this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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FWIW the US federal budget for 2024 is going to be about $6.8 trillion dollars. So that $1.3 billion is about 0.019% of the total budget. I'd call that a slap on the wrist for the billionaire class except that you can actually feel a slap on the wrist.
That's entirely the wrong denominator for this comparison. IRS doesn't write the budget nor do they write tax law, they just collect.
Fine, revenues are $4.9 trillion. My point is that $1.9 billion is literally a drop in the bucket - hardly an example of the IRS "going after rich people".
But ... It's an increase, right?
Are we okay with incremental improvements, or will only big bang headline news story type improvements be okay?
Is it an increase? The article @macattack cited does not give any data on how much the IRS collected from high-income earners before this additional push supposedly funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. The article does mention that Republicans in congress recently rescinded more than $20 billion in additional IRS funding, which does suggest that the net benefit was far less than $1.3 billion and might even have been negative. It seems like the kind of breathless article the impact of which relies on people not well understanding the difference between a billion and a trillion.