For a little context on why the IRS isn't pursuing college football cheating...
The NYT put together a nice opinion piece of five past Secretaries of Treasuries. It describes how woefully underfunded the agency is to do it's job.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/opinion/politics/irs-tax-evasion-geithner-lew-paulson-summers-rubin.html
The key paragraph:
Over the past 25 years, I.R.S. resources have been steadily cut, with the ratio of enforcement funding to returns filed falling by around 50 percent. Today, the I.R.S. has fewer auditors than at any time since World War II. Faced with resource constraints, it is no surprise that the agency is not able to appropriately focus scrutiny on complex returns, where noncompliance is greatest. Of about four million partnership returns filed in 2018, the I.R.S. audited only 140 of them. It did not pursue 300 high-income taxpayers who together cost the agency $10 billion in unpaid taxes over a three-year period when they failed to even file returns. And audit rates of those in the top 1 percent have fallen most staggeringly over the course of the past decade, such that rural counties in the Deep South have some of the highest rates of examination in the country.
If we are looking for a level playing field, I doubt it will be provided by the IRS anytime soon. There are much bigger fish to fry, and rightfully so.
Please don't make this thread political. It is not about the politics or tax rates or anything like that. This is all about what is already legally owed under current tax law that people are successfully getting away with.
Totally separate from football things, funding more IRS staff would probably produce a better ROI than anything else Congress could do. It's very telling that they don't.
Certainly would make sense to me...
Having worked with the governments decrepit financial system via the Defense Travel Service, spending a couple billion on a complete system replacement would be a couple billion of the best $$$ this country ever spent. There are 17 separate finance centers that DTS has to deal with, and that's just for the DoD. There's a ~32 character alphanumeric string that codes funding to specific accounts generated by Congress - and each of these change every 6 months. It's so backwards that Concur Expense cancelled out of a contract to replace/modernize DTS because they literally couldn't deal with the obsolete financial transaction requirements.
Did you work directly for DTS? If so, God bless your soul for dealing with that and I apologize if I ever harassed you.
You could run it at less cost to taxpayer but with better results if you let the IRS self-fund by taking a portion of all the money it gets back from tax cheats.
The government doesn't operate the way it does out of incompetence, but out of design.
That might be a little bit of a conflict of interest.
Underfunded IRS enforcement? As a smart man once said, "and who benefits?"
NPR had a podcast about this professor in California who came up with a very simple proposal called "Ready Return" that was was designed to make filing taxes simpler and more accurate.
For most taxpayers, the government already has all of the information you need to fill out your tax return. So with the Ready Return, the government would simply send you a return that was pre-filled with all of your tax information. Taxpayers could still make corrections or add things, but for most taxpayers there would be few changes necessary.
They ran a pilot program in California and taxpayers loved it; taxpayers who tried it gave it a 96% positive approval rate.
They sought legislative approval to expand the program. Democratic lawmakers loved it. Republican lawmakers loved it. A bi-partisan solution that taxpayers love? Sounds like a no-brainer.
Then lobbyists got involved.
Intuit (maker of TurboTax software) spent millions lobbying the California legislature to squash the program. But the real issue was when Grover Norquist, the famous "tax reform" advocate got involved.
Republican lawmakers are almost unilaterally required to sign on to Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes in order to receive campaign funding from the major Republican donors. Of course, Ready Return didnt actually raise taxes rates; but it was still opposed because it make taxes easier to collect and made paying taxes less painful. Grover decreed that a vote for the program would be deemed a violation of the pledge, which killed the program for good.
So when you wonder why we can't have nice things in this country, remember that its probably in someone's self interest for it to be that way.
My wife is a CPA and she flat out hates the IRS. Clients will call in and get told things that are flat out not true, then my wife will call and be told something totally different than what the customer was told and what the IRS guidelines say. This leads to A LOT of angry customers blaming her for not getting more money back that they shouldn't be getting back in the first place. This may explain a little bit of that although that has nothing to do with the auditors.
This post is completely true, as I also experience this when working with clients where I live. Even when writing a letter to clearly explain mistakes made, along with providing documentation, it's a nightmare. Appealing to the IRS Office of Appeals is also a hugely time consuming and frustrating process.
I don't want to get sidetracked from the football aspect, but wouldn't adding more funding in theory solve some of these problems?
It would. Underfunding them is a way to introduce dysfunction as qualified employees burn out, making them even more unpopular, driving political momentum for more punitive cuts, and so on. Works like a charm because Americans are gullible, uninformed, entitled idiots.
"Americans are gullible, uninformed, entitled idiots."
I am? I dont know what you mean? I demand more info on these things I know nothing about.
to be fair, he was talking about americans and not citizens of kazakstan which is greatest maker of world potassium, very nice.
uninformed except by propaganda with which we're absolutely inundated
Which I agree are completely horrible inefficiencies... the IRS still owes me a tax refund of $22k... from fucking 2019. Trust me I am not their biggest fan either.
They owe me $25k from 2016…..
Gov't doesn't hire the best and the brightest.
And when they do get talent, it's hard to keep them after a couple of years.
The tax evasion at the highest levels, both legal and illegal, in this country is disgraceful.
As unseemly as it is - I hope the IRS wouldn't go after a few football recruits who got $100g from crooked SEC powerhouses. Especially when the wealthiest people in the world don't pay a goddamn dime in taxes.
Years ago I heard from a few whistleblowers who said that if the CFO/top accountants of the world's most powerful companies told the IRS their clients dodged billions in taxes, the IRS wouldn't even bother to do anything about it.
IRS definitely has bigger fish to fry than college players on the take.
From some of the insiders on the premium message boards, the going rate for SEC 5-stars is now actually in the millions so it's a bit more than $100K. But completely agree with you at the broader point. It's chump change compared to the real tax evasion going on in the country. Absolutely disgraceful.
A 18 year old kidding hiding away millions? Im not so sure.
Balas himself said that a certain runningback turned down a near $1M offer from someone in the B12 to stay in the SEC. Putting the puzzle pieces together, this seems to be Leonard Fournette. This was obviously quite a long time ago, so think about the inflation in the football arms race between the cheaters. Thus, today's age $2M quote from another Rivals insider makes complete sense in that context.
This isn't random people saying this at this point who are anonymous like you or me.
Also by the way a lot of times it's not just to the kid directly, it's the family obviously.
it's not just to the kid directly, it's the family obviously.
Cam Netwon's dad and Reggie Bush's mom agrees.
Most I've heard ever was $1 million (UGA) but promised as $250k/year he spent in college so I doubt it was paid out. People saying Texas is now topping UGA so I'd believe a kid is getting $400k a year. Remember a lot of this comes directly from the assistant pool so how much do they want to hand over?
It's also not going all to the kids. Coaches, agents, friends, family most of all get most of it. Condos in Miami, or a new home near campus, that sort of thing is in addition, but that goes to Mom. The kid gets prepaid phones and credit cards and spending money but that's a small part of the whole.
Everything white-collar falls under selective prosecution.
There are two sets of laws in this country.
Yup. They’d sooner drain a single parent’s bank account than go after a billionaire who hasn’t filed a return in a decade, not because that’s what they want to do, but because the billionaire is golf buddies with their boss.
No only that, but the "little fish" generally dont have the means to fight, so slapping on a garnishment is pretty easy (or they might just take it straight from their bank account). Why go to court for one whale and deal with all that time and expense when you can nail 100 guppies with barely any effort?
The fact that the result for the guppies might be catastrophic while the whale may not even feel it is immaterial to them
And like most government agencies they're petrified of the high powered lawyers these extremely wealthy people can afford. And they're afraid of losing high-profile cases.
I couldn't have said it better and more concise. Regarding investigating a possible football IRS scandal. They would say "Nothing to see here".
A flat tax would fix that problem.
Not really, but it would likely create more problems as well.
So would eliminating all tax deductions and retaining the progressive structure (or making it even more progressive).
Yeah, that’s a common refrain from the very beneficiaries of some 80% of the tax code that is special interest giveaways.
The money behind the flat tax lobby comes from people who fully intend to grandfather in their exclusive benefits, ensuring the worst of both worlds. In other words, it’s a brazen scam.
The IRS is underfunded for the same reason, to deny them the resources they need to prosecute tax evaders.
The basic rule of thumb is that if someone claims to have a simple solution for “fixing” our budget, imagine them ending their soapbox nonsense with, “for me”. And then dismiss them as an idiot with absolutely no idea how to govern a nation as large and complex as ours.
So here's what politics has become in America: I mention having a flat tax would reduce the IRS operating costs, and suddenly I'm part of the evil "lobby" and I'm only interested in things that will benefit me and I'm a hypocrite on a soapbox spouting nonsense.
This is why you can't even discuss policy anymore and why we're going nowhere. Nobody cares about policy, as far as I can tell. People only see it as my side vs your side, and if you're not on my side you clearly hate poor people or hate America or are just evil and a Communist or a Nazi.
I probably responded too early on this. I am a proponent of a version of the flat tax plan, especially one that puts the personal exemption high enough that truly poor people aren't paying much in taxes and most lower income families aren't paying too much. I'm also a huge proponent in simplifying "filing taxes" because the way we do that in this country is absurd. We shouldn't need to spend hundreds of dollars just to file our taxes.
That said, there are exemptions that should stay, and if you allow that you're starting to defeat the purpose. I want people to be able to put money away for retirement tax free, because they should be encouraged to do that, same with giving to charity. Self employed people pose similar issue. But I think certain ideas of that have a lot of merit.
That's basically where I'm at. Something like $50,000/year is tax free for all. And then you get an amount for each dependent, etc. And anything above that is subject to the flat tax.
I think the reason things are so muddy with the tax system is because of how many different taxes there are. Income tax is generally progressive (when the law is enforced) but things like excise tax, property tax, sales tax, etc are regressive. Plus there are state and municipal taxes with their own complexities. I don't know if any amount of tinkering with our federal tax code will fix that particular problem. But it starts with creating an environment where the laws are enforceable. I think everyone here agrees with that last part at least.
That's basically where I'm at. Something like $50,000/year is tax free for all. And then you get an amount for each dependent, etc. And anything above that is subject to the flat tax.
That’s called a tax bracket. Which, conceptually, is how the current system works already. It just has more tiers.
So here's what politics has become in America: I mention having a flat tax would reduce the IRS operating costs, and suddenly I'm part of the evil "lobby" and I'm only interested in things that will benefit me and I'm a hypocrite on a soapbox spouting nonsense.
Actually I accused you of being a sucker for a siren song, not part of the lobby that successfully sold you a disingenuous idea, LOL. But the flat tax is inherently a cynically simple scheme that deliberately appeals to anti-intellectual entitlement, so that’s on you, yeah.
If you’re annoyed, that’s because you have the financial security to enjoy being offended. Unfortunately I can’t be arsed to care about feelings anymore, since I became aware of this country’s history of using taxes to perpetuate inequality, and which side the flat taxers have been on.
I don't know of any siren song. In fact I don't watch the news because I'm already at the highest dose of Wellbutrin, Lexapro and Adderall. But believe it or not, some people can look at a situation and think of ideas on their own without getting sold snake oil. There are much smarter people than me who could probably come up with better ideas, but those are definitely not the ones who are legislating. And since we can't have a discussion because we'll be accused of being privileged rather than having a respectful counterpoint, we'll never solve many problems anyway.
So you admit you deliberately don’t keep yourself informed, but you want your ideas to “fix” the country to be respected anyway.
That is exactly what privilege looks like.
I find it hilarious that you think calling me privileged is a win or something. I'm well aware of how privileged I am and will readily admit it. I paid $96,000 in federal income tax alone last year. Yet this has nothing to do with whether a flat tax would be a positive or a negative. And the fact that you've put in so many words to try to discredit my one sentence and none of it has anything to do with a the actual policy, I'll take that to mean you don't have the slightest clue about any of this. So I'll go ahead and mark this one down in the win column. Thanks for playing.
Dragonchild - for someone who clearly has a strong opinion (and strong desire for name calling) you haven't thrown out any of your own ideas. There is a problem. Someone threw out an imperfect solution (is is the best possible solution? Who knows) and all you can do is get upset and call them privileged, all while not refuting his point or coming up with one of your own.
"And since we can't have a discussion because we'll be accused of being privileged rather than having a respectful counterpoint, we'll never solve many problems anyway."
Feelings getting hurt is not the reason why our problems don't get fixed.
Speaking specifically to what you wrote Brutus, you are correct.
Jimmy Carter called the federal tax code “a disgrace to the human race” in 1977 when it was around 25,000 pages. Today it is around 75,000 pages.
I’m not going to talk politics here, but simplifying the tax code would probably help with the problem of enforcing a tax code with so much complexity.
What's laughable is how many presidential candidates in the just the past few election cycles ran on a flat income tax platform, or something to that affect. It's all talk and no action.
Did any of those presidential candidates get elected?
Regardless if they did, what action are you expecting from the president to change the tax laws?
Yep. And even if it is not by design, complexity is a tax on the poor.
Don't disagree with you but...
Broadly speaking, everyone across the spectrum wants to simplify the tax code to excise all the loopholes. However, if it were that easy, someone would've done it by now. Not saying that as a defense of the existing tax code(s), but more of a 'it is what it is' observation.
How would that help with people who don’t file? The inherent justice of the system would compel them to file?