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Greed is winning in America. Any person or political party that is trying to reduce staffing for a tax collection agency is trying to get away with tax fraud or

• nostromo 7y ago
  “Anyone opposing more police officers and equipment is looking to break the law.” Just as I don’t want a bored cop on every street corner, I also don’t want the IRS to be staffed to maximize revenue. It’s a balance.
  • vkou 7y ago
    That's because when cops have nothing better to do, they harass and assault people for all sorts of subjective made up infractions. I do not expect a properly staffed tax agency to.
    • utopian3 7y ago
      The IRS has (this decade) targeted specific institutions by their affiliations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy (Read the fourth paragraph of this page)
      • vkou 7y ago
        And? Why are audits targeted to a type of organization a problem? If doctors started forming non-profits to do financial engineering to get tax-exempt status, I'd sure as hell hope that the IRS would devote a bit more scrutiny than usual to practitioners of that profession. Political groups started doing financial engineering to get tax-exempt status. The IRS started auditing them a bit more closely. I don't see the issue.
        • vageli 7y ago
          > And? Why are audits targeted to a type of organization a problem? > If doctors started forming non-profits to do financial engineering to get tax-exempt status, I'd sure as hell hope that the IRS would devote a bit more scrutiny than usual to practitioners of that profession. > Political groups started doing financial engineering to get tax-exempt status. The IRS started auditing them a bit more closely. I don't see the issue. The country's inspector general deemed it unlawful. Given the report that came out from the investigation, there seems to be more to the audits than neutral scrutiny that is not performed on the basis of ideology.
    • nostromo 7y ago
      > they harass and assault people for all sorts of subjective made up infractions. The IRS does this all the time. And unlike criminal law, the burden of proof is on the accused, not the state.
      • vkou 7y ago
        Does it actually disproportionately harass people who follow proper accounting practices, and who report their income correctly? Is it harassment when they actually identify that money was owed? Or is this just a meme largely spread by a demographic who is upset that their magic internet money is, in fact, subject to taxes (or, alternatively, a demographic that thinks all taxes are theft)?
        • cloakandswagger 7y ago
          Funny that you mention crypto (I assume that's what you're derisively referring to). Did you know that the ominous, threatening letters sent out by the IRS to crypto traders was an indiscriminate shotgun blast of mailings sent to every Coinbase customer with an account value over a certain threshold? Did you know that the IRS wanted personal info on every single Coinbase customer until that was ruled unlawful? So yes, thousands of presumably innocent people who "followed proper accounting practices and who reported their income correctly" were harassed by a letter from a tax agency insinuating that they had misreported crypto earnings.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • matwood 7y ago
      This is what anyone does. When someones job is X, and they run out of legit X to do they make things up. We see it everyday in software when people throw away working software to rewrite it in the latest fad. IRS agents are no exception.
  • toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I like taxes; with them we buy civilization. I want the IRS to have whatever resources are necessary to collect every tax dollar owed (but not a dollar more) according to tax statue.
    • conanbatt 7y ago
      > I like taxes; with them we buy civilization. You are welcome to over-report them for your own satisfaction.
      • toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Seems less effective than working to ensure everyone pays what they owe.
        • conanbatt 7y ago
          That is not liking taxes: that is liking taxes on others.
          • munk-a 7y ago
            No, it's appreciating society where everyone puts in according to their ability to make something we can all enjoy. I'm fine with people who are unable to contribute putting less in, I'm not fine with people who exploit the system - and before some BS about welfare queens gets injected... I also care about scale, the amount of missed revenue from corporate taxes far outweighs how people below the poverty line are able to abuse the system - right now it even seems like they're getting the sharp end of the stick to support the top earners - rather than the squeeze being on the middle class.
            • kortilla 7y ago
              >puts in according to their ability That’s sales speak for “others should pay even proportionally more than me”.
  • kurthr 7y ago
    Yeah, the people "getting away with it" in this case aren't those paying withholding or even mostly individuals... they're corporations bilking the government and every other taxpayer. It's more like cutting back on the FBI when there's an outbreak of organized crime...
    • nostromo 7y ago
      The problem is Congress, not the IRS. Most corporations pay the amount of tax they owe under the law, but the law is written to allow tax evasion. The IRS can’t do anything about this. The fix is to close several well known loopholes.
      • ceejayoz 7y ago
        The IRS can't go after people using legal loopholes, but that has little to do with what's being discussed here. The enforcement arm, which goes after people who aren't using loopholes, but committing actual tax fraud (and stuff like non-filers), has a ROI of something like $5 for every $1 spent. Cutting its budget is like burning piles of taxpayer dollars in a barrel.
      • munk-a 7y ago
        Honestly I'd just like to see a minimum VAT lifetime tax, when a product reaches the USA it should be charged on value equal to a sane minimum VAT (as value added inside the country is charged) less VAT applied on a per-segment basis in supplier countries. If Bermuda has a 0% VAT and apple is adding 90% of sale value in that country by affixing a sticker... then the US should collect the money Bermuda is leaving on the table - it may not directly benefit US tax payers (since those countries with low VATs may then choose to raise them) but that should help even out the benefit of shipping a bunch of commodities to a random island to slap a sticker on - it'll encourage less globalized supply networks by removing some perverse incentives to ship the item off to every corner of the globe and... we might just help the environment while doing it.
      • sachdevap 7y ago
        "Most corporations pay the amount of tax they owe under the law" <- That's what the IRS is there to ensure. Legal tax evasion is not a problem in discussion here.
  • specialist 7y ago
    "It’s a balance." What would that look like?
    • BurningFrog 7y ago
      One way to maximize revenue would be for every tax payer to be audited every year. Things like that is what I think about when I hear some of the hardline comments here.
      • matwood 7y ago
        > One way to maximize revenue would be for every tax payer to be audited every year. Oddly enough, the government has the information to do this for many (most?) tax payers every year and send them the forms pre-filled out ready to sign. Unfortunately, the tax prep companies fight letting the government do this.
        • sokoloff 7y ago
          Around 1/3 of returns are business returns. I don't think the IRS has anywhere near enough information to auto-file those. Anyone who has charitable contributions (and frankly, probably anyone who is itemizing deductions) also likely has return information which the IRS does not have access to. Anyone who is amortizing discount points on real estate or has stock trades from stocks purchased prior to Jan 1, 2011 is in a situation where the IRS can't auto-file for them. In 2017 (last year of returns before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act rules changes which will reduce the number of those itemizing), about 30% of personal returns itemized. I do suspect that a lot of "extremely simple" returns could have a pro-forma return auto-prepared by the IRS (and I'd support the IRS trying to permit that, in part because "f*%k Intuit").
  • moate 7y ago
    >>I also don’t want the IRS to be staffed to maximize revenue The issue there isn't the IRS though, it's the tax code. The IRS is absolutely a department that needs to be staffed to maximize their revenue. If you have an easy to navigate tax-code that doesn't require a doctoral understanding of economics, then there's not a problem for the everyday person (TBH you can also say the same thing about the law in general). >>“Anyone opposing more police officers and equipment is breaking the law” is similar to your argument. Here's a better statement: I believe the people who are most actively working and spending money to depower the IRS are those who seek the most to gain by hiding their financial doings. They seek to deregulate industry as a whole in the name of corporate gains while simultaneously infiltrating various branches of the government to further this agenda. These people are doing so in an (successful) effort to push more wealth from the majority into the hands of a minority. I believe this is bad for society as a whole.
    • astura 7y ago
      What specifically is difficult about the tax code? How does it compare to other countries?
  • avanderveen 7y ago
    I feel like I'm not understanding your comment. Is it that you don't want IRS employees sitting around doing nothing? Because if this resulted in losing $34B in revenue, it doesn't like they were sitting around doing nothing.
    • davidw 7y ago
      At some point, you'd start spending a lot more money to recover less money. You'd probably be wise to back off at that point... "diminishing returns". We're not there, though.
      • perpetualpatzer 7y ago
        > We're not there, though. I suspect that's true, but you don't actually know that from this dataset. Some portion of the cost is born by the auditee to respond/defend against the audit and passed on to shareholders/employees/customers. If the response costs are great with respect to the IRS's audit costs, the government could quite profitably add auditors, but have a negative overall impact on end citizens.
      • SamReidHughes 7y ago
        Even if the IRS "profits" from spending $1B to collect $2B, that's a 50% processing fee on that incoming money, halving the efficiency of that marginal dollar. If that's still worth collecting, it's better to raise taxes. Really the appropriate stopping point in IRS funding has little to do with whether one of these numbers is close to another.
        • davidw 7y ago
          It's also a deterrent to people trying to evade taxes. It's not fair to raise taxes on other people who are honest and pay because it's a pain to collect from some people. I realize that's simplifying things some, and not all people who don't pay do so because they're sneaky or dishonest or whatever, but I think the broader point stands.
  • griffinkelly 7y ago
    The US has massive amounts of deficit spending and we're pretty far from balancing the budget. Why does the amount of lost revenue even matter?
    • munk-a 7y ago
      I think it's particularly egregious because the part in control while the budget has been broken has classically been the one to strongly advocate for a balanced budget - and will probably start advocating as soon as they fall out of power. Granted, both parties are terrible when it comes to corporate interest so... they both suck - but one really has a strong tendency to advocate for balancing the books.
      • kortilla 7y ago
        The budget has been broken with both sides in control. There is no longer a political motivation to actually balance the budget now that there is no way for the government to really run out of money any time soon.
        • munk-a 7y ago
          That is one monetary school of thought that I believe will remain valid as long as other nation's currencies are measured against our own, if that standard slipped though that debt would suddenly be realized and repayment would be required at a respectable rate to continue doing international business. It's a major problem I have with MMT - it assumes American prosperity in perpetuity, but history has established that perpetuity isn't a thing and those chickens will come home to roost... If we're smart then the US economy can fade gracefully, like England, otherwise it'll likely get violent and revolutionary.
    • mywittyname 7y ago
      Because lack of enforcement is a Tax On Honesty.
  • arcticbull 7y ago
    The IRS sees maximum revenue at the point where everyone is paying their taxes as specified in the IRC. Anything short of that, people are evading taxes, intentionally or unintentionally. You are in fact arguing that the state shouldn't necessarily collect all it's owed. I doubt that attitude would get you far in the Accounts Receivable department at any business. It's different with police officers because the number of crimes is un-countable [1] and if you point the police at anyone they'll find crimes. The same isn't really true of a W-2 employee with a 401(k). The taxes due are by definition countable and the compliance process is largely automated. You are just responsible for truing it up at the end of the year. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389...
    • nostromo 7y ago
      > if you point the police at anyone they'll find crimes. The same is true for our tax laws. I can almost guarantee every adult over 30 has made an error in their tax return. There are a million examples. Here's one: do you know someone that has stayed with a friend or family member rent free? The guest should have claimed the fair rent value of this non-monetary "gift" on their tax return. But literally nobody does.
      • arcticbull 7y ago
        Errors are fine, you don't go to prison for an error. You get audited, the IRS takes a look, they tell you how much you actually owed, plus interest. I actually don't mind the additional scrutiny this will bring to dark corners of the tax code. The reality is we owe it today, and if we realize it, there may be a bigger push to simplify the tax code down (to be clear, this does not mean reduce tax burden, but just reduce complexity). Let's take this down a level. If your friend owes you $200, and paid you back $150 because of an honest mistake, does that mean your friend no longer owes you $50 because, oops? Of course not. This is no different at the scale of the IRS.
      • sokoloff 7y ago
        Gifts between individuals under $15K/yr have no tax consequences.
  • mikeash 7y ago
    It’s pretty clear which side of the balance the IRS is on at the moment. I didn’t read the statement as a universally applicable principle, but rather a description of the current situation.
  • moksly 7y ago
    Your comparison is a little flawed. IRS staff are a net surplus for the government, and its quite silly to get rid of someone who makes money. We did it in Denmark during our new public management period. It cost us billions in tax evasion and fraud, and at one point someone did the math. Turned out our tax-agents cost 500.000 danish kroner a year, but they gave the state a net positive of 1.5-10 million Danish kroner. Needles to say, there is now support for our tax agency from every political party, even the ones that want to cut taxes. If your tax-agents aren’t needed, then downsize them, but I’m not sure that’s anywhere. The police on the other hand are an expense you pay to avoid paying a bigger expense.
    • rhacker 7y ago
      I think too that, while you may not be able to check each agent's logs and find out that they netted big gains individually, the idea is that over time, when the big fish are caught - possibly reported in the news, other big fish start cooperating without having to catch them. The money just starts getting collected.
    • isoskeles 7y ago
      Well then, we should make the entire government and every single person in the country an IRS employee so we’ll have infinite money by that logic. How do you factor in for the point where these agents having diminishing returns? Is it when the agency brings in as much as they cost? If so, why is that the reasonable place to employ to? The purpose of the IRS is to collect taxes to fund other agencies that don’t directly make revenue for the government.
      • Loughla 7y ago
        What a weird argument. The other person says "hey, look, we learned that cutting this service had a negative effect on our country, and we learned from our lesson" and your response is "Well then make everyone part of that service" What? How does that make sense? Why are you making that drastic of a leap? Why?
        • 7y ago
• raws 7y ago
  What do you mean? Smaller governments work better for the same or greater workloads, of course?!
• metamet 7y ago
  Elizabeth Warren has set this up as the core paradigm in her campaign. She posits that greed and corruption have overtaken the American government's purpose, especially in the last 25 years. Money, through lobbying and other forms of influence, now dictates who the government works for. It works for large corporations, pharmaceuticals and the oil industry (for example) rather than America's citizens and workers--specifically with access to healthcare, a living wage and a clean planet.
  • MuffinFlavored 7y ago
    I read her plan to tax businesses with $100m in profit is easily sidestepped by spinning off child-subsidiaries of your businesses right around that $100m mark and report back "womp womp, no over $100m profits here".
    • MichaelApproved 7y ago
      And that's easily countered by saying "total profits, including subsidiaries."
      • tick_tock_tick 7y ago
        Even she wouldn't be stupid enough to try that.
        • munk-a 7y ago
          Indeed, we should all cower in fear to avoid offending the lobbyists.
      • hervature 7y ago
        And that's easily countered by having franchises and not subsidiaries
        • enraged_camel 7y ago
          And that's easily countered by saying, "total profits, including subsidiaries and franchises." See, we can play this game all day. The fundamental point is this: just because people might break a law (directly or in spirit) is not an argument against having said law.
• navigatesol 7y ago
  >Any person or political party that is trying to reduce staffing for a tax collection agency is trying to get away with tax fraud or they are working for somebody who is Wow, that's a very bold accusation. Have you a single shred of evidence for this libel? Being as how this started quite a while ago, I guess all politicians and both political parties are tax frauds or employed by them: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
• derefr 7y ago
  I've always thought of the tax system as adversarial, sort of like the justice system: it's supposed to be the goal of individuals and corporations to "try to get away with tax fraud" (i.e. to selfishly claim as few assets and as many deductions as possible), and it's supposed to be the goal of the government to catch all the fraudulent claims and punish them in a way where individuals/corporations are the exactly-right amount of disincentivized from this behavior, without causing undue losses in GDP from trying to chase the long tail of enforcement. The intended outcome is that the statistical distribution of claims all bunch up at the edge of "being as close as possible to being illegal while still being legal." Which seems to actually be a better Nash equilibrium, economically, than one where people/corporations are so afraid of the IRS that they don't claim as much as they could.
• exabrial 7y ago
  I generally believe that Taxation is the problem, not the other way around.