Earlier quoted context omitted.
This fails to account for the fact that IRS currently (and maybe this changes in the future) has a hard time doing serious audits on any significant amount of wealthy people; and that the agency has pretty much been gutted over the years. [0] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted [1] https://www.propublica.org/series/gutting-the-irs [2] https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich
all it takes is for one president in 2030s to create a new branch of gov that pays Google style salaries. would attract the best and brightest to write some powerful tools for all that, no?
I’ve done consulting work for tax agencies. They are full of smart people and are very good, as most government agencies are, at implementing and consistently delivering processes.
The problem at the IRS is that a group of people with the ability to influence the purse strings have signed pledges and dedicated careers to make the IRS as ineffective as possible. I have a former associate who is a specialist in a few arcane areas of tax law and has the ability to basically look at the books of any company and figure it out in a day or two. He left because systematic cuts meant that he was one of a half dozen specialists in the country (there were 200+ when he started), and ended up traveling all across the country to testify at trials as an expert.
Look at the military as an example of how any government agency works. Billions are spent on weapons systems development with the best and brightest minds. In the field, the applied work is done by 19 year old kids, roughly sorted into an occupational category by IQ.