There’s a “mole” in the IRS who, for money, or fame, or sex, or out of some misplaced fidelity to socialist fantasies, exfiltrated this data illegally, and dumped it in ProPublica’s lap.
"I have one more thing to add here. President Biden’s budget would add nearly 87,000 workers to the IRS, mostly to catch tax cheats. The agency would be beefed up with $80 billion in additional funding under Biden’s plan. To put that in perspective, it’s over 13% of the entire defense budget. It would bring the IRS’s budget to 56% of the U.S. Air Force’s budget, at over $93 billion."
I don't see the problem here. If the IRS catches more than $80 billion in tax cheats, then this pays for itself and everything above and beyond the $80 billion are funds that can go toward paying down the debt (what a concept!), infrastructure, the space program, etc.
And maybe once the citizens are tired of having to talk to the IRS about their GameStonk and sleeping pills, an enterprising politician will run on the platform where the IRS sends most taxpayers a letter with what they think they owe, like sane countries[1], and those that contest the figure can go through the hassle of doing their taxes themselves and having all the fun arguing with the IRS auditors. (This was also a fun bit on a recent episode of "Young Sheldon".)
"If the IRS catches more than $80 billion in tax cheats,"
Is that a big "if" or almost a certainty? I'm skeptical of anything that adds 87,000 union workers to the federal payroll. If they catch the bulk of the big-time cheats in five years, we are stuck with 87,000 overpaid bureaucrats forever.
The IRS states that the amount it is under-staffed to catch is $1 trillion dollars:
"The United States is losing approximately $1 trillion in unpaid taxes every year, Charles Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, estimated on Tuesday, arguing that the agency lacks the resources to catch tax cheats."
"The so-called tax gap has surged in the last decade. The last official estimate from the I.R.S. was that an average of $441 billion per year went unpaid from 2011 to 2013. Most of the unpaid taxes are the result of evasion by the wealthy and large corporations, Mr. Rettig said."[1]
Even if we grant that the IRS is inflating that number for its own interests, if they're 8% successful with the new staff, then we're at a break even point. And if they catch more folks avoiding their taxes, it saves on MY tax bill given that my dollars aren't making up for the shirkers' shortfalls.
You certainly do the research. The NYT will not allow me to read their articles. That break-even statistic is based on a trillion dollar supposition. I have seen many managers try to inflate their budget based on hypotheticals. Very few got away with it. When the governments involved can't even catch $440 million fraud in Covid relief, I tend to lose confidence. I might believe some of what Mr. Rettig says but only because he was a likely participant in the fraud when he represented wealthy individuals and corporations in tax matters.
I suspect that the total collectible amount is less than $1T, but that the actual number is quite a bit more than $80 billion.
If we go back in time to 2006 during the Bush administration, the Commerce Department put the figure at $345 in 2001[1]:
"A new report by the Commerce Department found that Americans failed to report more than a trillion dollars in income on their 2003 tax returns. That was a 37 percent increase in unreported income from 2000."
"In a separate report, the Internal Revenue Service looked at both unreported income and improper deductions and concluded that Americans shortchanged the government by $345 billion in 2001 -- an amount almost equal to the projected federal budget deficit for 2007."
"The report, released yesterday by the I.R.S. commissioner, Mark W. Everson, was the agency's first estimate in 15 years of the gap between what Americans owed in taxes and what they paid. The I.R.S. report concluded that proprietors of small businesses, investors and farmers cheated the most. Workers who had 99 percent of their wages reported to the government and taxes withheld from their paychecks were the least likely to cheat."
"Mr. Everson acknowledged that the estimate is probably low because the I.R.S. looked only at individuals and small unincorporated businesses. It has not revised its estimates of tax cheating by corporations, large estates and by firms that do not hire their workers directly but instead contract with an employee leasing firm."
I do not believe the Feds will ever catch the bulk of the cheating. Adding 87,000 employees is just a further rip-off of the taxpayers under the present tax code. After my dad retired he started a book keeping and tax service and had a number of wealthy clients and businesses. I sometimes helped prepare returns for his review when the weather was too bad for fishing or golf. He told me about the cheaters and the clients he turned down. He always said he was too old to go to jail for someone who could not be trusted to at least document their claims believably.
After I retired, I worked about ten years with AARP doing taxes for senior citizens (some had substantial incomes) and low income taxpayers. I turned quite a few younger clients away because I knew or suspected suspected manipulation of income or marital status for earned income credit. There were others who showed up with previous years returns prepared by tax services which who left in a huff because their personal information did not support what the returns showed.
What is needed is a new tax code - not more IRS employees.
You missed my point. I agree the IRS needs to beef up on tax cheats. But not while others in the agency are leaking protected FTI to the press with no consequences. They can’t have it both ways.
I guess I'm failing to see how one item (catching the leaker) blocks the other (cracking down on tax cheats). I guess I'm not under the impression that the IRS (as an entity) is all that happy itself with the leak itself and isn't already working to catch the leaker.
I expect that the mole will be caught and jailed and the IRS will be the ones pushing for it. Unless I've missed something? That said, the longer it takes to uncover the mole using the IRS's built-in safeguards, the more likely I'm going to believe that it's a foreign actor (speaking as someone whose PII - and security clearance questionnaire responses - was compromised by China in the 2015 OPM breach).
Ideally, some of that money would also be used to modernize their systems and security as well. How much has cutting their budget kept open holes in their security that can result in such leaks occurring, and prevent easy traceability?
Whatever one's view on tax policy is, an individual's tax returns are none of the public's business, period. Whoever leaked this information, needs to be punished to the extreme. And you are right Steve, the tax liabilities of the Buffett, Gates, and others are not a secret or a surprise to anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of our tax system.
"I have one more thing to add here. President Biden’s budget would add nearly 87,000 workers to the IRS, mostly to catch tax cheats. The agency would be beefed up with $80 billion in additional funding under Biden’s plan. To put that in perspective, it’s over 13% of the entire defense budget. It would bring the IRS’s budget to 56% of the U.S. Air Force’s budget, at over $93 billion."
I don't see the problem here. If the IRS catches more than $80 billion in tax cheats, then this pays for itself and everything above and beyond the $80 billion are funds that can go toward paying down the debt (what a concept!), infrastructure, the space program, etc.
And maybe once the citizens are tired of having to talk to the IRS about their GameStonk and sleeping pills, an enterprising politician will run on the platform where the IRS sends most taxpayers a letter with what they think they owe, like sane countries[1], and those that contest the figure can go through the hassle of doing their taxes themselves and having all the fun arguing with the IRS auditors. (This was also a fun bit on a recent episode of "Young Sheldon".)
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/the-10-second-tax-return/475899/
The Young Sheldon bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKIYNN0FYfo
"If the IRS catches more than $80 billion in tax cheats,"
Is that a big "if" or almost a certainty? I'm skeptical of anything that adds 87,000 union workers to the federal payroll. If they catch the bulk of the big-time cheats in five years, we are stuck with 87,000 overpaid bureaucrats forever.
The IRS states that the amount it is under-staffed to catch is $1 trillion dollars:
"The United States is losing approximately $1 trillion in unpaid taxes every year, Charles Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, estimated on Tuesday, arguing that the agency lacks the resources to catch tax cheats."
"The so-called tax gap has surged in the last decade. The last official estimate from the I.R.S. was that an average of $441 billion per year went unpaid from 2011 to 2013. Most of the unpaid taxes are the result of evasion by the wealthy and large corporations, Mr. Rettig said."[1]
Even if we grant that the IRS is inflating that number for its own interests, if they're 8% successful with the new staff, then we're at a break even point. And if they catch more folks avoiding their taxes, it saves on MY tax bill given that my dollars aren't making up for the shirkers' shortfalls.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/13/business/stock-market-today
You certainly do the research. The NYT will not allow me to read their articles. That break-even statistic is based on a trillion dollar supposition. I have seen many managers try to inflate their budget based on hypotheticals. Very few got away with it. When the governments involved can't even catch $440 million fraud in Covid relief, I tend to lose confidence. I might believe some of what Mr. Rettig says but only because he was a likely participant in the fraud when he represented wealthy individuals and corporations in tax matters.
I suspect that the total collectible amount is less than $1T, but that the actual number is quite a bit more than $80 billion.
If we go back in time to 2006 during the Bush administration, the Commerce Department put the figure at $345 in 2001[1]:
"A new report by the Commerce Department found that Americans failed to report more than a trillion dollars in income on their 2003 tax returns. That was a 37 percent increase in unreported income from 2000."
"In a separate report, the Internal Revenue Service looked at both unreported income and improper deductions and concluded that Americans shortchanged the government by $345 billion in 2001 -- an amount almost equal to the projected federal budget deficit for 2007."
"The report, released yesterday by the I.R.S. commissioner, Mark W. Everson, was the agency's first estimate in 15 years of the gap between what Americans owed in taxes and what they paid. The I.R.S. report concluded that proprietors of small businesses, investors and farmers cheated the most. Workers who had 99 percent of their wages reported to the government and taxes withheld from their paychecks were the least likely to cheat."
"Mr. Everson acknowledged that the estimate is probably low because the I.R.S. looked only at individuals and small unincorporated businesses. It has not revised its estimates of tax cheating by corporations, large estates and by firms that do not hire their workers directly but instead contract with an employee leasing firm."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/15/business/tax-cheating-has-gone-up-two-federal-studies-find.html
I do not believe the Feds will ever catch the bulk of the cheating. Adding 87,000 employees is just a further rip-off of the taxpayers under the present tax code. After my dad retired he started a book keeping and tax service and had a number of wealthy clients and businesses. I sometimes helped prepare returns for his review when the weather was too bad for fishing or golf. He told me about the cheaters and the clients he turned down. He always said he was too old to go to jail for someone who could not be trusted to at least document their claims believably.
After I retired, I worked about ten years with AARP doing taxes for senior citizens (some had substantial incomes) and low income taxpayers. I turned quite a few younger clients away because I knew or suspected suspected manipulation of income or marital status for earned income credit. There were others who showed up with previous years returns prepared by tax services which who left in a huff because their personal information did not support what the returns showed.
What is needed is a new tax code - not more IRS employees.
"put the figure at $345 in 2001"
should be
"put the figure at $345 BILLION in 2001"
You missed my point. I agree the IRS needs to beef up on tax cheats. But not while others in the agency are leaking protected FTI to the press with no consequences. They can’t have it both ways.
I guess I'm failing to see how one item (catching the leaker) blocks the other (cracking down on tax cheats). I guess I'm not under the impression that the IRS (as an entity) is all that happy itself with the leak itself and isn't already working to catch the leaker.
I expect that the mole will be caught and jailed and the IRS will be the ones pushing for it. Unless I've missed something? That said, the longer it takes to uncover the mole using the IRS's built-in safeguards, the more likely I'm going to believe that it's a foreign actor (speaking as someone whose PII - and security clearance questionnaire responses - was compromised by China in the 2015 OPM breach).
How quickly we forget Lois Lerner.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/return-of-the-irs-scandal-11623191964
Ideally, some of that money would also be used to modernize their systems and security as well. How much has cutting their budget kept open holes in their security that can result in such leaks occurring, and prevent easy traceability?
Whatever one's view on tax policy is, an individual's tax returns are none of the public's business, period. Whoever leaked this information, needs to be punished to the extreme. And you are right Steve, the tax liabilities of the Buffett, Gates, and others are not a secret or a surprise to anyone who has a rudimentary understanding of our tax system.
This screams hack to me. I would be really surprised if this came directly from the IRS.
I would not be surprised at all.