I understood parent's point to be that we obviously can't trust them to do better than this. In any case it seems clear that this is exactly why high tax rates hurt the middle class more than the rich. And everyone know it, and yet it persists.

Typically it's because taxing the super rich wouldn't be enough, so you tax a broad swath of the population.

Billionaires (put together) in the US hold something similar to 1 year of federal tax receipts, for example. Tax them into the ground and you get 1 year of revenue.

For the US it doesn't so much matter who is taxed or how much. We cannot break even if you take into account unfunded liabilities.

This is one of the more interesting points that gets lost in the "tax the rich" talk. I believe this is because people's general political point of reference is their individual situation and not the overall system - but from the system point of view it truly is just a drop in the bucket.

Eh, the top 1% of earners are responsible for c15% of income. Bear in mind that these will be on a higher tax band too, so a figure of c25% of income tax revenue is pretty likely - hardly a drop in a budget.

But the conversation is always towards higher taxes rather than fixing enforcement, design, etc.

Edit: I think I hit a nerve.

Not really. The Biden administration’s proposals include more funding and organisational reform for the IRS. Democrats have been talking for some time about how the steady defunding of the IRS has resulted in less tax collection from the rich and powerful.

Reforming the IRS as an organization doesn't work when it's tax law that's the problem.

Tax law has issues, but deficient analysis, audit and enforcement against richer, more complex files is a huge issue.

Why fail to fix one over the other?

It’s part of a solution, not the entire solution. But even if you improved tax law you’re still going to need a well-resourced and highly skilled IRS capable of properly auditing multinationals and the very wealthy.

What leads you to believe increased funding would be directed toward regulating the richest and most powerful people/companies (i.e. the biggest financiers of political campaigns on both sides of the aisle)?

The OPs statement was that more focus needs to be on improving enforcement. I simply pointed out that improving enforcement, by reversing the budget cuts and consequent drop in audit capability within the IRS, was part of the current administration’s policy.

Whether their proposed changes will actually work is another question, but it’s wrong to say there’s no attention there and that the debate is only about raising taxes.

I can’t say I understand the downvotes I received for saying that.

Which high taxes are part of.

Raising taxes is an admission that current tax policy, and the other side of the coin, the government spending policy, are awfully designed.

Of course there has never been a competent design since taxes always need to be higher to "reduce" the ever increasing wealth gap higher taxes were supposed to be tackling in the first place.

Just for once we could try something different maybe?