TRUMP, THE DRAFT AND TAX DODGER, HAS INFECTED THE GOP

By Bynjamin Appelbaum

New York Times

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, recently took to social media to warn that Democrats have hatched a dastardly plot. “Democrats,” he said, “want to track every penny you earn so they can then tax you and your family at the maximum possible amount.”

Well, yes. Democrats want Americans to pay the full amount they owe in taxes.

What doesn’t get enough attention is that many Republicans seem not to agree.

Resistance to taxation is the rotten core of the modern Republican Party. Republicans in recent decades have sharply reduced the federal income tax rates imposed on wealthy people and big companies, but their opposition to taxation goes beyond that. They are aiding and abetting tax evasion.

Republicans have hacked away at funding for the Internal Revenue Service over the past decade, enfeebling the agency. When the rich and powerful open loopholes in the tax code, Republicans reliably fight to keep the loopholes open. Indeed, they valorize Americans who find ways to pay less, a normalization of antisocial behavior that may be even more damaging than the efforts at bureaucratic sabotage.

Former President Donald Trump’s loud and proud declaration that paying very little in taxes “makes me smart” was just a more brazen articulation of what has become party orthodoxy.

The Democratic proposal targeted by Mr. McCarthy – in the video he posted online, he calls it “un-American” – would make it harder for wealthy people to cheat on their taxes.

The I.R.S. estimated in 2019 that Americans conceal from taxation more than half of income that is not subject to some form of third-party verification like a W-2, the form that the government uses to verify ordinary wage income. 

This blind spot costs the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. In comparison, more than 95 percent of wage income is reported.

Under th current version of the Democrats’ plan, which is part of the Biden administration’s sweeping “Build Back Better” legislation, banks would be required to submit annual reports on accounts with total inflows and outflows exceeding $10,000, excluding paychecks and government benefits. The banks would report the total amount deposited in the account and the total amount withdrawn. 

There would be no reporting of individual transactions. The information would give the I.R.S. a better chance to catch cheaters – and it would provide a salutary reminder for people to pay what they owe.

The Biden administration recently cemented an international agreement to establish a 15 percent global minimum tax on corporate income. The long-sought deal would reduce the incentive for American firms to evade taxation by pretending to generate revenue in low-tax havens like Ireland and roughly half the islands in the Caribbean – a practice that has become all but business as usual in industries with intangible products, like finance, technology and pharmaceutical research.

To read the rest of the story, click on link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/opinion/republicans-tax-evasion.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20211025&instance_id=43710&nl=the-morning&regi_id=118696256&segment_id=72580&te=1&user_id=e686a99f0675424fa8b39ab931759509