81–90 of 319 posts
Simplifying tax code will go much further than trying to staff up IRS. My 2c.
A good friend was a specialist in a few tax evasion schemes used by real estate developers and a few other more obscure areas with similar methods. Basically, there were about 50 people nationally doing this in the early 90s, but the program was defunded over time and when he retired, there were 4. He spent about 60% of his time flying all over the country to testifying in court. Today there is nobody, the last guy retired last year.
By my friend's reckoning, his direct work accounted for $100M in recovered revenue per year. Some big cases were multiples of that. They have models that show the deterrent effect that enforcement has -- that $100M in recovery may deter $1B in undetected fraud. That is money being stolen from the treasury.
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 they are working for somebody who is. It is far past the time to recognise this.
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--spec…
Amazon doesn't pay taxes despite being worth $793 billion. How can I do this?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taxes are a membership fee for society If only you could appreciate that the US was founded protesting a 5% GDP tax rate.
If only you could appreciate that it was * founded by wealthy landowners interested in protecting their interests * that 5% tax wasn't going towards US infrastructure * 200+ years have passed since, and we've gone past horse-drawn carriages
This meme needs to die.
Nobody was sitting around saying "You know what will make me richer, a decade of war with England and if we win followed up with several decades of poor trade relations". The wealthy landowners who founded this country were very much going all in on a bet where the possible outcomes were lose everything or break even. They didn't do it for the money, not that there was any money in it to do it for.
Edit: Is my statement factually incorrect or ideologically inconvenient?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“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.
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.
We're not there, though.
Amazon doesn't pay taxes despite being worth $793 billion. How can I do this?
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 they are working for somebody who is. It is far past the time to recognise this.
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:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“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.
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?