Podcast (attitude): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Part One:
We speak with Paul Kiel, who covers business for ProPublica, about the current state of IRS enforcement of U.S. tax laws. The Republican budget cuts have reduced the number (and experience/expertise) of IRS employees, the people who decide which taxpayers to audit and how deeply to scrutinize them. And among this reduced number of IRS auditors, the Trump Administration’s policies have led the IRS to focus heavily on families who benefit from the Low-Income Tax Credit program.
Most commenters – including Ronald Reagan – have described the LITC program as one of the best (most efficient) programs for moving families and children out of poverty. LITC is a counterweight to the yawning income gap between rich and poor. Although the LITC serves working families with very limited incomes, the IRS devotes *more than one-third of its audits* to scrutinizing these families’ eligibility. In contrast, the audits which IRS has chosen to *reduce* the most are audits of the wealthy and well-off.
Does this result in unfairness? The leading targets of the IRS audit attack are African-American rural counties in the South. Following close behind are Appalachia, South Texas with its heavily Latinx population, and working families with incomes ranging from $20,000-30,000 per year. Meanwhile, IRS has reduced its scrutiny of possible errors in the way rich taxpayers take advantage of the myriad tax loopholes. And there’s been a big drop in the IRS’s *criminal* enforcement of tax law violations, against wealth people who cheat on their taxes, hide income offshore, or commit fraud.
Part Two:
We chat with Rex Santus, staff reporter for VICE News, about the recent upsurge in strikes by teachers unions across the country. Because teachers are public employees, their strikes are statutorily “illegal.” But many teachers have risked losing their jobs, harassment, and jail, in order to stand together in support of fair wages and working conditions.
Such strikes by teachers have inspired their students and other young activists – millenials and Generation Z – who feel like they have been harmed the most by older leaders’ failure adequately to address a lot of the country’s (and the planet’s) problems. Private sector workers may also recognize this new union activism as a mutually beneficial practice that could save their families, too, from the multiple crises that currently threaten them.
Public debate of these issues might fine-tune people’s views. We should all concern ourselves with protecting the *workers* in dying industries: making sure they have income supports/health insurance/training/help finding new jobs in the new economy. It is not helpful when our fears cause us to fight to protect the entire inefficient *industries* — including the coal *companies* which are dangerous to the planet or many manufacturing companies where the U.S. no longer has a comparative advantage vis-a-vis other countries.
