
One Regulation Is Painless – A Million of Them Hurt - jseliger
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-27/one-regulation-is-painless-a-million-of-them-hurt
======
nathan_long
This reminds me a lot of the tax code. One special case is painless. A whole
pile means that millions of worker hours are wasted trying to fill out the
forms correctly, and millions of dollars paid to CPAs to do what any citizen
ought to be able to do in minutes.

Both with taxes and regulations, it's death by a thousand cuts. If you try to
fix it, you'll hear "but soy farmers _need_ tax breaks" and "but workers
_need_ to have good office chairs". Individually, each claim sounds
reasonable. Collectively, it's a mess.

I sometimes fantasize of ways to limit this. Eg, have all laws sunset, so we
have to prioritize renewing the most important. Or set absolute size limits on
areas of regulation - like a one-page tax code (with specified font and
margins). But likely none of it would work, humans being so good at exploiting
systems for personal gain.

~~~
nkurz
I appreciated this description of the difference between American and Swedish
tax preparation by some who files both:

 _Our US federal and state forms tax forms were more than 30 pages long last
year, downloaded completely blank. During the two weeks we 'll spend in
Wisconsin this summer, our main job will be to get our taxes done.

I'll wade through stacks of bank and credit card records line by line,
documenting all professional income beyond our wages and scanning for every
possible business or charitable deduction. Once this is done, we — like the
majority of US taxpayers — will hire a tax professional who charges us $500 to
review and co-sign our work.

Tax-preparation services cost American taxpayers more than $32 billion per
year. My wife, Betty, and I each have a PhD, but that's not enough to
understand IRS instructions. Finally, with a great sigh of relief, our
marriage still intact, we'll sign the forms and send them to the IRS.

Of course, despite our great efforts, we don't know whether the IRS is going
to be happy or not. We might get audited and have to dig up all this stuff
again, because the government has three years to check and revise our returns.

In Sweden, the four-page tax form comes in the mail already filled out. On a
Saturday morning, Betty and I take our coffee to the couch and review the
forms. Seeing they look reasonable, as they always do, we "sign" with a text
from our phones. In 15 minutes we are done. We don't have to hire a tax
consultant, and we avoid fights about whether a print cartridge bought at the
drugstore is a business expense or not._

[http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes-
love](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11380356/swedish-taxes-love)

~~~
SilasX
In fairness, that's a lot of information that Americans would consider
private, going out through the mail in clearly marked envelopes. They can only
be so casual about it in Sweden because they also have the social practice of
being less secretive about how much they make.

With that said, if we could nail down the authentication process, we could do
here (and should). It wouldn't improve _everyone 's_ situation -- e.g. if you
have a lot of income from hard-to-track sources -- but for most people it
would be a godsend.

~~~
cortesoft
W-2s are usually sent in the mail currently, which have all the stuff you
would want to keep private. I have never heard anyone complain that W-2s in
the mail are dangerous.

In fact, what extra information would be on this pre-filled form that isn't
already being sent via mail? Bank statements, retirement statements, pretty
much all financial info is sent in the mail every day.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>W-2s are usually sent in the mail currently, which have all the stuff you
would want to keep private. I have never heard anyone complain that W-2s in
the mail are dangerous.

That's because opening someone else's mail is a federal felony.
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708)

------
lsiebert
I think a fair bit of regulation around employment has stepped up as unions
have been weakened. Strong unions allowed people to band together to prevent
unfair working conditions, but since the unions were dependent fundamentally
on the business, they had to keep in mind real business requirements in their
asks. Governments trying to protect workers from unfair situations don't have
the give and take of collective bargaining.

I feel like most businesses would probably prefer to pay workers more because
of collective bargaining and worry less about compliance, but a variety of
legal and social changes keep collective bargaining from happening. Unions in
California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read for wanting
to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly, that seems like
a sensible position to take.

Unfortunately most advocates of the free market seem to hate unions, so any
advantage collective bargaining might have over government regulation in terms
of giving employees a fair deal while keeping regulatory costs low gets
downplayed.

edit: I put a space between any and advantage to fix a typo.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Unions in California were criticized in a recent forbes opinion piece I read
> for wanting to exempt union run shops from the minimum wage, but frankly,
> that seems like a sensible position to take.

I can _sort of_ see that, because those employees (supposedly) have the union
to take care of them. But if below minimum wage isn't enough to live on, below
minimum wage plus having to pay union dues isn't enough, either. And "it's
legal to do that to union employees but not to non-union employees" reeks of
double standard.

~~~
lawpoop
It allows them some leverage over their constituents. For instance, in
Michigan, a big union state, there is no state law mandating lunch or other
breaks. That way, unions can say to employees, "Without a union, your employer
can deny you a lunch or bathroom break."

From a naive perspective, it has historically been ironically anti-union
politicians who have backed worker protections, precisely because it takes
ammunition away from unions. Why do you need a union if all the benefits are
already written into law? Less union shops mean less union voters.

But, to argue for the unions, not only do they negotiate wages, but also
benefits. Maybe you aren't getting the minimum wage, but you might be getting
better health care, a retirement account, overtime, paid vacation, sick time,
flex time, etc. Whereas a non-union employer can say "We're paying a $15
minimum wage so we can't afford health insurance, vacation, etc." With a
minimum wage, all you're guaranteed is that wage (other state laws aside).

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I fail to see why it is the state's business to write the laws in such a way
as to give unions leverage over their constituents.

I also fail to see why other benefits that a union could get should exempt
them from minimum wage laws. Employers could give non-union employees
benefits, too, but that doesn't exempt _them_ from the minimum wage laws. I
fail to see how a union being in the mix should change anything.

~~~
lawpoop
It's not that the state writes a law that gives the unions leverage. They
write laws to /take away/ leverage from a union.

There's nothing to guarantee any kind of break from work for an employee,
unless it's a law or it's part of the agreement between the employer and the
employee. So if the state makes it a law, that is one less benefit a union can
negotiate for their members.

------
danielweber
George McGovern, Democratic Presidential candidate in 1972, wrote in 1992
about trying to run a business after getting out of politics

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702034064045780705...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070543545022704)
(google the headline for the full article)

"I also wish that during the years I was in public office I had had this
firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day.
That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more
understanding presidential contender."

and

"The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is
not too high to clear? I don't have the answer. I do know that we need to
start raising these questions more often."

~~~
mark-r
Does that mean Trump is the perfect presidential contender? Nobody's going to
understand business concerns better than him.

~~~
runholm
Trump has the experience. If he will work towards resolving the issues in good
fashion is a question worth debating though.

------
icelancer
This is exactly how I feel as a small business owner. The total amount of tax
paid is paltry; I could afford to pay more (and indeed I generally vote along
liberal lines). But the constant nagging, begging, and hands out from 20+
different government departments for money and my time while providing
absolutely terrible customer service in return... I can easily see why small
business owners vote Republican, even if that won't even solve the problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Has it gotten considerably worse in the last, say, 15 years? Or am I just more
aware of it? (I am not a small business owner - I'm looking at it from the
outside.)

------
ThomPete
As someone who both has done business in Denmark and in the US I am always
reminded how relative it all is.

So yes it's burdensome but it shouldn't be something that you as a business
owner should deal with. You have lawyers and financial advisors and staff for
that when your business become too complex.

On the flipside you have access to a huge huge market which every other
country in the world is envying.

The problem is that because employees don't have proper representation as most
unions have been wiped out, or have too much representation through too
powerful unions, the government is forced to go in and implement regulation.

Denmark have something called the Danish model which basically ensures that
the employers and the unions on their members behalf negotiate the basic terms
only with the government as an intermediary.

It's not perfect and it's showing signs of erosion because unions across the
world are loosing the battle against the employers. But it would probably be a
good thing for the US system to implement something like that on a state
basis.

~~~
caseysoftware
> So yes it's burdensome but it shouldn't be something that you as a business
> owner should deal with. You have lawyers and financial advisors and staff
> for that when your business become too complex.

But how do the lawyers and advisors get the information? Someone has to
collect it.

Then, as someone collects it, it must be validated and/or reviewed in some way
to be considered "trusted" in some regard.

Then the other side - regulators - must have a way to spot check and
confirm/validate the information which implies investigators and potentially
field investigators. Since most companies aren't going to allow strangers to
roam around the office, these investigators probably need to be escorted while
on site.

Unless your underlying goal is really "full employment via regulatory burden"
and then this is on the right track.

~~~
ThomPete
Problems like these are opportunities. An opening to build a business which
helps making complexity easier.

It's actually in many ways a feature not a bug.

~~~
PKop
But for society, and the economy as a whole, these problems are "dead-weight
loss" [0]. No productive output is created by jumping through the necessary
hoops to comply with every increasing complexity.

And there are opportunity costs to spending time and money on tax / regulatory
compliance vs. the actual business.

If your above statement was true, then wouldn't it be more true the more
complexity we added to the system?

Maybe instead of working till the middle of April [1] to pay the government
our tax bill, we could be working half the year.. or longer? Surely all of
that complexity would create even more openings for businesses wanting to
solve the complexity problem...

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss)

[1] [http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax-freedom-
day-2015-april-...](http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax-freedom-
day-2015-april-24th)

~~~
ThomPete
It is true the more complexity we add to the system. The more complexity the
more problems the more opportunity. Of course a system can be so complex that
becomes unworkable.

But technology allow us to take a lot of that cumbersome complexity and make
it trivial.

Denmark has one of the most streamlined and optimized tax-reporting systems
yet you don't see it nourishing because of that.

------
jxramos
This is precisely the focus of the 10000 commandments:
[https://cei.org/10KC](https://cei.org/10KC), which says regulation is
tantamount to a backdoor tax more or less.

"Ten Thousand Commandments, points out: regulations impose enormous burdens on
American consumers, businesses, and the economy. Unnecessary and meddlesome
overregulation and intervention create uncertainty that slows innovation and
economic growth. But unfortunately, regulations get little attention in policy
debates. Unlike taxes, they are difficult to quantify because they are
unbudgeted and often indirect."

------
crazy1van
Regulations are great for handling tragedy of the commons scenarios. Eg, it's
in a single business's best interest to dump chemicals in our shared water
supply, but it is in the common people's interest to have clean water. So we
regulate polluting the water.

However, most regulations I encounter are more of the Baptists and Bootleggers
variety. They both want highly regulated liquor for totally different reasons.
Just like many large businesses are fine with extra regulations that well
intentioned Do-Gooders suggest because the big businesses know it will block
small innovative competitors from entering their market.

It's so frustrating to see the anti-Corporate crowd cheer for more
regulations. They're just cementing their place in society.

~~~
x1798DE
> Regulations are great for handling tragedy of the commons scenarios.

I have never seen any actual evidence for this. There is strong reasoning to
say markets are bad at handing tragedies of the commons, but it does not
follow from that that government is good at it.

~~~
enraged_camel
Markets _may_ be good at preventing tragedies of the commons, but they may
also fail to do so.

Consider the case of a lake fished by several fishing boats. Each fishing boat
consumes a percentage of their daily catch and sells the rest for profit. The
nature of the lake makes it a zero-sum resource: if one fishing boat catches
more fish, it means less fish for the others.

The problem: every fishing boat has a short-term incentive to overfish, since
more fish lead to more profits. This incentivizes every fishing boat to catch
as much fish as possible, until there's no more fish. That's the tragedy of
the commons, and there's nothing the market can do to fix this.

By the way, I didn't make up this scenario. There's a ton of examples of this
exact same thing happening all over the world, not just with fisheries but
with any kind of shared resource ("the commons"). You can read more here:
[http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ten-reallife-
examples-...](http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ten-reallife-examples-of-
the-tragedy-of-the-common.html)

~~~
x1798DE
I think you missed my point. Your example and others are a clear demonstration
of how externalities cause individual incentives to lead to a sub-optimal
outcome - that is not in dispute.

What I was saying is that just because markets are bad at solving a problem
does not mean that government is good at solving that problem. It doesn't even
mean that government isn't _worse_ at solving it.

------
natrius
Everyone is familiar with the idea that companies pay politicians to weaken
regulations, but more people need to realize that they pay politicians to
strengthen regulations as well. Expertise in regulatory compliance is a
competitive advantage that all incumbents have. They can create barriers to
entry by making regulatory compliance harder.

Companies bribe politicians who hate regulations to remove regulations they
hate. Companies bribe politicians who like regulations to add regulations that
they can comply with more easily than their competitors. Centralized democracy
is fundamentally flawed because votes can be bought.

~~~
partiallypro
Regulatory Capture and Public Choice Theory should be taught in high school.
It's counterintuitive on the surface, but makes a lot of sense when you see it
in action. Regulations are incredibly hard to remove and very rarely are
removed; on any level, state, local or federal. It's much easier to write new
regulations and starve your competition.

------
benbenolson
I agree completely with this article; as the son of a contractor, I've heard
countless stories about how city regulations, without exception, cause good
business practices to become frustrating.

Not only is it frustrating, but even in principle such regulations are
definitely overstepping the bounds of government; no government should
regulate how a business should operate. The market will decide that.

~~~
wiz21
I'm very happy my governement makes regulations : * the market didn't decide
VW should not fake emission * the market didn't decide Fukushima to be secured
* the market didn't decide bisphenol-A is dangerous * the market didn't avoid
asbestos * the market didn't choose forbid to sell cigarettes to people who
can be hurt by them (i.e. children) * the market didn't decide tax avoidance
is a bad thing

Eventually, those things will get fixed, but when the damage is done (see
asbestos), i.e. when it's too late.

The problem is that market pushes business to make money, not to be virtuous.
That's because when a business must choose between "closing" and "going on but
being less than virtuous", the business says "I don't have choice, it's either
live or nothing", so I choose "live on".

I understand that not all business operate like this. But many people will
make that choice because it's practical. Much like choosing between free
software (politically fine but economically broken (that's an approximation))
and proprietary software (ok to enslave people but economically viable).

~~~
narag
I am in favour of fair and reasonable regulations, but your examples are
unconvincing. Faking emissions, avoiding taxes... those are illegal actions,
just because you are trying to fool government for profit. Fukushima most
likely followed regulations that were inadequate.

The key word here is _responsability_. If businesses are made responsible and
have to pay when they behave recklessly, the only measures needed are those
preventing unreversible damage.

Also there should be some kind of limitation to what government can regulate
and how.

~~~
emodendroket
> Faking emissions, avoiding taxes... those are illegal actions, just because
> you are trying to fool government for profit.

Huh? Without regulation, VW could just claim whatever they wanted about the
emissions of the car and it wouldn't be illegal.

------
rayiner
> But it also falls most heavily on smaller businesses, which cannot afford
> staffs of pricey compliance specialists to make sure that their desk chairs
> meet the new California workplace seating requirements. This may help
> explain why the number of firms is falling, and markets are consolidating.

The inefficiency with which small businesses deal with regulatory compliance
is just one example of a general phenomenon. Small businesses are inefficient
at pretty much everything. For example, there is no way cab companies, the
largest of which may have a few hundred drivers, could ever deploy the kind of
software infrastructure Uber has developed. Mom-and-pops can never compete
with Amazon's or Wal-Mart's integrated and unified systems for warehousing,
picking, shipping, and logistics. As technology makes it easier to manage
increasingly-large enterprises and unlocks economies of scale, consolidation
will continue apace, with or without the impact of regulatory compliance.

At the end of the day, someone has to make sure workers aren't being abused by
being forced to work for more hours than they are paid for. As long we
consider that a legitimate burden we put on businesses, we have to face the
fact that the relative difficulty of compliance is just one of the many
disadvantages of being small.

~~~
icebraining
_For example, there is no way cab companies, the largest of which may have a
few hundred drivers, could ever deploy the kind of software infrastructure
Uber has developed._

No, but a small business could build and support the software for many of
them, as a service. In fact, there are plenty of startups doing just that.
Scale doesn't have to come from building up, it can come from building
horizontally, in a web of small businesses supporting each other.

Unless you're facing a stupid number of regulations, which scale linearly with
the number of firms, encouraging the centralization and monopolization of
markets.

~~~
rayiner
So some company builds the software. Can cab companies afford to run that
software on their own server farms? Of course not. So the software company
sells it as a service, running everything on its own AWS instances. At that
point, there is zero reason for that company to not just be Uber.

~~~
icebraining
Why would you need a server farm to handle a few hundred users? A gaming host,
which does essentially the same (push location of players around in realtime,
just in a virtual world) can support hundreds of players on a single server,
and not a particularly beefy one at that.

That said, even if the company does host the servers, in what way does that
mean they should also vet and hire drivers, handle (non software related)
support calls, invest in marketing and advertising, and all those hundred of
other tasks that a taxi business needs, all in many countries and languages?

And the reality is that there are already dozens of companies doing just the
software and renting it out to taxi companies, they must have some reason for
doing so.

------
emodendroket
I mean, OK, yes, regulation costs money. So? "It costs money" is not, in and
of itself, a reason not to do something.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, when "things" (regulation, or taxes, or transport, or transaction costs,
or whatever) cost less, then more things become economically viable, _so more
things happen_. That is, the overall economy grows.

We've had a stagnant economy for the last 6 years (at least). It is my
impression that we have also had an increasing burden of regulation in that
time. Are they related? I can't prove it, but I suspect yes, at least to some
degree.

~~~
emodendroket
And what is that impression based on?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It's primarily based on working in business. But it's hard for me to tell if
the regulations are becoming more burdensome, or if I'm just becoming more
aware of them as my role becomes more senior.

It's also somewhat based on my perception of how many regulatory hoops I'd
have to jump through to start a business. Again, though, I don't know if the
hoops were always there and my awareness of them grew, or if the number of
hoops increased.

------
3pt14159
You can have both a safely regulated economy as well as a non-burdensome one.
America has it particularly bad because a good portion of the population
doesn't believe in regulations _at all_.

A smarter strategy would be to see what other countries in the world do that
is both effective and efficient.

~~~
emodendroket
America's case is particularly complex, I think, because of the extent to
which rules for everything vary between states or even municipalities.

~~~
kspaans
Canada is in the same boat, with taxes and regulations changing between
provinces. Yet they don't manage quite as much complexity in their tax code!

~~~
emodendroket
Yes, there are a handful of federal systems like this, but I think they end up
increasing costs pretty significantly for people who want to operate
nationally.

------
strommen
So California requires employers to document their employees' lunch breaks.
Does anybody think that this law was passed simply on a whim?

Of course not. And the same is true for nearly other regulation that is taking
up business' time and money.

The people at fault here are those employers that did _not_ let their
employees have lunch breaks. And the companies that did not provide safety
gear, and that refused to hire non-whites, and that wantonly dumped toxic
chemicals in the rivers.

We need regulations because some people are scumbags.

~~~
CydeWeys
I can't believe how far down in the comments I had to scroll to see this
sentiment, and that it's sitting partially grayed no less!

To me it's completely obvious; if businesses could be trusted not to abuse
their employees, then nannying regulations mandating lunch breaks wouldn't be
necessary. Since businesses repeatedly abuse the power imbalances they have
over their workers (including removing lunch breaks), there you have the
regulations.

------
pm24601
Lets see. The poor Mr. Warren Meyer is crying about being forced to document
and prove he is not taking advantage of his employees.

Or in other words, California is doing the job of government: protecting those
who cannot defend themselves from being ripped off.

Mr. Meyer needs to understand that businesses have been engaged in wage theft
for a very, very long time. ( read more here:
[http://www.wagetheft.org/](http://www.wagetheft.org/) )

No business owner should cry crocodile tears about the government doing its
job of protecting citizens from being forced to work off the clock or being
denied lawfully entitled breaks.

The regulations were put in place because businesses ripped off workers. This
is the same reason why minimum wage is needed, child labor laws, health and
safety regulations, etc.

------
mistermann
To me this is extremely similar to change control requirements on systems -
yes there is a very good reason for them, but if in practice the people
administering these rules lose track of _why_ the rules exist, have a lack of
understanding of the technology involved (therefore unable to properly judge
risk), and then throw some political chicanery where some people are eager for
any new tool they can use to "enforce their authoritah" on those below them in
the organizational chain, and you end up with an environment where doing
things takes twice as long, but you're not actually any safer than you were
without the controls.

------
tn13
There is nothing surprising about this. All government regulations are like
this at one point people simply stop giving fucks to these rules.

I am pretty sure everyone company out there violating some kind of regulation.
Do you know that it is illegal to throw a dry cell in your usual waste basket
?

In such systems people who have complete disregard for law, who are
exploitative who are willing to bribe or threaten government official tend to
succeed at faster rate than usual law abiding citizens leading to India or
China like situations.

------
Bluestrike2
A huge part of the problem is that many legislators and regulators don’t
understand the economic theory behind regulation and government intervention
in the first place. Generally speaking, the goal is to price in negative
externalities. In some cases, that can extend to disincentivizing certain
behaviors as well.

You also have to acknowledge that, just as certain market forces can cause
distortions, so too can government actions. Regardless of your school of
thought, there’s no escaping the realization that regulation is an incredibly
nuanced issue. It’s not black and white, and never has been.

There’s also a ton of room for abuse, both willful and through neglect. In
general, this is probably what most people are thinking of when they talk
about regulations being bad.

As an example, and apologies in advance for the length, my dad’s family is in
the cemetery industry. Over the past few months, a few members of the
Pennsylvania Senate have pushed a bill—Senate Bill 874—that changes how
cemeteries handle funeral merchandise (caskets, vaults, bronze markers, etc.).
Currently, 70% of retail price of pre-need merchandise is put into a trust
fund until the merchandise is delivered. It’s been this way since the 60s in
Pennsylvania and most other states, and there have never really been any
problems. The money sits in trust, earns interest, and when the merchandise is
ready to be delivered, is used to pay for the merchandise. Very, very simple
stuff.

Among other things, SB 874 would change that funding requirement to 100%. The
biggest problem with that is that there are costs associated with the
sale—offices, marketing, sales staff, etc.—that can’t be deferred. So you have
two options: (1) you quit selling pre-need merchandise altogether, or (2) you
raise non-merchandise prices (lots, mausoleum crypts, etc.) to compensate. And
you start making significant cuts, starting with the sales staff. The
significant hit to a cemetery’s cash flow also means it’s harder for them to
pay for maintenance costs without tapping into their perpetual care funds (a
big issue for smaller cemeteries and those that are mostly full), meaning that
money isn’t there earning interest for the future.

SB 874 also makes some other changes like ending constructive delivery on
caskets and vaults and applies the FTC Funeral Rule to PA cemeteries. There’s
an argument to be made about constructive delivery of caskets, but existing
regulations still apply and the practice is rare to begin with. So even if
you’re worried about a casket “rotting away in a warehouse” as one person put
it, the cemetery is still responsible for it as it’s under their care. If the
casket is damaged, they have to make good that damage. And as for vaults,
they’re large concrete boxes that go in the ground. They’re very tough, hard
to damage, and installing them in bulk leads to significant cost savings. By
not permitting cemeteries to constructively deliver them, you wind up raising
the cost of both the vault and the installation to the detriment of consumers.
As for the Funeral Rule, even the FTC says that “[many] of the disclosures
required by the Funeral Rule make little sense if they are imposed on
cemeteries” and that “there is insufficient evidence that commercial
cemeteries, crematories, and third-party sellers of funeral goods are engaged
in widespread unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” They advised the PA
Senate that SB 874 would “lessen competition, resulting in potentially higher
prices and fewer options for consumers, without countervailing benefits to
consumers.”

So basically, we have a bill that would make significant changes to the
cemetery industry for no verifiable reasons. There’s no evidence of any
malfeasance in PA cemeteries over the course of decades, and no benefit to the
consumer for the changes. And any benefit there might be would be wiped out by
the increased costs elsewhere, to say nothing of the decreased competition as
cemeteries exist the pre-need merchandise market. And the other regulations
and contract law protect the consumer in the few specific hypotheticals that
they’re worried about. So why push it?

Well, that’s where it gets interesting. One of the senators sponsoring the
bill happens to own a large funeral home near Philadelphia. With cemeteries
not selling merchandise, people would have no choice but to go to the funeral
director. The bill originally came up after a public company, StoneMor, signed
a lease agreement to operate the Philadelphia Diocese’s cemeteries, including
the right to sell merchandise for them. So Philly funeral directors came up
with this bill as a means of fighting back, and the rest of the state’s
funeral directors went along with it because it would benefit them
significantly.

At the very least, it’s a massive conflict of interest and a classic example
of political corruption for private gain. Why should any elected
representative be permitted to push legislation that would have a direct
benefit on their own business’s bottom line?

When people bemoan government regulation and intervention, it’s stuff like
this that they’re thinking about. Every time a legislator jumps the shark with
something like this, they make it that much harder for legitimate government
intervention. The end result is the sort of gridlock we have now, where things
are black and white and each side shouts slogans at one another.

Sorry for the length.

~~~
rqebmm
tl;dr: A few members of the Pennsylvania Senate have pushed a bill—Senate Bill
874—that changes how cemeteries handle funeral merchandise (caskets, vaults,
bronze markers, etc.) ... One of the senators sponsoring the bill happens to
own a large funeral home near Philadelphia. With cemeteries not selling
merchandise, people would have no choice but to go to the funeral director.
... Philly funeral directors came up with this bill as a means of fighting
back, and the rest of the state’s funeral directors went along with it because
it would benefit them significantly. At the very least, it’s a massive
conflict of interest and a classic example of political corruption for private
gain.

------
joesmo
Businesses cannot be trusted. If they could be trusted, you wouldn't need all
this regulation. Even as it stands, many businesses don't follow regulations
and there are generally no repercussions for that. It's the employees who
always suffer, who don't get their lunch breaks or health insurance or
whatever it is they are legally allowed by law but denied by their employers.
Sorry, it's impossible to side with businesses on this one given the track
record of most businesses.

------
ecobiker
While the tax code should be simplified, it's possible to automate most of the
rules anyway. It should be as simple as upload W2(s), link your trading
accounts, answer a few questions and be done with it for most people. The
software need not satisfy every usecase for everyone in the country. Are there
an free/open source tax filing software?

~~~
dsp1234
Note that this is basically what the 1040-EZ[0] is. It has the benefit of
being one page, with simple instructions and it covers a lot of people.

• Your filing status is single or married filing jointly. If you are not sure
about your filing status, see instructions.

• You (and your spouse if married filing jointly) were under age 65 and not
blind at the end of 2015. If you were born on January 1, 1951, you are
considered to be age 65 at the end of 2015.

• You do not claim any dependents. For information on dependents, see Pub.
501.

• Your taxable income (line 6) is less than $100,000.

• You do not claim any adjustments to income. For information on adjustments
to income, use the Tax Topics listed under Adjustments to Income at
www.irs.gov/taxtopics (see instructions).

• The only tax credit you can claim is the earned income credit (EIC). The
credit may give you a refund even if you do not owe any tax. You do not need a
qualifying child to claim the EIC. For information on credits, use the Tax
Topics listed under Tax Credits at www.irs.gov/taxtopics (see instructions).
If you received a Form 1098-T or paid higher education expenses, you may be
eligible for a tax credit or deduction that you must claim on Form 1040A or
Form 1040. For more information on tax benefits for education, see Pub. 970.
If you can claim the premium tax credit or you received any advance payment of
the premium tax credit in 2015, you must use Form 1040A or Form 1040.

• You had only wages, salaries, tips, taxable scholarship or fellowship
grants, unemployment compensation, or Alaska Permanent Fund dividends, and
your taxable interest was not over $1,500. But if you earned tips, including
allocated tips, that are not included in box 5 and box 7 of your Form W-2, you
may not be able to use Form 1040EZ (see instructions). If you are planning to
use Form 1040EZ for a child who received Alaska Permanent Fund dividends, see
instructions.

As for free offerings, these can also be found via the IRS[1], but generally
apply to lower income amounts.

[0] - [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-
pdf/f1040ez.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040ez.pdf)

[1] -
[https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/wizard.jsp?ck](https://apps.irs.gov/app/freeFile/jsp/wizard.jsp?ck)

------
sxcurry
If you'd like to know more about the libertarian blogger who wrote this piece,
check out her profile on the S.H.A.M.E (Shame the Hacks who Abuse Media
Ethics) page: [http://shameproject.com/profile/megan-
mcardle/](http://shameproject.com/profile/megan-mcardle/)

~~~
emodendroket
Excellent. I love the SHAME Project.

------
dbcurtis
Documentable, reasonable, compliance costs should be a tax credit.

(Yes, "reasonable" is quantifiable. Think about courts awarding reasonable
attorney's fees. There are decades of history around this concept.)

------
duaneb
What is the OP suggesting instead?

~~~
emodendroket
"Just let me do whatever I want; trust me."

------
good_sir_ant
TIL people who claim to be 'smart' on this site (of all sites) thing
regulations == solutions. Too cute.

