What does fair mean when it comes to income taxes?

[drkitten]

No, I didn't say anything about roads.

Actually, you did. Just not as specific as "roads."

You wrote:

If people aren't willing to chip in why should they expect to get anything?

Roads are part of "anything"; if non-taxpayers can't expect to get "anything," they certainly can't expect to get roads. Therefore, you're suggesting that roads shouldn't be built outside non-taxpayers' houses.

All I'm proposing is that taxes are voluntary and that we try to create a culture where this works.

The only problem is that we're fairly confident that no such culture can be created; we've got several zillion years of history suggesting that if people can get a free ride, some will. You might as well propose that taxes are voluntary and that we try to create a four-sided triangle.

 

[Michael Redman]

No, government would take the labour without compensation, and compulsory labour would substitute for people's leisure time. In fact it would be a disincentive to take leisure time, so it might well be a good deal more efficient (for the economy) than taxing wages.

You're assuming it wouldn't substitute for people's paid work time. People generally have their leisure time when it is not particularly easy to find paid work, i.e. at night and on weekends. Unless the forced labor was done at night and on weekends, it would require substitution of paid work time. Additionally, quite a few working people have only enough "leisure" time to get the daily work of living done, and would either have to give up paid work or sleep, no matter when the forced labor was scheduled.

Though, this is a rather silly subject to begin with.

 

[daenku32]

Why isn't it? Are you claiming that Bill Gates gets more value from the government than the homeless does?
If so, can you substantiate that claim?

Considering that the government is what protects all that intellectual property, and ensures stocks are traded fairly, I'd say pretty much all his worth is directly dependent on the government.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Consider religions though. Most churches rely on voluntary donations.

I think that this is something that has never been seriously tried.

I think voluntary taxation is an excellent idea.
It would be interesting to see how the government could manage if they couldn't just take what they want at gunpoint.

 

[daenku32]

I think voluntary taxation is an excellent idea.
It would be interesting to see how the government could manage if they couldn't just take what they want at gunpoint.

I think they are called "failed states".

 

[AvalonXQ]

I think they are called "failed states".

Can you give three examples of these states that tried voluntary taxation and failed?
The sentiment above was that the idea has never been seriously tried.

 

[Fishstick]

You could always fill out Form 4029. Sure you'll still have income tax, but your taxes would no longer go toward socialism!

 

[lomiller]

No.



Because they're willing to "ride freely" on other people who are willing to pay. Especially if they realize they can ride freely.

Bear in mind that "willing to" chip in isn't the same as chipping in. If I notice that I get the same level of bus service whether I pay or not, why should I pay? Of course, the only reason that I get any bus service at all is because people have been paying. I might be "willing to" pay (as in, if you asked to levy a $100 yearly fee for the city bus service, I'd vote "yes"), but at the same time I'm also willing to accept the service "for free" if no one actually demands payment of me.

Especially if the "services" aren't the sort of thing that can be withheld, such as police protection.

Furthermore a lot of government serves have very broad benefits that extend well beyond the people who deal directly with government. Since these benefits are often felt society wide it’s probably impossible to avoid receiving at least some benefit from them.

 

[drkitten]

Furthermore a lot of government serves have very broad benefits that extend well beyond the people who deal directly with government. Since these benefits are often felt society wide it’s probably impossible to avoid receiving at least some benefit from them.

Exactly. Even if you don't drive, you still benefit from roads.

When your oven catches fire, the fire department arrives by road.
The ambulance arrives by road.
The stove repairman arrives by road.
And, ultimately, the replacement oven will arrive -- by road.

 

[paiute]

Sure

Why isn't it? Are you claiming that Bill Gates gets more value from the government than the homeless does?
If so, can you substantiate that claim?

Bill Gates has several billions of dollars that you and I are paying the military to protect from whoever might want to come over and take it. The homeless guy doesn't have much to lose besides that bulging black trash bag. The shopping cart doesn't even belong to him.

 

[Francesca R]

Can you give three examples of these states that tried voluntary taxation and failed?
The sentiment above was that the idea has never been seriously tried.

Two of the closest approaches to this (which still get nowhere near voluntary taxation) might be California's Proposition 13 and Colorado's TABOR.

Others more knowledgable than me can say whether these are generally thought to be successes or failures--though massive deficits and brownouts don't seem to be ringing endorsements . . . .

 

[GreyArea]

Paying is completely voluntary but if you don't pay there is some kind of social penalty (no voting? public humilation? Not allowed to contribute to political campaigns? Other ideas?).

I might be willing to support a local experiment in voluntary taxation if there was a way to make sure people get what they pay for. If you don't want to be taxed for the community's infrastructure and services, you don't get to use any of it. This is actually more complicated than it seems.

Would you be willing to pay user fees for the times that you do want to use publicly-funded resources, even indirectly? Example 1: A road-use charge via the pizza delivery driver. Example 2: An education charge when you hire a publicly-educated person.

What's more, you would have to pay for the tracking and charging system required by such an arrangement. I'm not going to do it for you. For example, the camera that tracks how far you walked along that socially-paid-for sidewalk isn't free either, and you're the one who wanted it.

I expect that taxation is cheaper, honestly. And I say this as one of the top 1% of income earners in the world.


Also, if taxes were voluntary, wouldn't that also mean we each get to direct them where we want? What happens when not enough people pay for boring things like sewage treatment, and instead fund exciting things like municipal wi-fi? We'd have a wireless router in every lamppost, and sewage filling the rivers three days out of seven.

Some conscious coordination and sensible prioritization is necessary. It could certainly be more democratic than it is now, but what we have now is still better than an invisible hand.

I don't know. Probably just make everyone so rich through technology that it doesn't matter anymore.

What does this even mean? To which technologies do you refer?

It sounds like you might like to live in Iain Banks' Culture. This is not a bad desire. But we're an incredibly long way from that, by millennia, if it's even possible.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Two of the closest approaches to this (which still get nowhere near voluntary taxation) might be California's Proposition 13 and Colorado's TABOR.

As you noted, these are nowhere near voluntary taxation. These are examples of attempts to limit the amount of compulsory taxes collected.
It would be a pretty radical paradigm shift to go from our current process, where massive taxes are mandatory and everyone does what they can to minimize what they pay, to a voluntary scheme where it's explained what people need to pay but everyone decides how much to pay anyway.
Having been very involved in churches and their financials, I can tell you that the ones I've attended manage to get the money they need to operate by asking the congregation for it.
I can also tell you that, since they recognize that they're spending people's hard-earned money, they're pretty careful in what they spend it on.
Government being forced to operate on what people are willing to pay them -- it would be a very interesting situation indeed.
One of the most interesting repercussions might be the government having to vie for funds with private companies who claim to be able to do the job cheaper and more efficiently. It could lead to some privatization in areas where privatization could be better.
Or it could be terrible. Who knows?

 

[AvalonXQ]

A related question that I don't know the answer to: let's say that I just wanted to give an extra $10,000 of my money to my state's Department of Transportation, to help cover the cost of repairing the roads. As of today, is there even any way to do it? Or would finding a way to add this donation to the budget likely eat up a good percentage of the ten grand just by itself?

 

[drkitten]

Two of the closest approaches to this (which still get nowhere near voluntary taxation) might be California's Proposition 13 and Colorado's TABOR.

Others more knowledgable than me can say whether these are generally thought to be successes or failures--though massive deficits and brownouts don't seem to be ringing endorsements . . . .

Leftist generally consider these to be abject failures. Libertarians generally point out that they aren't valid experiments because they didn't go all the way to voluntary taxation.

That's one of the biggest problems with libertarianism. People like AvalonXQ point out that the ideas themselves have never been tried in the exact form that any one particular proposal espouses. The unfortunate fact is that several different variants, of different similarity, have been tried -- and that the closer you get to the proposal itself, the worse the outcomes get. This seems to escape them.

Really, it's like some mad geologist claiming that the temperature at the center of the earth's core is 2 Kelvin.

No, it isn't. We've done lots of observations of the temperature of the earth, and it generally gets hotter the deeper you go. In fact, we've got some very well-validated models that tell us that the temperature is about 7000K (give or take 1000K). The fact that we've never managed to get a thermometer into the core itself doesn't invalidate what we do know about geological temperatures --- nor does it create any evidence to support this simply wacked out theory.

We saw this behavior on one of kevinquinyo's threads, where he was espousing the virtues of anarchy and declaiming that the problem with Somalia was not the absence of a strong government, but the fact that the government was not weak enough. How weakening this government even further would keep the warlords in check or eliminate piracy was never explained to the satisfaction of the readers.

 

[lomiller]

Exactly. Even if you don't drive, you still benefit from roads.

When your oven catches fire, the fire department arrives by road.
The ambulance arrives by road.
The stove repairman arrives by road.
And, ultimately, the replacement oven will arrive -- by road.

Even if the roads were standard if any number of people in your neighborhood opt out of any of those services it will reduce the value of your property forcing you to either pay for them or opt out yourself in the hopes someone else will pay for it. Overall there is a huge benefit to everyone from having “everyone in” and this won’t happen if being “in” is voluntary.

To my knowledge there are no examples of voluntary participation in the payment of important services that has ever enabled a country to develop beyond third world status. There are, however, plenty of third world countries where the government is too weak to provide such services leaving the door wide open to this type of voluntary approach.

 

[AvalonXQ]

That's one of the biggest problems with libertarianism. People like AvalonXQ point out that the ideas themselves have never been tried in the exact form that any one particular proposal espouses. The unfortunate fact is that several different variants, of different similarity, have been tried -- and that the closer you get to the proposal itself, the worse the outcomes get.

So, do we have examples where we actually get anywhere close to the proposals at all? There's a lot that would have to happen to try something resembling voluntary taxation, and capping taxes at current levels isn't really anywhere close.
It's like claiming you know the temperature at the core of the earth because you've taken the temperature both here, and at another building that is lower in elevation -- without even bothering to get below the crust at all.
Voluntary taxation would require a dramatic paradigm shift, not simply the same paradigm with a lower number thrown in.

 

[drkitten]

A related question that I don't know the answer to: let's say that I just wanted to give an extra $10,000 of my money to my state's Department of Transportation, to help cover the cost of repairing the roads. As of today, is there even any way to do it?

Depends on the state. In general, a check sent to the state treasurer would do it.

What would happen would also depend on how specific a donation you wanted to make. If you simply wanted to donate to the state's coffers, that would happen more or less automatically. If you wanted to donate to a named program (i.e. the Department of Transportation or the Maintenance Division of the DoT), that's usually do-able as well. If you want to specify it more finely (i.e. you want to repair roads in Washington County), they may not be able to do that. And of course at the extreme, if you're just asking them to fix this particular pothole in front of this specific house (which happens to be yours),.... they're not contractors and they're not available for hire.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

.. (which books like "Freakonomics" discuss IIRC) ...

The book has an interesting examination of the honor system snack food sales in various office buildings. Instead of vending machines some places have snacks for sale without the machine.

The seller who kept meticulous notes and had an extensive snack food sales route left a wealth of data for analysis.

Turns out the rich cheat a lot more than the poor and people steal more when they are angry. I don't recall if holidays made people steal more or less but it did differ. The author hypothesizes that feelings of entitlement affect one's willingness to steal.

Overall, theft was always a fairly small percent of the business so most people are honest most of the time when given a chance to steal undetected.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Depends on the state. In general, a check sent to the state treasurer would do it.

Okay, well that's good news.
An interesting initiative to try would be, the next time my city or schools need more money, encourage voluntary donations rather than trying to put a tax levy together. See whether or not those of us who actually think the cause is worth it can put our money where our mouth is and create a culture of voluntary donation without having to run up against taxpayers' ire at all.
Again, the notion of giving the money to government of your own free will is so much the opposite of the system that we've set up, that it seems like it would take a lot of getting used to.