A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #11-26 - Get the computer out of the paycheck! Fiscal complexity as an instrument of domination (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

There comes a point when technology ceases to be a tool and becomes 
power. That moment, today, is the paycheck. ---- Anyone who has tried to 
read one knows it: a sequence of items, codes, acronyms, rates, 
deductions, substitute taxes. It's not simply complicated: it's 
structurally incomprehensible. It's not designed to be read by the 
recipient, but to be processed by computer systems. And here lies the 
first crux.
Complexity is not a side effect: it's a choice. The tax and contribution 
system has been stratified over the years through exemptions, 
exceptions, temporary incentives, and special regimes. Each intervention 
has added to the previous one without replacing it. The result is not a 
fairer system, but a system that can no longer be controlled by those 
who endure it.

It wasn't always this way. Pay was understandable, debatable, 
contestable. The worker could at least roughly verify how the gross 
amount was calculated. Today, this possibility has disappeared. Not 
because of individual incompetence, but because the system is structured 
in such a way that it requires external tools to be interpreted.

Software, consultants, intermediaries: this is where real control shifts.

This shift is crucial: knowledge is separated from direct experience. 
Workers are no longer able to control their own wages without resorting 
to technical mediation. And when control passes through mediation, power 
shifts. It is not a neutral issue.

Let's take a concrete example: the tax exemption on contractual wage 
increases. It is presented as a benefit for everyone, but its actual 
operation tells a different story. By applying a proportional substitute 
tax, the tax burden on increases is reduced without taking into account 
the overall progressivity of income.

The result is simple and measurable: those who have little earn little, 
those who have more earn more. Using the same mechanism, a raise worth a 
few dozen euros for an average salary generates double or triple the 
benefits for the higher levels.

It's not a distortion: it's the normal functioning of a system that 
replaces progressivity with proportionality on individual income components.

But all this remains invisible.

Because the paycheck is no longer a tool for understanding, but a 
technical representation of calculations already made elsewhere. The 
worker sees the result, not the process. And what isn't seen is not 
contested. Complexity ceases to be a technical problem and becomes a 
power relationship.

Not only because it prevents verification, but because it creates 
dependency. Wage control is delegated to external structures: 
proprietary software, processing centers, professionals. Knowledge 
becomes concentrated, while workers lose autonomy. It's a form of 
expropriation. Not of income, but of the ability to understand it. Not 
knowing how one's pay is constructed means being unable to intervene, 
unable to negotiate, unable to defend oneself. It means no longer being 
able to oppose. It means having to accept.

And so the issue becomes political again.

It's not about "simplifying" in a technical sense, but about restoring 
power, accessibility, and control. A system that cannot be understood by 
those who endure it is, by definition, an authoritarian system, even 
when it presents itself as neutral.

Because behind every voice is a choice. Behind every algorithm is a 
decision.

And what has been built can be dismantled.

This is why the demand is simple, yet radical: remove the computer from 
the paycheck. Not in the sense of rejecting technology, but of rejecting 
its use as an instrument of separation and domination. Technology must 
return to being comprehensible, verifiable, and shared.

Otherwise, it's not technology. It's power.

Totò Caggese

https://umanitanova.org/fuori-il-computer-dalla-busta-paga-la-complessita-fiscale-come-strumento-di-dominio/
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