Everyone should do their own taxes. Unless you have some sort of mental disability, I view it as your responsibility as a citizen to reap what you sow.
If you find it difficult or nonsensical to do your taxes, then you are more likely to put pressure on your representative to change the tax laws or to punish them for mucking them up in the first place.
"It's more about refusing to testify in the face of a court order, AND that information has nothing to do with incriminating you. It's balancing your rights and the right of the court to get evidence."
Well, it is one thing to refuse to show up and answer questions at all and another to not want to fully answer a specific question. Besides, how does the court know that the information will not incriminate you in some other matter, unless they already know the answer. It is always conceivable that any testimony will incriminate you, just saying you were at a certain place might incriminate you in some matter that the court is unaware. Which creates a paradox, in order to convince the court that the testimony that you would give would actually incriminate you, you would have to incriminate yourself. Besides, it is an essentially unecessary power that is disrespectful of human dignity. Most people can be convinced to fully answer questions in other ways or will just lie if it suits them when there is little chance of getting caught in the lie. How many lies would be prevented if people were free to testify instead of compeled to?
"Anyway, if you don't agree with that, that's fine, but it's a hard thing to change."
I agree that it will be a hard thing to change. But an easy thing for any new justice system to establish. So, maybe someone can try it out the next time around.
"No, it's not. It's the basis of the justice system"
That doesn't mean it isn't an evil practice.
""Hurt" is a relative term. Civil contempt would generally hurt you in the pocket book with fines, for example $X daily until you comply with the court order."
Hurt is not a relative term. A fine is involuntary servitude, unless you inhereted the money.
I draw the line so that I would say courts should be able to order witnesses to appear and to give testimony, but that the content of their testimony should not be open to threat of contempt. And by content I mean you can say whatever you wish in response to a question.
I am certain that this would have minimal impact on all but the most extreme circumstantial cases and would generally lead to a better system of justice. Also, people should not be forced to actively provide physical evidence in civil cases, they should be able to choose between actively providing evidence and attesting to that and having their property searched for evidence.
whenever possible, government should respect the dignity of people when seeking public values. There is no real need to force people to give specific answers to questions in a trial. Regardless of the contempt power, Judges are essentially powerless to make someone answer a question. Taking away the contempt power in regards to the content of a witnesses testimony would merely be a recocgnition of that truth that respects the dignity of the person.
I have no problem with saying that someone may be compelled to appear and stand before a jury and be questioned, but judges have gone too far when they punish individuals who don't answer questions to the satisfaction of the court. This approach does not have my support. Punishing those that lie yes, but those who don't wish to answer certain questions no.
Judges have recognized that people accused of crimes should not be compelled to testify against themselves, why does it make sense that others should be? Sure it would make it harder for prosecuters to try some cases and for some types of civil suites. But if no one is willing to freely stand up and give compelling testimony and there is not enough physical evidence to draw a conlcusion, then so be it.
Citing contempt because of the content of someone's answer to a question is unnacceptable to me.
"Freedom of speech and freedom of the press do not, and should not, extend to an ability to withhold the identities of persons who have committed an illegal act."
When judges compel people to speak through threats they violate the fundamental purpose of the 1st ammendment for the sake of convenienve, not justice, and are no better than a common thug.
Telling people to say things because if they don't you will hurt them is evil.
Well, money is a chicken and egg problem with a startup. You need as much money as it takes to make your first products or provide your first service. Even then, say if your business is consulting, you can get people to pay you before you deliver anything tangible. But it takes effort to spend money also, sometimes a well funded startup becomes so concerned about spending the money they have been given that they forget to build a business, I've seen that happen.
"They do this already. Well, they still redirect through middlemen, but it is completely free. (This is new as of this year.) It only works if you have a certain set of income|income type|deductions|etc. but this covers most of the population. Why have the IRS develop it if they can convince third parties to give it away instead?"
Free as in you don't have to pay, but third parties will collect information about you and bombard you with advertisements while you fill out the form. I tried the free HRBlock website which was free for everyone, but they offered additional paid services a few times while filling out the wizard. I am smart enough to know I didn't need them, but why should I support a process that will likely mean that many people that can ill afford it will be told they should pay for services that they don't need.
You make it sound like it would cost a lot of money to develop the application. But they already spent a lot of money to allow paid preparers to be able to submit your tax returns electronically. I think they could write a relatively simple web app on top of that existing architecture.
The IRS spends a lot of money on IT, putting the forms online need not be an additional expenditure just a change in resource allocation.
Different countries tax differently, but it seems that our tax burden is not much greater or less than many other indutrial nations. The politics of comparing to other places is probably more important. Sometimes I think that politicians make the tax system complex purely so they can pick out the one or two things that might be better than the taxes of another jurisdiction while obscuring the reality that the overall tax burden is the same or worse than the other fella's.
When you are a politician it is best to always say that the grass is greener on your side.
" They won't do this because the IRS has already agreed to not compete with private industry."
Just have the IRS enable us submit the tax forms electronically without any middlemen for starters. Sure they can be complicated, but not that complicated that they require a "wizard" to walk us through it. Start with the 1040EZ if you want and then see how many people choose the ad driven or additional fee laden private websites versus the straightforward and free IRS web form.
If people can't follow the directions then let them pay for additional services, but right now the IRS is pushing everyone towards paid tax preparers just so they will file electronically. The IRS spends enough money on their website as it is that allowing the forms to be submited transactionally on the irs.gov website would not be a major undertaking. Even a full fledged review, confirmation and receipt system should be within reach of their current IT systems and people.
If people can bank online and check their various accounts online, then why is it that they cannot pay their taxes online directly with the irs? Filling out irs tax forms electronically should not be considered the domain of private industry. Having some basic tax forms online would go a great way towards simplifying the taxpayers relationship with the irs.
It is a corrupt practice that the IRS protects paid tax preparers by increasing and maintaining a complex process to the detriment of taxpayers. There is a big difference between not competing with private industry and creating a private industry on the backs of taxpayers. There is often very little value added by the paid tax preparers, but shouldn't it be up to the taxpayers to decide? IRS if you are listenning, I will never use even free electronic filing until you begin to offer it directly.
How about we do this the old fashioned way and just ask people directly for money. If someone can raise 3 million in private funds to save a tv show about exploring space, Enterprise, then somebody could certainly come up with the same amount to keep someone receiving and recording signals from voyager. NASA should turn over the keys to whomever raises the cash to keep running the program.
"You can as well, with the advantage of having a lower TCO for your customers."
Another selling point would be that you are not as much locked into one provider of support if the product you are using is open source. And if the provider is a small company, then the asset is protected in the case of the original provider going out of business since anyone can maintain the code.
Though I wouldn't lead with that selling point, better as part of a response to any concern over the size and long term viability of your company.
"The person who is in risk of getting in trouble is the candidate's campaign, not you. The purpose of the form is to officially declare if your words are financially part of the candidate's campaign or not."
No, go to the FEC website, although there are no defined fines for people that spend $250 and fail to report I could find reference to fines for people that spent $1000 and failed to report. This is NOT about punishing the candidate's campaign, but rather punishing the individual or group that is exercising their first ammendment right.
Police: Sir are you carrying a nuclear weapon or materials?
Evildoer: No, sir. I just left my doctor's office and had received a radiation treat
Police: (Calls doctor) Sir your story checks out sorry for the trouble.
Evildoer: Thank you, sir. I understand completely...
Police: Hey wait! Why does it say "Evildoer" next to your line in the script?!? I think I'd better have another look here. I knew that false leg with the timer counting down looked a little suspicious!
"I would give this research a second look if it were performed on primates, but a rat just isnt a proper comparitive test."
Well, I think a second look would be to perform the experiment on primates. Or better yet, come up with a computer model that actually could predict the effects rather than just doing statistical sampling.
"Don't further wreck the continually derailing train that is Slashdot commentry."
I was with you until this last part. No need to add a point of hopelessness to your otherwise helpful comment. Slashdot provides many tools for filtering out the useless comments, peer pressure is one of them and you are using it to hopefully good effect.
But remember, like someone who goes "shhhhh" in a crowded theatre you are adding to the noise yourself, so do so sparingly. Which is something that has been bothering me about the messageboards lately. There are far too many offtopic posts critical of the form of people's comments rather than the substance.
Yes, I realize the hypocracy of that statement or perhaps it is irony. But it is meta hypocracy.
"Every candidate on the ballot can draw on that account equally - so if there are 5 candidates, each can draw up to 20%."
So if there are 100 candidates then they would each get 1%. So, if I were a candidate with the best name recognition, then it would benefit me the most to have the most candidates. So, if I wanted to support the candidate with the best name recognition, then I should run for the same office or sign whatever petition is needed to get as many candidates on the ballot as possible.
Campaign finance reform is a fools errand and an otherwise distraction from the real issues. The only way we will get better candidates is to pay closer attention to the candidates and to refuse to vote for lesser candidates.
Maybe a quorum requirment, so that if no single candidate got the vote of a large enough percentage of the registered voters, say 33%, then that office would become empty and another election would have to be held. So, that way we would always have a meaningful "no" vote as an option.
"True. Oh, wait, was that a failed attempt at sarcasm? Campaign Finance Reform puts a cap on individual contributions from one company or one person. Running a blog will fall well below that cap."
I call bullshit. If someone spends just $250 in a calendar year on their website (inlcuding at least a portion of the cost of the computer, connection, hosting, software, etc) and write something that is for or against a candidate then they have to fill out this form: http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm5.pdf And they will have to fill it out every 3 months if they continue to spend any amount of money on their website.
$250 is not a lot of money to spend on a website in a year, especially to start. So, this certainly would apply to anyone who sets up a website where the content supports or opposes a candidate. This has already and will have a great chilling effect on political discussion in this country.
This is regulating the content of speech, clear and simple. Campaign finance reform is corrupt.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone should do their own taxes. Unless you have some sort of mental disability, I view it as your responsibility as a citizen to reap what you sow.
If you find it difficult or nonsensical to do your taxes, then you are more likely to put pressure on your representative to change the tax laws or to punish them for mucking them up in the first place.
"It's more about refusing to testify in the face of a court order, AND that information has nothing to do with incriminating you. It's balancing your rights and the right of the court to get evidence."
Well, it is one thing to refuse to show up and answer questions at all and another to not want to fully answer a specific question. Besides, how does the court know that the information will not incriminate you in some other matter, unless they already know the answer. It is always conceivable that any testimony will incriminate you, just saying you were at a certain place might incriminate you in some matter that the court is unaware. Which creates a paradox, in order to convince the court that the testimony that you would give would actually incriminate you, you would have to incriminate yourself. Besides, it is an essentially unecessary power that is disrespectful of human dignity. Most people can be convinced to fully answer questions in other ways or will just lie if it suits them when there is little chance of getting caught in the lie. How many lies would be prevented if people were free to testify instead of compeled to?
"Anyway, if you don't agree with that, that's fine, but it's a hard thing to change."
I agree that it will be a hard thing to change. But an easy thing for any new justice system to establish. So, maybe someone can try it out the next time around.
"No, it's not. It's the basis of the justice system"
That doesn't mean it isn't an evil practice.
""Hurt" is a relative term. Civil contempt would generally hurt you in the pocket book with fines, for example $X daily until you comply with the court order."
Hurt is not a relative term. A fine is involuntary servitude, unless you inhereted the money.
I draw the line so that I would say courts should be able to order witnesses to appear and to give testimony, but that the content of their testimony should not be open to threat of contempt. And by content I mean you can say whatever you wish in response to a question.
I am certain that this would have minimal impact on all but the most extreme circumstantial cases and would generally lead to a better system of justice. Also, people should not be forced to actively provide physical evidence in civil cases, they should be able to choose between actively providing evidence and attesting to that and having their property searched for evidence.
whenever possible, government should respect the dignity of people when seeking public values. There is no real need to force people to give specific answers to questions in a trial. Regardless of the contempt power, Judges are essentially powerless to make someone answer a question. Taking away the contempt power in regards to the content of a witnesses testimony would merely be a recocgnition of that truth that respects the dignity of the person.
"If courts were unable to compell witnesses to testify, the leglal system would be unable to work."
I have no problem with judges compelling witnesses to testify. Just with judges compelling people to answer questions a certain way.
I have no problem with saying that someone may be compelled to appear and stand before a jury and be questioned, but judges have gone too far when they punish individuals who don't answer questions to the satisfaction of the court. This approach does not have my support. Punishing those that lie yes, but those who don't wish to answer certain questions no.
Judges have recognized that people accused of crimes should not be compelled to testify against themselves, why does it make sense that others should be? Sure it would make it harder for prosecuters to try some cases and for some types of civil suites. But if no one is willing to freely stand up and give compelling testimony and there is not enough physical evidence to draw a conlcusion, then so be it.
Citing contempt because of the content of someone's answer to a question is unnacceptable to me.
"Freedom of speech and freedom of the press do not, and should not, extend to an ability to withhold the identities of persons who have committed an illegal act."
When judges compel people to speak through threats they violate the fundamental purpose of the 1st ammendment for the sake of convenienve, not justice, and are no better than a common thug.
Telling people to say things because if they don't you will hurt them is evil.
" at least real estate exists rather than promises of technology."
and so does my mortgage
+1 funny
"2. Reads slashdot."
Please hire me! Please Please Please...
Well, money is a chicken and egg problem with a startup. You need as much money as it takes to make your first products or provide your first service. Even then, say if your business is consulting, you can get people to pay you before you deliver anything tangible. But it takes effort to spend money also, sometimes a well funded startup becomes so concerned about spending the money they have been given that they forget to build a business, I've seen that happen.
"They do this already. Well, they still redirect through middlemen, but it is completely free. (This is new as of this year.) It only works if you have a certain set of income|income type|deductions|etc. but this covers most of the population. Why have the IRS develop it if they can convince third parties to give it away instead?"
Free as in you don't have to pay, but third parties will collect information about you and bombard you with advertisements while you fill out the form. I tried the free HRBlock website which was free for everyone, but they offered additional paid services a few times while filling out the wizard. I am smart enough to know I didn't need them, but why should I support a process that will likely mean that many people that can ill afford it will be told they should pay for services that they don't need.
You make it sound like it would cost a lot of money to develop the application. But they already spent a lot of money to allow paid preparers to be able to submit your tax returns electronically. I think they could write a relatively simple web app on top of that existing architecture.
The IRS spends a lot of money on IT, putting the forms online need not be an additional expenditure just a change in resource allocation.
no, that is for tax payments, not 1040s.
"Other countries like to brag that we have one of the lowest tax rates in the world, but I really don't believe its true."
t _d i.pdf
It isn't true, though this isn't per capita, here is a comparison as a percentage of gdp
http://www.estv.admin.ch/data/sd/e/inter/pdf/an
Different countries tax differently, but it seems that our tax burden is not much greater or less than many other indutrial nations. The politics of comparing to other places is probably more important. Sometimes I think that politicians make the tax system complex purely so they can pick out the one or two things that might be better than the taxes of another jurisdiction while obscuring the reality that the overall tax burden is the same or worse than the other fella's.
When you are a politician it is best to always say that the grass is greener on your side.
" They won't do this because the IRS has already agreed to not compete with private industry."
Just have the IRS enable us submit the tax forms electronically without any middlemen for starters. Sure they can be complicated, but not that complicated that they require a "wizard" to walk us through it. Start with the 1040EZ if you want and then see how many people choose the ad driven or additional fee laden private websites versus the straightforward and free IRS web form.
If people can't follow the directions then let them pay for additional services, but right now the IRS is pushing everyone towards paid tax preparers just so they will file electronically. The IRS spends enough money on their website as it is that allowing the forms to be submited transactionally on the irs.gov website would not be a major undertaking. Even a full fledged review, confirmation and receipt system should be within reach of their current IT systems and people.
If people can bank online and check their various accounts online, then why is it that they cannot pay their taxes online directly with the irs? Filling out irs tax forms electronically should not be considered the domain of private industry. Having some basic tax forms online would go a great way towards simplifying the taxpayers relationship with the irs.
It is a corrupt practice that the IRS protects paid tax preparers by increasing and maintaining a complex process to the detriment of taxpayers. There is a big difference between not competing with private industry and creating a private industry on the backs of taxpayers. There is often very little value added by the paid tax preparers, but shouldn't it be up to the taxpayers to decide? IRS if you are listenning, I will never use even free electronic filing until you begin to offer it directly.
How about we do this the old fashioned way and just ask people directly for money. If someone can raise 3 million in private funds to save a tv show about exploring space, Enterprise, then somebody could certainly come up with the same amount to keep someone receiving and recording signals from voyager. NASA should turn over the keys to whomever raises the cash to keep running the program.
"We Delivery"
"You can as well, with the advantage of having a lower TCO for your customers."
Another selling point would be that you are not as much locked into one provider of support if the product you are using is open source. And if the provider is a small company, then the asset is protected in the case of the original provider going out of business since anyone can maintain the code.
Though I wouldn't lead with that selling point, better as part of a response to any concern over the size and long term viability of your company.
You are nuts. Not in a good way.
"The person who is in risk of getting in trouble is the candidate's campaign, not you. The purpose of the form is to officially declare if your words are financially part of the candidate's campaign or not."
No, go to the FEC website, although there are no defined fines for people that spend $250 and fail to report I could find reference to fines for people that spent $1000 and failed to report. This is NOT about punishing the candidate's campaign, but rather punishing the individual or group that is exercising their first ammendment right.
Police: Sir are you carrying a nuclear weapon or materials?
Evildoer: No, sir. I just left my doctor's office and had received a radiation treat
Police: (Calls doctor) Sir your story checks out sorry for the trouble.
Evildoer: Thank you, sir. I understand completely...
Police: Hey wait! Why does it say "Evildoer" next to your line in the script?!? I think I'd better have another look here. I knew that false leg with the timer counting down looked a little suspicious!
"I would give this research a second look if it were performed on primates, but a rat just isnt a proper comparitive test."
Well, I think a second look would be to perform the experiment on primates. Or better yet, come up with a computer model that actually could predict the effects rather than just doing statistical sampling.
" So, filling out a form amounts to censorship?
No, didn't think so."
No, getting fined or going to prison for not filling out the form is censorship.
"Don't further wreck the continually derailing train that is Slashdot commentry."
I was with you until this last part. No need to add a point of hopelessness to your otherwise helpful comment. Slashdot provides many tools for filtering out the useless comments, peer pressure is one of them and you are using it to hopefully good effect.
But remember, like someone who goes "shhhhh" in a crowded theatre you are adding to the noise yourself, so do so sparingly. Which is something that has been bothering me about the messageboards lately. There are far too many offtopic posts critical of the form of people's comments rather than the substance.
Yes, I realize the hypocracy of that statement or perhaps it is irony. But it is meta hypocracy.
"Every candidate on the ballot can draw on that account equally - so if there are 5 candidates, each can draw up to 20%."
So if there are 100 candidates then they would each get 1%. So, if I were a candidate with the best name recognition, then it would benefit me the most to have the most candidates. So, if I wanted to support the candidate with the best name recognition, then I should run for the same office or sign whatever petition is needed to get as many candidates on the ballot as possible.
Campaign finance reform is a fools errand and an otherwise distraction from the real issues. The only way we will get better candidates is to pay closer attention to the candidates and to refuse to vote for lesser candidates.
Maybe a quorum requirment, so that if no single candidate got the vote of a large enough percentage of the registered voters, say 33%, then that office would become empty and another election would have to be held. So, that way we would always have a meaningful "no" vote as an option.
"True. Oh, wait, was that a failed attempt at sarcasm? Campaign Finance Reform puts a cap on individual contributions from one company or one person. Running a blog will fall well below that cap."
I call bullshit. If someone spends just $250 in a calendar year on their website (inlcuding at least a portion of the cost of the computer, connection, hosting, software, etc) and write something that is for or against a candidate then they have to fill out this form: http://www.fec.gov/pdf/forms/fecfrm5.pdf
And they will have to fill it out every 3 months if they continue to spend any amount of money on their website.
$250 is not a lot of money to spend on a website in a year, especially to start. So, this certainly would apply to anyone who sets up a website where the content supports or opposes a candidate. This has already and will have a great chilling effect on political discussion in this country.
This is regulating the content of speech, clear and simple. Campaign finance reform is corrupt.