Sheldon S. Cohen, IRS commissioner who computerized agency, dies at 91
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Mr. Cohen admitted in a letter to Long that the extent of wiretapping was far more extensive than initially revealed. By his count, the IRS had made “improper” and “questionable” use of wiretapping 287 times between 1958 and 1966, mostly owing to the “overzealousness on the part of certain personnel engaged in the investigation of the criminal element.”
Although his sparring with Long generated negative headlines, Mr. Cohen said it was far from his greatest concern during his four-year tenure. “The most embarrassing thing that happened to me in office was that millions of persons below the poverty line had to pay taxes,” he said in 1969 as he championed a system in which the poorest Americans would not pay income taxes.
It probably just "happened" while he was its head. It would have happened anyway. Because progress.
Not sure the math quite works out.
In fact that article even argues that it's perfectly fine for the government to be responsible for building roads.
Used wisely (and without a huge bureaucracy that finds busy work - including military such, and corrupt healthcare pricing) it should be enough to fund basic government, schools, and so on.
For roads, there are tolls and vehicle fees and so on. For pensions and healthcare, we have a special percentage held directly from the salary (at least in my parts). For electricity and telecommunication we pay bills (and still give huge subsidies). There are also municipal taxes for city level stuff.
It’s not perfect, but it’s very cheap to implement and electric cars are going to force the system to do something else.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Federal mandatory spending was $2.5 trillion in 2017. Mandatory spending includes social security, medicare, medicaid, unemploy. comp., veterans benefits, EIC, etc.
Interest on the debt was $263 billion.
Defense spending was $590 billion.
Just those categories $2.5 + $.263 + $.590 = $3.353 Trillion
Federal revenue in 2017, including payroll and income taxes, was $3.3 Trillion.
Just those three categories exceed total revenue and the remaining budget, non-defense discretionary, spending was just $610 billion.
Everybody hates taxes and just about everyone thinks the government is too bloated. Politicians love arguing about stupid piddly $10 million programs but real spending changes would be very, very painful.
What I'm saying is I don't see a path toward to world you're describing.
For example,
> For pensions ... percentage held directly from the salary
That's great and it can make a lot of sense. But how do we get there? Right now we have social security funded by payroll taxes. Those taxes alone exceed your ideal 10% tax rate for most. We can't remove those payroll taxes because what would fund social security? We can't remove social security because what would happen to the people dependent and soon to be dependent on it?
> If you don’t like taxes blame congress, the IRS like the police just quietly avoids anarchy.
You can't be serious. For most of our history, we didn't have an IRS. We didn't live in anarchy.
Nobody is against taxes. We had taxes before IRS existed. And if the IRS disappears, we'll still have taxes. Not only that, income tax unfairly penalizes the middle class workers while the wealthy are not ( income tax rates are much higher than the capital gain rate ).
Income taxes aren't used to build roads. We have gas tax for that. Income tax is used to fund wars and to line the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats.
Yeah, but not for that long: "The United States imposed income taxes briefly during the Civil War and the 1890s. In 1913, the 16th Amendment was ratified, permanently legalizing an income tax."