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niceguyanon comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Why doesn't the U.S. government hire more tax auditors? If every hired auditor can either uncover or deter (threat of chance of audit) tax evasion, it would pay for itself, create jobs, increase revenue, punish those who cheat. Estimated cost of tax evasion per year to the Federal gov is 450B.
Incompetent government tropes include agencies that hire too many people and becoming inappropriate profit centers. It would seem that the IRS should have at the very least been accidentally competent in this regard.
I think that in many cases uncovering a potential tax evasion might not be enough to get that money, it might require prosecution and large scale evidence collection. Maybe it's not worth it unless amount of evaded taxes is large?
Generally the numbers suggest that an additional tax collector brings in a lot more money than he costs.
Can I ask you to examine the apparent assumption here - that the $450B is all loss? Have you considered the possibility that the people who avoided the tax put the money to good use? Or that the government would not put that money to good use if it took it?
A major way of avoiding tax is to keep money offshore. ... so what can you usefully do with money while it is resting in an account in the Cayman islands?
Because the IRS isn't popular and it's not a good move for a politician to speak in favor of the IRS and advocate increase of IRS funding.