Lawrence GibbsFred T. Goldberg Jr.Charles RossottiMark EversonJohn KoskinenCharles Rettig and Daniel Werfel, Trump Just Fired 6,700 I.R.S. Workers in the Middle of Tax Season. That’s a Huge Mistake. NYTimes, Feb. 24, 2025.
Every year, the government receives much less in taxes than it is owed. Closing that gap, which stands at roughly $700 billion annually, would almost certainly require maintaining the I.R.S.’s collection capacity. Depleting it is tantamount to a chief executive saying something like: “We sold a lot of goods and services this year, but let’s limit our ability to collect what we’re owed.”
Perhaps only the company’s competitors would approve of such an approach. Yet here we are. Aggressive cuts to our nation’s accounts receivable function will reduce the amount of tax revenue coming in, which will in turn increase our nation’s deficit and add to our $36 trillion in debt.
So why go down this path? Let’s be clear: Shrinking the I.R.S. will not lower your tax obligation. That’s up to Congress. [...]Aggressive reductions in the I.R.S.’s resources will only render our government less effective and less efficient in collecting the taxes Congress has imposed. It will shift the burden of funding the government from people who shirk their taxes to the honest people who pay them, and it will impede efforts by the I.R.S. to modernize customer service and simplify the tax filing process for everyone.
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