The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes

http://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/rich-people-are-getting-away-not-paying-their-taxes/577798/

by chadash • 8 years ago

199 180 8 years ago

hkt3• 8 years ago

All very sad. It is time to bring the wealthiest back to heel. Companies and individuals cannot be above the law or the states which sustain their lives and businesses will crumble. Time to take back control.

president2• 8 years ago

It is impossible to revert. Rich people own the world and unless they are willing to sacrifice their wealth/power, there is no other solution other than revolt/war.

standerman• 8 years ago

Or you can organize and vote. This is still a democracy.

hkt3• 8 years ago

Go and read about Jeremy Corbyn. The UK at least stands a chance of fighting this.

mschuster91• 8 years ago

Classic "Republican" playbook: instead of killing a govt agency/service directly, slowly de-fund it over years until it's crippled, then use said crippled state as "you see, the state just can't provide healthcare/telecom/infrastructure efficiently, it must be privatized" justification, then deliver the remainders on a silver platter for the ultra rich to siphon the profits off.

Florin_Andrei2• 8 years ago

That's how a country dies eventually.

hkt3• 8 years ago

In the UK the Tories do that. They're even doing it to schools and hospitals.

jandrese2• 8 years ago

In the US this is charter schools (our current Secretary of Education is a big fan of charter schools) and nearly all hospitals already.

vxNsr• 8 years ago

Not clear what their plan is in this case though. You can't exactly privatize gov tax collection at least not in a way that wouldn't result in billions of dollars for fraud and even more lost revenue.

jccalhoun• 8 years ago

They have enough money that they don't care what happens to the rest of us.

magissima• 8 years ago

If they cared about losing money to fraud we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.

jblow3• 8 years ago

An IRS budget of $14B means each person in the USA is paying $43 per year to fund the agency (including children). At the Federal minimum wage, after taxes, that's about a full working day to pay it off. If you have a non-working spouse and one child, three working days.

So it seems like a lot to me.

Here's an idea, why don't we simplify our Byzantine tax filing processes so that the whole thing doesn't cost so much. I know, I know, all that sweet H&R Block tax lobbyist money is addictive, but it would be better for the country if congress would put down the pipe.

Florin_Andrei2• 8 years ago

So it seems like a lot to me.

I've no problem paying taxes, they buy me civilization.

why don't we simplify our Byzantine tax filing processes so that the whole thing doesn't cost so much

That's actually a very good idea. Fewer loopholes too, which are exploited by the haves at the expense of have-nots.

jblow3• 8 years ago

I've no problem paying taxes, they buy me civilization.

They do, but this line of argumentation is kind of vacuous if you don't include the actual cost of taxes. If taxes could be 1/3 of what everyone is paying, thus buying the same civilization except much more prosperous since money is used a lot more productively and people have much more choice about where it goes, isn't that better? (This 1/3 isn't meant to be a real number; it's a thought experiment).

Alternative way of looking at it -- if this argument works without cost, then why shouldn't everyone just pay 100% taxes?

nybble414• 8 years ago

I've no problem paying taxes, they buy me civilization.

This argument is vacuous because taxes aren't about what you pay, they're about what you can make others pay.

You are always free to pay whatever you want out of your own funds for the things you think of as "civilization". That isn't a tax, because it's voluntary. The only reason to support a tax is that there are things that you want (your so-called "civilization") which you want other people to pay for, whether they want these things or not.

tareqak2• 8 years ago

Please see this comment by a sibling poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18658762 . It sounds like it is money well spent, but it could definitely be improved.

jblow3• 8 years ago

Under this logic every agency deserves to have a bigger budget until the budget is equal to the amount of money it brings in -- i.e. bloat up to maximum size. I don't think anyone wants that.

It makes sense to try to keep government agencies operating efficiently. Unfortunately I don't trust today's journalism to give me an accurate picture of whether what's going on falls into that category or not.

linuxlizard• 8 years ago

A US military budget of $660,000,000,000 means each person the USA is paying $2030 to fund the military (including children). At the Federal minimum wage, after taxes, that's 47 full working days to pay it off.

So that seems like a lot more to me.

ohithereyou• 8 years ago

Luckily, we can focus on more than one thing at a time. We can oppose foreign interventionist wars and reform the tax code at the same time.

tick_tock_tick• 8 years ago

So our whole military is funded from only 2k a person. That's amazing! I always thought military was a huge part of the budget but it's clearly not.

jeffbax• 8 years ago

The military budget being too big doesn't mean that the IRS budget isn't either.

Our tax code is absurd, and held captive to interests that like to keep it that way (the wealthy who can dodge or bother to itemize expenses, and companies who get to tax us to figure out how it all works). We should fix that and reduce the IRS budget further, as well as reduce military spending.

smsm424• 8 years ago

I think having best military in the world for only $2K per year is not bad a deal. I spend more on gym membership. Of course, given that not each person in the US actually pays taxes, and of those who does, they are distributed very unevenly, my actual share is significantly higher, so I wouldn't mind some cuts there.

munk-a3• 8 years ago

I don't disagree that it'd be better to simplify the tax code but the idea that one dollar spend yields seven dollars return doesn't actually work as you're describing.

(this paragraph will assume funding for the IRS is done as a flat tax which is how $43 was arrived at)

Most people might pay $50 per year to fund the agency while a lot of people are paying nothing. Increasing the budget to reduce evasion will lower how much most people pay closer to that theoretical $43 while also increasing revenue overall. Right now it isn't a problem of the common person getting extorted by the government, the issue is that some people are not paying their fair share and increasing funding to the IRS will catch and punish those people while increasing the funding for the government overall.

I am with you on wanting a saner tax system but that isn't really in scope here. Some people are cheating the tax system and it isn't expensive to find and rectify the situation, it isn't even cheap. Tax law enforcement is so lax right now that lowering tax enforcement _costs money_ raising tax enforcement _yields money_ (for a while, there are eventually diminishing returns)

So long as the IRS is taking in more money than it is spending to do so there is absolutely no rational reason not to make sure it can maximize that.

a_c_s2• 8 years ago

For better or worse the federal budget for 2019 is $3,422 billion: spending a mere 0.004% of the budget on tax collection seems like a pretty good deal!

ams6110• 8 years ago

There's no budget, and hasn't been for years. Just a stream of continuing resolutions to keep feeding the locust

DATACOMMANDER• 8 years ago

$14B is ~0.4% of $3422B, not 0.004%. You’re off by a factor of 100.

sixothree• 8 years ago

I would certainly pay more to ensure equity in tax collection.

theandrewbailey• 8 years ago

"No business would fail to fund a unit that, on average, brought in $7 for every dollar spent. Shareholders would rebel and bring lawsuits, or at least oust the management or board of directors," Olson wrote in her preface to the report. "Yet this is precisely what we are doing with the IRS budget."[0]

Sounds like the IRS should be the most funded government agency.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/national-taxpayer-advocate-deli...

anonymouzz• 8 years ago

Yeah, especially because tax avoidance is an insanely difficult problem to fight once it gets big enough. I mean it's impossible to prosecute at once even 10% of the country for not paying taxes.

Imagine the US going through a Greece episode, which was caused in big part by tax avoidance. To this day it's perfectly fine in Greece to ask for a ~20% "cash discount" in almost any shop, which of course means simply not paying the VAT tax (similar to the US sales tax).

Edit: let me self-correct - this does not seem to be an actual problem in the US - with this plot: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion#Government_respo...

hardtke• 8 years ago

The US has a very high tax compliance rate because most of our income is reported through 3rd parties (w2, 1099, etc.). For income that is not reported through a 3rd party, we have low compliance rates as well. For income subject to little or no information reporting, the misreported income is 63% of total according to the IRS. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/p1415.pdf

jandrese2• 8 years ago

It has diminishing returns, but right now the budget is still on the steep part of the graph so funding it makes a lot of sense unless you're a tax cheat.

thaumasiotes• 8 years ago

"No business would fail to fund a unit that, on average, brought in $7 for every dollar spent.
"Yet this is precisely what we are doing with the IRS budget."

They might, if $8 out of the $7 brought in by that unit were cannibalized from other units.

SamReidHughes2• 8 years ago

Imagine if VISA charged a 14% fee on your tax payments. That's the math here.

elihu• 8 years ago

Perhaps the previous paragraph of context helps:

IRS Funding Decisions Fail to Take Into Account “Return on Investment.” On a budget of $11.8 billion, the IRS collected $2.52 trillion in FY 2012. That translates to an average return-on-investment (ROI) of about 214:1. Yet the appropriations process treats the IRS like any other discretionary spending program, with no explicit recognition that each dollar appropriated for the IRS generates substantially more than one dollar in additional revenue. Last year, the IRS Commissioner estimated in a letter to Congress that proposed reductions in the IRS budget would cause tax collections to fall seven times as much. > “No business would fail to fund a unit that, on average, brought in $7 for every dollar spent. Shareholders would rebel and bring lawsuits, or at least oust the management or board of directors,” Olson wrote in her preface to the report. “Yet this is precisely what we are doing with the IRS budget.”

conanbatt2• 8 years ago

Except the math is the opposite: for every dollar the IRS spends, people lose 7 dollars.

If all the money were to go to the IRS, congratulations, you achieved communism.

sublupo• 8 years ago

If only... It costs 7 dollars plus hundreds of dollars in lawyer and attorney's fees to properly prove in an audit that you paid your taxes

RileyJames• 8 years ago

I take pride in paying my taxes. It reminds me that our society has a cost, and we all contribute towards it.

I’d be interested to know how others feel. And how we could inspire more people to feel pride in contributing rather than make such efforts to avoid contributing.

andyburke• 8 years ago

I'm with you. But many people do not agree with us, and the last I heard, the ROI on each dollar spent at the IRS is higher than almost anywhere else in government. Hollowing out the IRS, and by extension the federal budget, has been a goal of one of our political parties for a very long time. It's sad to see them succeeding in a way that will cost our country dearly in the long term.

nybble414• 8 years ago

the ROI on each dollar spent at the IRS is higher than almost anywhere else in government

It only looks that way because you're comparing the revenues and expenses of a profit center. This is like measuring the "ROI" of a company's invoicing department, while disregarding the fact that without the cost centers actually producing goods and services for sale there would be nothing to invoice.

Properly measuring the worth of the department requires looking at the whole system, not just the IRS—and in this case, that includes both the public and private sectors. After all, the government supposedly exists to serve the public, and not for its own benefit. From that point of view, the IRS isn't producing much of anything; it's just moving money from one area of the economy to another. Any argument that this activity results in a positive ROI hinges on whether the areas they're moving money to are more beneficial than the areas they're taking money from. (Many would disagree.)

InitialLastName2• 8 years ago

It's almost as if the person running that party has spent his entire adult life trying to find ways to defraud the IRS (and otherwise minimize his tax burden).

AlexTWithBeard4• 8 years ago

I have strongly mixed feelings, especially with 60% of federal taxes going to military spending.

National parks are good though.

leetcrew3• 8 years ago

can you cite a source for 60% of federal taxes going to military spending?

JustSomeNobody2• 8 years ago

How much should go to military spending?

izzydata2• 8 years ago

According to this if the federal budget is 4.4 trillion and military budget is 886 billion then that would equate to 20%.

Not saying this is a good or a bad thing, but it isn't 60%.

malvosenior• 8 years ago

I will never feel good (let alone pride) paying taxes until:

* I don't pay an exorbitant amount of my monthly income to health insurance, mostly due to government meddling in that industry.

* Billions of dollars of weapons aren't deployed in theaters I don't want to fund wars in.

* I see some sort of efficiency or really, non-corruption at the local and state level with the money I'm paying.

Until then, I will continue to feel exploited and that my money would be of better use in the private sector.

mindslight• 8 years ago

Don't forget the outright citizen-hostile domestic programs - NSA, DEA, CIA, DHS, TSA, etc.

They're not an overwhelming portion of the budget, but taxes are the source of energy that they live on. Very few would directly pay to be surveilled and terrorized, but through the magic of the principle-agent problem the parasites persist.

(Having said that, I doubt the motives of large scale tax avoiders are so noble - in fact I would guess that they'd be more likely to support said programs)

bhawks2• 8 years ago

With the ways the government (local->state->federal) spend money and manage budgets funding them (thru debt+taxes) at the absolute minimum is the only moral option.

Rationale being:

* Military industrial complex and associated adventurism

* Broken criminal Justice system, prison industrial complex and civil asset forfeitures.

* Drug war

* Chronic pension mismanagement in nearly all states and localities.

Could go on and on ...

exabrial2• 8 years ago

I'm against taxes for the simple fact they're non-voluntary. I don't think there's anything wrong with people that that are willing to pay them, but I don't think forcefully [meaning, eventually you will be arrested by someone with a gun] taking another person's money is justifiable by any society.

TheBeardKing• 8 years ago

I would like to agree with you, except that if I were completely honest I would sometimes lump it with things that I should pay for like NPR and Wikipedia, and which I normally do, but some years I skip out on to spend on other niceties. Keeping government running and infrastructure maintained is much more important and should not be voluntarily withheld.

rm_-rf_slash• 8 years ago

I too read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager.

a_c_s2• 8 years ago

In the USA one won't be arrested nor go to jail for simply not paying taxes as it is merely a civil offense, not a criminal one.

https://tax.findlaw.com/tax-problems-audits/can-you-go-to-ja...

toasterlovin• 8 years ago

Would love to know how you think emergency response or national defense would work in a taxes-are-voluntary scenario.

mullingitover3• 8 years ago

This is reasonable. I'd prefer that rather than forcibly collecting taxes, non-payers could simply be, peacefully, stripped of citizenship and exiled.

Retra• 8 years ago

It would seem then that anybody who fails to pay their end of a transaction would get off scot-free? Because they only way you can maintain the usefulness of money is if you enforce payment where it is due.

StevePerkins• 8 years ago

Governance matters.

My feelings are similar to yours when it comes to paying my LOCAL taxes (e.g. property and sales). Because:

(1) I care about the services that my local government provides (e.g. schools, parks, libraries, roads and infrastructure), and

(2) My local county happens to do a good job at providing those services.

On the contrary, I view the FEDERAL government as a complete and utter mess. Spending all of my contributions (as well as those borrowed from my grandkids) on grotesquely inefficient entitlement programs, an imperial military, and basically just bribing corrupt government officials so that anything can get passed at all. I feel no moral qualms whatever with avoiding those taxes to the extent legally possible.

mullingitover3• 8 years ago

You know your local infrastructure would collapse or become breathtakingly costly if it wasn't propped up by Federal funds, right?

sp527• 8 years ago

Inefficiency is its own extra ‘tax’ and inherent to any sufficiently large complex system. But if the federal government didn’t in fact have meaningfully nonzero efficacy, your life would be considerably worse. Pay your taxes.

r00fus3• 8 years ago

On the contrary, I view the FEDERAL government as a complete and utter mess.

Medicare is one of the most successful government programs ever. Social Security would be a disaster if done by different jurisdictions or privately. I could go on, but there's a lot that Federal government does right.

Governance matters, so I vote for the people who think likewise.

dec0dedab0de• 8 years ago

I just don't like filling out the paperwork. It is like torture every year. I also dont particularly like the government keeping track of where everyone works.

pstuart2• 8 years ago

Bear in mind that anti-tax groups, and other profiteers of inefficiency (Grover Norquist, Intuit, et. al) actively lobby to make paying taxes as painful as possible so you will hate paying taxes period.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-maker-of-turbotax...

sonnyblarney• 8 years ago

I take pride in efficient services provided by taxation, and have extreme contempt for arbitrary taxation to support those that are inefficient, sometimes arrogantly so.

In Toronto, the folks that collect change at the TTC (i.e Metro) stations, earn over $100K a year if they work over time.

On my last visit - I had to stand in line for 20 minutes merely to buy a token with change. There were no change machines and no means for me to use even a debit/credit card.

The 'pass' that they offer (i.e. you load it up, more for commuters) cannot even be bought by the people selling tokens. It's absurd and outrageous. Granted there is some overlap of systems going on as they move to the new pass system - it's still stupendously insulting.

twblalock2• 8 years ago

I take pride in paying my taxes. It reminds me that our society has a cost, and we all contribute towards it.

Society's cost needs to be constrained by taxpayers. We need to put pressure on our governments to spend our tax dollars efficiently.

I live in California, so I pay state income tax as well as Federal income tax. I don't think I get as much per dollar of my tax as someone in Europe does. Europeans pay a little bit more than me (yes, only a little bit, I did the math) and get a lot more from their government, including comprehensive public transit that makes transit in the USA look like a joke, a much better social safety net, comprehensive health care not tied to their employers, schools that are actually good, low-cost higher education, etc. People in the UK get more from their government under Tory austerity policies than Americans ever got.

I don't want to pay more taxes until I get more for each dollar. If the Europeans can do it, so can we, but the political will does not exist here.

guelo• 8 years ago

Your tax dollars pay for a lot more military than the Europeans do.

rorykoehler2• 8 years ago

As a European I agree and I also think European countries as a whole are hugely inefficient on how they use tax money. We should pay taxes and we should demand ever increasing efficiency with equal great enthusiasm.

didibus3• 8 years ago

I think this is the challenge. Balancing efficiency and contributions.

If government is over-budgeted, it can become lazy, tempted to put some of it in their pockets, etc.

Under-budgeted, it can break down, such as what is hapenning to Greece.

That's just a hard problem honestly. With no clear answers.

That said, I do feel in the US, people don't actually want the government to give them anything. They're against having it offer affordable health-care, or education, or child care, or paternity/maternity leaves, or environmental safeguards, or proper water cleaning facilities, or art projects, or fund research, etc.

So on one hand people are dismissive of most things the government could provide. But on the other hand, the money is still collected in taxes, it just goes in other things.

I think it hurts priority discussions a bit. It would be one thing to say, cut taxes. But it's another to say, given the current budget, don't spend it on anything nice, because that would be too communist of us.

So where does all the money go then? Military?

TallGuyShort• 8 years ago

All the things I think are worth taxing for constantly seem to be underfunded. We seem to have plenty of money for the things I think are wrong.

If you're the government, you can always spend the money on stuff you want but your constituents don't want, and then tell them you have to raise taxes to pay for the things they want.

matz1• 8 years ago

Good for you. I definitely support and encourage you and I will get the benefit too. That being said, will I happily pay my tax? Haha no. I would not hesitate to cheat if the risk is very low.

ip26• 8 years ago

I don't terribly mind paying taxes. But I figure following the model of capitalism, it's meant for everyone to act in their own interest & look for the lowest tax bill, and that's how you arrive at what your fair share of taxes are. For example, finding all the deductions you are legally entitled to, or choosing to buy an electric car because it reduces your tax bill. That's all behavior we want.

So I guess you could say I'm happy to pay my fair share- but not more.

Now, structuring everything such that a particular taxpayer's lowest tax bill is actually "fair", is not easy, especially with lobbyists in the equation.

oppositelock• 8 years ago

I pay my taxes because I'd be in jail if I didn't. So much of what I pay goes to killing people all over the world, spreading the US hegemony, and jailing people for victimless "crimes" which I personally consider to be non-issues, that I'm disgusted each year when I tabulate my taxes.

So, you feel pride, I feel disgust. Society does have a cost, but building shared infrastructure and whatnot doesn't have to be funded via just one mechanism, one which can do whatever it feels like all over the world.

dwaltrip2• 8 years ago

Which government would you rather give your tax money to?

akudha• 8 years ago

I'm a foreigner in the US and am thankful for the public infrastructure (even the old ones) and more than happy to pay taxes. I find a lot of Americans complain about taxes (even those who are on welfare, forgetting that taxes paid by others is what helping them in the first place). I went to my local library to become a member. The old lady there asked me if I live in the area and launched a lecture (even after I showed address proof) about how she is paying her taxes and she wants to make sure her "tax dollars" are used only by those in the area etc. The whole thing was bizarre.

What is interesting is that taxes in US are actually lower than many European countries. Sure, the federal gov isn't the most efficient one, but hating taxes THIS much just feels weird and wrong to me. Without taxes, civilization as we know will collapse

smsm424• 8 years ago

Your local library most likely is supported by local property taxes, not federal income taxes. Though there are federal grants available for specific library improvements sometimes.

jki2757• 8 years ago

The US was founded in a tax revolt. It all makes sense if you think about it a bit.

smsm424• 8 years ago

I fail to find any pride in being forced to pay the price I have no influence over for goods I have no say in either production or distribution. Yes, I know that that's what I signed for when moving into the US to live as a non-citizen alien (not that becoming a citizen would change anything - voting in California, esp. SV part, is next to useless, the outcomes are predetermined anyway), and it's probably a better deal than most of other countries would offer me (that's why I took it), but it doesn't make me bubbling with joy.

I recognize that there's probably no realistic way to avoid it, but as it is for a person having to take drugs due to chronic illness, recognizing the necessity of having to do something does not mean being happy or proud about it. It's just a part of harsh reality. Especially if you take interest in particular details of how the massive trillion-size budgets are spent and how much money is wasted or stolen (illegally or legally) from it. No, platitudes of "society has a cost" do not do much for me. Food has a cost too, but if I'm offered a McDonald's sandwich for $100, I may pay for it and eat it, if all other food around is worse and more expensive, but I won't be proud or happy about it. And would take any legal effort available to me to keep my money out of the taxman's reach. When I feel the need to contribute to some cause, I just open my favorite charities list (unfortunately, much longer than my budget - after taxes - affords me to support adequately) and donate there.

oTTjRQxkTz2• 8 years ago

I don't take pride at all. It is burdensome, worrying, and hostile for the following reasons.

1) My taxes are overly complicated. I have to hire lawyers and accountants to help. They have made mistakes but I am still liable.

2) My tax bracket pays a very high rate. With state taxes included I am near 50% on income. I don't think that's reasonable and the justification, in my opinion, is more based on a suspicion or dislike of people in my bracket than because I can afford to pay. The government spends far more than it's revenue anyways. If my bracket were moved to 100%, there would still be revenue deficits.

3) The IRS treats me as if I am hiding money. The higher your bracket it seems the more likely you are to be audited. My father has been audited multiple times. I have been audited once. It is not a pleasant experience and every letter the IRS sends causes more anxiety. Honest or trivial mistakes are treated as if done with criminal intent.

4) Nearly half the population does not pay taxes but can elect people who can choose what my rates are. I will never have a majority representation or much power to lower them. This doesn't seem fair to me.

5) The IRS can very well be incompetent or corrupt in the sense of being political but no one will admit that. The assumption is generally that tax cheats are a problem but not a biased IRS.

For me to be proud, I think lowering my rate, simplifying taxes, requiring more Americans to pay, even if it is just a few dollars, and putting something in place to report overzealous IRS agents or corruption there would go a long way.

beatgammit• 8 years ago

I agree with most of what you said, but it seems silly to have everyone pay into taxes when they're net receivers of benefits.

The more important thing IMO is that the government is not careful with the money we give it, and it supports causes the majority disagree with (e.g. upholding the federal marijuana ban). When you couple runaway spending with a feeling of lack of representation, paying taxes feels more like extortion than "paying your share".

If having everyone pay a little in taxes means they're more likely to vote for responsible spending, I'm all for it. But the tax system is so convoluted that many people think they're making money with their refund. Maybe having few people get a refund would be better, IDK. But the current system makes people apathetic toward federal spending.

conanbatt2• 8 years ago

The people that direct how taxes are spent have campaigned for a century to make people feel good about paying them.

The truth is revealed when someone refuses to pay, and suddently the prideful contributions become mandatory commandments, under threats of confiscation and ultimately restriction of freedom.

zamalek• 8 years ago

I was raised a Catholic and, while not everything stuck with me, "give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's" did. The work that taxes do, at least in WA, make it a fair bargain too (where in South Africa it was daylight robbery).

isoskeles2• 8 years ago

I take no pride in it.

I had terrible experiences with the public school system growing up, and I doubt it's been fixed since then. I do not trust the government to do the right thing as a result. The government is yet another organization made up of people (or really, smaller organizations made up of people) who aren't necessarily doing their job correctly (or incorrectly, to be fair).

Also, our "society" and the government are not the same thing. Paying taxes to the government is not the same thing as paying your dues to society. As an example, if I have to pick between which person "contributes" to "society" more, a person who pays $0 in taxes because they work but earn very little versus a person who pays $0 in taxes because all their income is made illegally through theft, I can easily point to the former as being a better contributor to society. Similarly, one could make a case against the contributions of someone who pays a lot in taxes because they own a business that harms the environment or has other negative externalities. The point is that taxes are a rather poor measure of contribution to society. It's simply a reward of resources to government which, at least in the US, transforms those resources into a lot of shit including death in other countries.

I will admit that I think this is all necessary in order for the whole system to work, but I'm not going to pretend that the government is good or even, simply, not as bad as corporations. The attitude that taxes are something to be prideful about just seems like cheerleading. Not making a personal dig at you, that's just how I feel about the attitude.

And personally, I'll probably never feel prideful in contributing to taxes. Or maybe when I start receiving social security in several decades. Basically, it would take a lot to convince me that my previous most significant experience with the government (through my education) is unimportant and these other reasons (A, B, C, etc.) over here -- that I've had no personal experience with -- show that government is actually really very good and I should be proud to pay taxes.

InitialLastName2• 8 years ago

Similarly, one could make a case against the contributions of someone who pays a lot in taxes because they own a business that harms the environment or has other negative externalities.

I think there's a strong case to be made that one of the most fundamental justifications for taxes is to cover the cost of negative externalities.

davidgrenier• 8 years ago

There has to be some clever way to privatize this.

jmccaf• 8 years ago

Provincial tax collectors were corrupt and despised in antiquity, I prefer a faceless centralized IRS.

BoiledCabbage2• 8 years ago

Privatized prisons have worked out so well - I agree it's probably a good idea here as as well. /s

zeofig• 8 years ago

We just didn't do it cleverly enough, you silly socialist!

fwip2• 8 years ago

I'm sure we'll see an article about solving it with blockchain tomorrow.

exabrial2• 8 years ago

The IRS has a $12,000,000,000 to spend, and we're worried about a few millionaires not paying their taxes? I'm much more concerned about the first part, how on earth did we give that astronomical amount of funding to that agency and what in the heck are they doing with $12b that couldn't be done with $12m?

pchristensen• 8 years ago

For easier math, let's assume that 330m Americans file 120m tax returns. So all in, collection, processing, auditing, technology, customer support (which is excellent btw), management, compliance, etc would be ~$0.10 per return? Even at ~$100 that seems pretty well run. Scale costs.

jlawson• 8 years ago

The number is extreme... but it's worth noting that Facebook and Google both manage more users, often with more complex information, including people intentionally trying to break and trick their systems - at very low cost.

(I'm not sure if Google/FB spend 0.10 per user, but it sure ain't anywhere near $100).

I think with a sensibly simplified tax code, and FAANG-level technical innovation, IRS costs could enter that range.

BoiledCabbage2• 8 years ago

I swear people dont understand the size of the US and the scope of problems they tackle. And think everything is a startup for 40 people putting up a SPA. There are 325 million people in the US and that's not counting any companies.

12B means ~$40 annual cost to validate each person's taxes. That's nothing. That's including tracking down fraudsters, costs of audits, ensuring correctness.

One millionaire avoiding taxes is avoiding way more than $40 of responsibility...

devmunchies• 8 years ago

Agreed. I’d like to see the govt spend less on military and things like funding Israel. Spend the money at home.

PHGamer• 8 years ago

i guess there should be more enforcement but im not a big fan of an organization that presidents have used again their enemies. Also beauracies tend to grow over time and the amount of tax they need (both sides unfortunately). I would bet california breaks 10% sales tax this decade

danieltillett• 8 years ago

The political support for underfunding the IRS comes from the complexity of the US tax code combined with the extraordinary powers of the IRS. It leaves the average taxpayer with the feeling that could be audited and even jailed at any time for non-compliance with some obscure rule.

I am an Australian and I fear the IRS more than the ATO, not because I owe the IRS anything (I am not a US taxpayer), but because I have US customers. There is probably some obscure form or reporting requirement I have missed or filled in incorrectly that could make me the target of some arbitrary action by the IRS. You can see why foreign financial institutions just won’t have anything to do with US taxpayers.

lvngdfns• 8 years ago

The IRS administers and enforces the income tax laws beyond the parameters of the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President as well as beyond the parameters laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Moreover, the IRS’s own internal procedures, manuals and literature itself indicate the IRS knowingly deceives the American public about the scope of its true income tax authority.

In addition, consider this: https://www.numbersusa.com/news/irs-12-million-illegal-alien...

humanrebar2• 8 years ago

By that time, the Republican narrative had taken hold: The IRS had to be “held accountable” for wasting millions on lavish conferences and persecuting conservative nonprofits for their political beliefs.

That is very dismissive of some very salient complaints about how groups were targeted. Read the Wikipedia article. This isn't moonbat pizzagate nonsense. Among keywords targeted were "open source software", "medical marijuana", and "Israel".

A Democratic senator said:

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said, "We should not only fire the head of the IRS, which has occurred, but we've got to go down the line and find every single person who had anything to do with this and make sure that they are removed from the IRS and the word goes out that this is unacceptable."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

messick• 8 years ago

More like “Democratic”. She played the “see, I can be a Conservative too!” game to try to get the “small government” voters, and it didn’t even work anyway. Might as well quote Rand Paul because the whole “IRS is mean to Republicans” was definitely not a bipartisan belief except for red state Democrats.

rtpg2• 8 years ago

Definitely not great behavior. The idea this was purely an anti-conservative thing when OSS advocacy is on this list is where my eyes glaze over though. Just on its face there is a lot of evidence in the other direction

Ryun has stated he believes that Greenhouse Solutions benefited from its name (although the quick approval might also be due to the fact that Greenhouse Solutions was already operating as a nonprofit and was already on-file with the IRS.)

Like “conservative claims bias (but here is the real explanation).” Might as well place “claims to be innocent “ in the profile of every person in Shawshank

The insistence of people bringing up this thing as a conservative thing only when there were liberal groups also being targeted (There could have been a proper bipartisan effort against this!) is mind-boggling.

oTTjRQxkTz2• 8 years ago

In the TIGTA report from 2017, the Senate Finance Committee (and the IRS itself) found that most, but not all, of the potentially political applications set aside for scrutiny by the IRS were Tea Party and conservative groups. The committee also found that the IRS used names and policy positions in order to identify groups for scrutiny. I think there is evidence to say there was an anti-conservative bias.

see TIGTA report: https://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2017reports/2017...

humanrebar2• 8 years ago

I don't care to rehash the argument, but targeting nonprofits based on their names is at best arbitrary and uneven. Maybe it was accidental that conservative groups felt targeted. But given that non-profits aren't in the business of lawsuits, it's a due process concern when the IRS is arbitrary.

Some sort of heuristic based on random sampling or less political profiling (location, governing structure, association with known tax evaders) makes more sense.

jellicle• 8 years ago

The reality is that 100% of the groups "targeted" by the IRS, mostly Republican and a few Democratic, were and are obviously, blatantly violating tax law in order to launder political activity through a fake tax-free group, to dodge taxes and hinder accountability. Every one of them was and is guilty. For every election cycle nowadays, thousands of these paper front groups are created for laundering political funds, and most of them are discarded at the end of the cycle. It's the most blatant tax fraud imaginable.

Every US government agency charged with looking into this said as much - no political bias, IRS completely right to do what it did, which is "enforce tax law".

However, political pressure from Republicans and a few Democrats convinced the IRS to back down, which was a sad outcome for people who dislike corruption in their government.

And recently, the Trump government used a lawsuit settlement to funnel a great deal of taxpayer cash to Republican operatives based on a very flimsy claim. That's an excellent method of backdoor embezzlement itself - just have Republican groups sue the government for anything and have the executive branch "settle" their claims for infinite dollars.

didibus3• 8 years ago

I don't really understand your point.

Should audit selection be completly random? If your goal is to catch fraud, isn't it good to try and prioritize audits based on probability of fraud hapenning?

I'm also not sure what is discriminatory. Is being audited costly to the organisation? Otherwise, it shouldn't really be a big deal to be audited no? Unless you're actually committing fraud. Or to I misunderstand the scandal, and they claim that people were fined even though they didn't commit tax fraud?

smsm424• 8 years ago

Maybe if we had simpler tax code instead of byzantine monstrosity that happens now, when even professionals can't be sure if particular payment is right, and there's no hope regular citizen can figure it out - we'd not need as much funding to the IRS as we need now. But that would mean giving up the power to control people's decisions by messing with taxation - one of the most powerful levers of control Federal Government can have over the private citizen (Obamacare individual mandate has been deemed a "tax", because that'd make it within Fed's constitutional powers) and one of the most powerful levers to control the economy. Having simple tax code removes that power, and that's why it would not become simple.

RickJWagner• 8 years ago

From the same source, for some context:

"Proof the IRS Didn't Target Just Conservatives", from early on in the scandal

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/proof-t...

After the evidence was overwhelming and denial was impossible:

"New Documents Show the IRS Targeted 'Progressive' and 'Tea Party' Groups for Extra Scrutiny"

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/new-doc...

didibus3• 8 years ago

letting the poor commit too much fraud
Cutting the IRS’s budget didn’t make sense to him. It was one of the few areas of government that had a positive return on investment
Since the IRS-reform bill in 1998, the agency is prohibited from evaluating agents based on how much money they bring in. Instead, they are evaluated on how efficiently they open and close audits

I find these pretty interesting. It does feel a little fishy, given the IRS can actually be a revenue generating center for the government. Which would be very different if it was costing more then it brought in.

amaccuish• 8 years ago

Seems to me, though I'm not American, that many Americans take issue with the arduous process of paying tax in America. I suggest you take a look at Estonia's tax collection system and it's efficiency as a potential model.

The Golden Age of Rich People Not Paying Their Taxes

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