Sometimes I just goggle over certain numbers, like this estimate of how much tax cheating will be avoided by increasing funding for the IRS:
On one key question — how much money will be raised by providing $80 billion to increase IRS enforcement on rich tax cheats — the CBO said it would raise $207 billion over 10 years, meaning the net savings would be $127 billion. …
The core dispute is over whether, in the face of IRS enforcement, wealthy tax cheats would find new ways to avoid taxes (as the CBO believes), or whether more would actually pay up. Treasury believes the latter, projecting new revenue will come directly (from people forced to pay what they otherwise wouldn’t), and indirectly (as enforcement convinces rich scofflaws to stay on the straight and narrow).
Giving BBB a big boost, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who has been critical of the Biden administration, argues that the more optimistic scenario is correct, noting that the way CBO calculates gains from enforcement “is conservative to the point of implausibility.” [WaPo]
Those are some amazing numbers, don’t you think? Tax cheats so bold as to cost us multiple billions of dollars?
Makes you wonder how many consider themselves to be good people, too.
