The IRS has collected $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats — a milestone meant to showcase how the agency is making use of the money it received as part of the Biden administration’s signature climate, health care and tax package signed into law in 2022.
I’m skeptical on how good this is considering this is the result of six billion dollars in efforts.
You got a source for that $6 billion? I’ve tried searching around and can’t find that anywhere.
Every study I’ve ever seen has shown that funding the IRS is a net benefit to tax revenue. So my instinct is that the $6 billion you saw included more than just this particular campaign.
https://archive.ph/2KqpE
The funding was for this and improved customer service, but as TOModera says it may be just a one-time fee that will yield continuous returns.
You sound like my management. Hey, we gave you some money yesterday, why isn’t the 10-year-long project done today?
These things ramp up. Modernization takes time. We won’t see the true benefits until 80% of the way through the process.
To be honest, I bet they targeted this one billion just to show some progress. It’s probably not even related to the actual modernization efforts they’re going through. But if they didn’t show some progress, idiots would cut their funding because, like my management and old man dick, political funding has no staying power.
I can tell you, as someone who has done tax prep for friends for the last few years, that the customer service this year compared to last year was miles better. Shorter waits, less turnaround, I was actually kinda impressed.
Yeah but how can crooks profit off of that?
They’ve made 1 billion back of the 6, and expectations are 50 billion over 10 years. So if they don’t see a growing amount, sure, skepticism is fine, but these things take time and there is already some amount in the first year, which most wouldn’t have expected. I’d say be cautiously optimistic that there are results.
I don’t think this is intended as a full and complete accounting. Just an effort to publicize a win and pressure tax cheats.
It’s nowhere close to a full accounting. The IRS just plucked some extremely low hanging fruit by going after 1600 specific individuals that they already knew owed at least $250,000.
For TY 2024 the effort is being expanded and they are going to go after 25,000 high income earners who didn’t file taxes (at all) in TY 2017 and later. The IRS knows who they are and has already sent them letters warning them that their audits are coming soon.
It’s good stuff but its still more low hanging fruit. The hard work is going to start in TY 2025 when they start auditing the large companies.
There is the small hope that all this work has lead to better processes and checks to make finding problems, mistakes, and abuse more easily and cheaply.