want to know exactly where your tax dollars go? want to vote on it?
by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 research
here’s an idea: taxpayers should get a receipt so they can see what they’re paying for.
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actually, that’s already a thing, and it’s been in the internal revenue code since 1990.
in accordance with irc § 7523, the instructions for forms 1040, 1040a and 1040ez proffer crude pie charts showing the relative sizes of major budget categories and major income categories. the 2017 1040 even offered two graphs with data from the previous fiscal year.
but is that enough?
the national tax advocate, who works independently within the internal revenue service as a kind of ombudsman, says that the irs could do better and that doing better – really just a little better – could make taxpayers more willing to pay what they owe.
pies online
one area for improvement would recognize that times have changed. back in 1990, virtually all taxpayers used a hardcopy instruction manual to file a hardcopy return. that manual displayed a federal budget pie chart that was hard to miss.
today, nearly 90 percent of individual tax returns are filed electronically. dealing with the process online, most taxpayers never see the budgetary illustration.
moving the graph to prominence on the electronic filing webpage would mean more than a change of medium. it would open the possibility of interactive information. that interaction could give taxpayers a better sense of participation and a better sense of where their money goes. it could also give stakeholders and interest groups a better sense of taxpayer preferences. participation and expression of preference might go far to improve taxpayer morale. and better morale means better compliance.
here are some ideas from the nta, with some extrapolation from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间.
details
with a click-click here and the click-click there, the basic pie chart could be unfolded to reveal more details about the federal budget. the vague one-fifth of the pie that refers to “social programs” could be broken down into the specifics of food stamps, welfare, health insurance and whatever else falls within that category. a taxpayer could find out whether state department diplomacy is covered under the one-quarter that is “national defense, veterans and foreign affairs” or the 2 percent that includes “law enforcement and general government.”
without much effort, the breakdown could get fascinatingly granular. what taxpayer could fail to follow the destiny of his or her tax dollars?
personalized information
irs or third-party software could readily analyze an individual’s tax return to compute and display marginal tax rate, effective tax rate, tax benefits claimed and other perspectives on that specific return. software could even break down and distribute the tax bill to show how many dollars will go to each category of the budget.
again, the breakdown could be extremely granular. what taxpayer wouldn’t like to know what portion of an f-35 he or she owns, how many people he or she has given food stamps to, and how many pennies went into space exploration? one important category: how much of the individual’s tax bill goes to cover what tax dodgers didn’t pay in the previous year.
voting with taxes
the interactive capability of the internet would allow taxpayers to voice their opinions on how they would prefer that their tax dollars be spent. the preferences would be hypothetical and non-binding, of course, and cutting or increasing taxes would not be an option. but congress would surely be interested to know how many people would like to tweak some revenues from one line item to another. the harvest of data could allow congress to analyze not only the national mood but the preferences of various income classes, geographic areas and other demographic groups.
this aggregated data would be public information – one more thing for americans to argue about!
taxpayer morale
the idea behind these ideas, the nta says, is that taxpayer morale will be higher if taxpayers know what they’re paying for. the more they know, they more willing they will be cough up what they owe. (one can see, however, that the opposite might be true.) and the more one feels that one has some input into the distribution of one’s hard-earned cash, the more likely one is to pay all that one owes.
while the irs could probably accomplish all of these ideas if it wanted to (and had the budget to), it will probably take an act of congress to incorporate the ideas into the tax code. toward that end, the nta has recommended amending irc § 7523 as follows:
- to require the irs to provide each taxpayer with a “taxpayer receipt” that should a) how dollars are spent, and b) the taxpayer’s personal contributions and claimed tax benefits. this requirement would be satisfied with a web page displayed after a return is filed electronically. if a tax preparer files the return, the receipt would be provided along with the mandated copy of the return.
- to require the irs to develop those receipts in consultation with the taxpayer advocacy service.
- to require the taxpayer receipt to include an online link to a “ballot” where the taxpayer can “vote” on how federal funds should be spent and in what amounts.
- to require the irs to gather, aggregate and publish the results of “taxpayer voting” no later than 30 days after the end of the calendar year.
given the importance of information in the information age, the irs can use technology to improve taxpayer morale, gather relevant data and provide stakeholders and decision-makers with information they can use. it could actually make filing a tax return a little more satisfying and – who knows? – maybe even a little bit fun.