What is Digg?28 Comments
- DJSdotcom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11No wonder they let me write-off 457 online porn subscriptions as physical therapy!!
- nreynolds, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Well, it says 1 year. and there are about 1,300,000 people that pay income taxes. So it's like $2.50 per person, enough to buy a coke and a bag of chips and a cup-of-noodles at my school. And still have $0.25 left over for the trolley ride home.
- jawadde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7only 1.3M people pay taxes on a population of 250M ? Seems a bit low
- thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7owned
- jawadde, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6bad math alert : NOWHERE in the article is the GLOBAL amount given. what percentage are we talking about here ?i'm not an american, so I don't know your budgets, but i can imagine this is a tiny fraction of the bigger picture.
it's like yelling '25 people killed by fork' which semes insane until we find out we're talking about the total number in the world in the past 200 years - steelmaverick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+51.3 million is STILL very low. A more reasonable number could be 50 million.
- jawadde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Just poked wikipedia a little, and according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS there are 130M tax payers. Not only is this more reasonable, it also matches the $2.5 that nreynolds was talking about.
still, wiki mentions that "In fiscal year 2004, the IRS collected $43.1 billion in enforcement revenue". That would make the software error 0.73%, which seems within margin according to me. I'm pretty sure the loss of tax-income for the IRS due to fraud is a multitude of that, so the program just saved a little less than it could have - mindless2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Um, the program is 10+ Years old, Isn't it time to get something that would work (and be up-to-date)?
- PAJK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I wonder, is the cost of human labor, and a hundred calculators equal to 318M?
- Jfave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3where does the government get its money from?? Of course we pay for the governments failures!
- Radian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Good Lord, are we that bad at estimating orders of magnitude?
Considering almost everyone over the age of 18 files a tax return (incl. jointly), and probably 2/3 of the population is at least 18, on a population of 300 million, would estimate 200 million people.
Considering one tax return represents one or more taxpayers, we see IRS stats here:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html
I guess we need to start asking more of these "how many gas stations in the U.S." questions, critical thinking has left the building.... - rkuchiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"This failure has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and has worked to the benefit of criminals who intentionally filed false returns to defraud the federal government"
Of course, because we'll pay for it, instead of the government coughing up the money themselves for THEIR failure. - neonoodle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2jawadde: only 1.3M people pay taxes on a population of 250M ? Seems a bit low
keep in mind that in a population of 250 million, most people don't start paying taxes until they're 18 (some people at 16) and then only until they're around 65 and retired. Then take into account those 18 - 65 that are unemployed, and 1.3 million sounds like a reasonable figure. - sneakerelph, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3holy crap, at my school that would cost like $5. its like $2.50 for a cup o noodles though, which is insane. i need to start going out to lunch instead of staying at school...
- Reliant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1From Neonoodle:
keep in mind that in a population of 250 million, most people don't start paying taxes until they're 18 (some people at 16) and then only until they're around 65 and retired. Then take into account those 18 - 65 that are unemployed, and 1.3 million sounds like a reasonable figure.
Don't forget that there are those citizens that don't bother to file a tax report let alone pay anything. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You are commiting fraud if you don't hand over hard earned money to a government that will blow it on other countries. Makes perfect sense!
- PrettyBoyFloyd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Remember that even retired people have to pay taxes on their income. My retired father paid taxes on his pension and social security income last year. These funds were collected over his working years, but now that he's drawing revenue out of those accounts, they are now counted as taxable income. Seems absurd to me, but this is how the system screws the elderly.
- blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1US Population is almost 300 million. It's not even close to 250 million.
- serpentor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not true, if you get a refund you're overpaying the IRS throughout the year, equivalent to giving the U.S. Gov't an interest free loan. Yes, millions of Americans give the IRS an interest free loan.
Not me though, 8 claimed dependents (0 kids), usually end up owing the IRS bigtime but with no penalty. - richiestang78, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yes the IRS ripped off themselfs, teaching them for collecting the unconsitutional income tax and doing it whiles theres no law requiring us to pay it.
- GeoNine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I kind of wish I actually paid taxes so that I could have gotten in on this little exploit. hehe
- insomniac8400, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't understand. If it is fraud, and lots of money is on the line, why can't the government just force those who got extra due to their fraud, to pay it back? Fraud is a crime, right?
- kampfy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ nreynolds
There's a can. - ddales, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Another sheep claiming income tax is unconstitutional. Sad really.
Covered in Article I of the constitution. Have you ever actually read it? - mkrigsman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is hardly unique. Go to http://projectfailures.com and see many of them just as bad and worse.
- pcrow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0So they're only checking for fraud in cases where people are claiming refunds?
So you can still cheat if you're not being too greedy by claiming that you owe just a little bit instead of the huge amount you really owe, and they won't check for fraud? - seekandestroy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1131,301,697 individuals paid taxes in 2004.. discuss
Source: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html
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