"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
Matt Barrow wrote:


I can't find the source now, but I
recently saw a summary of how much money is spent simply related to
collection income taxes. This included the cost of the IRS, and all
tax
preparation services such as H&R Block, tax software, tax attorneys,
CPAs, etc. The number of people and amount of money spent simply
counting and collecting taxes (and trying to avoid the same) was simply
staggering.

But how much of this is solvable not by eliminating the taxation process,
but by (honestly, this time) simplifying it. In this day of automation,
the state of tax preparation is incredible to the point of offense. I
would not tolerate this in a vendor from whom I was purchasing by choice.

Check your cutting/snipping. That's not my post (with three levels of
indentation)



That the government has yet to get this right - along with any other
technological project of significance, like the FBI's fiasco - is a good
point for private enterprise. However, there are inherent inefficiencies
with that approach too.

Every payment has a cost, even in an efficient (ie. not government {8^)
world. The efficiency of the payment (ie. the amount that goes to
overhead
of the payment infrastructure) drops as the actual cost of the purchased
item/service drops. In other words, it's more efficient to pay a single
large sum than several smaller sums.

Government does not derive just powers from it's level of efficiency, but
from it's moral base. IOW, there are things a government MUST do by itself
(and things that it MUST NOT) due to the nature of it's power. A government
that can ititiate force against it's citizens or others is a THUG. This fact
does not go away regardless of how man people vote for it.

A legitimate governmetn cannot do anything that an individual citizen can.



This gets especially bad in the range called "micropayments", for which
the
world is still waiting on a good (accepted) solution.

By aggregating several purchases, taxes do (rather: could in theory)
provide
efficiency.

If only it were done well.

Efficiently, but not morally.