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Tuesday, June 15, 2021

House Holds Hearing Today On Minding The Tax Gap: Improving Tax Administration For The 21st Century

 


Former PM’s staffer’s gong shows its time to scrap honours


Hackers steal 26 MILLION logins for Amazon, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants after targeting PCs and making off with payment information from three million devices in latest major security breach Daily Mail


We Ran The Treasury Department. This Is How To Fix Tax Evasion.

The five of us served as Treasury secretary under three presidents, both Republican and Democrat, representing 17 years of experience at the helm of the department. While we are not in agreement on many areas of tax policy, we believe in the importance of strengthening the tax system to do more to collect legally owed but uncollected taxes — which, left unaddressed, could total $7 trillion over the next decade. We are convinced by the strength of our experiences that more can be done to pursue evasion in the ways outlined by President Biden’s recent proposal to increase the resources and information available to the I.R.S.

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.

The president’s proposal calls for significant investment in the I.R.S., with $80 billion over a decade in primarily mandatory funding to provide multiyear resources to support necessary work force, service and information technology advancements. In particular, the agency’s siloed and antiquated I.T. is a major source of risk, causing server crashes and leaving the I.R.S. susceptible to cyberattacks. It is imperative that the information technology undergirding our tax system keep pace with the information technology driving our economy. ...

We know firsthand the challenge dedicated I.R.S. employees face each day as they work to administer tax laws while hamstrung by inadequate funding and support. Reasonable people can disagree on the magnitude of particular tax rate increases. But on this issue, all should agree, including members of Congress of both parties: Giving the I.R.S. the tools it needs to improve compliance will raise significant revenue and create a fairer, more efficient system of tax administration.


Big Brother IS Watching You Watch

 

How I Lost Control Over My Own Face Der Spiegel

 

TikTok changed the shape of some people’s faces without asking MIT Technology Review

  

Official: Lady Dorrian Rules Courts Should Apply Different Standards to Bloggers and Mainstream Media Craig Murray


House Holds Hearing Today On Minding The Tax Gap: Improving Tax Administration For The 21st Century


AS SHE SHOULD:  A Chinese survivor of Mao’s communist hellhole warns Virginia school district about Critical Race Theory.





Dorothy Brown And David Cay Johnston Discuss Yesterday's ProPublica's Report On The Tax Secrets Of The .001%


The use of US armed forces abroad, 1798-2020, by US Congressional Research Service: 20 July, 2020

This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes.(Covert activities are not included)...



THE VISIGOTHS BEG TO DIFFER:  Open Immigration Was a Disaster for Rome.“By 500 A.D. Rome had lost control of every province under its rule to uninvited immigrants.”


We’ve got you on file: Australia’s McCarthyist moment

Some people think that McCarthyism – casting doubt, without evidence, on the loyalties of people in public life – was dead and buried with the Cold War....





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