{"id":34683,"date":"2021-11-21T16:52:51","date_gmt":"2021-11-21T22:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=34683"},"modified":"2021-11-21T16:52:51","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T22:52:51","slug":"its-something-of-a-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/11\/21\/its-something-of-a-bet\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Something Of A Bet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I just goggle over certain numbers, like this estimate of how much tax cheating will be avoided by increasing funding for the <em><strong>IRS<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On one key question \u2014 how much money will be raised by providing $80 billion to increase IRS enforcement on rich tax cheats \u2014\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/publication\/57620\">the CBO said<\/a> it would raise $207 billion over 10 years, meaning the net savings would be $127 billion. &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The core dispute is over whether, in the face of IRS enforcement, wealthy tax cheats would find new ways to avoid taxes (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2021\/11\/18\/democrats-cbo-tax-522959\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as the CBO believes<\/a>), or whether more would actually pay up. Treasury\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/news\/featured-stories\/preliminary-estimates-show-build-back-better-legislation-will-reduce-deficits\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">believes the latter<\/a>, projecting new revenue will come directly (from people forced to pay what they otherwise wouldn\u2019t), and indirectly (as enforcement convinces rich scofflaws to stay on the straight and narrow).<\/p>\n<p>Giving BBB a big boost, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who has been critical of the Biden administration, <a style=\"font-size: 16px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/11\/17\/cbo-build-back-better-irs-revenue-too-low\/?itid=lk_inline_manual_16\">argues<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"> that the more optimistic scenario is correct, noting that the way CBO calculates gains from enforcement \u201cis conservative to the point of implausibility.&#8221; <em>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2021\/11\/18\/why-dems-shouldnt-listen-to-the-cbo\/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_most&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F355378c%2F6197dbe69d2fdab56b93ebd1%2F59ee10d9ae7e8a504fd8ecd3%2F17%2F72%2F6197dbe69d2fdab56b93ebd1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>WaPo<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Those are some amazing numbers, don&#8217;t you think? Tax cheats so bold as to cost us multiple billions of dollars?<\/p>\n<p>Makes you wonder how many consider themselves to be good people, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u2014 how much money will be raised by providing $80 billion to increase IRS enforcement on rich tax cheats \u2014\u00a0the CBO said \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/11\/21\/its-something-of-a-bet\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34687,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34683\/revisions\/34687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}