Thechnically speaking...

[AmunRa]

I need some clarification if this idea is technically speaking feasible:
say i pay my taxes in bitcoins...and my bitcoins go into a public wallet..that is the government wallet ( just an assumption)...now because the government is supposed to be "transparent" all the tax bitcoins will go  again into public wallets of the various the entities the government (local or federal) deal with..,that way ..because each bitcoin transaction is traceable i will know where my bitcoins are spent ? would a system like this be possible to implement?  

[kuriboh]

Its a great idea, that way won't be lost funds, the transactions will be immediately and everyone will be happy.

But because its a great idea I don't think the government wants to take this ideas.

(Maybe I sound a little paranoic) The government is happy with this form of control over the economy because this way the people can't think and revolutionizing or implement new ideas. The government haves all the money and that makes the government and 1% happy.

[DeathAndTaxes]

You never will be able to pay your taxes in Bitcoins.  Fiat sucks.  It is horrible as a medium of exchange and worse as a store of wealth.  People only use it because they are coerced into doing so by things like legal tender laws and requirements that your taxes must be paid in legal tender.  Period.   That creates "demand".  It isn't going away.  Modern nation states would implode without the financial games they can play (like the US dollar "safe haven" currency has only lost 96.2% of purchasing power since the FED took over).

Maybe (and this is a stretch) someday there may be a service which allows you to "pay your taxes with Bitcoins" where the money transmitter having a license with IRS to act as a payment processor exchanges your BTC for USD and pays the IRS.

[niothor]

You know that this is a double enged sword.
You'll be able to track where the bitcoins go but the goverment will be able to track all your movements as well.

And if you say that you can hide them , so can they.

[Lethn]

It all depends on honesty, by all accounts it's possible, you've seen though how much trouble the U.S government is having even understanding Bitcoin, in order for us to know about their spending, they'd have to publicly submit their addresses and transactions for everyone to see. Granted, it would be fantastic from an innocent point of view but the way human nature works I see government, at least as we know it now just outright ending.  I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing corporations running the show nowadays and handling infrastructure rather than governments.

[lch]

I think technically this is possible to implement. But the government is still able to use shared wallets to hide the destination of the coins.

[EmperorBob]

You can prove that you control a certain address with signing, but you can't do the opposite (prove it isn't yours). This means that you can understate, but never overstate, the amount of bitcoins you currently control. If the government wanted to show the exact set of expenses, it could request a digitally signed receipt for any of its expenditures, proving that the money had effectively changed hands. But you can still make fake companies, or get a real company to make fake receipts. It's really hard to work around the pseudoanonymity here.

So you can get some level of transparency, but it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. You can get an audit trail, and it's really hard to accidentally lose track of the money if you're careful, but certain kinds of fraud can still occur. I mean even now no one in modern governments just wires themselves money from their department's bank account, instead they overspend on a contract and get a kickback for it. It does allow for citizen verification of expenses, as opposed to just internal verification.

[Adrian-x]

I need some clarification if this idea is technically speaking feasible:
say i pay my taxes in bitcoins...and my bitcoins go into a public wallet..that is the government wallet ( just an assumption)...now because the government is supposed to be "transparent" all the tax bitcoins will go  again into public wallets of the various the entities the government (local or federal) deal with..,that way ..because each bitcoin transaction is traceable i will know where my bitcoins are spent ? would a system like this be possible to implement?  

Not just government,  but I see every publicly traded corporation who has legal status functioning on the same basis. (Easy to tax and transparent to share holders)

Free the little guy strengthen and diversify the economy.