Posted on 01/22/2017 8:55:12 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump’s oft-used excuse for not releasing his tax returns is that they are still under audit at the US Internal Revenue Service—no matter that this doesn’t prevent their release—but if his pick for Treasury secretary gets his way, the interminable audit may end sooner.
Steven Mnuchin, the investor tapped by Trump for the top job in US economic policy, told lawmakers at his confirmation hearing today (Jan. 19) that he would like to expand the workforce at the IRS and modernize technology there in order to collect more taxes.
“The IRS headcount has gone down quite dramatically, almost 30% over the last couple of years,” Mnuchin noted, pointing out that cutting a revenue-generating department was not exactly an efficient move. He made the observation in response to a question about the “tax gap,” or the difference between what should be collected and how much ends up in the government coffers.
He said that as Treasury secretary—whose remit includes tax collection—he would like to reverse those cuts and improve customer service, adding later that modernizing the agency would be “one of my great priorities.”
“I can assure you that the president-elect understands the concept of where we add people, we make money,” Mnuchin said. “That’s a very quick conversation with Donald Trump.”
Unspoken was that many of the lawmakers in the incoming president’s own party had voted in favor of the spending cuts that lead to those reductions in headcount. The IRS has seen its staffing reduced by some 13,000 employees since Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives in 2010. So far, Trump has promised to continue budget cutting at federal agencies.
Republicans also have been upset with the IRS over its scrutiny of conservative groups seen as potential violators of campaign finance and money laundering rules.
(Excerpt) Read more at qz.com ...
Regarding federal taxes, the only thing that taxpayers and federal leaders need to know about the fed’s constitutionally limited powers, and associated limited power to appropriate taxes is the following.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Expand? Uh, no thank you
PLEASE President TRUMP listen to this,
Steven Mnuchin works for the same people as Obama, Clinton and Merkel....
Appointing him to any position will come back and biter you in the butt.
And when we have another DemoCrat president with a bigger IRS? Sorry, but the first thing to do with the IRS is to (finally) prosecute those including Lerner that were involved in targeting conservative/tea party groups. Adding more workers to the IRS should be waaaayyyy down the list of things to do, and frankly, shouldn't be on the list at all.
More fake news designed to shake people’s faith in what Trump is going to do...
Yes, the IRS has been reduced a lot in size. However, most returns are now submitted electronically, the IRS clearly was abusive in regards to Tee Party organization applications, if we can simplify the tax code the IRS won't need as many employees.
However, the IRS does need to audit and examine filings. I don't think they need 30% more, but lets see about tax simplification and cleansing the IRS of political operatives of the Obama administration.
I hope she is waiting for the inevitable knock on the door. "You have the right to remain silent."
Clearly the 90,000 current employees have not been getting the job done. They have utterly failed to stop tax evasion including the under-reporting of income in entire sectors of the economy and the tax fraud involved in hiring people (including but not limited to illegal aliens) under the table.
I don’t like the complexity of the current income tax or the progressivity of it. It is the definition of punishing success. But as long as we wink at millions of people, from construction workers to waitresses to small business owners, who routinely dump their tax burdens onto honest workers, we should not complain about efforts to reduce tax evasion. Even if we switch to a flat tax tomorrow, how long and how big an IRS will it take to punish prior evasion and collect those taxes owed prior to that switchover ? Didn’t we just vote for law & order ?
He is listed as an executive producer on 31 films, including “The Lego Movie,” “American Sniper,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Intern,” “How to Be Single,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Keanu,” “The Legend of Tarzan,” “Sully” and “Suicide Squad.”
Yes it does. The US Treasury prints the stuff.
Your thoughts about him?
We need local IRS offices where we can pick up forms and ask questions of human beings. No. Va has no offices any longer (used to be about 1-1/4 miles from my house, with parking. Now you have to go to some God forsaken hole in DC, one lousy office for the city according to their website.
Some offices out in the hinterland can’t even read a letter of inquiry properly. I’m still get “we’re working on it, whatever it is” letters from over 2 years ago.
I asked a simple question about whether my wife and I were eligible for a program because there were a couple lines on the W1040’s the looked like it applied to us.
STILL WAITING!
> “He made the observation in response to a question about the “tax gap,” or the difference between what should be collected and how much ends up in the government coffers.”
I’ve had discussions about the so-called ‘tax gap’ back to 2000. Whenever the question is asked how it is arrived at “what should be collected”, it is always left unanswered until pressing on it fully, to which the answer is ‘estimated’, ‘wished for’, etc.
The ‘tax gap’ issue is a Beltway buzz issue that is conjured up whenever fed bureaucrats and pols want to spend more, and want to shift focus to an imaginary magic unicorn of ‘taxes out there somewhere waiting to be picked up’. It doesn’t exist except in prostitution, drug dealing. black markets, MAYBE. And no one knows for sure what it is or where it might come from.
The ‘tax gap’ is used to justify increased spending because somehow a deal is made to hire more IRS employees to go round up those taxes somewhere. It’s a ruse and it needs to stop.
Good one. Context kinda misses you sometimes. :)
Well, we must remember Donald is not a rightist; he’s a centrist.
“Conservative” desiderata will sometimes not be met. The classic definition of wise taxation is something like “Getting the most feathers with the least hissing.” Like it or not, America now has a Brobdingnagian bill to pay down. The Laffer tax curve still holds, and Donald will be backing down tax rates to allow business to rise. Whatever staff is needed at the IRS to effect the best performance on its part, that’s what will be allocated. Without regard to conservative pushback desiderata. We’re architecting a future — not paying back a political past.
Tax form should be simple for the individual. I am currently dealing with the IRS saying I owe nearly 10k from 2014 when I sold stock I had bought but not sold for many years (never made a profit) because they do not know where I got money from in 2003. It was an inheritance and I gave them the insurance policy numbers, death certificate and they want to me to fill out more forms. They really need a form that says for inheritance. Going on 3 months now as they are slow to respond. Hopefully here good news this month from them....
The more complex the code, the more holes there are going to be in how it is administered. As you have found out, with the particular chain of transactions that the IRS is looking at, but not very wisely.
There is a not-so-subtle flaw in both the feathers-hissing analogy and the Laffer curve. Both start with the premise that maximizing taxes collected is the right thing to do.
In reality, we need to do something similar to the Laffer curve, but plot GDP vs. tax rate, and optimize tax rate for maximum GDP.
We could call this the CurlyDave curve.
If we could wave a magic wand over the national debt and it went poof, we might have a better case for a kinder tax plan.
However sooner or later credibility issues arise. Right now, to become a more fattened goose under Donald Trump only will embolden its creditors to demand a piece. Unless the US really gets wise with its national debt, the victory will be short lived.
This is also why Donald proposed a plan to dig out from the debt. He knows it can’t sit forever on the books. A leverage of kinds it might be, but sooner or later the enterprise has to catch up with it, or its credibility goes down the tubes.
So we are stuck with Laffer and goose feathers for now. If the US does dig out? NOW, we can talk about a follow up plan along different lines.
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