[HN Gopher] US IRS to hire 30k staff over two years as it deploy...
___________________________________________________________________
US IRS to hire 30k staff over two years as it deploys $80B in new
funding
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-04-06 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| Yoofie wrote:
| Questions: Hiring 30k over two years is alot of people. Where do
| these presumably qualified people come from? Are they MBA types?
| Finance majors? Do they take people off the street and train
| them? If so, how do we know these new people will be a net
| positive and not just administrative bloat? The article says they
| will hire more data scientists, but how many "data scientists"
| does the US pump out each year, and what does it take to convince
| them to work for the IRS?
|
| I have so many questions on how the mechanics of an
| organizational change like this works.
| svggrfgovgf wrote:
| I think that this new spending and new staff will be used to
| further weaponize the IRS against political opponents. We already
| saw the Obama administration use the IRS to suppress political
| opponents without any real consequences.
| exabrial wrote:
| I work for free more than 20% of the year to pay for stuff that
| costs about 15x the price it should. The difference of the money
| goes to golf buddies of the Pelosi's and other corrupt
| politicians.
|
| That $80b in funding will benefit literally no-one except a
| select few individuals.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| This is great news. I know an IRS engineer who just retired. He
| was managing a critical system at the time of retirement and the
| horror stories I've heard from him about it makes it clear they
| need to bring in people to not just improve auditing, but also
| modernize their infrastructure. Much of it is stuck in the 80s
| (or worse). Hopefully they overhaul existing systems and
| implement new ones to go along with hiring "more data scientists
| than they ever have"
| slackfan wrote:
| [flagged]
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| [dead]
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I don't understand this argument. How do we pay for
| infrastructure, or any public service? Privatization? Private
| companies have proven many times that they cannot be trusted to
| work in the best interest of people. Just look at any company
| town.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| If taxation is theft then anything you've ever benefited from
| that was accomplished with tax dollars is also theft
| YourDadVPN wrote:
| If he didn't steal it himself, then it was just handling
| stolen goods, technically.
| exabrial wrote:
| As a society, at some point, we're going to have to move past
| the ancient and barbaric practice if we want to advance.
| [deleted]
| slivanes wrote:
| Then using public infrastructure is freeloading.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Good. This should come with the caveat that they are going after
| ultra-high net worth individuals.
|
| An agent spending a day going through the returns of some random
| person who makes 40-60k to see that their return was off by $30
| is an absolute waste of time and resources.
|
| The IRS needs to fry the biggest fish for a change, instead of
| ignoring them or being too scared to face a well-funded legal
| team.
| tananaev wrote:
| There has to be random enforcement across the board. If people
| with lower incomes know they are never audited, it will
| encourage more people to under-report more. Obviously each
| individual audit won't be financially profitable for IRS, but
| the fact that it is enforced will send a message to millions of
| people that under-reporting a few hundred bucks is not worth it
| and it's better to pay the taxes on it.
| galkk wrote:
| They should go for everyone, ranked by income.
|
| One year I got a paper mail from IRS where they said that there
| were potentially unpaid taxes, but it could be that you haven't
| filed Schedule D form for RSU. I was very pleased with it - it
| clearly stated what I didn't do, what I should do (file needed
| forms), how to contact etc.
|
| I updated everything providing what was needed and sent it,
| everything was ok.
|
| Comparing to the messy interactions with tax guys that I had
| long time ago in my former home country (with hints of needs of
| bribes), when I was leaving it, I'll rather have to deal with
| IRS any day.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > They should go for everyone, ranked by income.
|
| The IRS is about to have the world's largest Kanban board.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There's plenty of low-income fraud that they should be tracking
| down as well. A politician local to me filed for PPP loans for
| multiple different LLCs he managed that had no trace of
| employees and got like $150k from the Feds. Would love for that
| to be looked into, but the backlog is real.
| pwinnski wrote:
| That's fraud, but outside the purview of the IRS. The program
| was administered by the SBA.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| It's my understanding that the IRS-CI group is
| investigating it; https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-
| criminal-investigation-ci-p...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I would strongly encourage you to report this potential fraud
| for investigation. It will be triaged in a timely manner.
|
| https://www.sba.gov/partners/contracting-
| officials/contract-...
| ortusdux wrote:
| "The new IRS chief, a former management consultant who briefly
| ran the agency on an acting basis in 2013, said that he would
| enforce Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's pledge to not
| increase historical audit rates for Americans earning under
| $400,000.
|
| The final 2017 audit rate for earners between $200,000 and
| $500,000 0.4%, far below the 2.3% for that bracket in 2010,
| according to IRS data."
| notch898a wrote:
| Didn't the legislature try to introduce a bill to prevent
| using the new agents/funding against lower earners, and it
| flopped? So it turns out all along no one actually wants to
| keep anyone accountable to such "promises."
|
| https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1.
| .. Statement of Purpose: To prevent the use
| of additional Internal Revenue Service Funds from being used
| for audits of taxpayers with taxable incomes below $400,000
| in order to protect low- and middle-income earning American
| taxpayers from an onslaught of audits from an army of new
| Internal Revenue Service auditors funded by an unprecedented,
| nearly $80.000.000.000, infusion of new funds.
| Vote Result: Amendment Rejected
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _legislature try to introduce a bill to prevent using the
| new agents /funding against lower earners_
|
| Money is fungible. This was a messaging bill. If they were
| serious, they'd create an independently-funded agency
| within the IRS with the sole mandate of going after high
| earners.
| notch898a wrote:
| If the bill was a message, so was the response. "Fuck
| you, we'd rather not be hindered by such promises."
|
| -----------------------------------
|
| RE: below [due to timeout]
|
| >The original bill already passed.
| factcheck: false. Original bill passed almost 12 hours
| later on the same day[0] [1]. The (above) amendment was
| voted on in the early morning, with the unamended
| increase passing in the afternoon.
|
| >Congress has more important things to do.
| factcheck: false. All 100 senators voted on the floor
| for a full vote on the amendment. None found they had
| something more important to do that would cause them not
| to cast a vote.
|
| >The executive has stated its position.
| factcheck: True. Either congress ignored the position,
| or they followed the privately endorsed position rather
| than the publicly endorsed one. [0] https://ww
| w.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vot
| e_117_2_00325.htm [1] https://www.senate.gov/l
| egislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_117_2_00296.
| htm
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _so was the response_
|
| Not really? The original bill already passed. The
| executive has stated its position. Congress has more
| important things to do.
| jksmith wrote:
| So less than 400k is designated as high net worth? 200k
| will be the new threshold at some point.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I don't take the legislature's failure to pass a bill as a
| sign of anything other than their general incompetence.
| LanceH wrote:
| The ultra-rich are largely law-abiding and have the paperwork
| to prove it.
|
| What should be concerning is the new reporting requirements on
| virtually any $600 transaction combined with 30k more IRS
| staff.
| jltsiren wrote:
| "Law-abiding" is not a binary concept. There are some
| activities that clearly abide by the law, and there are some
| activities that clearly break the law. But there is also a
| wide gray between the extremes, where it can be difficult to
| determine what the law actually is without going to court.
|
| The best practices for tax planning deliberately go into the
| gray area, because there is money to be made in the expected
| case. Even if you are audited and found breaking the law, the
| consequences are rarely that severe. But the same reasons
| that make going into the gray zone profitable in tax planning
| also make it profitable to audit people who practice tax
| planning.
| andrepd wrote:
| Even before tax evasion, the wealthiest 0.1% pay
| proportionally less taxes than everyone else.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| >The ultra-rich are largely law-abiding and have the
| paperwork to prove it.
|
| Just because they have receipts of their expensed 'business'
| dinners and 'client' trips to Disney World doesn't mean
| they're not fraudulent
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > The ultra-rich are largely law-abiding and have the
| paperwork to prove it.
|
| Oh really?
|
| "Credit Suisse, the collapsed Swiss bank taken over by UBS
| Group in a hastily arranged bailout earlier this month, may
| bring with it a fresh set of regulatory and legal problems
| for its new owner.
|
| For years, the bank has provided a safe haven for wealthy
| American clients to hide assets from the IRS -- even after it
| was caught and prosecuted for doing the same thing more than
| a decade ago"
|
| Many will take whatever opportunity they can get. Whether its
| complex offshore structures or moving it to banks that will
| greet you with a wink and a nod. As long as it doesn't go to
| the IRS.
|
| I'm not saying all wealthy individuals do this, or even most.
| But the amount of money that is intentionally hidden from the
| IRS is incredibly substantial. They have done the studies.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| People have a really simplistic view of what wealthy
| "compliant" tax returns look like. There is a massive amount
| of tax fraud at the wealthiest levels -- but since the IRS
| rarely prosecutes, people just assume the returns are merely
| avoidance instead of evasion.
|
| Look at what's come out from Trump's historical tax returns
| -- literally tens (if not hundreds?) of millions of dollars
| in tax fraud that was just never prosecuted. Had the
| authorities looked before the statute of limitations had
| elapsed, there would have likely been criminal charges.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d.
| ..
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-
| never-b...
|
| This isn't "some people say" territory - it's just blatant
| fraud that went unprosecuted and it happens all the time.
| themagician wrote:
| The IRS rarely prosecutes high earners because it's
| expensive and it's possible they fail.
|
| Once you get out of simple W2 and 1099 income things get
| real complicated real fast. So complicated the IRS can get
| it wrong themselves. The more complicated the return, the
| more subjective they become. When the rules are so complex
| or the terms so vague that things can be left up to
| interpretation or they do not capture all edge cases it
| becomes very easy to end up in a scenario where you have to
| prove intent to commit fraud if you really want to
| prosecute.
|
| There is no doubt that the IRS leaves plenty of money on
| the table by not pursuing more high earners, but who wants
| to do the hard work when the easy work is just to compare
| reported W2 and 1099 income statements with returns?
|
| If we wanted to get serious about going after high earners
| we would simplify the tax code. We'd get rid of certain
| carry overs all together. At some point we may even tax
| revenue instead of profits. That might sound wildly "anti-
| capitalist" but it's the only way to eliminate the
| ambiguity. We could create different incentives that
| reverse the burden.
|
| I can think of a funny example I saw the other day where
| some dope was telling people they can deduct their dog as a
| business expense if they work from home because the dog is
| a "guard dog". The thing is you actually can do this. If
| you do this with any old dog it obviously would not hold
| up... but where is the line? How much training does a dog
| need to be considered a guard dog? How many hours a day is
| the dog actually guarding? You going to interview the dog?
| What if the dog dies or runs away? The IRS is not going to
| scrutinize every dog. There are a ridiculous amount of
| things just like this that people write off as expenses. If
| you want to successfully prosecute you've got to really
| make the case that it was intentional--like that there was
| no dog at all. Otherwise it's just difficult, and there's
| so much lower hanging fruit. You want to go back and forth
| over a dog with or just go after this person who failed to
| report a PayPal transaction? The latter is so much easier.
| Guaranteed win.
| NickC25 wrote:
| They are "largely law-abiding" because collectively, they've
| bought the ability to call their actions law-abiding.
|
| Warren Buffet pays a smaller % of his income in tax than he
| secretary does, and he's said that himself. You know how
| that's possible? Because Buffet and people like him bought
| off the government ages ago and, collectively, said to the
| IRS "we're going to tell you what we are going to pay, and
| you're going to deal with it, OK?", and continually lobby
| congress and say that whatever minuscule amount they actually
| do pay is WAY too high and needs to be cut, and cut again.
| badlucklottery wrote:
| > This should come with the caveat that they are going after
| ultra-high net worth individuals.
|
| It sounds like that's the plan:
|
| "It also aims to help close the "tax gap" between taxes owed
| and those paid, estimated by Treasury at some $600 billion a
| year, by focusing new audits on the wealthiest Americans."
|
| Hopefully we can avoid electing clowns long enough to see this
| bear fruit.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _This should come with the caveat that they are going after
| ultra-high net worth individuals._
|
| Note that pretty much everything the Biden administration has
| done amounts to soaking the middle class. $600 reporting
| threshold, anyone?
| thebradbain wrote:
| The $600 reporting threshold has always been there (though I
| agree, it should be retroactively pinned to CPI from when it
| was introduced). Most banks through Zelle previously would
| automatically submit all transaction history to the IRS
| anyways; After all, the IRS can absolutely track how much
| money is entering/leaving your account on a given month,
| which is how they'd flag you for an audit if things don't add
| up to what you reported.
|
| The only real "change" was that now Venmo/Cash App will be
| required to, too-- and even that got delayed.
| notch898a wrote:
| That threshold has not always been there. Used to be 20k,
| but they had to lower it to catch the billionaires.
|
| https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/irs-
| delays-...
| lilsoso wrote:
| Does this cover most payments over $600? They're now
| mostly all recorded? I don't understand the exceptions.
|
| So it applies to digital payment methods like Paypal, to
| payment networks like Western Union, but also to any
| credit card transaction over $600?
|
| edit: I think I was thinking of the payments in the wrong
| direction. The 1099-K applies primarily to the receiving
| party?
| madengr wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| CrunchyJams wrote:
| I know this sounds crazy, but how about we apply the law
| equally to everyone? I have a difficult time seeing how
| targeting or generalizing any group of people rather than
| individual likelihood of tax evasion is an appropriate
| application of resources.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Because it's unprofitable. Think of the IRS like the sales
| staff of a business. Taxes are the revenues. No business
| would be rewarded for wasting marketing and sales budget on
| chasing customers who have no ability to pay.
|
| Sure you could go after a low income tax cheat, but you end
| up just putting them in debt if they don't actually have the
| ability to pay you.
|
| This is all about justice vs. profitability.
| CrunchyJams wrote:
| Except it's not a business. It's the government and it's
| job is to apply the law in a country founded on the idea of
| equality.
|
| Should police only pull over people in luxury cars because
| they're more likely to be able to pay a speeding ticket?
| chowchowchow wrote:
| The better analogy is should police pull over someone
| going 120mph or going 80mph if they have to choose.
|
| Clear answer IMO. Similarly should the government
| prioritize more serious offenses over lesser? It's a
| bigger crime to evade $1,000,000 in taxes than it is to
| evade a $1,000 tax bill.
| tedunangst wrote:
| The job of the revenue service is to collect revenue.
| oivey wrote:
| Because stealing a car isn't equal to stealing a candy bar.
| The more money you make the greater the possible size of the
| evasion.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| It's far easier for a business to evade paying taxes. Half
| the businesses I visit in NYC admit they want cash so they
| don't have to report it on their taxes.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Currently they prioritize going after people on low to middle
| income, so if there is additional funding it should go
| towards the people currently being ignored.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| you see that claim, but the caviat is that many of the
| types of fruad/errors made by low to middle income are
| easily detected.
|
| You can easily run a program to detect people claiming the
| same dependents.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yeah, last time this topic came up, I seem to recall that
| it turned out the vast majority of "audits" claimed to be
| targeted at the lower-classes were automated, mostly
| intended to catch common "whoopsies", and usually
| resulted in a pretty chill "yo, we think you owe X for
| reason Y, send us a check if you agree, or else perform
| the following steps to dispute" letters, not, like, thugs
| knocking down someone's door and demanding to comb
| through all their records from the last seven years.
|
| ... while audits for rich folks required heavy human
| involvement right from the beginning, so _of course_ the
| numbers are skewed such that it looks like they are
| targeting the middle and lower classes, if you treat both
| types of audit as identical.
| sarcasmatwork wrote:
| >Good. This should come with the caveat that they are going
| after ultra-high net worth individuals.
|
| If people work hard and make alot of money you want them
| targeted? Wow! If only I could waste billions of our taxes
| without accountability.
|
| Those ultra rich hire people, and have lot's of write off's and
| know the system. Tax code is difficult on purpose.
|
| There is a history of IRS targeting certain groups, while
| ignoring the others. If you think they wont target people that
| are helpless and can't fight you've got to wake up.
|
| Not too long ago: "Internal Revenue Service says it gave extra
| scrutiny to organizations with the names "Tea Party" or
| "Patriot" seeking tax-exempt status.
|
| No criminal charges were ever filed against IRS officials.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No charges were filed because they didn't commit a crime.
|
| Targeting some dopes creating a 501 as a "Tea Party" group is
| called targeting the low hanging fruit. So is aggressively
| enforcement of credits for non-custodial parents, etc.
|
| Meanwhile, those hard working ultra-rich real estate
| developers committing various frauds with self-dealing, fake
| appraisals, etc walk away with millions of dollars and pay
| little or nothing.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Not too long ago: "Internal Revenue Service says it gave
| extra scrutiny to organizations with the names "Tea Party" or
| "Patriot" seeking tax-exempt status.
|
| When they investigated, "progressive" and "occupy" (as in
| Occupy Wall Street) were also on the scrutiny list. They were
| (correctly) looking for political orgs masquerading as
| "social welfare" orgs to avoid disclosing donors.
|
| (Also on the list of terms: "open source software", "medical
| marijuana", etc.)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131207123209/https://www.bloom.
| ..
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > If people work hard and make alot of money you want them
| targeted? Wow! If only I could waste billions of our taxes
| without accountability.
|
| No, just the "make a lot of money" part. How hard they worked
| doesn't matter.
| slackfan wrote:
| Ahaha, your naivete is so cute.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| To the contrary, I think they should spend their time there is
| the best return on investment.
|
| The number one priority of the IRS I should be recovering
| funds, not ideological Warfare.
|
| Recovering funds should not be political, and to make it so is
| a race to the bottom. Once you start targeting specific groups,
| you normalize all kinds of bad behavior.
| jwie wrote:
| The fact that I have to file the return is itself part of the
| problem. This process should be "irs gives you a refund or tells
| you what you owe and then you either dispute it or take it". The
| audit practice invites mischief into a system where someone makes
| a judgement about when to audit, and the process is the
| punishment.
|
| Just tell me what I owe, and if I feel like it I can dispute it.
| If they can validate a tax return they obviously know what would
| be correct.
| stetrain wrote:
| Absolutely, but to accomplish that you'd need enough political
| will to combat the lobbying from TurboTax and the other tax
| filing businesses.
| abletonlive wrote:
| It's not like turbotax is some monopoly on tax filing
| software. There are at least a couple free tax filing options
| now available. That should in theory mean that turbotax is
| losing it's political power as time goes on.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| This comment is on the right track, but is inadequate. It
| invites the typical response that it "can't be done," because
| X, Y, Z.
|
| The truth is closer to yes. Yes, there could be (and is in
| civilized countries) a web based form that lists everything the
| government expects to apply this year. And it could be quite
| accurate. Then you spend fifteen minutes (typically) entering
| in your deductions or any missing data. Does the math. Reduces
| the manual process from a week to under an hour.
|
| (I understand that third-party software does reduce that time
| as well, but shouldn't need to exist.)
|
| So yes, it can be done, because I've done it when I had a
| contract in another country.
| jksmith wrote:
| That's what they do anyway if you don't file. Yeah, mandating
| filing is increasingly becoming a control mechanism as filing's
| only purpose.
| stetrain wrote:
| If you mean control by corporations who make money on the
| current process then yes.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-
| turbotax-20-year-f...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/ncna736386
| shrimpx wrote:
| IRS has happily kept thousands of dollars of my money when I
| filed incorrectly. A few years later I went to the IRS office
| for an unrelated matter and I asked the agent "can you look up
| year XXXX and see if I was owed a refund?" Agent looks up and
| says yup, you were owed a large refund. Too late to get it back
| now, but we strongly encourage you to correctly refile your
| taxes for that year.
|
| So they had done my taxes and knew they owed me money and,
| basically, stole my money. If I owed them money they would have
| immediately hit me with a bill or an audit. And on top of it
| they wanted me to refile my taxes "correctly" after they had
| already done my taxes.
|
| This "do your thing and we'll do it, too, and we'll see if you
| got it wrong" is one of the most stressful aspects of American
| bureaucracy.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| How long ago was the missed year? I missed a filing from 3
| years prior, in which I was owned money, and got it back no
| problem. Also since I do my own taxes, sometimes I make
| mistakes, and they correct them and I'm pleasantly surprised
| by a larger refund.
| shrimpx wrote:
| It was 4 years. I was told I could not get the money back.
| [deleted]
| beebmam wrote:
| Are there any alternative tax mechanisms to income taxes that
| you'd support? I've heard many times that VAT or consumption
| taxes are far more efficient than income taxes. Seems like
| they're also easier to enforce (except in regions with
| significant black markets). I've also heard that taxing land &
| non-invested property is a good idea, too.
| dpifke wrote:
| For some reasons why this won't work, might I suggest you skim
| through the other 1,526 comments on HN that have made the exact
| same suggestion:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| synergy20 wrote:
| what about the old plan as just-the-sales-
| tax(local+state+federal), so nobody needs to file anything, and
| no need of IRS at all. * flat-tax-rate as the
| default,itemized if you prefer: * charge less for
| regular food, educational and medical expenses *
| charge a little more for travel and non-essential leisure
| expenses * charge even more for luxury expenses
| * charge nothing before your spend reach a certain point, e.g.
| $5000
|
| Someone has to figure out how to design the tax rate, point is
| that, we no longer need the IRS and annual or quarterly tax
| reports.
|
| There are a few states did well with no income tax(just sales
| tax and property tax), the nation could do the same, don't
| forget to short Intuit if this happens.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > so nobody needs to file anything
|
| Most of us would need to do very little filing-related work
| every year if anti-tax politicians who think their crusade is
| worth wasting hundreds of person-lifetimes of hours every
| single year, and tax prep companies' lobbyists (probably
| with, ah, _some overlap_ between these two causes) would stop
| standing in the way, no major overhaul of the tax code
| required.
| petersellers wrote:
| There have been a number of studies done that demonstrate
| that a consumption tax (which is effectively what this is) is
| considered to be regressive because they disproportionately
| affect poor people.
|
| I'm all for simplifying the tax code (e.g. eliminating many
| deductions) as long as we also eliminate loopholes that rich
| people often use to avoid paying taxes on their income.
| ebiester wrote:
| It disproportionately taxes poor people over rich people.
|
| Also, how do you report how much you've spent to the IRS?
| That seems even harder. Some people have suggested a
| "prebate" of a payment that people get that helps with their
| first part of the sales tax, but that breaks down after a
| while.
|
| There are also the same problems of "under the table"
| behavior.
| kcplate wrote:
| >It disproportionately taxes poor people over rich people.
|
| I always hear this said about national sales taxes, but it
| just doesn't really jive with me as valid. It really seems
| to make the assumption that consumption doesn't actually
| increase based upon how wealthy you are. When it _obviously
| does_. I don't know many poor folks buying super cars,
| yachts, airplanes, and multimillion dollar homes. Yet I
| know a few wealthy folks with multiple of each.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If I'm wealthy, it's most likely that I own a business.
| If I have a business, then _it_ will have bought that
| airplane, yacht or car all as tax-deductible purchases.
| Business then lets me use those at its discretion. My
| personal car can be an '87 Chevette.
|
| Best example I'm personally familiar with is the
| carpenter whose Corvette was a company car.
| kcplate wrote:
| All of those things are still purchased though, whether
| it's a company or an individual. Personally I thought the
| purpose of taxes was to provide the government its
| funding, not punish.
| shagmin wrote:
| The thing is poor people have to spend all their income,
| wealthy people don't. So poor people have all their
| income taxed, while wealthy people surely aren't spending
| their last dollar on yachts for the most part. Wealthy
| people have lots of leftover income to invest and make
| yet even more money instead. At least with an income tax
| you can ensure no one pays taxes on their first $x and
| such.
| kcplate wrote:
| Still doesn't jive. Taxes are there to fund government,
| not punish success. Whether or not you have a large
| income or a small one, your consumption is what it is and
| to a degree can be controlled.
| cjensen wrote:
| This is a good first start, but won't work for everyone. E.g.
| we got a new roof with solar. The solar is tax deductible. But
| is the roof? My options are (a) no (b) the portion with solar
| on top (c) all. Asking around, different people have taken
| different options, and no option is un-taken.
|
| Option (c) will probably never get audited and we all know it.
| I won't be taking it.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Solar power shouldn't be tax deductible. This is another part
| of the problem.
| greedo wrote:
| He was just illustrating the complexity. The tax code has
| tons of incentives for every Congresscritter's pet project.
| Arborealist wrote:
| They can generate 95% of returns completely accurately. For
| people with advanced situations they can feel free to file
| their own correct copy or pay an accountant.
|
| People wanting to deduct their charitable contributions
| should have to work harder to do that. I shouldn't be
| inconvenienced because of that.
|
| Of course if they did that you wouldn't need 80K new feds,
| and since they tend to vote lockstep for more endless
| government, well it's quite convenient isn't it?
| thephyber wrote:
| The US government is great as building Dark Patterns in their
| benefits programs.
|
| There is one major party that thinks government doesn't and
| can't work well, so it's no wonder that lots of the
| stakeholders design systems that frustrate users.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I don't suppose any of that staff will be able to get around to
| what most other countries do with taxes, which can be summed up
| as "This is what we know about you, is it correct? If not, please
| correct it."
|
| As opposed to the US, "Tell me what I already know, and if it
| doesn't match, we'll make your life hell for an indeterminate
| period of time."
| dfxm12 wrote:
| No. TurboTax, et al. saw to that.
| sowbug wrote:
| Some light reading on the subject:
| https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2023/02/turbotax-parent-
| com...
| Syonyk wrote:
| I'm aware, this is why I pay someone local to do my taxes,
| instead of using TurboTax. They pay for prep software, but
| it's not TurboTax (Drake something or another).
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I listen to right wing (AM) radio on my way to work. (It works
| better than coffee I swear) - they're freaking out, or rather,
| trying to freak out their listeners about this. It's funny
| because it seems like a third of their ads are for listeners who
| are being audited or owe taxes. I guess being patriotic is
| limited to cheering on violence but not paying their share.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Those same listeners took the advice a few years ago and were
| protecting freedom by buying shelf Nevada corporations and
| rolling 401ks into "Gold IRAs"
|
| That stuff targets old people and people like tradesmen who own
| their own businesses, but are kinda dumb about business. Some
| of the ads are fake as well, bought by dark money orgs.
| helsinki wrote:
| It is our civic duty, as Americans, to pay as few taxes as
| possible.
| bwb wrote:
| Good, higher more!
| nilespotter wrote:
| [dead]
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