A big reason for the deficit

Bob001

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The Repubs are not only against imposing taxes, they're against collecting them when due.

Funding cuts have decimated the IRS staff, which shrank by 22 percent between 2010 and 2018, when it was left with fewer than 9,000 auditors, the lowest number in well over half a century, as ProPublica has pointed out.
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Every single year, the federal government fails to collect an enormous amount of revenue that Americans legally owe. This vast budget hole is known as the tax gap; according to the IRS’s most recent estimates, which are sadly a bit out of date, it amounted to $381 billion annually between 2011 and 2013. In a paper last year, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and University of Pennsylvania law professor Natasha Sarin estimated that $630 billion would slip through the government’s fingers this year.
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https://slate.com/business/2020/01/irs-audits-revenue-declining.html
 
Interesting article. It doesn't say which demographic is the major culprit, though it hints that the higher earners may make up most of the lost revenue. I certainly agree that the IRS needs to be staffed, and its goals prioritized, so as to maximize revenue for each dollar spent on enforcement.
 
This is not a reason for the deficit. The government officials choose to spend the money they do. Even if tax revenue was zero, low tax revenue would not be the reason for the deficit. Legislators choose to spend the money, it is their choice to use deficit spending.

Also, while an interesting article, I would be interested to know what is possible in tax systems. For example, do countries where the government calculates it for you more efficient?
 
BobTheCoward said:
This is not a reason for the deficit. The government officials choose to spend the money they do. Even if tax revenue was zero, low tax revenue would not be the reason for the deficit. Legislators choose to spend the money, it is their choice to use deficit spending.
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What complete and utter bull ****!

The observation that "spending causes budget deficits" is so laughably missing the point. You can't balance a budget when you deliberately take a pay cut at your job.

Tax cuts have NEVER paid for themselves. EVER!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ry-lesson-do-big-tax-cuts-pay-for-themselves/

Joe Thorndike, a tax historian and director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, said that “tax cuts did seem to increase the amount of taxes collected from wealthy taxpayers, as well as their share of overall revenue. But that’s partly because those same wealthy taxpayers were reaping a large share of the benefits from all that economic growth.”

He said it’s wrong to assume, even with the growth, that the tax cuts paid for themselves: “Did the 1920s tax cuts bolster economic growth? Probably. Did that growth help defray the cost of the tax cuts? Probably. Did that growth cover the full cost of those tax cuts? No.”

As Thorndike put it: “Historically, tax cuts have tended to generate some economic growth that in turn helps cover part of the cost of the cut itself. But to my knowledge, no major tax cut has ever generated enough growth to pay for itself completely.”
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Moreover, William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, co-wrote a paper in 1996 that defended Reagan’s economic record but also said it was “one of the greatest enduring myths” that Reagan officials believed tax cuts would pay for themselves. “This was nonsense from day one, because the credible evidence overwhelmingly indicates that revenue feedbacks from tax cuts is 35 cents per dollar, at most,” Niskanen wrote, noting that “the Reagan administration never assumed that the tax cuts would pay for themselves.”
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ChristianProgressive said:
What complete and utter bull ****!

The observation that "spending causes budget deficits" is so laughably missing the point. You can't balance a budget when you deliberately take a pay cut at your job.

Tax cuts have NEVER paid for themselves. EVER!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ry-lesson-do-big-tax-cuts-pay-for-themselves/
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Balancing the budget with a pay cut is extremely easy. You just don't want to because you don't like the consequences.

ETA: it doesn't even require any knowledge of government, taxation, or how the programs run. We can train a chicken to balance the budget by giving them tokens that represent revenue and little pots representing things to spend money on.
 
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BobTheCoward said:
Balancing the budget with a pay cut is extremely easy. You just don't want to because you don't like the consequences.
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Not the argument being addressed.

ETA: it doesn't even require any knowledge of government, taxation, or how the programs run. We can train a chicken to balance the budget by giving them tokens that represent revenue and little pots representing things to spend money on.
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and?
 
Being pro-law enforcement ends where the tax cops begin. **** tha police!

But at least the average American household is paying $1300 more because of tariffs. Indirect taxes are the best.
 
BobTheCoward said:
Balancing a budget when deliberately taking a pay cut is easy. Your point made no sense. A chicken could do it
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My point makes perfect sense. Trump and the GOP cut government revenues by almost $2 TRILLION, then had the nerve to complain that the deficit went up. That increase in the deficit and debt was 100% caused by the unwise and unjust tax cut.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
My point makes perfect sense. Trump and the GOP cut government revenues by almost $2 TRILLION, then had the nerve to complain that the deficit went up. That increase in the deficit and debt was 100% caused by the unwise and unjust tax cut.
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Ziggurat said:
Federal tax revenues have gone up every year under Trump.
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Cabbage said:
Not as percentage of GDP, Mr Cherry Picker.
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@Ziggurat

The relevant thing you would need to cite is whether Trump's tax policy changes resulted in a 2 Trillion loss in revenues or not. You have some latitude in the time frame given the way the facts were expressed.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
My point makes perfect sense. Trump and the GOP cut government revenues by almost $2 TRILLION, then had the nerve to complain that the deficit went up. That increase in the deficit and debt was 100% caused by the unwise and unjust tax cut.
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No, it was caused by signing an appropriations bill. If they signed a different bill, it would have done something different.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
@Ziggurat

The relevant thing you would need to cite is whether Trump's tax policy changes resulted in a 2 Trillion loss in revenues or not.
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Not really. I'm assuming he's correct, given the appropriate timeline and definition of "lost" revenue. But I don't need to show that he's wrong about that in order to make my point.
 
Ziggurat said:
Yes. Because spending has ballooned. We have a spending problem, not a taxation problem.
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Well whose fault is that?

We have the tax and spend Democrats, or the borrow and spend Republicans.

I wish I could vote for candidates who were fiscally responsible, but there aren't any.

I really hoped that Obama's second term, with a Democratic president and a Republican congress would work the same magic that happened in the Clinton years, but it was not to be. Obama, Boehner, and McConnell just weren't any match for Clinton, Gingrich, and Dole.
 
Stacyhs said:
And then complain that it's so high...but only if s/he's a Democrat.
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During the campaign, Sean Hannity had a litany of woe that he would talk about to describe the Obama years. All the horrible things that happened. One of those horrible things was that the USA was 20 trillion dollars in debt.


Now he has a litany of wonderful things that have happened under Trump. Curiously, he doesn't mention debt. Funny, that.
 
Loss Leader said:
Interesting article. It doesn't say which demographic is the major culprit, though it hints that the higher earners may make up most of the lost revenue. I certainly agree that the IRS needs to be staffed, and its goals prioritized, so as to maximize revenue for each dollar spent on enforcement.
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I would wager that most of the unassessed tax, is in the higher tax brackets. The lower earners, those who fudge to maximize the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, is where the majority of the exam function is looking. Why? It's automated. Look for "self employment" income that is *exactly* enough to max out the credit. Compare SSNs of claimed children to previous years. As examples. The rich have more ways, less searchable, to hide income. Or inflate deductions.
 
Loss Leader said:
Interesting article. It doesn't say which demographic is the major culprit, though it hints that the higher earners may make up most of the lost revenue. I certainly agree that the IRS needs to be staffed, and its goals prioritized, so as to maximize revenue for each dollar spent on enforcement.
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Trump himself would prefer the IRS be unable to look at tax evaders like himself.
 
Well, hopefully, the Democrats can get to the bottom of Trump's :rule10
 
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