Perhaps a new tax System, it is 2010 after all.

Erbium

Chances are, if I were to slowly go through the many posts below I would be able to pick out at least ten ideas/thoughts/opinions that I agree with or that I believe would work or be of use to our economy as a whole.
This is likely to be true for many other members & I'm sure we could all find a few good ideas from different parts of boards.ie.

However, no matter how good the idea or thought may be it is likely that it would never be implemented, tried or tested. Even if it could save lives.
If it does get enough attention, it has to go through a slow & inefficient process, ie our utterly useless money grabbing, power tripping politics.

These people, get to chose who to listen to and who not.
And as recent events have shown, are willing to turn a blind eye to true problems & corruption.

Apparently the government of Ireland is elected by the Irish citizens.
Perhaps this is true for the older generations, however I am at the age of 21 I have not elected a single politician in place. Nor do I ask any of the government or parties to represent me.
I also never got a say if tax payers money should go to bail le banks out...Nor did you. - Just to further my point.

They (politics) are simply inefficient tools that are used to keep our economy moving.
They were once the only tools available to do this difficult task.
However, some are taking a long time to realize we are in 2010.
Technology is the key.
The sooner it is realised the sooner we get out of this mess that the people in 'power' have put us in.

Erbium

I am not claiming to have a solution to the problem in hand....But I think I have one of those Ideas I mentioned above.

I think it is close to 80%+ of all money transactions are done ELECTRONICALLY.
Great.

We have existing methods to track just about every person in the country. VIA Cell phone, credit card, ID's, passports & much much more. - This can be looked at as a good or bad thing...or maybe you don't mind.
(I'm closing in on a point here.)

Ireland has of recently implemented a whole pile of optical fibre & wireless technologies.
oh we also have Eircoms copper cables ... Oh wait no, our government sold that. Thought that would have been paid by tax payers back in the day.
You can rest assured your taxes today are handled much better Ha!

So Ireland has a fairly decent communications infrastructure...It just needs to be put to use.

OK OK!

My point/idea
The problem with todays TAX system is you have very little control over where your hard earned money is going - Usually into the pockets of le fat cats.

Their is also little to no transparency in our current system.

If you had that bit of TAX from your daily expenses ie your bread milk & any other shopping clocked up at the end of the day, & forwarded to the 'department' of your choice.
ie you go onto this site, and select how you want to disperse/spread your tax across the different 'departments'.
Maybe you might like 50% going toward education while another 5 departments (Health, public transport) get 10%

Perhaps that chunk of your income that is 'forcefully' taken from you, should also be under your/my/everbodies control.

If this were added to the overall pool. & used for perhaps large scale projects.
Large projects could simply be suggested, if they are good enough they are voted for if they are voted for they are implemented.

If you don't vote perhaps its disperesed across all major projects or back to different departments.
Like I said..... This is simply an idea, & it is far from fully thought out.

But the point is, you the Irish citizen are in fact control & with that all Irish citizens have full transparancy in their tax system.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Erbium

After a few minutes of pondering an idea for some structuring here is an example of what I'm talking about might do.

User prompted to enter UserID
& UserPass

Presented with OverAll Figure # A real time variable, the overall Resource
Figure of the economy.

List 'Department' Choices # Health, Education, PulicTransport, etc

User selects 'Departments'

User selects TAX Source # Tax from daily/certain purchases, Income, etc...
User selects TAX Amount # Amount to contribute to selected Departments

Restrictions:
All tax must be distributed.
Only defined % to any department # System prevent starvation of other deparments

If user Not !define
{
DEFAULT: EVEN DISTRIBUTION
}

Erbium

Ideas & thoughts?
.... All I know is the system in place does not work.
and I'm pretty sure most can't argue with that!

ei.sdraob

firstly how about we spend the money already collected more efficiently

Erbium

ei.sdraob wrote: »

firstly how about we spend the money already collected more efficiently

That was the point of the post.... Its not been spent efficiently. :rolleyes:
The idea is to make sure that what we do have is spent efficiently & fairly.

ei.sdraob

Erbium wrote: »

That was the point of the post.... Its not been spent efficiently. :rolleyes:

oh i see

amen

allowing tax payers to allocate departments won't help to ensure tax money is spent efficently.

Look at the HSE. Drug price reducations from Feb 1st. These could have negoitated years ago and based on the reducation we are still over charged.

Better budget control. A lot of depts seem to spend most of their budgets in the last quarter and on things they don't need. A know of government dept that spent several thousand on high end pcs in Dec in order to spend their budget even though there was no need.

If a budget is not spent you don;t get it next year.

There has to be a better way.

PeakOutput

Erbium wrote: »

But the point is, you the Irish citizen are in fact control & with that all Irish citizens have full transparancy in their tax system.

great idea and all but you dont honestly believe this could work in reality do you?

first of all the people of ireland did elect the current goverment, over and over again.

we live in a republic. we elect politicians to make decisions for us therefore we did have a say in weather or not money was used to bail out the banks if we had of voted in labour(god forbid) it probably wouldnt have happened but we didnt we voted in ff who made the decision as we asked them to

now onto the reason your idea wont work

your idea is basically the same as having a straight up democracy

the reason we live in a republic and not a straight democracy is that

a) its not practical for everyone to vote on everything
b)most people dont care enough to vote for everything
c)most people dont have the intelligence to be asked to make certain decisions(not saying our politicians do but thats for another day)
d) in a straight up democracy 51% of people can oppress the other 49% with ease
e) and most importantly, people are selfish. if i have private health insurance why would i put any money into healthcare? the people who can afford private health insurance are the ones paying enough taxes to keep the health service going(77% of all taxes are paid by the top 10% of earners). no taxes allocated = no healthservice = the poor people die. same thing would happen public education, you could kiss bye bye to social welfare and free 3rd level education aswell. the roads and broadband would probably improve overnight as would our infrastructure in general because that would help the rich(the people paying most of the taxes) make more money


the fact is the way it is being done right now is the fairest way give or take a little here and there. the problem is again people are selfish and vote politicians to national office on local issues, this will not change in the forseeable future. this results in ****ing idiots being in control over and over and over because they are being voted in by ****ing idiots(the average person)

PeakOutput

Erbium wrote: »

Ideas & thoughts?
.... All I know is the system in place does not work.
and I'm pretty sure most can't argue with that!

it dosnt work because of the people we put in charge so whos fault is that? :rolleyes:

the system, in general, works fine

Riskymove

Erbium wrote: »

The idea is to make sure that what we do have is spent efficiently & fairly.

so basically you think we should have system for deciding the national budget based on X-Factor-like voting?

Sleepy

I can think of a myriad of means of overhauling our tax system in terms of how it's collected / each persons dues are calculated. When it comes to determining how the tax-take is to be spent, however, our current system is fine. The problem with our expenditure is not based in how we allocate our resources but in who allocates it and the system by which those parties are elected.

Erbium

Like X- Factor? I hate that show & just about everything to do with it. But no, most certainly not.
I'm really talking about replacing the error prone & self interested politicians with logical algorithms ie. computers, that benefit as many as logically possible.

Sleepy wrote: »

I can think of a myriad of means of overhauling our tax system in terms of how it's collected / each persons dues are calculated. When it comes to determining how the tax-take is to be spent, however, our current system is fine. The problem with our expenditure is not based in how we allocate our resources but in who allocates it and the system by which those parties are elected.

Its interesting that you say the current system is fine....Their is certainly huge inefficiency withing the current system.
I hole heartedly agree about the parties.
It is time that they are done away with.
That system must be removed & it will take effort & lots of it. Simply because, they are getting richer & richer. Not to mention the amount of secrets backstage.

It is time for the curtains to come up & stay up permanently. Their is no transparency in our system....Because it is built up on lies & protected against legislation defined by ....them. Who are supposedly elected by you & I.

I believe we need to replace our politics with logical functions based on statistical analyses & mathematical formulas, true logical computation & full transparency while continuously promoting & implementing efficiency.
Technology is the key - Not politics

Erbium

PeakOutput wrote: »

great idea and all but you dont honestly believe this could work in reality do you?

first of all the people of ireland did elect the current goverment, over and over again.

we live in a republic. we elect politicians to make decisions for us therefore we did have a say in weather or not money was used to bail out the banks if we had of voted in labour(god forbid) it probably wouldnt have happened but we didnt we voted in ff who made the decision as we asked them to

now onto the reason your idea wont work

your idea is basically the same as having a straight up democracy

the reason we live in a republic and not a straight democracy is that

a) its not practical for everyone to vote on everything
b)most people dont care enough to vote for everything
c)most people dont have the intelligence to be asked to make certain decisions(not saying our politicians do but thats for another day)
d) in a straight up democracy 51% of people can oppress the other 49% with ease
e) and most importantly, people are selfish. if i have private health insurance why would i put any money into healthcare? the people who can afford private health insurance are the ones paying enough taxes to keep the health service going(77% of all taxes are paid by the top 10% of earners). no taxes allocated = no healthservice = the poor people die. same thing would happen public education, you could kiss bye bye to social welfare and free 3rd level education aswell. the roads and broadband would probably improve overnight as would our infrastructure in general because that would help the rich(the people paying most of the taxes) make more money


the fact is the way it is being done right now is the fairest way give or take a little here and there. the problem is again people are selfish and vote politicians to national office on local issues, this will not change in the forseeable future. this results in ****ing idiots being in control over and over and over because they are being voted in by ****ing idiots(the average person)

I like your reply best...Its got the most points & input!

You must understand that I'm only trying to point to a way to make it better for everyone.
Yes I honestly do believe so & I believe it is just a matter of time & of course push.

anyway,
Your first point on why it wouldn't work, its not practical for everyone to vote.
I 100% agree with this, so the question is. If lots of people do not vote what algorithm could you implement to insure even & efficient distribution?

2nd point...Same as above

3rd point.... I agree most people don't have the intellegince to do so....Perhaps this is a greater reason to promote efficient education systems.

Again, I am not sure how to overcome peoples selfishness.....Selfishness is influenced by the environments we live in today.

It would need to be thought out with a solid logical structure to it. Something that would take many many more minds than my simple little head could construct.

I also think we accept what is around us to be 'simply the way it is' far to easily.

Perhaps my thread title was a bit to big headed...perhaps I should have started off smaller.

Lets see...

Erbium

Their is not enough logic implemented in the system we currently have.

Lets take advertisement for example.
Thousands & thousands of ads are pumped into people minute after minute...Most of them totally unaware.
Why is not legislation that at least two educational & informative advertisement played during commercial breaks?
Surely this would be more beneficial to many & perhaps people might stop & think about something other than X-factor or some other similar bollox for a second.

& btw again I point out no one in government represents my opinion. They were trained and educated in understanding law...most of them anyway. Plus they are old & far behind in current times.

ANyway I got some work to do & I'm gone slightly off the original track I intended going down!
I'll get back to it soon!

Sleepy

Erbium wrote: »

Its interesting that you say the current system is fine....Their is certainly huge inefficiency withing the current system.
I hole heartedly agree about the parties.
It is time that they are done away with.

That's the system of electing the people (and one I agree needs radical overhaul), not the system that those elected use to allocate government spending.

I can't see anything wrong with a Taoiseach and his cabinet preparing a budget, submitting it to the Dáil for approval and ministers accepting responsibility for the budget allocated to their departments. At department level, from what I can see most major spending is done through tender processes which are public knowledge.

This is all reasonably transparent and should we choose to do so, we can hold those responsible for wastage accountable at the next election.

Our problems rest in the quality of people our elections are returning to power and the electorate's tolerance for dodgy dealing and inefficiency. To my mind a reduction in the number of politicians and a move towards a national list election system would improve the quality of those taking office. An entire parliament of independents is most likely an unworkable proposition in terms of agreeing a program of grovernment so I can't say I'd be in favour of scrapping the party system - just some of the parties we have at present!

Nody

You need something along the following lines instead of popularity contest for people who don't know what departments do:

1) Everyone pays tax on any money inc. social welfare, no exceptions and no damn tax credits for it!
2) Unemployment and social wellfare should be scaled a lot more like Denmark's benefits (you get a fixed number of years of very high benefits in your life and after that greatly reduced; you also get retraining and/or Uni courses paid during those years for re-education to help you get back into the working population quickly)
3) Greatly lowered long term benefit money inc. having people living in remote parts to be able to afford the rent
4) Write into the law that every department has the right to move half of what is left of their budget at the end of the budget year to the next (this will create a rolling budget saving which will increase over years where money is not spent up at the end of the year) with out affecting their planned budget (set before expected amounts is calculated)
5) Make it mandatory that the budget is with in 3% of expected tax income (as set by a third party) for that year inc. any off the book costs (i.e. NAMA); failure to meet this requirement means a new election with in 3 months from the budget date
6) Mandatory corrective budget after 6/9 months if the planned tax income is not the same as actual to bring it with in the 3% limit
7) Mandatory to keep the Irish total bond value below say 70% of GDP; only allowed to exceed said limit with a 75%+ vote in the dale (i.e. cross party approval for extreme times only)

Now the above would scare the living daylight out of most politicans but lets take it one step further where it SHOULD be.

8) All departments have to save 10% of their previous year's budget; the department get to keep 50% of any savings realized (i.e. if they can figure out how to do something cheaper/faster they can actually increase their budget even though on paper it was due to go down that year).
9) Every department has to present their savings to the dale and the department leader's are PERSONALLY accountable for meeting said targets; failure to meet them means automatic dismissal (except if the dale votes 75%+ that this was due to extreme circumstances that they failed to meet it). If the department leader is let go the replacement comes from the opposition (who has to meet said targets of that year or be relased)!
10) Every project has a set budget with one person directly responsible for it in the government. Any contract signed with third party is all inclusive fixed price delivery inc. any unexpected circumstances and bank guarantee. The person responsible has to present to the dale every 6 month the status on project completion and cost and payments are only done after given milestones are meet to the company.

I could go on but the point is the tax system do need some overhaul (more people to pay tax for starters) but really make the damn departments and government responsible would go oh so much further.