Slashdot Mirror
Can Computers Be Used To Optimize the US Tax Code?
FatLittleMonkey writes "Science fiction author David Brin wonders whether the US tax code, described by President Obama as a '10,000-page monstrosity,' could be dramatically simplified. His idea is about using computers to shuffle the existing system: 'I know a simple way the sheer bulk of the tax code could be trimmed by perhaps 70% or more, without much political pain or obstructionism! ... it should be easy to create a program that will take the tax code and experiment with zeroing-out dozens, hundreds of provisions while sliding others upward and then showing how these simplifications would affect, say, one-hundred representative types of taxpayers... Let the program find the simplest version of a refined tax code that leaves all 100 taxpayer clades unhurt. If one group loses a favorite tax dodge, the system would seek a rebalancing of others to compensate. No mere human being could accomplish this, but I have been assured that a computer could do this in a snap.' With all the talk about Open Government, perhaps the computer code currently used in tax modelling could be released to the wider community, leading eventually to a Folding@Home type project."
Most EU countries have VAT which amounts to a (different in every country but currently in the UK:) 20% tax on all sales except essentials (baby milks, children's clothing, most foods - but not "luxury" foods with chocolate in them, etc. - and, strangely, printed books).
Yet we still have high tax rates too, and it's not because we're being "stung" any more than other countries.
Hell, some EU countries just charge you 50% of whatever you earn which actually works out quite a good deal when you take into account all the tiny taxes and administrative costs of them over a lifetime. It makes taxes SO much simpler and you can actually spend time chasing those who cheat the system rather than having to need a degree in law and mathematics to understand taxation enough to tell whether something is right or not.
The UK has a tax mess too - and we really should go the blanket 50% way (although if we were to do it properly, it would be nearer the 60-something % that we're currently paying) - we have fuel tax, road tax, "tv licensing", income tax, VAT, land tax, house-buying tax, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, corporation tax, national insurance contributions, gambling tax, air passenger tax, insurance premium tax, inheritance tax, council tax, and a million others, all on sliding scales and requiring all sorts of legal basis and challenges (McVities were sued by HM Customs and Excise for classing a Jaffa Cake as a cake - untaxable - and not a luxury biscuit - taxable. The lawsuit cost millions.)
Whereas if you just said "any money or goods you earn or are given as a gift/inheritance, we want 50%", it's very easy to work out. Hell, most of the time it's almost impossible to work out what you need to pay. Self-employed people fill out a tax return and if they *don't* want to calculate their own tax, they have to send it in 6 months before those who do with the relevant data so someone else can work it out for you. And that's AFTER you've made sure to legally declare everything and put it in the right boxes and ask for the right forms.
Slightly longer answer:
Maybe
Would politicians accept the solution without re-bloating it first? No
Actually, the original idea will never get off the ground, because most of those 10,000 pages deal with things like "companies employing less than 100 people and which are located in a depressed neighborhood and which have names ending in a vowel get to deduct the cost of the president's jet." Things like that are added to give one particular company a break, but they never mention the company's name, just a set of circumstances that describe only that company. The company knows who they are, but we are unlikely to figure it out since each of the intersecting sets is rather large. Unless that company is part of one of the clades, that particular clause will have zip effect and it will be proposed for deletion, leading to that company and all the others in the same situation to object to the entire process.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
You understand it is true, though?
Income Tax in the United States originally applied only to profits from dividends and the like. Wages and salaries were explicitly excluded. It affected only the wealthy who could afford to invest, and were successful at it.
That is really the only way it passed, by exempting 90% of the population. For an example, see Tennessee State's income tax today.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.