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How conservative Republicans cut IRS funding to ensure rich people pay less taxes
The GOP Gutted the IRS — and the Rich Made Out Like Bandits
"For much of the last decade, the Republican Party has branded itself as a champion of fiscal responsibility and the rule of law — while doing everything in its power to help rich people steal from the Treasury.
"Since taking Congress in 2011, the GOP has forced through a series of aggressive cuts to the Internal Revenue Service budget.
"Between 2010 and 2016, the number of individual tax returns filed in the U.S. increased by 7 percent, while IRS funding fell by 18 percent.
"That funding cut was exorbitantly expensive.
"Every $1 the government spends on enforcing tax compliance, it gets $6 back in recovered revenue, according to Treasury Department estimates."
Frankly, the IRS doesn't need staff (with guns) to terrorize normal people. It's good to cut their ranks after their hideous abuse of power towards the Tea Party movement.When the IRS cuts its staff, it no longer has the resources to go after rich parasites (like Trump). The tax burden shifts from those who report their income and those who work for a wage or salary. Meanwhile the parasites use shell companies to hide assets knowing all the while the IRS has no ability to conduct the sort of massive, long-term investigations required to root out rich tax cheats. Instead, the working poor are victimized by government's intense scrutiny associated with the Earned Income Tax Credit.
There are only about 160K people with wealth greater than $25M in the U.S. That's a ratio of 4:1 compared to the IRS employee base. They have plenty of resources to harass the Evul Rich people.
What percentage of IRS employees are criminal investigators?
Demonizing the IRS to Protect Tax Evaders
"In the last fiscal year, fewer than about 1,200 prosecutions for tax crimes were initiated, according to government data analyzed by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
"From 2010 to 2015, the number of IRS criminal investigators was cut 16 percent to 2,319, while overall the IRS lost a fifth of its workforce.
"Americans file about 150 million individual tax returns, corporations another six million.
"That means the Justice Department obtains about one indictment for every 100,000 tax returns.
"And many of those cases are where tax law is an easy way to prosecute drug dealers and politicians who took bribes."
If there are 160,000 US taxpayers worth more than $25 million, and only about 2300 criminal investigators, how is it possible to prosecute all the Evul Rich People.
And then there are those six million corporate returns to scrutinize.
Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father
