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Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

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Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#101

Post by vundercind »

bxparks wrote: post #89
anon291 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an American citizen, just call your US representative. They will have you on the phone with an actual person at the IRS in a day or two. Literally, I've learned this lesson the hard way. The moment I have to wait more than an hour or so to figure out a government service or agency, I immediately lodge a formal complaint with my representative. They have a large staff dedicated to constituent services, and…

This assumes that the Representative is competent, and believes that they act for the good of all people in their district, not just the ones who believe in their version of God. This not true across the country, and particularly, not in the district that I live in. I would never call my Representative. My Senators, not too bad, but there are only 2 of them for the entire state.

The politicians don’t personally do it. You won’t talk to the actual rep, you’ll talk to some recent poli-sci grad or intern or whatever.

I suppose some might be so incredibly bad at their job that they don’t have staff for constituent services, but most do. They don’t tend to ask who you voted for before helping. I’m in a very red state, vote for democrats, and have had state and federal republican rep offices help me out several times.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#102

Post by nebula8804 »

janalsncm wrote: post #91
alfalfasprout wrote: post #18

Taking a step back... one big problem is that our tax code is way too complex. It means that even common people are wading through a minefield every time they file their taxes. Between unclear deductions and credits, trickiness for those that have to pay estimated taxes, and a mafia led by Intuit lobbying against simple filing it's definitely a pay to play system. More broadly, our tax code is designed to benefit the…

There’s a good book “The Dictator’s Handbook” that proposed the Selectorate Theory that explains this, among other things. The complex tax code is a feature, not a bug. And I don’t just mean that Intuit is profiting off of the complexity, although that is also true. Politicians care about staying in office, rewarding their supporters, and maybe implementing prosocial policies. In that order. So tax cuts for the wealt…

All of this is enabled by the ability to print money and not have the painful consequences that other countries have to deal with. What happens when this is no longer the case? All this old cruft (farm bill for example) will cause a collapse. What would that even look like?

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#103

Post by ssnover »

chrisco255 wrote: post #94
HillRat wrote: post #5

The IRS is a perennial budgeting football for Congress, even though it's one of the few agencies for whom increasing their budget creates positive net revenue for the federal government; its enforcement arm is down 30% in staffing since 2010, with predictably dismal results. As an anecdotal comparison, I had a fairly long-running issue years ago with the IRS over a minor problem (some expenditures got posted to one f…

A better strategy would be to do away with income tax altogether and replace with something easier to comply with and enforce like a Federal sales tax. States that run on sales tax alone need only to collect revenue from businesses, which shrinks their staffing requirements. And since it's a straightforward % of sales, it's easier to audit as well.

These are not 1:1 replaceable. Income tax is progressively structured where higher earners pay a larger percentage in income that falls into higher income brackets. Sales tax is a flat percentage which varies based on item category, not the cost of the item.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#104

Post by robertlagrant »

mywittyname wrote: post #98
pembrook wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the IRS budget since the 80s hasn't decreased on a per-capita, inflation-adjusted basis, then something has gone horribly wrong. Why the heck would we want tax collection to get more inefficient every year? This one of the most misguided narratives I see from people of the other "specific US political party" to the one you're referring to. As another commenter pointed out, if the transition away from cash and self…

> Why the heck would we want tax collection to get more inefficient every year? There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful. They should be constantly front-of-mind for every American. It keeps people from forgetting about income taxes and having them fade from public discourse.

> There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful

Can you cite this?

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#105

Post by godelski »

jmclnx wrote: post #37
HillRat wrote: post #5

The IRS is a perennial budgeting football for Congress, even though it's one of the few agencies for whom increasing their budget creates positive net revenue for the federal government; its enforcement arm is down 30% in staffing since 2010, with predictably dismal results. As an anecdotal comparison, I had a fairly long-running issue years ago with the IRS over a minor problem (some expenditures got posted to one f…

I had friends and relatives who worked for the US IRS in the 80s, they all would say the IRS was the one place that budgets will never be cut, so the felt far more secure than I did in Tech. Little did they know the top 1% would get with one specific US Political Party to cut the IRS budget so thy can all cheat on their taxes. It is cheaper for them to hire lawyers than to pay their "fair share".

> the top 1% would get with one specific US Political Party

This is where people get it wrong, and VERY wrong. The IRS's budget had even significantly fallen between 2010 and 2014[0,1]. But it also increased from 2000 to 2004, then decreased, and increased from 2007 to 2010. Democrats only held congressional control (house and senate) in that second increase[2], but in some of those times the entire government was Republican controlled (granted, very narrow).

I'm not trying to say the Republicans are the "good guys." Actually I'm saying the opposite. I'm just saying that the defunding of the IRS isn't a partisan issue. It's just one is much more vocal about it.

This isn't an issue we can solve if we simply blame one side. Just remember, you can hold those that you side with accountable. So if you're a Democrat, it's important to be critical of Democrats or if you're a Republican, to be critical of Republicans. If you give your side a pass and just blame the other side, you bet people are going to take advantage of that. And they have.

[0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-need-to-rebuil...

[1] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/war-irs

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#106

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

bxparks wrote: post #89
anon291 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are an American citizen, just call your US representative. They will have you on the phone with an actual person at the IRS in a day or two. Literally, I've learned this lesson the hard way. The moment I have to wait more than an hour or so to figure out a government service or agency, I immediately lodge a formal complaint with my representative. They have a large staff dedicated to constituent services, and…

This assumes that the Representative is competent, and believes that they act for the good of all people in their district, not just the ones who believe in their version of God. This not true across the country, and particularly, not in the district that I live in. I would never call my Representative. My Senators, not too bad, but there are only 2 of them for the entire state.

You might be surprised. I don't have any direct experience to speak of, but I've heard that some reps whose rhetoric would make you think they want tens of millions of Americans imprisoned, deported, or dead turn out to have surprisingly good staffers handling constituent services.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#107

Post by judge2020 »

nebula8804 wrote: post #102
janalsncm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a good book “The Dictator’s Handbook” that proposed the Selectorate Theory that explains this, among other things. The complex tax code is a feature, not a bug. And I don’t just mean that Intuit is profiting off of the complexity, although that is also true. Politicians care about staying in office, rewarding their supporters, and maybe implementing prosocial policies. In that order. So tax cuts for the wealt…

All of this is enabled by the ability to print money and not have the painful consequences that other countries have to deal with. What happens when this is no longer the case? All this old cruft (farm bill for example) will cause a collapse. What would that even look like?

> old cruft

I don't see it as old cruft, farming still exists and buying their block is important.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#108

Post by adventured »

mc32 wrote: post #79
jmclnx wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had friends and relatives who worked for the US IRS in the 80s, they all would say the IRS was the one place that budgets will never be cut, so the felt far more secure than I did in Tech. Little did they know the top 1% would get with one specific US Political Party to cut the IRS budget so thy can all cheat on their taxes. It is cheaper for them to hire lawyers than to pay their "fair share".

I am under the impression the majority of 1%ers vote for the party we don’t envision them being part of. Things have flipped over the last decade. The populist and 1%er parties have flipped.

Factually that's correct.

We can just say it as it is here, frankly. The 1% are overwhelmingly Democrats. They live in cities like NYC, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston. Nearly all relevant US cities are extremely to the left in terms of wealth and voters. The Forbes 400 is overwhelmingly Democrat voting and donating these days. The very richest in the US are overwhelmingly Democrats.

From Zuckerberg to Bezos to Buffett to Gates, the elite of the Forbes 400 are not far right wingers or Trumpers or Conservatives. They vote center-left and they donate center-left. They champion left causes almost exclusively. You won't catch them backing Trump.

The Democrats used to have the south as a voting block, until the late 1990s / early 2000s. Those people are the foundation of the right vote today. The left abandoned them and largely gave up on domestic blue-collar labor.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#109

Post by mywittyname »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #18

Taking a step back... one big problem is that our tax code is way too complex. It means that even common people are wading through a minefield every time they file their taxes. Between unclear deductions and credits, trickiness for those that have to pay estimated taxes, and a mafia led by Intuit lobbying against simple filing it's definitely a pay to play system. More broadly, our tax code is designed to benefit the…

> It means that even common people are wading through a minefield every time they file their taxes.

According to the IRS, 87% of people take a standard deduction. There's really no minefield there. So long as you don't lie about how many children you have or any sort of tax credits you're applying for, it's dead simple. And worst case, if you mess something up, the IRS already knows the right answer and will send you a letter correcting your mistake or asking for proof.

The complexity is mostly for businesses, with a little bit of it being tax-free savings vectors like IRAs, 509, HSAs, etc. But even those are largely streamlined.

So really, it's an 80/20 thing, 80% of the complexity effects 20% of tax paying entities. And certainly those 20% don't want a "simplified" tax code if that means losing out on the money they save by dealing with the complexity.

Re: Millions of Taxpayers Call the IRS for Help. Two-Thirds Don't Reach Anyone

#110

Post by ryandrake »

robertlagrant wrote: post #104
mywittyname wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the heck would we want tax collection to get more inefficient every year? There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful. They should be constantly front-of-mind for every American. It keeps people from forgetting about income taxes and having them fade from public discourse.

> There is a subset of Republicans who believe that taxes should be painful Can you cite this?

Look up Grover Norquist and his lasting influence on even modern Republican policy.
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