1707

It’s not fraud if a lawyer and an Accountant says you can do it.

1708

I don’t recall this ever once being a campaign issue for any politician. IOW, the American public has never had a say in it. If Warren made “fully fund the IRS so that it can hire good accountants who will audit rich people” part of her platform, I’d vote for it.

1709

My limited experience with the government agencies/departments that I do work with, is they have some of the worst systems imaginable. Old, outdated and often unable to handle simple processes that the private industry working around them can pretty much handle. I am somewhat assuming the IRS might have similar problems. It is absolutely an assumption.

Now if they think the only way to audit the wealthy, rich, and ultra rich individuals is by hand, one at a time, hoping to find evidence of wrong-doing, I just question that. There are a lot of complex systems out there trying to handle complex problems and manual intervention is not required at every step.

1710

While she’d obviously need to work on the phrasing, that’s actually not a bad idea for a plank in her campaign platform; especially considering who she’d be running against in the general election if/when she gets there.

1711

Surely the revenue they’d reap from the rich would quickly and easily overcome the costs they need to spend on lawyers?

1712

if she does that, she’d better make sure they do their jobs well and efficiently so it does.

1713

Sure, but that money doesn’t go to the IRS, so it’s not like they fund themselves.

Studies have shown that the more money the IRS gets, the more money it brings in, sometimes 2 or 3 times more, but it’s up to Congress to fund the IRS.

1714

I didn’t think about that. Good point.

1715

Just spit balling here, but maybe they should privatize audits - any fine over 10k and the private auditor gets half the take. Like putting a bounty on high end tax evaders.

1716

Except, private auditors could just get paid 4,500 dollars to look the other way, and not do any work. Wouldn’t that make more sense? Economically?

I think history has shown us that the IRS would go after the rich, if properly funded and headed, but that isn’t going to happen as long as the GOP has any clout to stop it.

1717

It’s a bounty system. So even if one auditor is paid off, why wouldn’t every other auditor still be chasing it. And if it’s a whale with tens of millions in back taxes, half of that is the actual payout, not 4500.

Anyway, it was just pontificating on a system that may both be functional and politically feasible in the US. Making increased IRS funding a campaign issue sounds like a loser to me.

1718

You don’t campaign on increased funding for the IRS; you campaign on increasing audits of wealthy people, while pontificating about how it’s crazy that the IRS audits poor people more than it does rich people.

1719

Sure, I just am less optimistic that tactic will work with the middle of the spectrum voter.

1720

Agree, I think that’s a winning message.

1721

So, basically, you have dozens of people pouring over reams of private data in order to get money out of people. Over and over again.

And then of course, you would need some one to verify whether the information is true.

That seems like a recipe for disaster. What’s to stop a person from getting audited ten or twenty times in one year?

1722
1723

How the heck do you read that graph? It’s talking about two different years on the X and Y and using the same color for the dots. The intersection doesn’t make sense.

1724

I think each dot is a different region. So the unemployment in a region in 2006 and 2016.

1725

Ok, I think I get it now. Never seen a plot graph like that. A double bar graph would have made that a lot easier to parse.

1726

Close, each dot is a state.

So @Guap for any given dot you can see the unemployment stat for a state in two years. If the scatter plot trend line is relatively flat that means there is little correlation in unemployment between the two years. So a state’s unemployment in 1976 is not statistically significant in predicting the unemployment of that same state in 1986 (the correlation is about -6%, with baseline unemployment in ‘86 of about 7.4%)

However the correlation between 2006 and 2016 is 59%, with a baseline of 2%. So there is a structural level of unemployment at 2% + about 60% of 2006 levels. Which, as Krugman notes, points to less regional mobility and more structural regional unemployment.