Incorporating a new feature of Tax Direction to tag peoples’ problems alongwith their Tax Amounts to be directed into the specific solution-projects upon local conglomeration of similar directives

 

 

MOTIVATION:

The human civilization is on the brinks of a climate revolution and our present decisions will depend on whether we are able to outlive time as a dominant civilization in the Universe, or perish like many in our own history. It seems we are at crossroads having to manage polluting resources which are in great demand now and shift their usage into more sustainable products immediately. We are going to have to help ourselves in this regard by generating new revolutionary ideas and transform our steps towards eternal survival of all life on Earth into swiftly implementable actions. The two main challenges in this regard are climatic changes due to global warming which has started causing super floods and super cyclones and would be essentially irreversible within the next 5-10 years unless we take urgent necessary civilization saving action right now.

A basic roadblock during implementation is due to lack of government’s awareness and fund availability, for which we may have to run from pillar to post in some countries to just show that a profitable model exists to save Earth (which is another important evaluation technique we need to change). The existing human civilization has evolved a great deal from the basic barter system principles which seem to make use of a token (MONEY) issued by a central authority (the Central/Reserve/Federal Banks). This token has developed great potential difference within our society where people having a great deal of these tokens accumulated through time are having the ability to make decisions on how to make the next expenditure directions. These are almost always greedy decisions to be extremely profit making and pays no (or rather negative) heed to help us all (Pollution is the living proof alongwith the extreme inaction in delaying plastic & cigarette ban). A major problem is the Optimization Techniques used by major companies are created to help profit maximization rather than using Greener Objectives without thinking about economic values. The economic constraints are not physical laws but are created by us and can be changed.

However we are not provided the authority to divert our own tokens for our own use. The government functions based on the ability to direct our (Direct/Indirect/Corporate/Individual etc.) Taxes and develop projects for our nation's progress. However, the decision of using this huge sum of money every year is based on a huge internal political lobby and how certain corporates have been able to convince the government into helping with laws to help a specific business domain. This however is essentially neither something which is extremely bad nor might be easily preventable. However, the decision of such expenditure is being done by the Government elected representatives being supported by a huge administrative system based on internal data collection and years of policy data. This seems to have been working fine but we can make it work better, but before that we need to absorb the understanding that Tax as we know is being charged from us as a form of token by the government to help us. Tax might have been existing 5000 years before in the similar form (Ancient Tax Tokens, Trade Licenses and Metrological Records?: Making Sense of Indus Inscribed Objects Through Script-Internal, Contextual, Linguistic, and Ethnohistorical Lenses. by Bahata Ansumali Mukhopadhyay :: SSRN) and we need this to evolve now. The token of money which we are earning by our hardwork and  time spent on the planet for our own progress must have some utilization characteristics defined by us. But would this help?

 

 

EXPLANATION in the form of a CONVERSATION:

How can we as citizens direct money into research domain or infrastructure projects which is generally done by the government? We may suggest them on multiple portals or approach MP's or MLA's (democratic representatives of people with various tags everywhere), but this doesn't enlighten them the way it is necessary. Let's say, even if I suggest the government to invest in developmental projects related to "anti aging research" or suggest them to develop a fund for it, the question arises that where will this money come from? i.e. if we are also able to connect to the source of the expenditure, then it would be helpful and easily implementable.

Enter TAX. (You may want to read why and how the concept of TAX was introduced)

 

We are suggesting including a new information in TAX portals of the government wherein alongwith sending the Tax AMOUNT to the government agencies yearly; we would also provide a Tax DIRECTION. This would help them make necessary and bold decisions and create more awareness among the general public. This brave idea of enabling hyper-local governance using existing Tax Portals of the government would require a project in individual countries after the development of the final web-applications in this project.

 

Problem 1) The average citizen has a lot of requirements to ask the Government for help. It is however not possible to approach the authorities every time a new necessity creeps up.

Problem 2) Our Financial Budget has a lot of different monetary allocations to different states, to projects of national importance and other relevant fields. However there might be the case that some more financing is required in a specific sector or there may be a need for a project idea which might turn out to be of high strategic value but is presently being overlooked.

 

A Single Integrated Solution:- A huge chunk of the revenue generated by the Government is through Individual Income Tax. The government however collects the Tax but not the person's inner wish of how this Tax amount might be spent towards nation building. I propose to incorporate new features within existing tax portals which would allow Tax-Payers to provide other information which, for simplicity, is termed Direction.

 

Question:- What does this Tax Direction do?

Answer:- This enables the Income Tax Payers to tell the government regarding his/her request for investing his/her Tax Amount for a specific cause/project or in a specific domain/sector. The information of whether to provide this Tax Direction while paying the tax would be at the discretion of the Taxpayer (so some people might provide a Tax Direction to their Tax Amount while some might not).

 

Question:- What are the possibilities of typical Tax Directions?

Example Person 1:- This would be made an interactive tool with map features. I as an Income Tax Payer should be able to tell if I require a footbridge in my area at a specific juncture. For this I would click on the map at a specific location and write my requirements.

Example Person 2:- I as a Clean Energy enthusiast might provide a Tax Direction requesting the government to invest my Income Tax Amount into the Clean Energy sector (additional sub categories might also be provided like developing the Small-Hydropower-Infrastructure in Nevada).

Example Person 3:- I should be able to split my Tax Amount; directing 60% of it to be spent for Space Exploration and developing a Space Station. The rest 40% may be invested into Defence.

 

Question:- Why should we be bothered? Isn't the present system enough?

Answer:- The present system may be working fine but this new information would help the government in many ways. Using AI and ML techniques, the Tax Directions of all Income Tax Payers may be filtered before making a Financial Budget. So the Government of the country would know that; say 1729 people have requested for a new Community Centre in Alaska OR 58946 people request a water desalination plant in Chennai due to acute water shortage as a result of climate change. So these statistics would help the government to develop new innovative solutions using clustering of the common requests.

 

Additional Benefit:- This information would be taken to the Central Governments (assuming the individual tax is charged by the central government which is responsible to later provide yearly financial assistance to the states) and based on the importance and relevance of cumulative Tax Directions, the same information may be shared with the respective State Government authorities enabling hyper-local governance. Specifically, a typical person might have the need of telling the authorities for the requirement of a school/hospital in a remote area, and the Central Government may share this information with the respective State, so that the State Government may share the same with the District authorities for initiation of developmental work.

 

This new feature of a Tax Direction would help in generating new dimensions of investment and enable countries to progress faster, solving problems at a micro-scale. The Tax Direction is basically the voice of the people coupled with their Soft Power of requesting the government to give a direction to the progress of our civilization. The highest priority of our civilization should be eliminating the process of natural death. In most countries, such research work is not publicised in the press or funded extensively by the Government. It seems that the present upbringing of man, irrespective of their religion or social connections, seems to have let us to forget that we are, as-of-now, eventually going to die naturally and there is every possibility that what we do during our temporary existence essentially becomes pointless on the universal scales. The Tax Direction, when coupled with a positive understanding of our existence, would help a typical individual request the Government to highly prioritize its research spending in the domains of longevity, climate change and such survival constraints which we shall face.

 

 

PREDICTING the FUTURE:

Image a country and people are allowed to manage it's finances through a feedback mechanism! Tax Direction is that feedback! It is necessary to have a scientific backing behind this to be implemented and therefore lies my reason for this outreach. Presently the feedback we are able to send to the government agencies through various channels are very widely spread and often not implemented. This feedback mechanism would be completely digital for providing the much needed soft-power to the citizens for a much wider decentralised decision making process.

We are going to redefine the democratic views taking inspiration from DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organizations (What is a DAO in Crypto? (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) - YouTube) and incorporating similar principles within the democratic Tax Structure where we would have the ability to divert our own Tax money to help our immediate needs. However, will this help or will this magnify the problem? Just as we saw above, that corporation instead of taking drastic measures to save our planet from catastrophic mass extinction events within the next few hundred years, are churning in profits of a human created economic system as it this were just a game without our lives at stakes, won’t centralizing our own tax expenditures make the problem more complex. After all we would make more selfish decisions with our tax money? Initially it would be the case, especially for developing countries since people in developing countries have a lot of diverse existing local problems and they would first divert their tax amounts to solve these. However later in the developing countries and in the present developed countries, we might see futuristic approaches towards creating better solutions. The delay in seeing great results in this approach where we may have a soft power upon our own tax amounts is based on the assumption that we fundamentally selfish organisms but become selfless when we are aware of the much bigger problem. So in the initial years, much tax would be directed towards building local infrastructure projects and local spending would increase (which would be a cascading effect as more complex problems arise); but after a time delay allowing development to catch up equitably, we would see an uniform expenditure direction towards common civilization goals like those of increasing the human lifespan and positive action against climate change through hyperlocal sustainable projects.

 

 

Motivation RESOURCES:

An Economic Hit Man Confesses and Calls to Action | John Perkins | TEDxTraverseCity​

The dirty secret of capitalism -- and a new way forward​

3+ degrees of global warming​

Carl Sagan testifying before Congress in 1985 on climate change​

‘Fake socialite’ lives 21 days for free in Beijing as social experiment​

Where Does Money Come From? | Ole Bjerg | TEDxCopenhagen​

This is why we can't have nice things​

Honest Government Ad | Koalas & Trees​

The Token Economy Revolution | Michael Healy | TEDxBostonStudio​

How Banks Create Money Out of NOTHING - Richard Werner​

New Religions of the 21st Century | Yuval Harari | Talks at Google

Omdena Kharagpur Action Project: Incorporating a New Feature of Tax Direction to Tag Peoples’ Problems Along With Their Tax Amounts

Connect with InSociEUP: consciousuniversalpermanence@gmail.com