Re:People don't want to run their own bank
by danaris on Monday February 07, 2022 @12:16PM
(#30247818)
There's more that's different to it than that, though.
Just as another couple examples:
- Civil asset forfeiture is something that local police departments around the country can do to people within their jurisdiction. Seizing a bank account is something only the IRS can do—and the IRS is known to be woefully understaffed and under-resourced at the moment.
- As I understand it, when the IRS seizes a bank account, that money doesn't go to the IRS; I believe it goes into some more general fund, but I'm afraid I'm not well-informed about that. Civil asset forfeitures go, in most cases, directly to the police department that seized them. That makes the incentives completely different. (Even if I'm wrong, and assets seized by the IRS go into its budget, that still doesn't create the same kind of incentive that we see with these police departments, given the number of stories of officers in these small podunk towns driving extremely expensive cars off the job and buying extremely fancy police toys on the job with the seized money. The IRS, being a much more supervised federal government department, is going to have to account much more clearly for its expenditures.)
Just as another couple examples:
- Civil asset forfeiture is something that local police departments around the country can do to people within their jurisdiction. Seizing a bank account is something only the IRS can do—and the IRS is known to be woefully understaffed and under-resourced at the moment.
- As I understand it, when the IRS seizes a bank account, that money doesn't go to the IRS; I believe it goes into some more general fund, but I'm afraid I'm not well-informed about that. Civil asset forfeitures go, in most cases, directly to the police department that seized them. That makes the incentives completely different. (Even if I'm wrong, and assets seized by the IRS go into its budget, that still doesn't create the same kind of incentive that we see with these police departments, given the number of stories of officers in these small podunk towns driving extremely expensive cars off the job and buying extremely fancy police toys on the job with the seized money. The IRS, being a much more supervised federal government department, is going to have to account much more clearly for its expenditures.)