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As reported on 14 October by The New York Times, Charles Rettig, the commissioner of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced the previous day that the nation’s tax gap, the amount the government loses in unpaid taxes, had, from an average of $441 billion from 2011 to 2013, increased to its current figure of $1 trillion.
And Rettig told the Senate Finance Committee that most of those unpaid taxes could be chalked up to tax evasion committed by large corporations and the wealthy. He also blamed the cryptocurrency sector, with its estimated $2 trillion changing hands, for helping to facilitate the avoidance of taxes. He characterized his agency as being “outgunned.”
TRENDPOST: Perhaps the IRS won’t be “outgunned” when President Biden’s plan goes through to double the size of the agency’s workforce, hiring some 87,000 new workers over the next ten years, and increasing funding of the IRS by some $80 million.
That’s part of the same proposal that seeks to compel financial institutions to report to the government every account or transaction over $600, and requires cryptocurrency exchanges to report transactions over $10,000.
But will that snare the biggest tax cheats? See “AMERICA’S RICHEST 400 FAMILIES PAY A TINY PERCENT OF FEDERAL INCOME TAX COMPARED TO THE WORKING CLASS” (28 Sep 2021) and “BILLIONAIRES BEAT TAXES: LITTLE PEOPLE PAY” (30 Mar 2021).
No, with transactions of over $600 targeted, it will hit the average American while the Bigs will keep paying less.
TREND FORECAST: Look for average Americans to grow increasingly resentful of the 1 percent of the richest Americans who will continue to skate on paying their taxes—see “RICHEST AMERICANS ARE BIGGEST TAX CHEATS TREASURY REPORT FINDS” (14 Sep 2021)—and the corporations who will similarly continue to be let off the hook; see “‘BIGS’ WILL STILL PAY NO TAX UNDER BIDEN REFORM” (5 Oct 2021).
Meanwhile, a more powerful, more pervasive IRS will try to make up its revenue shortfalls on the backs of “we the people,” those same average, lower and middle class citizens who lack the resources to exploit the loopholes in the tax laws.