The primary downside seems to be that administering such a program is more complicated, which means more of the expense goes to overhead, and more people will not get the benefits they could because of the difficulty of navigating a more complex process.
Is that so? I’d think the income tax form should tell you those things.
Fwiw, Europeans would look at you funny if you were to ask them to tick Caucasian/Black/Asian/… on random government forms. This data literally doesn’t exist [here] in any consistent way, except [maybe] for criminal suspects.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program? How do you get your parents’ and grandparents’ IRS data correlated with your own? What about people who don’t file taxes? The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
This is something which happens with existing public assistance programs, where so many requirements have been put on the aid application that people give up trying to to prove they made less than X dollars in the last 12 months, or lived in the state for at least 5 years, or have passed a drug screening, and so on. Too often that’s done intentionally to stymie a program, but the phenomenon exists regardless of motivation. The more complicated the program requirement are, the more people will fail to get aid they should, and the more it costs to administer.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program?
Quite honestly, there should be various options. I guess IRS could run such a program itself. Alternatively, the US has SSNs as a universal ID and IRS could send over required data organized by SSN.
What about people who don’t file taxes?
I don’t know but that’s probably solvable.
The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
I am not convinced by that. An administrator-run program with a simple methodology and a good data basis might be a lot more efficient than an application-based program inviting human error and long back-and-forths.
Is that so? I’d think the income tax form should tell you those things.
Fwiw, Europeans would look at you funny if you were to ask them to tick Caucasian/Black/Asian/… on random government forms. This data literally doesn’t exist [here] in any consistent way, except [maybe] for criminal suspects.
Yeah but how do you get the information from the IRS into the systems that manage this hypothetical program? How do you get your parents’ and grandparents’ IRS data correlated with your own? What about people who don’t file taxes? The risk is that all that work falls on the applicant. Or if the program administrators do all that work, that’s where the overhead costs come in.
This is something which happens with existing public assistance programs, where so many requirements have been put on the aid application that people give up trying to to prove they made less than X dollars in the last 12 months, or lived in the state for at least 5 years, or have passed a drug screening, and so on. Too often that’s done intentionally to stymie a program, but the phenomenon exists regardless of motivation. The more complicated the program requirement are, the more people will fail to get aid they should, and the more it costs to administer.
Quite honestly, there should be various options. I guess IRS could run such a program itself. Alternatively, the US has SSNs as a universal ID and IRS could send over required data organized by SSN.
I don’t know but that’s probably solvable.
I am not convinced by that. An administrator-run program with a simple methodology and a good data basis might be a lot more efficient than an application-based program inviting human error and long back-and-forths.