Infrastructure / Reconciliation / Debt Limit Sweat

Surprised I haven’t seen any talk in here about the (probably not happening at this point) proposal to give the IRS direct access to see the inflow of any bank account over $600 to help enforce tax collection.

Given how many people I know at virtually all levels of income that do something on the side, I cannot imagine a proposal that would do more to alienate one’s entire voter base, especially when it’s clear they’re throwing up their hands at collecting an extra dime out of Bezos & Co.

And how many of these side businesses are paid through stuff like venmo? My friends and I are constantly using venmo to split checks, pay rent, buy group tickets and stuff–are we going to get scrutinized? $600 just seems stupid low for that kind of thing. Make it $600,000 or something

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1442871649636859910

I mean the debt limit is the clearest example that the filibuster doesn’t work. There’s no give and take, no negotiation with the debt limit. It’s a simple procedural processes, and yet because of the elevated requirements to pass is we get this continuous hostage taking for no reason.

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For no valid policy reason. But the Rs love the grandstanding and posturing about the debt. WHY CAN’T BIDEN RUN HIS GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS OR HOUSEHOLD HERP DERP INSTEAD OF JUST GIVING AWAY MONEY TO “URBAN” WELFARE QUEENS?!?!?!

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Nobody ever actually thought the filibuster encouraged bipartisanship. It’s the new “libs hate the troops,” a tool for getting democrats to engage in good faith on nonsense.

Well a consequence of that is that people do believe it if they uncritically read the NYT and WP where writers dutifully amplify Republican talking points. This is where stuff like Stephen King’s “70% of something” comment comes from.

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Yeah I think the last proposal was to raise it to at least $10k, most likely it will drift higher or just not get included.

$600 seems too low to be useful (it is a common reporting threshold, but here would just generate too many flags to be useful), but conceptually I support this.

Yes way too low plus it’s doubly annoying when they should be concentrating on taxing the super rich. Instead they are just going to bug people with small transactions while the wealthy do whatever the fuck they want.

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Important context on the IRS is that they have been drowned in the bathtub as desired by the Grover Norquist types. They don’t have the people to do the hard work of forensic audits on the big fish. They want data reporting from banks so they can turn loose cheap automation on the data. You’re going to end up with AI IRSbots sending form letters to people about their receipt of bank transfers while billionaires and multimillionaires duck taxes altogether. Fuck that. Any tax collection reform is a failure if it doesn’t start with doubling the budget of the IRS with all of the new auditors working on cases for people with earnings over $1 million.

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Yeah that’s what I’m saying, it’s not gonna sit well with the average middle class dude who paid every dime in taxes for their day job but then gets a letter asking for $500 plus penalties for some crappy side work they did, just after reading an article that Bezos now has enough wealth to buy the poorest 20% of countries or something. People would be furious and Biden and congress Dems would take 100% of the blame right in time for the midterms.

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Even worse is the student loan payment restart. Just pure political suicide.

I thought this was paired with additional IRS staff, is that not the case?

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The carried interest loophole is still in the fucking bill. There is absolutely nothing in it that scares billionaires. Maybe your local car dealer taking sham deductions will have to straighten up, but there aren’t even provisions to in any way inconvenience the mega-rich.

Looks like it. I am not that familiar with the proposal. I am seeing a plan to double the headcount by 2031. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. They’ve been contracting for a decade so they have a long way to go just to get back to where they were in 2010.

Yeah it is a slow rebuild for sure at this point. The IRS is barely functional, cant imagine they have been doing a lot of 2019-2020 complex audits. This is in part to reduce the need for payfors, so not sure how much of this actually gets actioned anyways.

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Nobody talk about progressive refuse to vote on the bipartisan bill?

They said they have 60 votes to vote no one it.

I think the idea is there will be a “framework” progressives are comfortable with by Thursday. Today they clearly dont have the votes

This is gonna combine nicely with what looks like a massive increase in heating bills coming this winter to really make people feel like wtf where did all my money go.

I think that discussion is in the sweat thread.

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