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"It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is current

"It only makes sense to cut the budget of the tax enforcement agency if it costs more than one unit to collect an additional one unit of taxes, which is currently not the case for the IRS." You are assuming that the only function of enforcing taxes is to get money (1). We can presume that honest taxpayers would feel like fools if taxes were not enforced in a assertive way. That would be a thread to social cohesion. (1)- In fact, I dispute that the function of taxes is to get money, but I will leave that polemic discussion for other day.

logfromblammo 9y ago
I would naturally assume that if it cost the IRS more than $1 to collect a marginal $1 in revenue, that the purpose of the agency would be to intimidate and terrorize taxpayers, and would therefore call for the agency to be abolished, rather than just have its budget reduced. Additionally, I question the utility of taxes that cost more to enforce than the revenues they bring in. Those are things that the public should not acquiesce to, anyway. My tinfoil-hat self adamantly asserts that the purpose of the income tax is not to collect revenue, but to control the side-effects to the inflationary monetary policy that is the real source of revenue for the federal government. That self somehow sees a significant difference between spending money after it was collected via taxation and spending debt that is later discharged via taxation. Whenever that self starts ranting about the great Keynesian confidence game, my other selves generally cram it back into the penalty box for a while.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  You think that any attempts to prevent tax evasion are tyrannical? Why even have laws if you're not going to bother enforcing any of them? The idea that the government's primary means of paying for things is printing currency is perhaps true if you just stepped out of a time machine from the early 19th Century, but it has little to do with how the government works today. If that were actually how the government ran inflation would be well into the double digits (if not higher), as you could see by referring to any historical examples of governments trying to do this.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Sometimes, taxes are imposed as a substitute for a law, especially when such a law would not be possible. For instance, poll taxes were routinely used as a substitute for laws banning black Americans from voting. Attempts to punish tax evasion that are more costly to pursue than the revenues generated from the tax being evaded are tyrannical. The cost-benefit analysis makes it clear that the tax in question is a lever to control people rather than a means of raising revenue for some particular purpose. Please don't try to argue with my foil-hatted self. I have tried it on occasion, and it just never works. Better for me to just cram it into a locked compartment of my brain, and only let it out for entertainment purposes. But even my more rational personality components can detect the odor of trimethylamine in the Federal Reserve-Treasury relationship. Perhaps it is because I can still hear foil-hat tapping on the pipes when it is locked up, but the manner in which the government measures inflation and publishes inflation statistics is not entirely honest. Look into price indices [0], and in particular, the price indices that US policymakers use [1] [2]. It is clear that they choose to use measures that understate real inflation. Furthermore, they occasionally change the method of calculation, without putting hard breaks in all the time series graphs. That can cause the index to further understate inflation. That isn't to say that you should believe the favorite sites of fearmongers and gold-hawkers (i.e. ShadowStats) either. Be skeptical of anyone trying to tell you what your money is worth. Trying to track money through the government is more than a full-time job, and would be a boring and infuriating hobby for an amateur. As such, few people can perceive how their taxes become... well, anything. In that environment, tax evasion frequently becomes rationalized as a victimless crime, and political corruption grows in the spaces where no one ever looks. Transparency and open records would go further to prevent tax evasion than any number of law enforcers hunting down those people that attempt it, as would simply dropping those taxes that cost more to collect than they bring in. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_index [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_consumption_expenditures_price_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_consumption_expenditu...

logfromblammo 9y ago

I would naturally assume that if it cost the IRS more than $1 to collect a marginal $1 in revenue, that the purpose of the agency would be to intimidate and terrorize taxpayers, and would therefore call for the agency to be abolished, rather than just have its budget reduced. Additionally, I question the utility of taxes that cost more to enforce than the revenues they bring in. Those are things that the public should not acquiesce to, anyway. My tinfoil-hat self adamantly asserts that the purpose of the income tax is not to collect revenue, but to control the side-effects to the inflationary monetary policy that is the real source of revenue for the federal government. That self somehow sees a significant difference between spending money after it was collected via taxation and spending debt that is later discharged via taxation. Whenever that self starts ranting about the great Keynesian confidence game, my other selves generally cram it back into the penalty box for a while.

emodendroket 9y ago
You think that any attempts to prevent tax evasion are tyrannical? Why even have laws if you're not going to bother enforcing any of them? The idea that the government's primary means of paying for things is printing currency is perhaps true if you just stepped out of a time machine from the early 19th Century, but it has little to do with how the government works today. If that were actually how the government ran inflation would be well into the double digits (if not higher), as you could see by referring to any historical examples of governments trying to do this.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Sometimes, taxes are imposed as a substitute for a law, especially when such a law would not be possible. For instance, poll taxes were routinely used as a substitute for laws banning black Americans from voting. Attempts to punish tax evasion that are more costly to pursue than the revenues generated from the tax being evaded are tyrannical. The cost-benefit analysis makes it clear that the tax in question is a lever to control people rather than a means of raising revenue for some particular purpose. Please don't try to argue with my foil-hatted self. I have tried it on occasion, and it just never works. Better for me to just cram it into a locked compartment of my brain, and only let it out for entertainment purposes. But even my more rational personality components can detect the odor of trimethylamine in the Federal Reserve-Treasury relationship. Perhaps it is because I can still hear foil-hat tapping on the pipes when it is locked up, but the manner in which the government measures inflation and publishes inflation statistics is not entirely honest. Look into price indices [0], and in particular, the price indices that US policymakers use [1] [2]. It is clear that they choose to use measures that understate real inflation. Furthermore, they occasionally change the method of calculation, without putting hard breaks in all the time series graphs. That can cause the index to further understate inflation. That isn't to say that you should believe the favorite sites of fearmongers and gold-hawkers (i.e. ShadowStats) either. Be skeptical of anyone trying to tell you what your money is worth. Trying to track money through the government is more than a full-time job, and would be a boring and infuriating hobby for an amateur. As such, few people can perceive how their taxes become... well, anything. In that environment, tax evasion frequently becomes rationalized as a victimless crime, and political corruption grows in the spaces where no one ever looks. Transparency and open records would go further to prevent tax evasion than any number of law enforcers hunting down those people that attempt it, as would simply dropping those taxes that cost more to collect than they bring in. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_index [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_consumption_expenditures_price_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_consumption_expenditu...