Comment by rootsudo
7 months ago
$240,000 is really inexpensive in the end. Makes you wonder why most Companies aren’t; If not already are doing the same.
7 months ago
$240,000 is really inexpensive in the end. Makes you wonder why most Companies aren’t; If not already are doing the same.
That's just 2025 Q1 lobbying money. They've been at this for quite a while and spent a lot more than just $240k. They just finally got an administration in office that's openly willing to make the government less efficient and less cost effective.
Because that's not why it happened. There's just an assumption in American politics that whenever anything bad happens it's because of "corporations" and not ideology.
Republicans are against easy tax filing because Grover Norquist makes them all sign pledges against it, not because of lobbying.
Corporations and ideology are not orthogonal concerns. The Republican small government ideology is about moving power out of democratically-accountable public institutions into accountable-only-to-their-owners private ones.
Private businesses are accountable to their customers, not only their shareholders. A business that loses all of its customers ceases to operate. A business that loses 10% of its customers will be held accountable by its shareholders.
Government is far less accountable than that. Government can have the disapproval of over half the population and continue to operate.
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No; the Republicans argue that it is not in the IRS’s interest to do a good job, or offer the best tax strategies with their own tools. (Additionally, should the IRS tool contain a bug, does the IRS have the right to collect against their own mistake?)
This is a particular sore spot, as Republicans have still not forgiven the IRS in 2013 for admitting deliberately harassing conservative nonprofits without cause.
Call it a stupid argument, but at least it’s not a strawman like the above comment.
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I had to google this name and I found that he "makes" them sign a pledge to not raise taxes and to simplify tax laws, not to a pledge to oppose easier tax filing.
Well, there are two things going on here.
Norquist does oppose efforts by the IRS to (partially) obviate TurboTax by having the IRS do your taxes [1].
Separately, he has the anti-tax pledge you mention. The former is not entailed by the latter, at least in any obvious way.
So the parent is right about Norquist opposing filing simplification, but wrong about it being related to the infamous pledge.
[1] For those asking for a citation, here's a recent tweet: https://x.com/GroverNorquist/status/1912592196894630291
They're specifically against automatic tax calculation because they think making everyone do the work themselves encourages keeping it simple.
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Most companies do lobby - they just prefer donating to industry coalitions, because it helps reduce the chances of negative press one way or the other.
That said, ime the RoI isn't that hot for the amount of time and effort spent, as relationships do matter more than money as some point political donations have diminishing returns.
That’s what I was thinking… I would expect the lobbying to be way more of their budget, since their entire business model depends on keeping the status quo.
yes, so true! Even if they've been spending around that much every year, it's still an amazingly good ROI for Intuit to pay off lawmakers.
The article does also mention other bribes they've given recently, including $1 million to Trump
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