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

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

#141
What does the last sentence mean exactly? "The IRS is fundamental in preventing businesses from engaging in transactions that aggressively reduce their tax liability."

It's not clear to me what is actually being said here because engaging in transactions that reduce tax liability is legal.

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

#142

And yet some people manage to whip themselves in to a righteous frenzy over someone collecting welfare or immigrants getting a microscopic bit of state aid. Such people really need to get a sense of proportion. The destitute, despised, downtrodden guy who slaves away to support their family by mowing your lawn, picking apples for you, driving you somewhere, or serving you your burger is not your enemy.

[deleted]

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

#143
post #134

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.

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 krone…

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.

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, we've been in a state for decades where a $1 increase in IRS budget results in more than $1 in income, yet their budget has continued to be cut. I'm all for closing down those well-known loopholes, but that doesn't mean there won't be loopholes, or just people/companies not paying what they owe. At this stage, those of us that ARE paying our taxes are the ones being taken advantage of.

Exactly. It seems obvious that you would want at the very least to fund the agency to the point where you no longer see a marginal profit for each dollar spent. At that point you're still very far from maximizing taxes collected.

Should we do this for other types of law enforcement?

Local police pay for themselves in traffic and parking tickets, among other fees. So maybe we should keep adding cops until we've maximized fine revenue.

Or maybe marginal profit isn't a good way to measure law enforcement...

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

#145

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.

I think you mis-understand just how easy it is to create a corporation with no employees...

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

#146

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".

I for one look forward to finding out which of the 595 Apple subsidiaries I'll be doing business with moving forward. I guess what I'm saying is that yes, it's possible that some companies will put in the legwork to restructure into a few subsidiaries, but this tax wouldn't have applied to them in the current regime anyways. The biggest ones, on the other hand, are unlikely to do the leg-work. Either way the plan can…

> I for one look forward to finding out which of the 595 Apple subsidiaries I'll be doing business with moving forward.

None of them. You'll be doing business with Apple CustomerCare or whatever it's called, and they're going to pay license fees for some logo, software or what have you to those 595 companies. It's how Amazon & Co funnel their money out of Europe without hardly paying any taxes, too.

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

#147

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".

I for one look forward to finding out which of the 595 Apple subsidiaries I'll be doing business with moving forward. I guess what I'm saying is that yes, it's possible that some companies will put in the legwork to restructure into a few subsidiaries, but this tax wouldn't have applied to them in the current regime anyways. The biggest ones, on the other hand, are unlikely to do the leg-work. Either way the plan can…

I think you have it backwards. The biggest companies that are already avoiding taxes can justify the lawyer costs to do it again.

Besides, they typically already have dozens of subsidiaries that are largely invisible to most employees and business partners. This is just adding more reasons to do so.

(Source: have worked on subsidiary taxonomy of large companies before, not for tax purposes, and from the outside there is often little information, at face value, why these subsidiaries exist. Even if you asked them, it wouldn't be hard to come up with legal reasons.)

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

#148
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any guarantee here that splitting a business will create jobs. 1) Business A has 1B in profits with X number of employees, gets taxed. 2) Business B splits into 10 businesses with 100M in profits and X/10 number of employees per business unit, and doesn't get taxes.

Sounds like Business B is going to need 9 new buildings. Are they built already?

A single building can support multiple mailboxes. Hey, a single mailbox can even support multiple stickers!

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

#149
post #134

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.

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 krone…

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.

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

#150

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".

I for one look forward to finding out which of the 595 Apple subsidiaries I'll be doing business with moving forward. I guess what I'm saying is that yes, it's possible that some companies will put in the legwork to restructure into a few subsidiaries, but this tax wouldn't have applied to them in the current regime anyways. The biggest ones, on the other hand, are unlikely to do the leg-work. Either way the plan can…

The front end company would be the same for everyone. They money would get funneled to the 4847373 shell companies on the back end. Then through Bermuda->Netherlands->Ireland a bit, same as usual. If it saves the company $.002, they will do it no matter how large and excessive their profits already are.
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