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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

#91

Post by astura »

moate wrote: post #37
nostromo wrote: post #20

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 also don’t want the IRS to be staffed to maximize revenue The issue there isn't the IRS though, it's the tax code. The IRS is absolutely a department that needs to be staffed to maximize their revenue. If you have an easy to navigate tax-code that doesn't require a doctoral understanding of economics, then there's not a problem for the everyday person (TBH you can also say the same thing about the law in general)…

What specifically is difficult about the tax code? How does it compare to other countries?

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

#92

Post by xadhominemx »

cptskippy wrote: post #72
danenania wrote: post #29

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.

That is absolutely not true. Much of the complexity of the tax code is present in order to clearly prescribe rules in edge case situations in order to reduce judgement calls that would inevitably tilt in favor of the filer.

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

#93

Post by MichaelApproved »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #83
metamet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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".

And that's easily countered by saying "total profits, including subsidiaries."

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

#94

Post by arcticbull »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #83
metamet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 be adjusted, as my sibling says, to include the revenue from subsidiaries so let's not be defeatist :)

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

#95

Post by wang_li »

nostromo wrote: post #35
kurthr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the people "getting away with it" in this case aren't those paying withholding or even mostly individuals... they're corporations bilking the government and every other taxpayer. It's more like cutting back on the FBI when there's an outbreak of organized crime...

The problem is Congress, not the IRS. Most corporations pay the amount of tax they owe under the law, but the law is written to allow tax evasion. The IRS can’t do anything about this. The fix is to close several well known loopholes.

>but the law is written to allow tax evasion.

Avoidance. There's no natural tax system so suggesting the law is setup to allow tax evasion is illogical.

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

#96

Post by tlmchncl »

tathougies wrote: post #52

The Obama administration proved that tax agencies can be used as agents of political censorship. The power of government to censor political speech should be opposed at all levels and at all points of the political spectrum. One easy way of doing this is to reduce the size of these governmental agencies. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-...

It's worth noting that an FBI investigation found no evidence that the IRS was targeting conservative groups, and that the apology was issued by the Trump Administration, who might have a vested interest in making the IRS look bad.

"In January 2014, James Comey, who at the time was the FBI director, told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. On September 8, 2017, the Trump Justice Department declined to reopen the criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy.[1]

In late September 2017, an exhaustive report by the Treasury Department's inspector general found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

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

#97

Post by arcticbull »

nostromo wrote: post #20
Kapura wrote: 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.

The IRS sees maximum revenue at the point where everyone is paying their taxes as specified in the IRC. Anything short of that, people are evading taxes, intentionally or unintentionally. You are in fact arguing that the state shouldn't necessarily collect all it's owed. I doubt that attitude would get you far in the Accounts Receivable department at any business.

It's different with police officers because the number of crimes is un-countable [1] and if you point the police at anyone they'll find crimes. The same isn't really true of a W-2 employee with a 401(k). The taxes due are by definition countable and the compliance process is largely automated. You are just responsible for truing it up at the end of the year.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389...

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

#98

Post by cloakandswagger »

vkou wrote: post #41
nostromo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they harass and assault people for all sorts of subjective made up infractions. The IRS does this all the time. And unlike criminal law, the burden of proof is on the accused, not the state.

Does it actually disproportionately harass people who follow proper accounting practices, and who report their income correctly? Is it harassment when they actually identify that money was owed? Or is this just a meme largely spread by a demographic who is upset that their magic internet money is, in fact, subject to taxes (or, alternatively, a demographic that thinks all taxes are theft)?

Funny that you mention crypto (I assume that's what you're derisively referring to).

Did you know that the ominous, threatening letters sent out by the IRS to crypto traders was an indiscriminate shotgun blast of mailings sent to every Coinbase customer with an account value over a certain threshold? Did you know that the IRS wanted personal info on every single Coinbase customer until that was ruled unlawful?

So yes, thousands of presumably innocent people who "followed proper accounting practices and who reported their income correctly" were harassed by a letter from a tax agency insinuating that they had misreported crypto earnings.

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

#99

Post by sseveran »

cptskippy wrote: post #72
danenania wrote: post #29

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 because congress for over 100 years has been creating laws one by one to give preferential treatment to various groups that they want to favor at the expense of others.

The consequence is that for anything moderately or more complex there is actually no correct answer on what your tax liability is. What is the value of an intangible asset? How do you define novelty for the R&D tax credit? There are thousands of intersecting rules that change your liability and many of those are up to interpretation.

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

#100

Post by tick_tock_tick »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #93
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #83

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".

And that's easily countered by saying "total profits, including subsidiaries."

Even she wouldn't be stupid enough to try that.
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