Fund the IRS

The latest episode of The Stakes series on the Why Is This Happening? podcast is about tax policy. The guest is  Kimberly Clausing, a UCLA Law School endowed chair in tax law and policy.

(As a reminder, guests on The Stakes compare what Trump and Biden did as presidents in particular policy areas. The 2024 election is the first one since 1892 when both major candidates have previously been president, so each has an obvious record to compare. The first episode was about immigration policy.)

The tax policy conversation looked at rates and enforcement under each president, which connected to climate policy as well, since that's part of Biden's tax policy. Of course, a lot of discussion about Trump was about the big tax cut bill that passed in 2017. But Clausing and Hayes also talked about the undermining of the IRS as it relates to enforcement, which started before but continued under Trump. (Here's an earlier post on that subject.)

For me, this is the literal money quote from Clausing:

The people who have opaque sources of income are well off, and so underfunding the IRS really serves the interests of dishonest people at the top, rather than your typical worker who would benefit from being able to get their questions answered and get their returns prioritized in quick ways.

Dishonest people at the top who have opaque source of income... gee, who does that sound like?

Maybe it's not the best idea to have people like that making decisions about our public policy!