IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has a message for high-wealth tax cheats who are wrongly deducting private jet travel and otherwise shorting the government on their taxes: Pay your fair share so “others aren’t shouldering the burden of funding our government.”
He also has a thought for ordinary taxpayers putting off the inevitable with less than a month left in tax-filing season: “Get it done.” (And double-check your work.)
Werfel, who will hit the one-year mark at the helm of the IRS in April, said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press that the agency will expand its pursuit of high-wealth tax dodgers with new initiatives in the coming months and is using tools like artificial intelligence to ferret out abuses and taking the fight to sophisticated scammers.
That doesn’t mean the IRS has undergone a complete image makeover. There’s still plenty of criticism to go around, including from Republican lawmakers who accuse the agency of heavy-handed overreach.
Look, I’m not a damn policy expert, all I know is our current tax code is completely fucked and benefits the wealthy and screws the middle class as is. Make it a 50% tax on anything above $500k, I don’t know. Just make it less garbage than it is now, where I’m getting screwed and have to deal with filing taxes every year. I had friends in Norway that didn’t have to deal with tax returns because it was already all accurate and taken out of their pay. What a crazy concept.
That’s, uh, not a flat tax, then. You figured out the better approach immediately. And I agree, simplify the tax code while keeping it progressive.