The federal government is ignoring the easy part of the solution to its fiscal problems — collecting billions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
According to federal prosecutors, the California lawyer Michael Avenatti has not filed a federal income tax return since 2010, and he has not paid federal income taxes since 2008.
This may seem astonishing to the millions of Americans who dutifully file tax returns each year, under the assumption that the government would notice if they didn’t.
But it should not come as a surprise. Congressional Republicans led the charge to sharply reduce funding for the Internal Revenue Service over the past decade, and the agency has warned repeatedly that it has been deprived of the resources necessary to catch tax cheats.
The government has been operating on the honor system — and hoping that no one noticed. ...
The Hill op-ed: Misplaced Outrage Over Tax Refunds Was Predictable and Preventable, by Kathleen Delaney Thomas (North Carolina):
The biggest surprise about the recent fallout over lower tax refunds is that anybody in Washington is surprised. People love their tax refunds. Psychologists and economists have been documenting this phenomenon for decades.
For some, a refund helps them save for a major purchase like a car. For others, the refund feels like a windfall that they might spend on a vacation. Still others prefer overpaying their taxes because they dread the uncertainty of a tax bill. ...
The tax reform bill cut taxes for most individuals, so why are some refunds shrinking? The reason is that Treasury changed the withholding tables last year. For many, this meant less withholding and slightly bigger paychecks.
But the increased pay may have been too small for people to notice. Refunds, on the other hand, are highly salient. ...
A standard deduction for work-related expenses should be examined with a view to eradicating the need for millions of Australians to lodge tax returns, the Inspector-General of Taxation (IGT) has recommended in the report, the Future of the Tax Profession. The IGT also highlighted the "already fragile relationship between the ATO and the tax profession". The IGT & the ATO also disagreed over the cyber security standards of the agency, with the IGT saying the ATO had not provided public evidence of greater cyber resilience. The ATO has also disagreed to eight of the 19 recommendations directed to the ATO.
A standard deduction for work-related expenses should be examined with a view to eradicating the need for millions of Australians to lodge tax returns, the Inspector-General of Taxation (IGT) has recommended in the report, the Future of the Tax Profession. The IGT also highlighted the "already fragile relationship between the ATO and the tax profession". The IGT & the ATO also disagreed over the cyber security standards of the agency, with the IGT saying the ATO had not provided public evidence of greater cyber resilience. The ATO has also disagreed to eight of the 19 recommendations directed to the ATO.
Federal
News Network April 4,
2019
On page 6 of the Navy’s recent report about its cyber readiness, there is a jaw-dropping confession: “The systems the U.S. relies upon to mobilize, deploy and sustain forces have been extensively targeted by potential adversaries, and compromised to such extent that their reliability is questionable.” Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, wants that single sentence in the 80-page report to sink in for a second. “The Navy’s report on their resilience and reliability is that watershed moment not only for the Department of Defense but for all agencies in the federal government, and I would even proffer in the private sector, to have an honest, internal look at their systems, their data, their capabilities and their protection mechanisms and where they have vulnerabilities and how the threats are manifested in their organizations,” Evanina said after speaking at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) event on supply chain management in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1. “I think all agencies should take a hard look and say, ‘What can we do that is similar to this to look at our own processes and protection models?’”
On page 6 of the Navy’s recent report about its cyber readiness, there is a jaw-dropping confession: “The systems the U.S. relies upon to mobilize, deploy and sustain forces have been extensively targeted by potential adversaries, and compromised to such extent that their reliability is questionable.” Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, wants that single sentence in the 80-page report to sink in for a second. “The Navy’s report on their resilience and reliability is that watershed moment not only for the Department of Defense but for all agencies in the federal government, and I would even proffer in the private sector, to have an honest, internal look at their systems, their data, their capabilities and their protection mechanisms and where they have vulnerabilities and how the threats are manifested in their organizations,” Evanina said after speaking at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) event on supply chain management in Arlington, Virginia, on April 1. “I think all agencies should take a hard look and say, ‘What can we do that is similar to this to look at our own processes and protection models?’”
BC's selection:
“Leaders can let you fail, but
not be a failure!”
“A leader is not good because
they are right, they are good because they are willing to learn, and to trust.”
“This (leadership) isn’t easy
stuff and it’s not always fair!”
"You can get knocked down and it
hurts, it leaves scars but if you are a leader the people who you counted on
with help you out, and if you are a leader the people who have counted on you,
need you on your feet”