来源：《华盛顿邮报》
刊登日期：2021年3月26日
These are challenging times for the federal agency Americans love to hate: the Internal Revenue Service. Having been deprived of funding increases by mostly Republican Congresses over the past decade, the IRS is being asked to operate during a pandemic with roughly one-fifth less budget and one-fifth fewer staff than it had in 2010. Yet its mission has been expanded in the past year to include not only collecting money but also sending out repeated “stimulus payments,” the most recent of which were approved by Congress earlier this month. Small wonder that the IRS is behind on processing returns for tax year 2020 and had to postpone the filing deadline from April 15 to May 17.
对于美国人又爱又恨的联邦机构——美国国税局来说，这是一个充满挑战的时代。过去10年中，共和党占优的国会不给美国国税局增加预算，美国国税局被要求在新冠大流行期间照常运作，而其预算和员工数量均比2010年减少约五分之一。然而，在过去的一年里，其职责已经扩大，不仅包括筹集资金，而且还要不断发放“刺激支出”，最近的一项刺激支出已在本月早些时候由国会批准。难怪美国国税局(IRS)在处理2020年度退税申报方面会滞后，不得不将提交截止日期从4月15日推迟到5月17日。
Nor is it any surprise that the underfunding of this agency has affected its enforcement of the tax code, leading to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax avoidance, the majority of it by upper-income households. In 2019, the IRS estimated this “tax gap” at $381 billion per year, based on data from 2011 to 2013. A new peer-reviewed study of this problem, published Monday by a team of academic and IRS analysts, suggests it is even larger than previously feared. Though it’s almost impossible for ordinary people to avoid reporting income to the IRS — their employers do it for them — upper-income taxpayers can make much greater use of self-reporting via partnerships and other sophisticated “pass-through” entities. Random audits, which are less frequent now than they were 10 years ago, are relatively ineffective at defeating such techniques, the report notes.
同样不足为奇的是，国税局的资金不足已经影响了税法的执行，导致了数千亿美元的避税行为，其中大部分来自高收入家庭。2019年，美国国税局根据2011年至2013年的数据估计，这一“税收流失”为每年3810亿美元。周一，一个由学者和美国国税局（IRS）分析师组成的研究小组发表了一份新的同行评议研究报告，表明这个问题比之前担心的还要严重。尽管普通人几乎无法避免向IRS报告收入——因为他们的雇主替他们做了——但高收入纳税人可以通过合伙企业和其他复杂的“过手”实体，更多地使用自行申报。报告指出，与10年前相比，现在的随机审计不那么频繁了，相对而言，挫败这类避税手段的效果不太好。
The result is that 36 percent of all unpaid federal income taxes are owed by the top 1 percent of households; in theory, collecting that from them would yield $175 billion annually. These findings are consistent with a 2020 estimate by law professor Natasha Sarin of the University of Pennsylvania and former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers that restoring IRS funding to 2011 levels, could net the government $1 trillion over 10 years.
其结果是，所有未缴的联邦所得税中，有36%是由最富有的1%的家庭所欠；理论上，从他们那里征收所得税每年将获得1750亿美元。这些发现与宾夕法尼亚大学法学教授娜塔莎·萨林和前财政部长劳伦斯·h·萨默斯在2020年做出的估计相符，他们认为，将美国国税局的预算恢复到2011年的水平，可以在10年内为政府带来1万亿美元的净收益。
That may be overly optimistic, in part because tax avoiders will undoubtedly find new ways to hide their money if there’s a crackdown. Nevertheless, when it comes to reining in federal deficits, better enforcement of the existing tax code is — or should be — a no-brainer. Those Republicans who attacked and defunded the IRS over recent years were essentially managing to achieve greater tax cuts for the rich than the already large ones they had passed into law. Even then-President Donald Trump allowed his treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to embrace the principle that investments in tax enforcement pay for themselves, usually several times over. Mr. Trump actually presided over modest budget increases at the IRS, though nowhere near enough to restore a robust enforcement capacity. The agency received $1.4 billion from this year’s covid relief bill, mostly to modernize technology.
这可能过于乐观了，部分原因是如果受到打击，避税者无疑会找到新方法隐藏资金。然而，在控制联邦赤字方面，更好地执行现有税法是——或者应该是——无需动脑的事情。那些近年来攻击国税局并削减预算的共和党人，实质上是设法为富人，在已经通过的大规模减税法案以外，实现更大的减税。即使是当时的总统唐纳德·特朗普也允许财政部长史蒂文·姆努钦接受这样的原则，即在税收执法方面的投资可以赚钱，而且通常是投入的几倍。在特朗普的主持下，国税局的预算实际上小幅增加，尽管远远不足以恢复强大的执法能力。国税局从今年的新冠疫情救助法案中获得了14亿美元，主要用于技术现代化。
Democrats have advocated higher taxes on the wealthy, which are warranted but, for the time being, politically difficult given GOP opposition. Meanwhile, it’s time to start making sure those at the top pay what the current law says they owe.
民主党支持对富人增税，这是正当的，但由于共和党的反对，目前在政治上很困难。与此同时，现在是时候开始确保那些最有钱的人支付现行法律规定的他们所欠的钱了。