Summary
The IRS anticipates a $500 billion revenue loss as taxpayers increasingly skip filings following cuts from Elon Musk under Trump.
The IRS, set to downsize by 20% by May 15, has seen increased online chatter about avoiding taxes, with individuals betting auditors won’t scrutinize accounts.
Experts warned that workforce reductions could cripple the agency’s efficiency.
Treasury officials predict a 10% drop in tax receipts compared to 2024.
Former IRS commissioners have criticized the cuts, warning of dysfunction and reduced collection capacity.
Oh yes, because the United States has such great healthcare that a CEO was shot in broad daylight on the streets of New York. But a couple of months ago. As for roads and libraries and such, that’s what state taxes are for. Mind you, I somewhat disagree with state taxation as well, but at least state taxation benefits you directly.
You have an issue with capitalism not taxation and that’s ignoring the fact that if we reverted back to pre 1940 tax schemes we would be taking in more money and only the richest people in America would pay a dime.
Cut 99% of the government, and you could accomplish that. If nothing else, you could always eliminate the income tax and put consumption taxes on goods besides groceries and housing. An income tax disincentivizes making more income, but a consumption tax would disincentivize needless consumption.
Are you Elon Musk? Because “cut 99% of the government” is the kind of uninformed ass-pull I would epxect from him.
Consumption taxes on goods is extremely regressive. That will tremendously impact the poor.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
Oh yes, because eliminating groceries and housing from the consumption tax hurts the poor so badly because the poor need to buy five cars and ten yachts, etc.
I honestly have no idea what you’re trying to say. No one is talking about poor people buying five cars and yachts. I’m talking about how when you’re poor, and you’re trying to make what little you have cover (for example) clothing, paying $10 in taxes is a bigger portion, and thus hurts more, than if you were rich and had to pay the same tax.
Do you know how money works? How the more money you have, the less each dollar matters?
What I’m attempting to say, and apparently not getting across properly, is that if the common day-to-day items that you need to live your life are exempt from the consumption tax, then the poor people would never have to pay it.
If food was exempt from the consumption tax, then nobody would have to pay the consumption tax, because everybody eats food. Both rich and poor people.
Another example would be shirts. How many new shirts does the average person need per year? Set the consumption tax to apply to any purchase of shirts more frequently than that. If a person needs two shirts per year, then those two shirts would not be taxed, and the third shirt and beyond would be. So you still get shirts, and you don’t have to pay the tax.
You need a new car, say once every 10 years, and you can buy one car every 10 years without getting the consumption tax. But if you want more than one car in that time frame, then you pay the consumption tax, etc.
Mind you, this is if we agree that taxation is needed at all, anyway.
And who would exactly make sure that you are not going over the amount of shirts to dodge the consumption tax? With no IRS and without 99% of the government I assume nobody???
That’s a good point. Which is why it’s probably a better idea to just have the consumption tax apply to everybody equally instead of different levels, because otherwise you would end up creating a surveillance state. Well, not like we already don’t have one, but still, that’s a different story.
If a poor person needs a new shirt, they will go buy a shirt and wear it until they can’t anymore. Whereas if a rich person goes, they will buy 10 shirts instead of just one. So the poor person gets hit with the consumption tax and the rich person gets hit with 10 times the consumption tax.
A poor person would buy a car, say once every ten years, and pay the consumption tax one time, where a rich person goes out and buys ten really expensive cars, and not only pays the consumption tax on the car itself, but ends up paying an extreme amount more because of the branding of the car. The poor person buys a Honda Civic to get them to and from work, where the rich person buys a Bugatti.
Ok, I kind of get what you’re going for, but that’s still a very regressive taxation model. Assuming we could reach some consensus on “taxation has a place in government”, in my opinion you want to tax people who can better afford it. This is why flat taxes kind of suck.
Like let’s say we did a flat 10% tax of money. Someone who makes $10,000 pays $1000, and is left with $9000. Barely enough to live on. Someone who makes $1,000,000 pays $100,000 and is left with $900,000, which is a shit load of money. This is why progressive taxation is more popular. We say, don’t tax the first $10,000 at all, then tax stuff from like $10,001 to $100,000 at 10%, then $100,001 to $500,000 at 20%, and everything above that at 50%. (Numbers made up). Now people who have a lot of money pay more, and the cost of being rich scales.
We don’t really want very wealthy people. We don’t want money and power to consolidate in the hands of a few people. We want a flatter distribution of wealth. Now you have more people living life, having ideas, making inventions and art. If you put all the money in the hands of a few, and everyone else struggles to meet their basic needs, your society isn’t going to thrive.
Taxing what people purchase would be regressive, because there’s a certain floor for what everyone needs to buy. Some rich guy just isn’t buying so much more stuff that it’s going to work out.
The progressive tax, as you have more money, is clearly working. Because Elon Musk exists, and Jeff Bezos exists. If it was truly working properly, these types of people would not exist. The idea appears to make sense, but we’re living it and it’s not working.
You’re like 70 percent water, can we remove that and expect you to function?
That’s kind of the point. We don’t need a functional government because we don’t need government at all. Governments want us to think we need them when we do not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ0Qkhnt6bQ
That’s immensely dumb and highlights a basic misunderstanding of government.
That is irrelevant to your claim of “Taxation is theft”. Taxes pay for programs like medicare, medicaid, and social security, which are extremely popular.
Pushing stuff down to the state level makes coordination difficult, some projects impossible, and again is irrelevant to your argument that taxation is theft
If taxes pay for Social Security, then why do I keep hearing that Social Security is bankrupt or will be by like 2031? If pushing taxation down to the state level makes a project impossible to do, then perhaps that project should not have been done to begin with.
Because conservatives have been trying to kill social security since its inception. It shouldn’t really be in any danger of insolvency, barring conservative sabotage. A trivial search finds many articles about this: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/social-security-bankrupt/
This is clearly pants on head stupid. Postal service. Interstate transit systems. Weather forecasting. Just off the top of my head.
And again, one more time, you haven’t backed up your initial claim that “Taxation is theft”.
Taxation is theft simply because you did not agree to it or you did not have a choice but to agree to it. The only difference between the IRS demanding taxes from you and a street criminal demanding part of your paycheck every month not to hurt you is that you see the IRS as legitimate where you see the street criminal as a criminal. But they are both criminals.
You have a choice, go somewhere government isn’t but I guarantee you choose not to.
Right, I’m all ears. Where exactly on planet Earth can you go that is not ruled by a government? As far as I can tell, you have no choice.
Nowhere that’s the point. There are places that have very little actual government and a lot of violence or places with lots of government and comparably less freedom to do some things. You choose, you just don’t like your choices and that’s understandable, what’s not understandable is assuming no government is better than functional government.
Somalia is a libertarians wet dream so I hear
I wouldn’t know. I only know how the western world portrays Somalia. And I’m guessing that’s what you’re basing your comment on.
Why are they both criminals? What law are they going breaking? I think the IRS, as part of the sovereign government of the US, cannot really be criminal. I think that’s getting into some like philosophy of “what is the state?” stuff though, which is beyond my expertise.
You seem to be rejecting the whole idea of social contracts and representative government. Which, ok, but that’s going against quite a long history.
Of course the IRS isn’t breaking the laws, because they write the laws, and therefore they can exempt themselves from said laws. If you tried to do the same thing the IRS does, you would be arrested. So for the same action, you get penalized while this other group gets legitimized.
That doesn’t explain how they are “criminal”. that was the word you used.
Many things are either subject to penalties or legitimacy based on context. If you cut someone open and take out their kidney, that’s probably a crime! Unless you’re a doctor doing a surgery in a hospital. Context matters.
When you were born, were you given the option to sign a contract agreeing to the taxation policy? If not, were you given the choice and free will to leave with the full understanding that you would try to find an area that better suited you? If the answer to these questions are no, which I’m going to assume they are, then you did not agree to the taxation policy and were not given the option. Therefore, it is a criminal act. If a doctor cuts out your kidney, it’s because you gave consent for that to occur.