HELP! CITIZEN CONTROLLED TAX ALLOCATION AND DISTRIBUTION

Ok, so I’ve had an Idea to make a governments spending of tax money fairer and more representative of their citizens and I need help. I've got over 11,000 connections so I know if we put out heads together we could do something really cool.

The idea is an app (smart phone/PC/web based/whatever) where there is essentially tax allocation sliders that allow you, the citizen, to decide how your tax contribution gets allocated.

So for example if you are completely against war – you can choose not to fund it. Or if you are against Planned Parenthood you could choose not to fund it. The people that do support those things will allocate their distribution to fund it.

Real Example: Some people in the US are very much for ‘the wall’ and other are very much against it – if it does go ahead at least you can be safe in the knowledge that none of your tax dollars would go to building it, and maybe if people were more accountable for where their money was being spent they would maybe decide that there are better things to spend money on – who knows?

There might need to be some nuances and maybe some more in-depth questions. For example, I imagine there are many people who support the troops but don’t support the wars that the troops are sent to fight. They might want to make sure that their money goes towards making sure the soldiers and vets are looked after but not towards drone strikes.

This isn’t a discussion about whether peoples beliefs about wars or walls are right or wrong, this is just a discussion about allowing people to actually choose what their tax dollars get spent on.

The neat thing too is that when a disaster happens like a storm that wrecks communities and leaves people without food and shelter the government could do a 'contribution drive' where a little box pops up saying “Are you happy to increase your tax contribution by 1%/$1/whatever this month the help the victims of hurricane X?” or something to that effect. It would make donating 'one-click simple'.

Maybe there could be a corporate version too.

People would then be able to see exactly how much has been raised and it would hold politicians accountable as citizens who have contributed would want to see how and where the money gets spent. People could also link their social media to show that they have helped the good cause…because people like doing that.

I imagine there would need to be a certain percentage of the money that people don’t get to decide with to cover essential things that we would never consider to be important. I am unsure of what percentage this would need to be. But even if you got to decide how to allocate your remaining 50% (for arguments sake) that is still cool, right?

You’d have to verify yourself in the app somehow, national insurance number and some other details I guess, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

This isn’t a complete idea obviously – I wanted as much input from as many people as possible to really see if this is possible.

Questions I need help answering:

• Is this actually a good/moral idea?
• Is there anything I'm totally not seeing as to why this wouldn't work?
• Are there any added benefits that I haven't thought of?
• What percentage of peoples tax should they get to decide with?
• How likely/possible is fraud?
• How often should people be able to alter their allocation?
• Can people actually be trusted to decide what their money gets spent on or is that the job of the government?
• Does the tech exist to make this work?
• What tech would that be?
• Can blockchain help at all?
• Would this be too cost prohibitive to create, run, manage and maintain?
• Does anyone know of a company who could make a cool prototype?
• What’s the best way to get a government to trial it?
• Would any of you be interested in starting a little ‘think tank’ to discuss this and other ideas?

Please share this with your connections or tag people you think might be interested or able to help because I don’t know how to make this work and maybe they do.