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:
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.
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at
the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center
for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
INEQUALITY FOR ALL.
