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Why Stripping the IRS is Dumb (Video 1:35)

Why Stripping the IRS is Dumb (Video 1:35)
Thu, 4/20/2017 - by Robert Reich
This article originally appeared on Inequality Media and robertreich.org

4 REASONS WHY TRUMP’S PLAN TO STRIP THE IRS IS INCREDIBLY DUMB

Donald Trump is proposing a 14.1 percent cut in the I.R.S.’s budget next year. This is incredibly dumb, for four reasons: 

1. It won’t save money.

To the contrary, this move worsens the budget deficit. That’s because every dollar spent by the IRS to collect taxes generates $4 in unpaid taxes.
 

2. It worsens the federal budget deficit.

The current estimate of unpaid taxes per year is almost as large as the federal government’s annual budget deficit.
 

3. It widens inequality.

Since most IRS audits are of high-income people, the real beneficiaries of Trump’s move are the wealthy, more of whom will now be able to skirt their duty to pay taxes.
 

4. The IRS is already understaffed.

The number of individual tax return audits fell last year to its lowest level since 2004, and enforcement levels were already down by nearly 30 percent from 2010. 
 

Donald Trump hates the IRS and has spent years battling it. There’s reason to think he doesn’t even want to pay his own taxes. But this is no reason to explode the Federal Budget Deficit and give another windfall to the rich.

[via robertreich.org]

 

 

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Article Tabs

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Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

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Donald Trump, Hitler

Like Hitler, Trump has a unique command of propaganda, a captivating public presence, and he knows how to drive home narratives beneficial to him and harmful to his enemies.

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

Based on details that have emerged about Trump’s presidential agenda, the far-right Heritage Foundation plans for the next GOP president to have all the tools necessary to demolish multicultural democracy and establish a white, Christian ethnostate that imposes a gender apartheid not unlike the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

Based on details that have emerged about Trump’s presidential agenda, the far-right Heritage Foundation plans for the next GOP president to have all the tools necessary to demolish multicultural democracy and establish a white, Christian ethnostate that imposes a gender apartheid not unlike the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

Posted 1 month 2 weeks ago

Thanks to the Electoral College, leftists have perhaps the final say this November over whether democracy can hold on for at least another four years, or if fascism will take root and infect all facets of the federal government for decades to come.

Posted 1 week 3 days ago

What remains unknown is whether post-truth Republicans will succeed in 2024 as the Nazis did in 1933.

Posted 1 month 4 days ago

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

Posted 1 week 5 days ago

Agriculture, the service economy, sexual exploitation, manufacturing, construction and domestic work drive today's enslavement around the world.

Posted 3 days 18 hours ago