IRS has already collected more than $500M in delinquent millionaire back taxes | Hacker News Reader

IRS has already collected more than $500M in delinquent millionaire back taxes

marketwatch.com

23 pointsMilnerRoute21 comments

One of the best, most cost-effective things they could do is publish a list of the top, say, 5,000 tax delinquents, similar to California[0] (which gets some good results).

edit: this would require a change to the law, not something IRS can do on its own

[0]https://www.ftb.ca.gov/about-ftb/newsroom/top-500-past-due-b...

How about we just spend less? This is like watching an alcoholic go around and collect drinks from people he bought shots for.

The only place immune to inflation here is McDonald's.

Because of BigMac index?

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Your example is flawed in the sense that for an alcoholic, no amount of drinks are healthy. Taxation and spending aren't inherently bad, wasteful spending is.

> Taxation and spending aren't inherently bad

I mean, they kind of are. Tax-and-spend policies inherently centralize and politicize decision making for matters that are better off in the decentralized hands of civil society, and create perverse incentives that usually lead to both waste and bad policy.

For some questions, there might not be viable alternatives, so we might be stuck with tax-and-spend, but that doesn't make its own defects disappear, it just means we need to deal with those defects.

You'd have to clear that with the lobbyists that, every year, secure billions in subsidies for their corporate masters with 14 Scrooge McDuck piles of money already, while poor kids go without meals in schools.

What a Snidely Whiplash level timeline I find myself in.

Lobbyist are not in power, our elected officials are. I think parent id specifically asking for our elected officials to stop pandering to lobbyists along with a whole other flow of bad behaviors.

> Lobbyist are not in power, our elected officials are.

I don't think I'd agree with that statement at all. Ostensibly our elected officials are in power but in reality it sure doesn't seem that way (with a handful of exceptions). You can't pump all that money into politics and expect it to have no effect. And while "most money spent" != "won election" it sure helps a lot, as in you need money to run a successful campaign so you are going to be beholden to someone. Even purest of heart are going to be at least slightly biased and I seriously doubt I'd consider the majority of elected officials to fall into the category of "people with pure hearts". The incentives are just not there to set ourselves up for success.

Officials are not in power, Money is in power.

Unfortunately, calls to "spend less" usually end up serving as a fig leaf over a political agenda that includes massive spending from the Federal Reserve in the form of ZIRP. The focus on "spending" has been sneakily construed to ignore the Federal Reserve, and direct the focus at legislative/executive programs trying to assuage ZIRP's economic damage. For example we'd need far less "affordable housing" assistance if the government hadn't spend decades pumping up the housing market as a Potemkin investment.

Furthermore, spending more or less doesn't really have any bearing on the distribution of who taxes are collected from. Your every day W-2 worker is under the thumb of a whole slew of deductions being prohibited to them, plus surveillance databases that make their finances completely legible. So it's a bit disingenuous to imply that tax non-compliance by those already receiving preferential treatment represents some higher ideal rather than just more corruption.

The deficit jumped to almost 15% in 2020 with the pandemic. The deficit has returned to normal 5-6% of GDP. 5% is sustainable for forever as long as GDP keeps growing faster. It has been in that range for fifty years except for recessions and Clinton surplus.

Also, the government is now paying for the retirement of the boomers. We could increase taxes to pay for the increase. Or we could borrow it, changing debt to Social Security fund to debt to everyone. Or we could slash spending for everything else.

Alternatively we could hire Trump to reprise his "president" character for a TV show, so he resumes encouraging the boomers to get Covid and now RSV.

> the government is now paying for the retirement of the boomers.

Are there any facts to back up this extraordinary claim? It might help if you explain your definition of "paying for retirement".

What is extraordinary about the government paying Social Security and Medicare for the boomers, the second largest cohort in history, who are currently retiring?

Up until 2021, Social Security income matched outlays, but the outlays have increased and will keep increasing. Social Security is now drawing from the trust fund; it is small now but will get worse.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59340

>government paying Social Security and Medicare for the boomers,

Is that your definition of paying for retirement?

Also, as a side note, recipients of Medicare pay Medicare premiums.

Truth be told, I'd rather we give enforcing the equally-applied rule of law a shot first.

I'd be willing to compromise on that, with the provision we roll it out at the top first; starting with Senators/Reps

That's a deal! Wasteful spending, personal profit, and congressional privilege all go together hand in hand.

So in this scenario, "people he bought shots for" are the solar panel vendors?

Wow. Does this mean they can fix climate change now?

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