[ashtonkem]

This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents. It’s incredibly obnoxious, but the amount of money made is so obscene that it makes bribing[0] Congress people trivial.

0 - Yes, I know it’s technically a donation. But if it walks like a bribe and it quacks like a bribe, I see no reason to arbitrarily let them off the hook.

[jjoonathan]

It walks like a bribe, it talks like a bribe, it quacks like a bribe, it flaps like a bribe, it lies like a bribe, it hides like a bribe, it looks like a bribe, it feels like a bribe, it smells like a bribe, what is it?

Lobbying, duh. Definitely not a bribe.

It's pretty wild that legal lobbying + the realities of campaign finance effectively mean that our government has instituted a policy of mandatory bribery. I mean, democracy is always going to have warts, but this one is really special.

[duped]

You're 100% right except for one thing - you're describing campaign finance, not lobbying.

[jjoonathan]

Totally not a duck!

(quack)

Seriously, though, go on. I'm dying to hear how you've got a definition of "lobbying" that cleverly gerrymanders around all the corrupt dealmaking and only includes purely informational communication. I can't wait to hear why we should confuse this definition -- which seems precision-engineered to deflect blame away from certain shortfalls in our political apparatus -- with the common usage of the term, which frequently refers to real life events and therefore inevitably includes a great many situations where the thing going "quack" is, in fact, a duck.

[duped]

Lobbying is advocacy. If you call your congressperson you're lobbying. If the ACLU files an amicus brief in a SCOTUS case that's lobbying. When the NRA hosts events for their members to speak to congresspeople that's lobbying.

Registered lobbyists work for interest groups to have their voices heard. It's not always innocent, but it is not the same problem as campaign financing. Money is not changing hands.

[dragonwriter]

> This is one of those areas where Congress has purposefully injected friction into the system specifically so that businesses can seek rents.

Its sticky because that's not the only purposes; GOP politicians who want to campaign against taxes to push serial tax cuts weighted to the rich as the solution to every problem also want to preserve the current filing system as a source of leverage because it makes the perceived burden of taxes higher, though some of them (e.g., flat taxers) are willing to trade it off in exchange for a permanent massive downward redistribution of tax burden.

[dantheman]

Each party has their own exemptions they push. Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption - complete nonsense.

[dragonwriter]

> Each party has their own exemptions they push.

I'm not talking about pushing “exemptions”, I’m talking about motivation for specifically not allowing the IRS to prepare and provide taxpayers with a baseline calculation based on information they have as a complete return for the common simple cases requiring supplemental filing for compelx cases.

> Notice the Democratic support state tax exemption

Both Democrats and Republicans support the State and Local Tax Deduction; the GOP supports a dollar cap so as to increase pressure for low-tax state policies (more than would exist without the deduction at all or with an ubcapped deduction), Democrats prefer it be untaxed which leaves the federal hand off state tax policy.

[awillen]

I'm generally less anti-lobbying than most - I think there's value in corporations being able to express their desires to elected officials - but this is the case that just completely destroys the validity of it.

It's just unjustifiable that we have the current system in place. There is not one single, rational argument to be made that US citizens are better off having to file their taxes every year. A system in which people get a tax bill from the government with an explanation of how it's calculate, then they can file their own tax return if they disagree, is just clearly better in every single way.

I think Intuit is a company that makes a lot of really useful products, but I can't look at them as anything except just utterly unethical because of their lobbying on this topic.