Writer's Block: Happy birthday Mr. President!

[boogieshoes]

i don't usually answer these, because i don't usually find them interesting or entertaining, but:

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i'm an ugly American... and our tax system sucks *a$$*.  horrible, horrible, a$$.  goetse a$$.  if i could do it magically, instintaneously, without messing with the usually HoR mess, i'd change our tax system drastically.  in lieu of our graduated income tax system which even the IRS can't understand, i'd have state and federal sales tax.  i read somewhere that most people would be content with 25% taxes to the government - state, local, and federal - total. 

one of the major problems we have in the US right now is the swirling whirlpool that is paying for our taxes to be collected and re-distributed.  redistribution issues will always undergo debates, but it's ridiculous that the IRS is our biggest government agency, and about 90% of that is paying tax accountants to work the tax collection system every year.  have it be an automatic process, and you can get rid of a lot government fluff. 

then maybe they can do other important things, like increase the FDA employment to the point where there's no longer an ongoing conflict of interest in the form of pharmaceutical companies testing their own pills for public safety.  and where the FDA can actually enforce regulations if need be.

or my other bugaboo - maybe they could afford to pay the people who clean the Senate Building while our dearly elected b*tch about how little they make - as they fly their private jets off on expensive vacations.

-bs

Comments

[murstein.livejournal.com]

i read somewhere that most people would be content with 25% taxes to the government - state, local, and federal - total.

This year, we're expecting to tie 1950 as the low-percentage-tax post-WWII record of 14.4% of GDP. (And don't forget, every dollar of GDP is income for somebody, even when that "somebody" is a corporation with hundreds of millions of owners.) Heck, even the Heritage Foundation admits that. Sure, your taxes are more than that, and so are mine. Balancing that, though, we have people whose incomes are so low they only pay Social Security, Medicare, and sales and excise taxes, plus the other extreme: Hedge fund managers, who routinely defer paying tax on their income as carried interest, and pay the capital gains rate (you know, the same rate as a single worker who earned $8,500) on the little they can't figure out how to defer. (Oh, and they also don't pay into Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment, but get to collect from all three programs, at the statutory maximum rate, when the time comes; it's a pretty sweet deal, for someone making a couple hundred million a year, eh?)

. . . it's ridiculous that the IRS is our biggest government agency . . .

Um. By what measure? Not headcount; while I haven't found a breakout for the IRS by itself, Treasury (which includes the IRS) has a total of 88,000. For contrast, DoD is the biggest agency, at 652,000 civilians employed. Heck, the armed service with the fewest employees (Air Force) has 170% of Treasury's employment, at 149,000. Also with larger headcounts than Treasury are the VA, Homeland Security, and Justice.'

It's not by budget, either; while Treasury is spending $593.55 billion, they're outspent by DoD ($721.285 billion), HHS ($934.426, mostly Medicare and Medicaid), and Social Security ($789.553, mostly in the form of sending Social Security checks to retirees). See Page 83 of this document.

Ah, here we go. The IRS' budget for 2011 is $12.633 billion, or about 2% of Treasury's total budget.

So, I'm stumped. In what way is the IRS our biggest agency?

. . . and about 90% of that is paying tax accountants to work the tax collection system every year.

Actually, most of the tax accountants at IRS work to do audits, which are designed to catch tax cheats. I suppose one might object to them, if one was in favor of cheating on taxes. From a cost-benefit cut-the-deficit perspective, it's worth knowing that the average IRS auditor brings $6 into the government coffers for every dollar s/he receives in wages, and one of the easiest ways to cut the deficit a little, is to increase auditor headcount until their marginal utility drops under $2 brought in for every dollar of payroll spent. Sure, some people would suffer; but those are folks who are breaking the law to begin with.

have it be an automatic process . . .

Once the tax forms mailed in are data entered, it is an automated process. The problem is, that almost half (114.3 million out of a total of 236.5 million) of all tax forms are filed on paper, which means someone on the government's side has to type them into the system. (No direct link for the hardcopy number; I reached it by subtracting the number of returns filed electronically.)