House Republicans did not make an impressive start given that the very first bill they passed would help shield “tax cheats,” complained the editor of the North Carolina Charlotte Observer.
Republicans – including all of North Carolina’s GOP representatives – voted last night to cut $71 billion from $80 billion in additional funding that Congress made available to the Internal Revenue Service under the Inflation Reduction Act.
The additional money is intended to ensure “businesses and the wealthy pay the taxes they owe,” the paper said in an editorial Wednesday. Republicans applauded after the bill was passed.
“The GOP sees paying taxes not as a way to support the nation, but as an obligation to avoid,” added the Observer, “They’re not shy about it.” When Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 presidential debate that Donald Trump didn’t pay taxes, she “leaned into the microphone and interjected, ‘That makes me smart.'”
The recently released tax returns from 2015 to 2020 reveal that Trump paid $642,000 in federal income tax in 2015, only $750 in 2016 and 2017, almost $1 million in 2018, $133,000 in 2019 and nothing in 2020. .
Republicans claim they do not want to hire thousands of new IRS agents, who they claim will “hound small businesses and probe conservative groups that have tax-exempt status,” a newspaper editorial said.
The GOP legislation is “symbolic” because the Democratic-controlled Senate won’t take it up. But “votes still matter a lot,” the editorial said. “This is the message that Republican members of the House of Representatives … are rejecting the basic duty of good citizenship: Obeying the law by paying taxes.”
Observers pointed to the words carved into the IRS building in Washington, a quote from the Supreme Court decision of Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”
“Apparently,” the paper stated, Republican members of the House of Representatives “consider that a civilized society — a fair, just and compassionate society — is priceless.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (DN.Y.) accused Republicans – who complain about the budget imbalance – increasing the federal debt by not spending money to go after the well-heeled tax scofflaws.
The Congressional Budget Office said Monday that if the Republican bill becomes law, it will save $71 billion up front – but will cause the government to miss $185 billion in uncollected tax revenue for a net loss of $114 billion over a decade.
IRS audits have declined since 2010, with the “sharpest decline” involving the highest earners, the Observer said.