5 ms·

Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose, and the return is 1bln? I wonder if they even know what the outlays are for collection...wi

Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose, and the return is 1bln? I wonder if they even know what the outlays are for collection...will they ever collect more than the 30bln they allocated? How much does everyone need to be squeezed just to retrieve that 30bln allocation...All the smartest wealthiest people have the best accountants and moved/invested/capexd their money legally to begin with, within the letter of the law and rules anyway.

defrost 2y ago
Certainly not per year. Operating costs 2014-2023: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose $80bn through 2031, or about $8bn per year [1]. That is projected to buy us well over a trillion dollars of new revenue [2]. FTA: “In June, the Treasury proposed a rule and guidance that includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting” — a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes. That could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, Treasury said.” > the smartest wealthiest people have the best accountants and moved/invested/capexd their money legally to begin with Now do the dumbest wealthy. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59972 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59972 [2] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037
- pstrateman 2y ago
  So that's still $8bn to collect $1bn. Or am I missing something?
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Yeah, in the sense that my car cost $32k and I drove it to my job that made me $3k today. But I will drive the car tomorrow as well. And I drove it yesterday too.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > that's still $8bn to collect $1bn No. > Or am I missing something? Read the article and the CBO report [1]. $8bn produced this $1bn. It also produced other additional revenue. CBO projects $6.40 of new revenue for each dollar spent by the IRS. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037
- defrost 2y ago
  That's a mandatory guaranteed $8bn per annum funding for an operation that for the past decade has run at approx $14 bn per annum operating costs, so there still needs to be annual discretionary allocations to keep the IRS afloat at "normal" levels. Recently the costs have increased to $16 bn per annum as part of an expansion to collect more of the inferred unpaid (avoided) taxes.
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    Or in other words, we were paying that already, and this is just the return so far on removing some of the hoops the organization has to jump through to cover expenses.
vkou 2y ago
> Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose Given that the entirety of the IRS budget is 16B, that sounds unlikely.
credit_guy 2y ago
I think there's an invisible side of the story: deterrence. Maybe 30 bln will never be recovered, but the barrier to cheat is now higher, so less evasion will happen, and more taxes will be collected? How much more? It's difficult to measure. Imagine you have a barn with mice and you get a cat to eat the mice. Most of the mice run away. If you measure only how many mice the cat eats per day, you might be underwhelmed, and might think the investment in the cat was not worth it. But you should care less about the cat's diet and more about the fact that there are fewer mice.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > I think there's an invisible side of the story: deterrence. Isn't this the theory behind mandatory minimum sentences etc. in the War on Drugs? It doesn't seem to work. And it's also misunderstanding where most of the problem is. It's not that so many people are committing tax fraud. They recovered a billion dollars? The federal budget is over 6 trillion dollars. International corporations avoid taxes by structuring their activities in ways that minimize taxes. It's legal. The problem is the structure of the tax code, which tries to tax "profit" instead of sales or wages or something else that physically exists in a specific jurisdiction, and then the "profit" ends up in whatever country has the lowest taxes.
  - b112 2y ago
    At the turn of the 20th, eg 1900s, most tax was paid by corporations and resouce taxation. At least it was in Canada. An example, a "temporary" personal income tax started in 1917 to fund WWI in Canada. Corporations were hit too, but my point is that tax revenue came from elsewhere. Resources. Over the last 100+ years, slowly, primary taxation has shifted from corporations and resources to individuals. One can see why this makes sense, as policy with respect to trade has shifted as well. We've become more global, as eluded to, and the least up to this century the goal has been on "reducing trade barriers". So tax has shifted to "consumption tax" (gas tax, sales tax, sin tax), and personal income tax, as it is harder for people to be in multiple tax jurisdictions. At least, this is how I see it. Your citizens live here, own property (your municipality gets income), have to eat/do things locally (consumption tax), and can't claim they live elsewhere easily, for the "average Joe" is just going to have a simple tax structure, and it's known where he hangs his hat.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

defrost 2y ago

Certainly not per year. Operating costs 2014-2023: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose $80bn through 2031, or about $8bn per year [1]. That is projected to buy us well over a trillion dollars of new revenue [2]. FTA: “In June, the Treasury proposed a rule and guidance that includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting” — a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes. That could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, Treasury said.” > the smartest wealthiest people have the best accountants and moved/invested/capexd their money legally to begin with Now do the dumbest wealthy. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59972 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59972 [2] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037

pstrateman 2y ago
So that's still $8bn to collect $1bn. Or am I missing something?
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Yeah, in the sense that my car cost $32k and I drove it to my job that made me $3k today. But I will drive the car tomorrow as well. And I drove it yesterday too.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > that's still $8bn to collect $1bn No. > Or am I missing something? Read the article and the CBO report [1]. $8bn produced this $1bn. It also produced other additional revenue. CBO projects $6.40 of new revenue for each dollar spent by the IRS. [1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60037
defrost 2y ago
That's a mandatory guaranteed $8bn per annum funding for an operation that for the past decade has run at approx $14 bn per annum operating costs, so there still needs to be annual discretionary allocations to keep the IRS afloat at "normal" levels. Recently the costs have increased to $16 bn per annum as part of an expansion to collect more of the inferred unpaid (avoided) taxes.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  Or in other words, we were paying that already, and this is just the return so far on removing some of the hoops the organization has to jump through to cover expenses.

vkou 2y ago

> Didn't congress add 30bln to the IRS budget solely for this purpose Given that the entirety of the IRS budget is 16B, that sounds unlikely.

credit_guy 2y ago

I think there's an invisible side of the story: deterrence. Maybe 30 bln will never be recovered, but the barrier to cheat is now higher, so less evasion will happen, and more taxes will be collected? How much more? It's difficult to measure. Imagine you have a barn with mice and you get a cat to eat the mice. Most of the mice run away. If you measure only how many mice the cat eats per day, you might be underwhelmed, and might think the investment in the cat was not worth it. But you should care less about the cat's diet and more about the fact that there are fewer mice.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> I think there's an invisible side of the story: deterrence. Isn't this the theory behind mandatory minimum sentences etc. in the War on Drugs? It doesn't seem to work. And it's also misunderstanding where most of the problem is. It's not that so many people are committing tax fraud. They recovered a billion dollars? The federal budget is over 6 trillion dollars. International corporations avoid taxes by structuring their activities in ways that minimize taxes. It's legal. The problem is the structure of the tax code, which tries to tax "profit" instead of sales or wages or something else that physically exists in a specific jurisdiction, and then the "profit" ends up in whatever country has the lowest taxes.
- b112 2y ago
  At the turn of the 20th, eg 1900s, most tax was paid by corporations and resouce taxation. At least it was in Canada. An example, a "temporary" personal income tax started in 1917 to fund WWI in Canada. Corporations were hit too, but my point is that tax revenue came from elsewhere. Resources. Over the last 100+ years, slowly, primary taxation has shifted from corporations and resources to individuals. One can see why this makes sense, as policy with respect to trade has shifted as well. We've become more global, as eluded to, and the least up to this century the goal has been on "reducing trade barriers". So tax has shifted to "consumption tax" (gas tax, sales tax, sin tax), and personal income tax, as it is harder for people to be in multiple tax jurisdictions. At least, this is how I see it. Your citizens live here, own property (your municipality gets income), have to eat/do things locally (consumption tax), and can't claim they live elsewhere easily, for the "average Joe" is just going to have a simple tax structure, and it's known where he hangs his hat.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]