4 ms·

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 Den

by 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?
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    How doesn’t it? You didn’t address a single point here. Many government agencies make no money, as they’re not profitable organizations (I’d argue the entire government is de facto a non-profit organization but that’s a separate argument). The few that are able to make money would typically do so for their own ends (like taxing gasoline for maintaining roads). The IRS is one of the few organizations that generates income for the government specifically to spread across other agencies. What’s insane to me is people talking about this like there’s no ceiling to how much money the IRS can take or that if the IRS went to $0 per employee that would somehow be a good thing. It’s the same thing when people say NASA generates income for the country therefore we should fund it more. Be intellectually honest with yourselves, if we funded the IRS or NASA or any other entity that makes $X/employee, there is a point where that funding becomes suboptimal. And I’m not seeing anyone discuss what the optimal amount is here, it just seems like you think the amount is “more” because taxing people is “good.”
    - moksly 7y ago
      > If your tax-agents aren’t needed, then downsize them, I mean, maybe I could have put it more clearly, but I think it is fairly obvious that I wasn’t advocating for what you seem to think. I’m just not sure what strawman you’re trying to prove wrong here, or who you’re even arguing against. Unlimited funds to tax-agencies is silly, everyone agrees on that, but in both the original and my example, the result of downsizing staff to save a few million on the budget ended up costing society billions.
      - isoskeles 7y ago
        Society didn’t lose out on billions, the government did. Whether or not that is bad is definitely a discussion worth having, but I won’t immediately conflate the two ideas. People and corporations got to keep money they may have otherwise lost due to auditing. At a glance, I am okay with that, and the arguments put forth so far don’t really convince me otherwise, like the number of dollars per IRS employee is a meaningless metric to me because it doesn’t tell me what’s optimal for government.
- jddj 7y ago
  The reach for hyperbole isn't really warranted. At the moment the IRS brings in $5.2 for every $1 spent, that's $3.2 of extra revenue per $1. But their budget is being cut. We don't need to reach to see that wherever the line is where we break even, we're not there yet.

by moksly 7y ago

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?
- isoskeles 7y ago
  How doesn’t it? You didn’t address a single point here. Many government agencies make no money, as they’re not profitable organizations (I’d argue the entire government is de facto a non-profit organization but that’s a separate argument). The few that are able to make money would typically do so for their own ends (like taxing gasoline for maintaining roads). The IRS is one of the few organizations that generates income for the government specifically to spread across other agencies. What’s insane to me is people talking about this like there’s no ceiling to how much money the IRS can take or that if the IRS went to $0 per employee that would somehow be a good thing. It’s the same thing when people say NASA generates income for the country therefore we should fund it more. Be intellectually honest with yourselves, if we funded the IRS or NASA or any other entity that makes $X/employee, there is a point where that funding becomes suboptimal. And I’m not seeing anyone discuss what the optimal amount is here, it just seems like you think the amount is “more” because taxing people is “good.”
  - moksly 7y ago
    > If your tax-agents aren’t needed, then downsize them, I mean, maybe I could have put it more clearly, but I think it is fairly obvious that I wasn’t advocating for what you seem to think. I’m just not sure what strawman you’re trying to prove wrong here, or who you’re even arguing against. Unlimited funds to tax-agencies is silly, everyone agrees on that, but in both the original and my example, the result of downsizing staff to save a few million on the budget ended up costing society billions.
    - isoskeles 7y ago
      Society didn’t lose out on billions, the government did. Whether or not that is bad is definitely a discussion worth having, but I won’t immediately conflate the two ideas. People and corporations got to keep money they may have otherwise lost due to auditing. At a glance, I am okay with that, and the arguments put forth so far don’t really convince me otherwise, like the number of dollars per IRS employee is a meaningless metric to me because it doesn’t tell me what’s optimal for government.
jddj 7y ago
The reach for hyperbole isn't really warranted. At the moment the IRS brings in $5.2 for every $1 spent, that's $3.2 of extra revenue per $1. But their budget is being cut. We don't need to reach to see that wherever the line is where we break even, we're not there yet.