IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has a message for high-wealth tax cheats who are wrongly deducting private jet travel and otherwise shorting the government on their taxes: Pay your fair share so “others aren’t shouldering the burden of funding our government.”
He also has a thought for ordinary taxpayers putting off the inevitable with less than a month left in tax-filing season: “Get it done.” (And double-check your work.)
Werfel, who will hit the one-year mark at the helm of the IRS in April, said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press that the agency will expand its pursuit of high-wealth tax dodgers with new initiatives in the coming months and is using tools like artificial intelligence to ferret out abuses and taking the fight to sophisticated scammers.
That doesn’t mean the IRS has undergone a complete image makeover. There’s still plenty of criticism to go around, including from Republican lawmakers who accuse the agency of heavy-handed overreach.
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A flat tax is a terrible idea. 10% of the salary of someone who makes $50,000 a year is a lot bigger hardship than 10% of the salary of someone who makes $500,000 a year.
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That’s, uh, not a flat tax, then. You figured out the better approach immediately. And I agree, simplify the tax code while keeping it progressive.
I agree with most of that, but a flat tax would benefit the most wealthy the most.
A simple uncheatable tax doesn’t need to be flat.
Years ago I came up with an algorithmic progressive tax that tracks the income distribution curve.
Using the 2011 numbers I could get 1% increments for. With a top tax rate of 40%, the bottom ~85% of people had a tax rate below 5%, and the budget that year would still balance.
And being a fixed algorythm, it’s completely closed to manipulation. Unless you lie about your income, but that’s already a felony.
But what if you creatively identify your income? And then get a bonus of a bunch of stocks, which you then leverage with a bank loan?.. oh right, that’s how a lot of them do it already.
That would be the lying part.
Eventually those shares would be sold, or inherited. That income would be taxed at whatever the algorithm dictates.
So, we’re back to playing the “algorithm” with what defines income, and what defines inherence, sale, etc of shares.
Sounds like essentially what we’ve got, just with the handwaving of “algorithm” instead.
It eliminates the picking and choosing of tax brackets. What you’re talking about is making definitions. There is no way to mathematically fix that.
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