[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
I’ve done consulting work for tax agencies. They are full of smart people and are very good, as most government agencies are, at implementing and consistently delivering processes.
The problem at the IRS is that a group of people with the ability to influence the purse strings have signed pledges and dedicated careers to make the IRS as ineffective as possible. I have a former associate who is a specialist in a few arcane areas of tax law and has the ability to basically look at the books of any company and figure it out in a day or two. He left because systematic cuts meant that he was one of a half dozen specialists in the country (there were 200+ when he started), and ended up traveling all across the country to testify at trials as an expert.
Look at the military as an example of how any government agency works. Billions are spent on weapons systems development with the best and brightest minds. In the field, the applied work is done by 19 year old kids, roughly sorted into an occupational category by IQ.
The problem with the government paying "Google salaries" is who gets them? Is an IRS auditor really worthy of half a million a year in comp? What about the DEA agent deep under cover and risking his life, much more deserving... right?
So you create a new branch of the government where keyboard warriors bang out solutions to government problems. Why is one of these hot-shots making what an entire department of inspectors is paid at the USDA? The resentment from other agencies will be a hard barrier to overcome. They also have no incentive to help your new Rockstar Agency to get access to all the data they need so they can put government employees out of work.
Not to mention, is it really beneficial to the tax payer to try and compete with tech companies? If FAANG companies start to suffer a talent drain, they will just re-up and double whatever the government offers.
Now imagine Facebook steps in and wants to hire all the electricians and is willing to pay $750k/yr. Obviously the entire system becomes fucked and the government (or even "normal" businesses) won't be able to find electricians.
Don't get me wrong... I like my tech salary. But inserting a player into any market or economy with effectively unlimited resources breaks it.
tldr; Korolev, the lead Soviet engineer during the space race died in the middle of it from colon cancer and they never recovered.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this...
Base living wage ($70-$90k)
+ 1-5% of each amount recovered
Incentivize pursuing the biggest evaders, and the problem may solve itself.
Your idea would likely just spur a movement to throw the book at normal working people to extract the most from easy targets, like self-employed misfiles.
Right now the IRS are spending too much time going after the low hanging fruit, which is hurting the little guys. The department has been gutted and understaffed, so they are trying to hit the easy less sophisticated targets.
A few $1 Million settlements could more than double their salary for the year. Even if the bonus was split between a team, a few whales would be a boon.
https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/01/the-comple...
A better summary wouldn't be "they make plenty of money legally." It would be they make plenty of money illegally after paying the settlements.
Also, showing these fines is a long way from "the most law breaking entities".
I do believe Wells Fargo got in trouble for helping launder money - and they spent a LOT of money to help fix it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico...
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54597256
I could keep Googling but that should cover your complaints about laundering money.
Do you also claim that banks are the biggest thieves?
> HSBC Holdings Plc agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion in fines to U.S. authorities for allowing itself to be used to launder a river of drug money flowing out of Mexico and other banking lapses.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-probe-idUSBRE8BA05M2...
I.e, exploiting things like identity theft, countries and exchanges with little oversight, mules, gambling, etc.
I assume that even if they moved some portion of it, say 10 BTC, to N different wallets, those transactions would be traceable to the exchange?
I’m not sure how XMR works but then the exchange would know at least which wallet the XMR was sent to.
I’m also not sure of the law surrounding a P2P transfer (IE receiving stolen property) but I’m guessing you might be SOL if you did a trade with them on a P2P platform as well...
Very interested if someone in the know would like to chime in
There are thousands of btc exchanges all around the world. For sure there are some where they dont even know about bitfinex.
Is that how it works? Won't there be, say banking institutions that simply won't keep a record of who converted the bitcoin to money similar to how VPN providers are claiming to not log user's IP addresses?
Sure, there might be places where you could convert that Bitcoin into a local fiat currency, but then what? You have US$7.5B denominated in some random fiat currency that is likely mostly cut off from the "main" transactable currencies of the world. You'd have to find ways to slowly launder it and convert it into something else. Doable, I guess, and maybe worth the time and effort considering you can't do anything with the money otherwise, at least not without getting caught. But doing all that is risky as well... make a mistake and you could get caught.
There’s records and then there’s “records”.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-...
So yes records (of sometimes dubious quality) are kept from a pedantic standpoint, but I understood GP to mean that this would prevent someone from laundering large sums through (large respectable) banks which is demonstrably not always the case.
Not only may these logs be questionable, but apparently the penalties, using the HSBC example, don’t seem to be a deterrent.
TLDR; banks having records doesn’t mean shit when you want to launder large sums of money.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443713704577601...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324412604578512...
What about tumblers?
The real solution is to drop bitcoin and use better technology. Monero looks like the best option right now. Private transactions, concealed amounts, fungibility, low fees and fast transaction processing. It's everything bitcoin was meant to be.
Walk into WalMart with cash and buy a prepaid gift card. Voilà. And the best part: it works literally everywhere. Both the buying and the using. Unlike flavor-of-the-week crypto.
Though, let's be real for a second, the ways to screw up from this point are many and varied. Accidentally use your home IP address to make the purchase? Oops. Did the naughty thing at Starbucks and there just happened to be a CCTV cam on you? Oh noes.
Probably best to stay offline, use cash everywhere, limit your banking, turn off your smartphone, and move from location to location constantly.
Or just give up.
> O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
You can't: buy a fancy boat, car, or house. You can't pay for your kids school supplies (or school tuition), or treat your wife to a fancy hair do.
The money laundering laws try to stop people dealing in tens of thousands of dollars, who LIVE off of the money.
Also, something to keep in mind, most financial companies have a "Know Your Customer" stage where they verify you employment and income. If you are trying to buy a $20k thing, and your only income is "a stack of Visa Gift Cards", you're going to have a bad day.
Or letting someone else to do that in Starbucks by buying him off would be quite easy.
So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would be able to have their funds more or less locked up.
So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we know the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught. However in the future I could easily see a government watch money that some undesired element has move and no one will want it because the moment they get it they are connected to an undesirable and their wallet becomes tainted.