In this case millions of people have to spend between $0 - ~$200 a year so that a few hundred/thousand people can make boatloads of cash to file taxes.
To be a tragedy of the commons there must be
1) a shared resource (example: the ocean)
2) it must be in an individual's best interest to utilize the resource as much as possible (example: the more fish I catch the more money I make)
and
3) the actions of each individual working in their individual best interest leads to the degradation of the shared resource as a whole for everyone given enough individuals (example: extinction of fish species).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
>The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. The theory originated in an essay written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land.
>In this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, roads and highways, or even an office refrigerator.
The law can address this problem. If you work at a tax agency, the various secrecy acts establish a tight controls on taxpayer data. Like go to jail for doing the type of things that Intuit does.
The political jargon term you’re looking for is “logic of collective action.”
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
https://www.irs.gov/e-file-providers/before-starting-free-fi...
Anyone whose life is so plain and simple that they can do their taxes with just a 1040 or a 1040EZ form really doesn't understand how taxes work.
Yes! 100%!
> Tragedy of the Commons at its finest.
ok, now you lost me
So saying "Hey just have the government do this!" is fairly useless.
> The IRS may be saving money as a result of its decision to shut down its free TeleFile program for filing taxes returns by phone, but the move is costing taxpayers millions of dollars, according to a report released by the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2542655/report--shutdo...
Fear of government is engrained in American culture. It is literally what the nation was founded on, and enshrined in the documents which established the country.
2. Errors are likely to go unnoticed as people will be loathe to “check the governments work”
Also not really an argument, but a consideration is that by keeping taxes “painful”, they are more unpopular than they would be, making higher tax policies less palatable to the public.
The government is already equally as able to optimize for revenue today as you claim they would be in a situation where the IRS mails you your 1040 with your income pre-printed.
Ultimately most people’s income taxes are withheld from their paycheck, and you get a refund at the end.
Do you know how much you pay in taxes now? Do you think other people know how much they pay?
How would your knowledge of how much you pay change under a proposed system where the IRS mails you a pre-filled 1040?
You say there’s work to be checked — it’s literally “did they get my w2 right?” and “do I want to take the standard deduction?”
If you don’t want to take the standard deduction, the process reverts to what it is today - you fill out your own tax forms and send them in. Nothing changes for that situation.
Your second point assumes gross incompetence or straight malice, which is unfair.
Edited for clarity
And what about the other 20%, which could be upwards of 75 million people?
It's so very SV/HN to reduce every problem to a numbers game, and anyone who doesn't fit into the larger figure is marginalized as an "edge case" to be ignored and discounted.
Tragedy of the Commons at its finest.