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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

If the IRS budget since the 80s hasn't decreased on a per-capita, inflation-adjusted basis, then something has gone horribly wrong. Why the heck would we want tax collection to get more inefficient every year?

This one of the most misguided narratives I see from people of the other "specific US political party" to the one you're referring to.

As another commenter pointed out, if the transition away from cash and self-reporting to automatic data collection on hundreds of millions of Americans hasn't produced any productivity gains, then everything the the "evil 1%ers" have been saying about the ills of government are in fact true.

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1) It has.

2) Tax enforcement is a cat and mouse game, efficiency from automatic data collection could be offset by any number of things like changes to the tax code or more advanced methods for tax evasion.

3) Efficiency relative to the 1980s is way less important than the efficiency of each marginal dollar. Refusing to fund the IRS over its efficiency is like skipping work because you need to find a faster route to the office first. Finding a faster route isn't a bad idea but it shouldn't take priority over the point of the whole endeavor.

I know big company/government types often (incorrectly) conflate "size of budget" with "amount of work being done."

But this disincentivizes productivity and is a sign of a broken system of endlessly expanding do-nothing bureaucracy.

The budget for [insert government agency] should never being growing steadily with population growth + inflation, assuming similar scope of work. This would mean government is wholly incapable of productivity, which would be a terrible outcome for the citizens who fund it.

What evidence do you have that the amount of tax evasion on a per capita basis is more prevalent today than it was in the past? All numbers I've seen for Americans is that tax evasion has been reduced dramatically. Americans can't even hold money abroad anymore without it being automatically reported by every single bank in the world due to FATCA.

Not saying that opportunities for large-scale tax evasion don't exist--and you may disagree with policies at both the individual and corporate level that enable tax-avoidance--but the opportunities for people who are properly classified as the the 1%s or at least the top few percenters mostly don't exist without really going outside the law.

> Why the heck would we want tax collection to get more inefficient every year?

There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful. They should be constantly front-of-mind for every American. It keeps people from forgetting about income taxes and having them fade from public discourse.

> There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful

Can you cite this?

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2018/07/18/tax-filing-...

Scroll down to the section that mentions Americans for Tax Reform and links to the presentation: Doing taxes keeps citizens aware of the tax burden imposed upon them by the government. A Return-Free scheme would allow the government to raise revenues invisibly

In case you're not aware of Norquist, https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/1...: The paradox for taxpayers is that visible, painful taxes are the taxpayer's best protection against runaway government spending and taxes.

Look up Grover Norquist and his lasting influence on even modern Republican policy.

> he is the primary promoter of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a pledge signed by lawmakers who agree to oppose increases in marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses, and net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits without a matching reduced tax rate

This guy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_duckies

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