We should demand governments to maintain and provide an API for their tax codes. Let them have skin in the game. If the taxes are incorrect, businesses can point out that it’s the government API’s fault.
Completely developed in the open, and with full test coverage.
This should be required to collect taxes. No API? No taxes. API down? Tax waived.
True. One is a more realistic reality though. And it results in this thing only being built once instead of a massive headache for all.
I have to imagine government workers are already writing software to identify if we’ve all implemented it correctly, when the could have just given us the code/api up front.
> I have to imagine government workers are already writing software to identify if we’ve all implemented it correctly
Because of the jurisdiction issue, even if each local (and for each location all relevant governmental tax authorities) had a clear API, interacting with them all, and dealing with the interactions between them recursively, is itself a large problem.
And from what I've seen from smaller jurisdictions, the automation software is all about simplifying a human-in-loop workflow rather than full machine-driven rules.
Since we're talking about a hypothetical solution, in theory this would have a spec and potentially even be further centralized.
I could imagine a world where the IRS ran the tax software for every taxing entity in the US. Each jurisdiction would have to configure their specs or potentially even codify the business logic. International would likely be tricky but it's similar to what is being done with ACH and other banking systems that are slowing moving to international. So, it's not impossible there's just not much of a push for it.
You might be interested in [Catala](https://catala-lang.org/en/), a domain specific language for implementing legislative texts. Iirc, they have worked on the french tax code, and are starting on the us one now.
Gee, that's bold, I feel like "try writing in plain English" is already asking a lot of the legal profession (fortunately some of them are taking care of asking it of themselves). I wouldn't want to push it!
Here is an irony. If most contracts were rewritten in plain Spanish, they would be understood by a higher portion of the general US public than the current legalese!
If you believe the statistics on literacy and multi-lingualism, it's a tossup as to whether Chinese or legalese is more widely understood.
True, but if the lawmakers writing the tax code bear more of the pain of the complexity of the tax-code (i.e. get complaints and warnings of their own devs that have to implement that API) then they might write better tax codes.
That is the point of the tax code, to be able to use it for political wielding of power e.g. the Chicken tax because LBJ was pissed at Europe that caused a 25% tariff on light trucks imported to the U.S. based on a retaliation for European tariffs on American chicken..
Every tax system is. Because the experts who help to develop it are the same people who get paid to help you file your taxes. Making it easier would lose them income.
It is a combinatorial explosion problem. Each taxing authority probably isn't too different from the norm, but in the US you are more likely to encounter many different taxing authorities that overlap.
Come to Brazil, we have taxes on products 'circulating', moving your products between logistic centers is OK, but if the product is lost or stolen, taxes are due (as if it was a sale).
Some tax regulations were considered illegal by higher authorities, but that won't stop a tax auditor in a local level charging them and potentially closing down your business.
Why would you do that when you could just lobby the government to make the tax code even more complex, then sell a service to handle that complexity for you under the threat of jail time if you get it wrong?
You're being facetious but I don't think this is a radical idea. Government already publishes the tax code in English language. This is just formalization of the tax code in computer code: More precise, testable and provable.
What makes you think that this is being facetious?
https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f... has a good overview of how companies that provide software for calculating taxes guarantee a market for their products by keeping the process of calculating taxes more complicated than it needs to be.
In Bangalore, India, workers put on Smith face masks as they posed for selfies with the man himself. Fittingly, the tour culminated in San Diego, the home of TurboTax, the software that transformed the company’s fortunes. There, Smith arrived at his party in a DeLorean, and as he walked a red carpet, cheering employees waved “Brad is Rad” signs. To Smith’s delight, his favorite rock star, Gene Simmons of Kiss, emerged.
I have no words to describe what I just read. That's straight out of the TV show Silicon Valley.
This actually sounds like a good use for smart contracts if we switch to a CBDC. Basically you pass your transaction through whatever state’s contract and it will automatically do the tax withholding for you.
Completely developed in the open, and with full test coverage.
This should be required to collect taxes. No API? No taxes. API down? Tax waived.