer healthcare and has 77% favor-ability [1].

==Most Americans would prefer labor unions to have less influence than they do now or to maintain the status quo==

This is complete editorializing. You could just as easily say that more Americans prefer labor unions to have the same or more influence than they do now. The Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest pro-business lobby, has vowed to fight an single-payer initiatives [2]. This is what people typically mean by "elites", the owners of capital. They are typically the one's influencing policy, not high wage earners.

==But it doesn’t break down along “elites” and “non-elites” but rather at the middle class.==

You are completely missing the point here. Corporations are fighting increased minimum wages across the country [3].

==So it’s likely that the majority of actual voters oppose a $15 minimum wage.==

Here, you rely on the question asking specifically about $15/hr minimum wage. In reality, the minimum wage is $7.25 and there is a lot of daylight between that and $15/hr. If you ask about a different number, like $10/hr, you get a different result.

"the poll found that 71 percent of people surveyed support raising the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour." [4]

==But even though Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the Republican President, Republicans just maintained control of the Senate.==

Only 35 of the 100 seats were up for election in 2018, so it doesn't stand to reason that the results would match public perception directly.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/16/medicare-medicaid-popularity...

[2] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-ad...

[3] https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/09/04/co...

[4] https://theintercept.com/2018/04/17/the-restaurant-industry-...

> Which is single-payer healthcare and has 77% favor-ability [1].

Medicare has broad public support (and has for decades) and there are no serious proposals for getting rid of it, notwithstanding the elites. That is why, when we talk about "single-payer" as a policy proposal, or as a point of comparison with other countries, we are talking about extending single-payer to everyone. And that does not have the same broad support that Medicare does.

At the time the ACA was enacted, a slight majority of those polled opposed single-payer healthcare for everyone: https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer.... That has flipped in the last 10 years, with a significant majority now supporting single-payer (59-39).

Again, let's circle back to the question at hand: why does the U.S. lack single payer healthcare when many other developed countries have it? Is it because of "elites" overriding the public will? Or is it because the public itself only came to support it by a significant margin in the last few years, after the last major change in healthcare law?

> This is complete editorializing. You could just as easily say that more Americans prefer labor unions to have the same or more influence than they do now.

That would be answering the wrong question. We are comparing the U.S. to "other representative democracies" like "France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, [and] Australia" (these are your words). Why does the U.S. have weak labor unions, when many developed countries have stronger ones? Is it because of "elites" overriding the majority? Or is it because a large majority prefer the current, weak labor unions, or would weaken labor unions even further?

> The Chamber of Commerce, the country's largest pro-business lobby, has vowed to fight an single-payer initiatives [2]. This is what people typically mean by "elites", the owners of capital. They are typically the one's influencing policy, not high wage earners.

The Northwestern study we are talking about here--which is what people are citing for the premise that "elites" influence policy--didn't define "elites" as "capital owners." It defined them as the top 10% of income earners.

> Here, you rely on the question asking specifically about $15/hr minimum wage. In reality, the minimum wage is $7.25 and there is a lot of daylight between that and $15/hr. If you ask about a different number, like $10/hr, you get a different result.

Again, what are we trying to prove? Why are U.S. minimum wages lower than in say Canada (scheduled to rise to $15 in the next couple of years) or Australia ($18) or France (about $12, but in a country where wages overall are much less than the U.S.)? Is it "elites" or because public support for a minimum wage that high is borderline?

Yes, there is public support for a $10+ minimum wage, which is why states across the country are in the process of raising their minimum wages to $10+. That is so, notwithstanding the presence of "elites" in New York, California, Maryland, etc.

> Only 35 of the 100 seats were up for election in 2018, so it doesn't stand to reason that the results would match public perception directly.

Various statistics I've seen show that a Republican majority vote in the Senate (51 votes) can represent as little as 42-43% of the total population. That's really a huge margin when you think about it. Say polls show that a policy is supported by 58% of the population, and opposed by 42% of the population. If you adjust for the fact that voters are more conservative than the overall public, that might turn into say 54-46%. And those 46% of voters, in turn, might be represented by 51 Senators, who can kill any bill implementing that policy. You don't need "elites" to explain how that works, and the Northwestern study (astoundingly) doesn't account for that phenomenon at all.

==Why does the U.S. have weak labor unions, when many developed countries have stronger ones? Is it because of "elites" overriding the majority? Or is it because a large majority prefer the current, weak labor unions, or would weaken labor unions even further?==

I think you make important points throughout your posts. However, I believe the entire basis of your opinions stands on top of an assumption that polls reflect the unbiased opinions of people with full information.

Put another way, is it at least possible that "a large majority prefer the current, weak labor unions" exactly because they have been influenced by the elite to think that? If the elite own the media infrastructure and are the ones funding Super PACS, isn't it possible that polls only show the success or failure of their ability to influence?

If a Super PAC (or the media at-large) is able to turn a topic into a partisan issue, then it is much more predictable how the public will view it (generally, split). I think polls might be measuring the results after the fact as opposed to accounting for the very influence we are discussing.