The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
That is very dismissive of some very salient complaints about how groups were targeted. Read the Wikipedia article. This isn't moonbat pizzagate nonsense. Among keywords targeted were "open source software", "medical marijuana", and "Israel".
A Democratic senator said:
> U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said, "We should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we've got to go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this and make sure that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this is unacceptable."
>Ryun has stated he believes that Greenhouse Solutions benefited from its name (although the quick approval might also be due to the fact that Greenhouse Solutions was already operating as a nonprofit and was already on-file with the IRS.)
Like “conservative claims bias (but here is the real explanation).” Might as well place “claims to be innocent “ in the profile of every person in Shawshank
The insistence of people bringing up this thing as a conservative thing only when there were liberal groups also being targeted (There could have been a proper bipartisan effort against this!) is mind-boggling.
see TIGTA report: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/2017...
Some sort of heuristic based on random sampling or less political profiling (location, governing structure, association with known tax evaders) makes more sense.
I do feel like "random sampling" would make a lot more sense here. Other profiling feels like it might end up in the same spot though. Really the ideal thing is to improve the processes/rules and give enough resources to where they don't feel the need to have to pull fringe-political-shaped needles out of haystacks in the hopes that those needles happen to also be non-compliant shaped.
Incentives are all weird here, and we end up in these messes. And some people take advantage of that to create a narrative that makes it _even harder_ to solve the real problem (imagine asking for more resources for compliance after this "IRS is being used for politics" stuff)
Every US government agency charged with looking into this said as much - no political bias, IRS completely right to do what it did, which is "enforce tax law".
However, political pressure from Republicans and a few Democrats convinced the IRS to back down, which was a sad outcome for people who dislike corruption in their government.
And recently, the Trump government used a lawsuit settlement to funnel a great deal of taxpayer cash to Republican operatives based on a very flimsy claim. That's an excellent method of backdoor embezzlement itself - just have Republican groups sue the government for anything and have the executive branch "settle" their claims for infinite dollars.
Should audit selection be completly random? If your goal is to catch fraud, isn't it good to try and prioritize audits based on probability of fraud hapenning?
I'm also not sure what is discriminatory. Is being audited costly to the organisation? Otherwise, it shouldn't really be a big deal to be audited no? Unless you're actually committing fraud. Or to I misunderstand the scandal, and they claim that people were fined even though they didn't commit tax fraud?
Sounds like the IRS should be the most funded government agency.
[0] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/national-taxpayer-advocate-deli...
Imagine the US going through a Greece episode, which was caused in big part by tax avoidance. To this day it's perfectly fine in Greece to ask for a ~20% "cash discount" in almost any shop, which of course means simply not paying the VAT tax (similar to the US sales tax).
Edit: let me self-correct - this does not seem to be an actual problem in the US - with this plot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion#Government_respo...
For most people and most of their income. I seriously doubt it true that most income, as in >50% of all income earned by all US entities, is so reported. Corporate income is massive. Corporations, the wealthy, private contractors ... their income is not automatically reported. Note too that "income" includes all income, not just net profits subject to tax.
The difference between the US and Mexico in terms of corruption is not that the people in the US are pure of heart, it’s that coordinating corrupt and illegal activities is next to impossible when law enforcement are clean.
What are some differences between law enforcement in the US and Mexico?
> "Yet this is precisely what we are doing with the IRS budget."
They might, if $8 out of the $7 brought in by that unit were cannibalized from other units.
> IRS Funding Decisions Fail to Take Into Account “Return on Investment.” On a budget of $11.8 billion, the IRS collected $2.52 trillion in FY 2012. That translates to an average return-on-investment (ROI) of about 214:1. Yet the appropriations process treats the IRS like any other discretionary spending program, with no explicit recognition that each dollar appropriated for the IRS generates substantially more than one dollar in additional revenue. Last year, the IRS Commissioner estimated in a letter to Congress that proposed reductions in the IRS budget would cause tax collections to fall seven times as much. > > “No business would fail to fund a unit that, on average, brought in $7 for every dollar spent. Shareholders would rebel and bring lawsuits, or at least oust the management or board of directors,” Olson wrote in her preface to the report. “Yet this is precisely what we are doing with the IRS budget.”
Even if the money it brought in came mostly from the shareholders, and disproportionately those most engaged in corporate governance?
And that's only counting the IRS's side of the costs.
If all the money were to go to the IRS, congratulations, you achieved communism.
I’d be interested to know how others feel. And how we could inspire more people to feel pride in contributing rather than make such efforts to avoid contributing.
It only looks that way because you're comparing the revenues and expenses of a profit center. This is like measuring the "ROI" of a company's invoicing department, while disregarding the fact that without the cost centers actually producing goods and services for sale there would be nothing to invoice.
Properly measuring the worth of the department requires looking at the whole system, not just the IRS—and in this case, that includes both the public and private sectors. After all, the government supposedly exists to serve the public, and not for its own benefit. From that point of view, the IRS isn't producing much of anything; it's just moving money from one area of the economy to another. Any argument that this activity results in a positive ROI hinges on whether the areas they're moving money to are more beneficial than the areas they're taking money from. (Many would disagree.)
National parks are good though.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...
claims 54% on "military" and additional 6% on "veteran's affair"
Because those, combined with debt service, make up a HUGE portion of the federal budget.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud...
It's 60% of discretionary spending or around 18% of all federal spending. The biggest programs are entitlements: social security and medicare.
You are right and I am wrong. :o(
It just seems to me that spending more than half of the budget on military is somewhat wrong.
I don't, myself, object purely to the proportion... but more to the fact that military spending tends to disappear into defense contractor's pockets and being spent on more lobbying to increase spending on the military more.
I also have a moral objection to the nation being such a war monger and would love to see our military spending drop by the effect of needing to blow less things up.
So, I'll state clearly and without _any trace of sarcasm_ military spending should be 75rad% of our budget, which is a reduction of 4rad%.
Also the 60% number in the grand parent is... I have no idea where that's from, in 2012 DoD spending was ~15% of the budget and it has always, within recent history, been below the amount allocated for social security.
A lot of the military spending goes toward defense on the behalf of Japan and Europe. Those regions haven't devolved into their usual historic conflicts under this arrangement, and there are enormous peace dividends that we reap from that.
I think overseas investment for peace and prosperity is a worthy goal, this can include subsidizing foreign militaries, investing in foreign infrastructure, or even just being diplomatic and not starting fights.
I also didn't mention this before but I have no objections to the US paying rather insane amounts of money to support wages for military personnel (and I don't object to O5+ pay levels either) but I do object to the US government's mercenary employment. I think our economy is nearing a post-scarcity state and government, especially military, employment is a way to delay the bad effects this can have on our economy.
Private military services and DoD equipment acquisition tends to be where most of the US spending ends up going into dark holes for no real reason. I'd love to see this reformed.
I'd like to know where you think it goes after that, because after 14 years in the industry I saw very little of it.
> being spent on more lobbying to increase spending on the military more
The amount spent on lobbying is pretty small, relatively speaking. It also needs to come out of the company's profits, which aren't all that high since they are generally capped by contracts.
The government pays the company. The company pays the employees. The employees donate to a PAC. (for every big defense contractor there exists a friendly PAC) The PAC does lobbying.
Employees aren't required to participate. There is no punishment for an employee who instead donates to an opposing PAC or just spends their extra money on trips to baseball games.
It's not half as bad as a public sector union doing lobbying with involuntary dues.
If a defense contractor employee can't donate to that PAC, what about every other PAC? It is political expression. Would you ban political expression for all people who in some indirect way get paid by the government?
Also, no less than 1% of GDP. 2% of GDP is a fine target.
Not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but it isn't 60%.
* I don't pay an exorbitant amount of my monthly income to health insurance, mostly due to government meddling in that industry.
* Billions of dollars of weapons aren't deployed in theaters I don't want to fund wars in.
* I see some sort of efficiency or really, non-corruption at the local and state level with the money I'm paying.
Until then, I will continue to feel exploited and that my money would be of better use in the private sector.
They're not an overwhelming portion of the budget, but taxes are the source of energy that they live on. Very few would directly pay to be surveilled and terrorized, but through the magic of the principle-agent problem the parasites persist.
(Having said that, I doubt the motives of large scale tax avoiders are so noble - in fact I would guess that they'd be more likely to support said programs)
Rationale being:
* Military industrial complex and associated adventurism
* Broken criminal Justice system, prison industrial complex and civil asset forfeitures.
* Drug war
* Chronic pension mismanagement in nearly all states and localities.
Could go on and on ...
https://tax.findlaw.com/tax-problems-audits/can-you-go-to-ja...
"You can go to jail for not filing your taxes. You can go to jail for lying on your return. But you can’t go to jail for not having enough money to pay your taxes. "
That is, if you intentionally avoid paying taxes by either not filing or filing a fraudulent report, then you certain can go to jail. See Al Capone for the most famous example.
The ocean is the only place not claimed by a nation. That's the point. You cannot buy land, and have it declared yours, not subject to the authority of a nation.
If you support violence, that's fine. Go ahead and say so, and make that arguement. Lots of people support the government's monopoly on violence. It is not a particularly controversial opinion to have.
But don't pretend like exiling people from land that they own is "non violent". Just be honest with yourself and say "yes. I support the government's monopoly on violence". It's not hard, nor controversial.
If someone is squatting in your house, benefiting from money you spend on it, you are justified in evicting them.
> The ocean is the only place not claimed by a nation. That's the point. You cannot buy land, and have it declared yours, not subject to the authority of a nation.
This has been true since basically the dawn of human civilization. Just in those times, you were subject to the authority of invaders.
> But don't pretend like exiling people from land that they own is "non violent". Just be honest with yourself and say "yes. I support the government's monopoly on violence". It's not hard, nor controversial.
Owning land is a concept that only exists inside of a system of government with a mechanism to enforce property rights. If they decide they don't want to be subject to the rules of society, they don't get to have their cake and eat it too.
> If you support violence, that's fine. Go ahead and say so, and make that arguement. Lots of people support the government's monopoly on violence. It is not a particularly controversial opinion to have. If someone is squatting in your house, benefiting from money you spend on it, you are justified in evicting them
This argument is only valid if you believe that the 200 countries in the world own every single inch of land in the world.
> . Just in those times, you were subject to the authority of invaders.
Yes, and this would be described as violence.
And that's fine. If you believe in the authority of the monopoly on violence of governments, all you have to do is say so! That's it!
This is merely a descriptive claim I am making. That the act of owning every plot of land in the world, and preventing other people from owning it, and then kicking people off of 100% of the land, is violence.
If there was an ever expanding mirror world, where people could up and leave too, then this would not be violence.
Or in other words, owning 100% of something is violence, but owning 0.00001 % of something is not.
And all you have to do is say that you support the uncontroversial opinion of the government monopoly on violence, and we are good to go. Easy!
My feelings are similar to yours when it comes to paying my LOCAL taxes (e.g. property and sales). Because:
(1) I care about the services that my local government provides (e.g. schools, parks, libraries, roads and infrastructure), and
(2) My local county happens to do a good job at providing those services.
On the contrary, I view the FEDERAL government as a complete and utter mess. Spending all of my contributions (as well as those borrowed from my grandkids) on grotesquely inefficient entitlement programs, an imperial military, and basically just bribing corrupt government officials so that anything can get passed at all. I feel no moral qualms whatever with avoiding those taxes to the extent legally possible.
Medicare is one of the most successful government programs ever. Social Security would be a disaster if done by different jurisdictions or privately. I could go on, but there's a lot that Federal government does right.
Governance matters, so I vote for the people who think likewise.
I guess it depends on how you define successful. It’s the single largest budget item (>$1T/year), it’s largely wasteful, and our populace is only getting sicker (more chronic conditions and medications). We don’t aim to treat chronic illness in Medicare patients either we aim to manage it...it’s broken. And if you don’t believe it’s broken, all you need to do is look at the current transition from pay per service to outcome/managed based reimbursements to see even CMS has waived the white flag. Care will only decline as your Medicare insurer will own your primary care doctor, your specialists, the local hospital and your pharmacy under this system.
>Social Security would be a disaster if done by different jurisdictions or privately.
Have you received your SOcial Security Administration Statement? I don’t know about yours, I guess it varies by retirement age, but the last one I got informed me I should expect to receive $.42 for every $1 I put in...that is a broken system.
If the risk pool were to expand to the entire age set, it would probably completely outcompete any private options.
That’s what makes it so inefficient.
In the 70’s, private insurance got into Medicare.
In 2003 the flood gates opened with Medicare “Advatage Plans” which are private insurance managed care. The numbers of patients opting for Medicare Advantage is growing every year and now accounts for 1 in 3 Medicare patients...and they’re often the chronic care patients (most vulnerable and costly).
This has directly lead to market consolidation (lack of choice in plans, networks, doctors). It has also lead to outcomes based reimbursement while the market leaders are reinventing HMO so they can get paid for a managed care system and not be subject to outcomes based payments.
I’d be all for a system like you’re talking about, a single payer system, but that doesn’t exist, and private insurance is running amuck with the $1T+ Medicare budget.
Do you have a link to the 70s history? Wikipedia got nothing.
As to Advantage and the Donut hole for Part D - who should we blame for that?
You said it was successful and efficient. I don’t agree.
You said it’s more efficient than private insurance. I don’t need to disagree, because that’s not even close to a realistic picture, it’s quasi-privatized, with 33% of Medicare patients opting for private insurance for their Medicare and more joining every year.
Bush enacted Medicare Part D because millions of patients couldn’t afford their drugs (millions getting free care and no drugs is broken and Bush tried Part D as a proposed fix), the fix failed and Obama tried to gut part D in its entirety because of the runaway waste and inefficiency but his party stopped him because it’s not politically advisable for the left take away benefits, so Part D was amended (still being rolled out) under the ACA (Obamacare). Just one example under the changes, doctors are incentivized (paid bonus’s) to keep electronic records of patients and another bonus to turn patient records over to the government and if they don’t they get penalized. It’s a gross and broken system, most people don’t even know Medicare patient records are turned over to the government.
Want to see the problem with managed care...look at HMOs, which under Obamacare have been rebranded to ACOs. Basically the private insurance opts out of outcomes based payments (which are failing anyway and no one wants a part of that, because it’s insruance dictating how you treat patients) and the insurance owned networks do managed care get paid $x/patient per year and they water down services to ensure they turn the max profit.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax...
"That’s the real reason the Left and the government class supports IRS-prepared tax returns: they want the government to be bigger, and that requires higher tax revenues. The fact that IRS tax preparation is understood by everyone to result in higher tax revenues exposes the conflict of interest that would be caused by IRS-prepared tax returns."
From https://www.huffingtonpost.com/grover-norquist/grover-norqui...
That argument is disingenuous at best.
In Toronto, the folks that collect change at the TTC (i.e Metro) stations, earn over $100K a year if they work over time.
On my last visit - I had to stand in line for 20 minutes merely to buy a token with change. There were no change machines and no means for me to use even a debit/credit card.
The 'pass' that they offer (i.e. you load it up, more for commuters) cannot even be bought by the people selling tokens. It's absurd and outrageous. Granted there is some overlap of systems going on as they move to the new pass system - it's still stupendously insulting.
Society's cost needs to be constrained by taxpayers. We need to put pressure on our governments to spend our tax dollars efficiently.
I live in California, so I pay state income tax as well as Federal income tax. I don't think I get as much per dollar of my tax as someone in Europe does. Europeans pay a little bit more than me (yes, only a little bit, I did the math) and get a lot more from their government, including comprehensive public transit that makes transit in the USA look like a joke, a much better social safety net, comprehensive health care not tied to their employers, schools that are actually good, low-cost higher education, etc. People in the UK get more from their government under Tory austerity policies than Americans ever got.
I don't want to pay more taxes until I get more for each dollar. If the Europeans can do it, so can we, but the political will does not exist here.
That WE pay (or more) for THEIR military.
The more nuanced question is if the resulting power + influence is worth the cost for the US.
[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/03/nato-spending-2017.html
A country does not benefit having another country occupying their land. Germany is the fourth manufacturer of weapons of the world, they do not need to be defended or protected like the world "umbrella" implies, they can do it on their own.
If the Germans-Europeans had to pay for all the cost involved in the occupation there will be no reason to have the US army on Europe's land.
But that’s not what OP said. He/she is speaking in absolutes: “Our tax dollars pay for more of their military than they do...” it helps no one and I wanted to call them out on their lie.
To then simply conclude that the US spends '70% of NATO defense spending' is incorrect since you inflate it with cost for defending a lot of territories outside of NATOs scope.
Of course the US pays more in total, but the EU doesn't have 700 military bases outside of the EU.
Very different situation than Europe.
The US puts the military where it wants to because it serves the US's interest. Don't believe for a second that it's to "protect Europe."
Does this serve US interests? Unquestionably. That doesn't invalidate my statement.
The USA doesn't fund NATO. Funding for NATO comes from all member organizations. All member organizations provide troops and materiel for joint operations.
The US spends "all the money on defense" because it's a fantastic government jobs program for mostly white folks.
The US has bases around the world to influence local politics. The idea that it's to protect those countries is simplistic at best.
The NATO direct budget is paid 22% by the US, 14% by Germany, 10% by the UK. The rest of the contributions are all less than 10% of the budget. So yes, the US does fund NATO, both with direct and indirect costs. The EU can afford to not spend money on their defense because we exist, and because we base our assets there.
Influencing local politics is not the primary reason for having bases located remotely, in many cases it doesn't even happen. The idea that we put them there to "influence local politics" is actually the simplistic explanation that really doesn't begin to describe how the world works. The US presence in Germany has nothing to do with influencing anything in Germany, the US presence in Korea has nothing to do with influencing Korea, the US presence in Spain has nothing to do with influencing Spain, etc.
It's not because they want to reduce the amount of influence the former USSR and China could exert.
We clearly have very different world views. I'd suggest we end this here.
We have the military to do it, and somebody has to hold off USSR aggression since the countries who should be doing it won't spend the money on their own defense to do it (I used USSR purposely -- we really shouldn't be in Germany anymore as that threat really doesn't exist, at least in the form it did, anymore).
That's part of the issue with NATO. NATO has become a code for saying the US will spend the money to do it.
Korea was to stop the spread of communism in SE Asia, and we're still there to do exactly that -- again, we shouldn't have to be there anymore, but who has the money to spend on defense? We do, so we do it.
If government is over-budgeted, it can become lazy, tempted to put some of it in their pockets, etc.
Under-budgeted, it can break down, such as what is hapenning to Greece.
That's just a hard problem honestly. With no clear answers.
That said, I do feel in the US, people don't actually want the government to give them anything. They're against having it offer affordable health-care, or education, or child care, or paternity/maternity leaves, or environmental safeguards, or proper water cleaning facilities, or art projects, or fund research, etc.
So on one hand people are dismissive of most things the government could provide. But on the other hand, the money is still collected in taxes, it just goes in other things.
I think it hurts priority discussions a bit. It would be one thing to say, cut taxes. But it's another to say, given the current budget, don't spend it on anything nice, because that would be too communist of us.
So where does all the money go then? Military?
If you're the government, you can always spend the money on stuff you want but your constituents don't want, and then tell them you have to raise taxes to pay for the things they want.
So I guess you could say I'm happy to pay my fair share- but not more.
Now, structuring everything such that a particular taxpayer's lowest tax bill is actually "fair", is not easy, especially with lobbyists in the equation.
So, you feel pride, I feel disgust. Society does have a cost, but building shared infrastructure and whatnot doesn't have to be funded via just one mechanism, one which can do whatever it feels like all over the world.
What is interesting is that taxes in US are actually lower than many European countries. Sure, the federal gov isn't the most efficient one, but hating taxes THIS much just feels weird and wrong to me. Without taxes, civilization as we know will collapse
I recognize that there's probably no realistic way to avoid it, but as it is for a person having to take drugs due to chronic illness, recognizing the necessity of having to do something does not mean being happy or proud about it. It's just a part of harsh reality. Especially if you take interest in particular details of how the massive trillion-size budgets are spent and how much money is wasted or stolen (illegally or legally) from it. No, platitudes of "society has a cost" do not do much for me. Food has a cost too, but if I'm offered a McDonald's sandwich for $100, I may pay for it and eat it, if all other food around is worse and more expensive, but I won't be proud or happy about it. And would take any legal effort available to me to keep my money out of the taxman's reach. When I feel the need to contribute to some cause, I just open my favorite charities list (unfortunately, much longer than my budget - after taxes - affords me to support adequately) and donate there.
1) My taxes are overly complicated. I have to hire lawyers and accountants to help. They have made mistakes but I am still liable.
2) My tax bracket pays a very high rate. With state taxes included I am near 50% on income. I don't think that's reasonable and the justification, in my opinion, is more based on a suspicion or dislike of people in my bracket than because I can afford to pay. The government spends far more than it's revenue anyways. If my bracket were moved to 100%, there would still be revenue deficits.
3) The IRS treats me as if I am hiding money. The higher your bracket it seems the more likely you are to be audited. My father has been audited multiple times. I have been audited once. It is not a pleasant experience and every letter the IRS sends causes more anxiety. Honest or trivial mistakes are treated as if done with criminal intent.
4) Nearly half the population does not pay taxes but can elect people who can choose what my rates are. I will never have a majority representation or much power to lower them. This doesn't seem fair to me.
5) The IRS can very well be incompetent or corrupt in the sense of being political but no one will admit that. The assumption is generally that tax cheats are a problem but not a biased IRS.
For me to be proud, I think lowering my rate, simplifying taxes, requiring more Americans to pay, even if it is just a few dollars, and putting something in place to report overzealous IRS agents or corruption there would go a long way.
The more important thing IMO is that the government is not careful with the money we give it, and it supports causes the majority disagree with (e.g. upholding the federal marijuana ban). When you couple runaway spending with a feeling of lack of representation, paying taxes feels more like extortion than "paying your share".
If having everyone pay a little in taxes means they're more likely to vote for responsible spending, I'm all for it. But the tax system is so convoluted that many people think they're making money with their refund. Maybe having few people get a refund would be better, IDK. But the current system makes people apathetic toward federal spending.
What's silly is letting people who are net tax-receivers have any say in how much other people pay in taxes. No representation without net taxation!
Caveat: It's difficult to measure, but the cost of regulation (which does not include merely respecting others' natural rights) should really be counted as a form of tax. One idea would be to actually pay people to follow the regulations, as an equitable trade and not a benefit. The net tax-payers in charge would then be responsible for contributing the resources needed to make it worthwhile for the rest to comply with the regulations they propose. Anyone who doesn't comply simply doesn't get paid.
The truth is revealed when someone refuses to pay, and suddently the prideful contributions become mandatory commandments, under threats of confiscation and ultimately restriction of freedom.
I had terrible experiences with the public school system growing up, and I doubt it's been fixed since then. I do not trust the government to do the right thing as a result. The government is yet another organization made up of people (or really, smaller organizations made up of people) who aren't necessarily doing their job correctly (or incorrectly, to be fair).
Also, our "society" and the government are not the same thing. Paying taxes to the government is not the same thing as paying your dues to society. As an example, if I have to pick between which person "contributes" to "society" more, a person who pays $0 in taxes because they work but earn very little versus a person who pays $0 in taxes because all their income is made illegally through theft, I can easily point to the former as being a better contributor to society. Similarly, one could make a case against the contributions of someone who pays a lot in taxes because they own a business that harms the environment or has other negative externalities. The point is that taxes are a rather poor measure of contribution to society. It's simply a reward of resources to government which, at least in the US, transforms those resources into a lot of shit including death in other countries.
I will admit that I think this is all necessary in order for the whole system to work, but I'm not going to pretend that the government is good or even, simply, not as bad as corporations. The attitude that taxes are something to be prideful about just seems like cheerleading. Not making a personal dig at you, that's just how I feel about the attitude.
And personally, I'll probably never feel prideful in contributing to taxes. Or maybe when I start receiving social security in several decades. Basically, it would take a lot to convince me that my previous most significant experience with the government (through my education) is unimportant and these other reasons (A, B, C, etc.) over here -- that I've had no personal experience with -- show that government is actually really very good and I should be proud to pay taxes.
I think there's a strong case to be made that one of the most fundamental justifications for taxes is to cover the cost of negative externalities.
So it seems like a lot to me.
Here's an idea, why don't we simplify our Byzantine tax filing processes so that the whole thing doesn't cost so much. I know, I know, all that sweet H&R Block tax lobbyist money is addictive, but it would be better for the country if congress would put down the pipe.
I've no problem paying taxes, they buy me civilization.
> why don't we simplify our Byzantine tax filing processes so that the whole thing doesn't cost so much
That's actually a very good idea. Fewer loopholes too, which are exploited by the haves at the expense of have-nots.
They do, but this line of argumentation is kind of vacuous if you don't include the actual cost of taxes. If taxes could be 1/3 of what everyone is paying, thus buying the same civilization except much more prosperous since money is used a lot more productively and people have much more choice about where it goes, isn't that better? (This 1/3 isn't meant to be a real number; it's a thought experiment).
Alternative way of looking at it -- if this argument works without cost, then why shouldn't everyone just pay 100% taxes?
The problem is a lot of times the desired outcomes aren't simple. Nor are the solutions. And experts and their opinions are generally for hire anymore.
This argument is vacuous because taxes aren't about what you pay, they're about what you can make others pay.
You are always free to pay whatever you want out of your own funds for the things you think of as "civilization". That isn't a tax, because it's voluntary. The only reason to support a tax is that there are things that you want (your so-called "civilization") which you want other people to pay for, whether they want these things or not.
It makes sense to try to keep government agencies operating efficiently. Unfortunately I don't trust today's journalism to give me an accurate picture of whether what's going on falls into that category or not.
That's not the same as "concern for profit". And yet, the question of cost-benefit is pretty much the same question, but in terms of society as a whole.
So that seems like a lot more to me.
Our tax code is absurd, and held captive to interests that like to keep it that way (the wealthy who can dodge or bother to itemize expenses, and companies who get to tax us to figure out how it all works). We should fix that and reduce the IRS budget further, as well as reduce military spending.
(this paragraph will assume funding for the IRS is done as a flat tax which is how $43 was arrived at)
Most people might pay $50 per year to fund the agency while a lot of people are paying nothing. Increasing the budget to reduce evasion will lower how much most people pay closer to that theoretical $43 while also increasing revenue overall. Right now it isn't a problem of the common person getting extorted by the government, the issue is that some people are not paying their fair share and increasing funding to the IRS will catch and punish those people while increasing the funding for the government overall.
I am with you on wanting a saner tax system but that isn't really in scope here. Some people are cheating the tax system and it isn't expensive to find and rectify the situation, it isn't even cheap. Tax law enforcement is so lax right now that lowering tax enforcement _costs money_ raising tax enforcement _yields money_ (for a while, there are eventually diminishing returns)
So long as the IRS is taking in more money than it is spending to do so there is absolutely no rational reason not to make sure it can maximize that.
I am an Australian and I fear the IRS more than the ATO, not because I owe the IRS anything (I am not a US taxpayer), but because I have US customers. There is probably some obscure form or reporting requirement I have missed or filled in incorrectly that could make me the target of some arbitrary action by the IRS. You can see why foreign financial institutions just won’t have anything to do with US taxpayers.
It's an important distinction.
As it happened, the next day the assembly changed its mind, and sent off another galley rescinding the order. The second galley was indeed able to overtake the first in time. Thucydides attributed this to deliberate slowness by the captain of the first.
"Democracy" is a family of types of government, of which the absolute democracy many imagine in one form. A representative democracy is another.
> Cutting the IRS’s budget didn’t make sense to him. It was one of the few areas of government that had a positive return on investment
> Since the IRS-reform bill in 1998, the agency is prohibited from evaluating agents based on how much money they bring in. Instead, they are evaluated on how efficiently they open and close audits
I find these pretty interesting. It does feel a little fishy, given the IRS can actually be a revenue generating center for the government. Which would be very different if it was costing more then it brought in.
"Proof the IRS Didn't Target Just Conservatives", from early on in the scandal
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/proof-t...
After the evidence was overwhelming and denial was impossible:
"New Documents Show the IRS Targeted 'Progressive' and 'Tea Party' Groups for Extra Scrutiny"
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/new-doc...
In addition, consider this: https://www.numbersusa.com/news/irs-12-million-illegal-alien...
(I'm not sure if Google/FB spend 0.10 per user, but it sure ain't anywhere near $100).
I think with a sensibly simplified tax code, and FAANG-level technical innovation, IRS costs could enter that range.
12B means ~$40 annual cost to validate each person's taxes. That's nothing. That's including tracking down fraudsters, costs of audits, ensuring correctness.
One millionaire avoiding taxes is avoiding way more than $40 of responsibility...