IRS Warns of Downtime Risk As Congress Makes Cuts 253
dcblogs writes Successive budget cuts by Congress are forcing the Internal Revenue Service to delay system modernization that would improve its ability to prevent fraud. In telling of the problems ahead, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen almost sounded desperate in a recent memo to employees. The IRS is heavily dependent on technology, and the impact of the budget reduction to IT this year was put at $200 million. It will mean delays in replacing "aging IT systems" and "increasing the risk of downtime," Koskinen said. A new system to protect against ID theft will be delayed, and other IT cost-efficiency efforts curbed.The budget cuts have been so deep IRS employees are being warned of a possible shutdown for two days before this fiscal year ends in October. It would be a forced furlough for agency workers. The IRS employed 84,189 last year, down from 86,400 in 2013. When attrition is considered, the IRS says it lost between 16,000 and 17,000 employees since 2010. The agency has also been hit with a hiring freeze, and appears to be hiring very few people in IT compared to other agencies.
One has to wonder (Score:3, Informative)
If these upgrades are so critical, why did they wait until THIS year, and especially during tax season, to do them? Sounds like PR, like the public park "closings" where they actually increased staff to keep people out.
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appears to be hiring very few people in IT compared to other agencies.
So that's the benchmark?
Re:One has to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
seems like it's time to fire IRS management and bring in/promote some fresh minds that can work under the reduced budgets.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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In other countries... (Score:5, Informative)
In other countries, the government collects payroll information and prepares a tax statement for each citizen. People review the tax bill and pay if they owe money. Or they amend any information on income and pay the recalculated payment.
In the US, citizens are made to calculate their tax responsibility, or hire someone to do it. The government then tells them if they have their calculation correct with threat of penalty if done incorrectly.
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The IRS will figure your tax for you if you wish if your case isn't too complex: http://www.irs.gov/publication... [irs.gov]
Re:In other countries... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because companies like Intuit and H&R Block lobby Congress to prevent the IRS from simply applying all the information they already have.
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*jelly roll*
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A private corporation is free to decrease or increase output in order to find the new optimization point as conditions change, or to pursue new lines of business. The IRS must continue to collect all taxes that Congress requires by law and is prohibited from creating new taxes.
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Does the amount of work that the IRS is legally required to do reduce when the economy slows?
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I think there should be one one federal income tax rate, and only one exemption. Make the rate whatever you want it to be, I don't care.
The one exemption will be the amount equal to 5 times the level of poverty for a person or family, at the location they live. Use the federal Cost of Living Allowance to factor the difference between poverty levels in California and Arkansas.
Anyone who reasonably believes their income for the year will fall below that level (five times their local poverty level for their fa
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My second thought was, if their budget is cut all they have to do is reduce the scope of their mission. It isn't like their victims are going to complain about not being audited. And r
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They can't. The scope of their mission is defined by Congress. They are tasked with carrying out what Congress says. They can't unilaterally say, "We're not going to do what we're told to do."
That said, if they wanted to reduce their mission scope they could always ignore trying to collect money from people who didn't hand over their money to private companies since this has nothing to do with
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Interesting theory you have there. So, does that mean that the President can't just ignore Congress and do what he likes about, say, Cuba? There ARE laws in place, after all....
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you poor stupid idiot.
you have a non argument and no clue.
you can raise these specious "questions" but they reveal more about your own ignorance than anything of value releated to the IRS.
maybe the upgrades have been scheduled for months, predicated on projected funding, not an uncommon practice. further, no matter when the upgrades are scheduled for someone can raise the "why now?" question and have it seem important (when its really not). Its not like they only work 3 months out of the year.
and they have
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You didn't answer why they decided to wait until tax season?
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The current federal budget law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) requires that the President submit the budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February
Re:One has to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
you idiot.
they didn't falsely attack private citizens.
they weren't an attack tool of the DNC.
they ddnt lie to congress.
the entire IRS "scandal" was manufactured from whole cloth.
enforcement of the tax code IS THEIR JOB.
when a blatantly political group tries to use a non-political category for non profit status THEY SHOULD investigate.
but guess what? Guess how many groups they investigated didn't get approved for their non profit status?
Less that 5.
And how many of those were conservative groups? 0.
--
And why should you be glad that an agency gets is budget cut as punishment?
That may make sense for a toddler, but not a government agency, especially the one responsible for collecting and processing the funding for the rest of the government. Should we slash the military budget after drone strikes hit civilians? Should we gut the EPA after oil spills? Maybe we should dismantale the DOJ aftr they fail to get a conviction of walls treet bankers?
This is stupidity. But this is the GOP strategy: make it so government cant do its job, and then complain that government doesn't work.
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Obama himself said the IRS did wrong, is he lying too?
The IRS told Congress that Ms. Lerner's emails were non-recoverable after 9 months of attempting. The IRS AG found backup tapes of her emails after 2 weeks of looking, with the help of the IRS IT staff. The staff he talked to was never even asked about backup tapes before. They outright lied to Congress, period.
As for the tax exempt approvals, they are to take no more than 90 days. Over a 2 year period, over 700 days, no single group with "tea party"
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When it comes to these kinds of organizations, approval delayed is the same as approval denied. They cannot begin any meaning fund raising until their tax status is determined.
What the IRS essentially did was to put them in limbo. That means they couldn't represent themselves to potential donors as a bonafide tax exempt organization.
And how long were they delayed? Almost all were delayed until after the 2012 elections.
For Lois, it is mission accomplished.
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Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Their budget got gutted because the IRS became a political attack tool of the DNC and then lied to Congress about it.
They certainly had some poor behavior but that's not why their budget got gutted, that was just the pretext. The modern Republican party A) Doesn't believe in taxes, so anything that impairs tax collection is good B) Is deliberately following a "starve the beast" strategy of shrinking government size C) Is against anything that would harm corporations or the wealthy, tax audits being a prime example D) Is not particularly enamored of the idea of "good governance" and so is willing to destroy the function of government departments in order to achieve their other objectives. I'm not particularly fond of the Democrats either, they've got their own set of problems, but that's a separate discussion.
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It takes a special kind of asshat to make cold fjord look sensible.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Now piss off.
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You first.
Obama Administration REFUSES To Release Documents About White House Role in IRS Scandal [dailycaller.com]
THOUSANDS OF DOCUMENTS: IRS Gave Taxpayer Information To White House [dailycaller.com]
In 'Lost' Trove Of IRS Emails, 2,500 May Link White House To Confidential Taxpayer Data [forbes.com]
There is plenty more digging to do, especially given the stalling by the administration.
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There is plenty more digging to do, especially given the stalling by the administration.
This is the most important piece to remember.
If the Bush administration had done this, the press would be crawling all over it to "expose the corruption" of the White House. And rightly so. But since Obama is at the top of the heap now, they ignore it and call it a false story. The hypocrisy of the situation is sickening.
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Daily Caller - extremist right wing source
Forbes: the magazine of the ultra-wealthy
Got *anything* that isn't right wing extremist... oh, I know, all the media lies... except that on the extreme right.
mark
Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with the slightest shred of common sense realizes that the IRS was doing their job. In case you have forgotten, the role of the IRS is to collect taxes. If they get an application for tax exempt status from a group that is vehemently opposed to taxation and known for making statement encouraging people to cheat on their taxes, they should put extra scrutiny on that application.
This is no different from the DEA aiming to work harder investigating NORML and other such pro-drug organizations.
In other words, find a different conspiracy for your anger. This one isn't worth shit.
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I'm sorry - if you (as the head of the IRS) allow the IRS to be politicized on your watch, then you will not be funded by the next Congress. It doesn't matter if you think it hasn't been politicized if enough people disagree with you. If the IRS wanted to continue as an organization, they needed to avoid even a hint of partisanship.
It doesn't take a genius here...
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It doesn't matter if you think it hasn't been politicized if enough people disagree with you.
Isn't this the exact same argument that has been ridiculed a few posts back about voting on whether climate change is a fact or not? Facts are not subject to majority votes.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that's a pretty damn stupid attitude.
"I'm sorry, nose. If you didn't want to get cut off you shouldn't have sneezed on your watch. You have only yourself to blame."
The government needs funding. We can't get rid of the IRS. We can reform it if it's corrupt, those there's really no evidence it was in recent history (the "Tea Party was targeted!!!" thing is essentially a conservative myth).
But I guess the Republicans would rather enable tax chiefs than appoint an independent auditor to make sure the agency doesn't target anyone inappropriately. Weird. Maybe the politicians are tax cheats themselves? Who knows.
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The only way congress has of reforming it is to cut funding.
That's an idiotic view. Congress has many ways of reforming a government agency. Cutting funding is simply spiteful and unproductive and potentially allows tax cheats to get away with their fraud.
Who the fuck defends the IRS anyway?
Those with mental maturity within the double digits and IQs outside the double digits.
Re:One has to wonder (Score:5, Informative)
It's even more innocuous than that. The IRS was targeting political groups who applied for 501(c)(3) charity status to make sure they really qualified, because there are restrictions on how political your mission can be if you try to qualify as a charity under 501(c)(3). They targeted both Tea Party and progressive groups because, guess what, those groups tend to engage in potentially prohibited political activity as part of their missions.
They actually targeted more left-leaning than right-leaning groups for scrutiny, but all anyone ever whines about is how The Government oppressed those poor tea partiers.
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You do realize that they also admit to targeting openly liberal groups as well, don't you? They also gave extra attention to any group with the word 'progressive', 'occupy', 'rights' and several other key words in its title. The paper they presented to Congress only mentions Tea Party groups because Congress specifically told them to ONLY report on attention that they gave groups with 'tea party' in the name.
The teabaggers could have easily avoided the entire issue by choosing one of the other non-profi
Re:One has to wonder (Score:4, Informative)
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Hence my question: why did they wait until now? I don't think they had plans to upgrade until there was a crisis that could prevent them from doing so, loudly and publicly.
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Let's hope (Score:3, Insightful)
That this forces simplification of the tax code.
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Like the removal of thousands of corporate tax giveaways? Not likely.
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I seem to remember any requests for a flat tax or the 9-9-9 plan (really any attempt to simplify the tax plan) being attacked by social democrats.
Re:Let's hope (Score:5, Insightful)
That this forces simplification of the tax code.
Since when does the IRS decide what the Federal Tax laws are?
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
That this forces simplification of the tax code.
Since when does the IRS decide what the Federal Tax laws are?
That is easily the most insightful comment in this discussion so far.
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That this forces simplification of the tax code.
Since when does the IRS decide what the Federal Tax laws are?
Since Obama became president. See the affordable care act subsidies.
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Since Obama became president. See the affordable care act subsidies.
So you're saying that the IRS unilaterally went out and made changes to the tax law without direction from POTUS or Congress?
Every branch writes laws (Score:3)
So you're saying that the IRS unilaterally went out and made changes to the tax law without direction from POTUS or Congress?
EVERY government agency does this. Neither Congress nor POTUS would ever get anything done if they had to approve every action of every government agency. Congress and POTUS and the judiciary set the framework but the agencies generally see to the fine details and have significant leeway in deciding how to best carry out those regulations.
Here's how it works. Legislatures write statutes which usually outline what is to be done but often leaves the finer details up to the agencies tasked with carrying out
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EXACTLY. As long as the tax code is ridiculously complicated, we're going to need ridiculously complicated bureaucracy and IT systems to manage and enforce that complexity. Let's see how well our new GOP overlords in Congress manage to legislate an actual reduction in tax code complexity, now that they have the gavel all to themselves in both the house and the senate.
Let's not bring the cart before the horse. If you want an IRS that can run on a shoestring budget, make a shoestring tax code that I can print
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EXACTLY. As long as the tax code is ridiculously complicated, we're going to need ridiculously complicated bureaucracy and IT systems to manage and enforce that complexity. Let's see how well our new GOP overlords in Congress manage to legislate an actual reduction in tax code complexity, now that they have the gavel all to themselves in both the house and the senate.
Let's not bring the cart before the horse. If you want an IRS that can run on a shoestring budget, make a shoestring tax code that I can print on my home inkjet printer -- THE WHOLE CODE -- in under 5 minutes.
Otherwise, shut the fuck up and fund the IRS so they can do what they are required to do by law.
I posted my plan above [slashdot.org], but I'll copy it here for your perusal:
I think there should be one one federal income tax rate, and only one exemption. Make the rate whatever you want it to be, I don't care.
The one exemption will be the amount equal to 5 times the level of poverty for a person or family, at the location they live. Use the federal Cost of Living Allowance to factor the difference between poverty levels in California and Arkansas.
Anyone who reasonably believes their income for the year will fall belo
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They already did that back in the 80s.
Trouble is that if you make the code too simple than you can hurt business. You want to encourage business to do things like give benefits, hire people, spend on research and development and so on.
You also want to encourage that average person to save, invest, spend education and so on.
Frankly the answer of "simplify the tax code" is an oversimplification of a rather complex problem. Many people think that the rather complex tax code of the 60s and 70s was more fair tha
The IRS could shut down??? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The IRS could shut down??? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's horrible! Just horrible. Oh, the humanity!
Actually, I'd go with 'yes, if a bit hyperbolic' on this one. Even in a hypothetical libertarian utopia, the military and police functions are deemed within the legitimate scope of the state, and not exactly expected to be paid for by donations and bake sales(in fact, the bake sales would be specifically illegitimate since they'd be a particularly feckless flavor of state industry).
And, if you must have taxation, are you actually better off with incompetent, ideosyncratic, error-prone, and potentially insecure taxation, likely focused on shaking down easy targets in order to save money, rather than aiming for greatest possible procedural uniformity? Obviously, nobody enjoys the fact that things cost money, and essentially nobody would assert that our tax code, our budget, or both(usually both) are remotely optimal; but it is vanishingly unlikely that the reforms you(or anybody else) wants are something you'll be lucky enough to get as a product of the IRS flailing around in absence of the resources to operate as designed, or the state as a whole flailing around in an attempt to deal with budget shortfalls(unexpected ones in particular).
Even the wholly serious 'starve the beast' theorists tend to be dangerously optimistic about the order in which various organs of 'the beast' will atrophy(frequently not the order they want); as well as tending to ignore the fact that, until deficit spending becomes impossible(either through political impasse over debt ceilings, or because the world at large won't buy T-bills anymore) deficit spending actually makes government-provided services more attractive(given that the US government can generally borrow with minimal difficulty and at fairly good rates, the percentage of a given project funded by debt is, at least in the short to medium term, almost indistinguishable from a pure discount. In the suitably long term, or to people who have a gnawing fear of 'debt' as a concept, this is troubling; but aside from them, deficit spending actually makes it easier to sell government programs: even fairly half-assed ideas start to look good at a suitable discount.)
For these reasons, I'd maintain that any gloating about IRS dysfunction is deeply shortsighted and (unless it is specifically helping you avoid scrutiny of your stash in the Caymans), likely even self destructive: There are many potential gains to be realized through improvements in the tax structure and budget; but it is not actually that likely that they will be realized by unsystematic institutional starvation, while the consequences of a system too dysfunctional to even administer the already problematic tax code and budget as they are written are quite unlikely to be improvements.
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Now, you can make a separate argument that the IRS needs a management change, or needs their entire IT strategy to be re-evaluated and possibly massively overhauled. You can also make an argument that they should be able to work efficiently with less resources than they get now. But I don't think anyone can make a serious argument that problems with their ability to function are desirable.
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I don't think anyone can make a serious argument that problems with their ability to function are desirable.
OK, here is the argument:
1) The IRS audits certain classes of people a LOT. (I've been audited almost every year for the last 5 years)
2) Normally, they don't find anything worth mentioning. But the taxpayer still had to pay for the audit.
3) So the taxpayer is out several thousand dollars, the "people" gained nothing
4) Repeated across 10 million audits, on average the "people" are gaining FAR less th
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Anecdote is anecdote.
I've seen a ratio of 1:6 quoted a number of times before as being the dollars spent on audits to tax dollars collected as a result of the audits. Arguably that ratio would have to scale such that at some point it is no longer profitable to perform audits. But currently the IRS budget has been cut repeatedly and as a result it is safe to guess that we are letting more people get away with cheating on their taxes, or making silly mistakes.
My Mother in Law is one of those that made a silly
Sorry, but again, NO... a resounding no.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The IRS suffering a temporary shutdown would be cause for celebration.
I'm not talking about libertarian utopias here at all. Rather, I'm saying a failure of that magnitude (a government incapable of even keeping its agency going which collects its FUNDS) would be a huge wake-up call that the current system is broken.
Discussions that might come from such a shutdown would include, "Maybe it's about time we simplify the tax code, so all of this infrastructure isn't necessary to collect taxes?"
Re:The IRS could shut down??? (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone with a fairly libertarian outlook, I'd like to chime in with my agreement. There is a whole raft of cuts that I'd like to make to the IRS and the tax code generally, but I'm not silly enough to think that de-funding their IT budget is going to help accomplish my goals.
Wait for it... (Score:2)
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Having fewer employees does increase that risk. If one person has to do the work of five, they will have to take some shortcuts (either to complete tasks quicker, or to drop 'low impact' tasks like checking and patching the latest vulnerabilities in software in use).
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Typical Bueaurocratic Blackmail (Score:2)
This is no more than an agency squeeze play for budget restoration. In other words, bull shit.
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replying to undo inadvertant wrong mod selection
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Not completely through fault of theirs thought. You have one of the most complex tax codes in the world (with several times the population of the only other first world country i can think of with a tax code thats just as fucked up), and a population who, because of heavy government distrust, is doing everything it can to stick it to the man (not counting corporations which always are).
That will end up making it a much more complicated problem to deal with than the FBI has to. Its employees are also going t
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The IRS is an unbelievably bloated agency.
I call BS. Do you have any evidence of bloat at the IRS? The Boston Globe has reported that the IRS is not "up to the basics of its job." [bostonglobe.com] The IRS makes billions of dollars in fraudulent payments "because it lacks the ability to check whether many returns are accurate before refunds are mailed." The IRS relies on tax preparers to file accurate returns. Guess what, they often screw up. The agency is "so short-staffed it cannot answer nearly 40 percent of phone calls, and it has failed to meet its own 45-day d
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so what the [censored] do they actually DO all day long. all year long.
Create Star Trek parody videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com] And according to the video, they also play Wii.
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They routinely expected 60 hour work weeks from the contractors.
Boo hoo. Contractors are paid by the hour aren't they? Every other company in America is demanding 50 hours of their salaried, overtime exempt (only in name in most cases) employees. So again, boo hoo.
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If they are so bloated why would the contractors have to work overtime? Would that mean they have excess labor?
Nice to see the usual approach here (Score:2, Insightful)
"Burn everything down, because there might be problems in the old implementation, so let's start from scratch." It's fun to think back to the time when /. wasn't filled with paranoiacs, and when working as a team to solve things wasn't seen as socialism.
Yes, I understand that you think taxes are theft. Given that the alternative is either not having civilization or living in a permanent Mexican standoff (which, one could argue, is also not having civilization), it seems like having a functional government
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it seems like having a functional government would be something to support.
Bolded the key word there for you. We currently have the most inefficient, nonsensically bureaucratic bloated warthog of a government in the western hemisphere. It's eating our capital to sustain its own largesse and that is stealing.
They could save on energy costs (Score:2)
Well, cry me a river... (Score:2)
Poor babies, so they'll have to get by with just 12.5 Bn in 2015...your tax dollars at work.
Well cry me a river... (Score:2)
All the more reason to move to a flat tax system.
People attacking the IRS here are dumb (Score:2, Troll)
Yes. It's that simple: Shortsighted moronic stupidity.
But this is the GOP playbook: break things so they don't work, then complain that they don't work, and break them some more.
Case in point: the IRS.
Now nobody particularly likes the taxman.
But the IRS is responsible for funding the rest of government.
So impairing the governments ability to actually pay for the things it does, is stupid.
Specifically, for every dollar spent on the IRS, government takes in 5-7 dollars.
So cutting the IRS, impairing it, preven
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to lash out at Big Government. They should call it the Ayn Rand Wet Dream Enhancement Act of 2014.
(end got cut off again)
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for every dollar spent on the IRS, government takes in 5-7 dollars.
Just because it collects the revenue does not mean it generates the revenue. You need to demonstrate that reducing the IRS's budget will, in fact, mean that people pay fewer taxes, which is a specious argument.
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Kind of like breaking the Healthcare System because a tiny minority wasn't being served to the satisfaction of the Democrats?
Congress is the real problem here (Score:2)
Why is the tax code so convoluted that there is an entire industry devoted to following the code? It's because Congress keeps piling on the laws, exceptions, work-around, and "social engineering". Instead of adding law to the US Code, they should be removing pages from the US Code. To make things simpler, start eliminating "targeted" deductions and exemptions/exceptions to deductions, so that individuals and married people can play by the same rules as the businesses, companies, and corporations. If ins
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"Why is the tax code so convoluted that there is an entire industry devoted to following the code?" - Good question. A lot of it has to do with lobby groups who seem to have their hands in every piece of legislation. Some of it is just general government mindset. They love to congratulate themselves for passing more regulations.
"If you are going to give people money, give people money directly, and not via the IRS" - Couldn't agree with you more. It is far more efficient and less expensive to give the money
The IRS will never have updated systems (Score:2)
Crazy Talk (Score:3)
WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING WE WANT.
I know this is a crazy idea, but maybe we could have a serious discussion about what our government spends its money on, instead of just continuing to write checks for every bloody social program or war we feel like funding, and then kicking the can to future congresses by coming up with a "sequester" that takes a flat cut of every budget.
I mean, yes, at least taking a TINY bit from each budget is better than never cutting spending at all, but that result is what you get when the room is filled with incompetents too stupid to compromise/prioritize in any way.
Two points:
1) the fact that we're the wealthiest nation with the highest standard of living ever in human history, and are having this discussion is pretty pathetic.
2) Congress is largely to blame, but POTUS gets much of this as the nation looks to him for leadership, yet he cheerfully - like everyone else in Washington, largely in both parties - as if the money will never really run out. Every SOTU speech is filled with new programs he wants to enact, and new things to spend $ on. To repeat:
WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING WE WANT.
I know, I don't belong in politics. Clearly, I'm irrational by Washington standards.
You can't get rid of it. (Score:2)
Re:So this is a great year to BS my tax return (Score:5, Interesting)
Not so fast, Cowboy. They will have the manpower to audit YOU, just not [huge-multinational-name-here].
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While your cynicism about the IRS is understandable, it is misplaced in this case. Private citizens, provided they are not wealthy and have an uncomplicated tax return, are often never audited in their entire lives. Large multinationals are audited every single year. Indeed, I know that Exxon gets so much scrutiny from the IRS that they have set aside a floor of their corporate headquarters for the IRS's use (IIRC there were up to 35 auditors plus support staff on site at times).
The reason for this is ca
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They aren't going to cut enforcement. They're going to cut the check-writing department.
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Again, I think this is a major reason that the tax code IS NOT simplfied. If it was then there many tax giveaways would simply be gone. How the amount of money that is given away to corporate entities is NOT a scandal is itself a scandal, and it's partially pulled off because the tax laws are so hard to understand without a team of lawyers.
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So Paul Ryan's plan to cut those programs is both immoral - to take away a program the recipients paid into like a pension fund - and short-sighted, since most of the money saved by cuts will be lost through other state and federal agencies picking up the sl
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I have more socialist leanings, or at least a desire for a much stronger social safety net at all levels and what I believe to be the moral justification for it and for raising taxes on the wealthy to support it too.
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By his example, he got a $10 raise.
Unless you are using Common Core math I guess.
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Project budget does not could as a real budget.
I am expecting a certain raise but I won't budget that until I see if it materializes.
Re:Rationale (Score:4, Insightful)
One suspects that might have been the point.
The IRS already spends $300 million/year (FY2014) on this supposed "modernization," and thats down from previous years ($330 million/year for FY2012 and FY2013) So over the last decade they have blown through billions on "modernization."
With this sort of budget, they could have built several Titan supercomputers per year (in 2012 it was the fastest supercomputer ever built) and still had billions of dollars left over.
The agency actually currently blows through a total of $11.7 billion/year.
It seems to me that they already have an order of magnitude more money than they need and the problem for them is that when push comes to shove their budget could easily be cut in half several times, which if it happened would mean the big-whigs over at the IRS would suddenly lose their power to wastefully spend many billions of dollars per year. Obviously that outcome is frowned upon by those that control that money.
That some people defend this practice with statement like "Given that the alternative is either not having civilization or living in a permanent Mexican standoff " shows that those people really have no idea how much money these government agencies are spending. There is a reason that 4 of the 5 richest counties in the United States surround Washington D.C:
#1 Loudoun County, Virginia. 35 miles from D.C
#2 Howard County, Maryland. 27 miles from D.C
#3 Fairfax County, Virginia. 11 miles from D.C
#4 Hunterdon County, New Jersey. 160 miles from D.C.
#5 Arlington County, Virginia. 5 miles from D.C.
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"Successive budget cuts by Congress are forcing the Internal Revenue Service to delay system modernization that would improve its ability to prevent fraud."
One suspects that might have been the point.
This is crap. They are picking where to spend their money. This just shows that this is less important to the IRS than other areas.