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IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

accountingtoday.com

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Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#131
It really feels like there's a vested interesting in this country of destroying this country in favor of short term profits. The government can no longer claim it's even remotely acting in the interest of the average person. It's also pretty clear that one party is far more devoted to this than the other.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#132
post #24

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.

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.

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.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

If businesses started creating child companies (for any reason) it would result in substantial job creation.. so this sounds like a win-win to me.

Substantial job creation of ceo and accountant positions, that is. Shell companies do not really employ people.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#134
post #14

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.

“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.

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.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

If businesses started creating child companies (for any reason) it would result in substantial job creation.. so this sounds like a win-win to me.

This is the broken window fallacy. If our goal is to increase employment rates then we should support policies that do so where human productivity is most efficient.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also important is what happens to a business that gets caught. If the punishment is 'pay back taxes plus a moderate penalty, and here we'll even set up a convenient payment plan for you', then cheating on taxes is effectively a free roll. You have a 95% chance of saving a ton of money, and 5% chance of paying only a bit more than you would have paid anyway if you followed the laws. That said, the absurd complexity of…

The complexity is by design to make it harder to audit and easier to hide cheating. Given clear and straightforward code/laws, it becomes hard to cheat.

> The complexity is by design to make it harder to audit and easier to hide cheating.

You ascribe too much to malice, when it is typically just plain old politics. Representative will only vote to tax X if his/her constituent Y is excluded somehow. Add these types of items over many bills/years and you get what we have today.

Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business

#138

I don't get why countries always under-invest in tax collection... as long as it's ROI positive, shouldn't budgets be getting increased?

If 99.9% of the national income were used to gather 100% of the national income, you would have positive ROI.

Where does the remaining 0.1% go then 0.o?
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