• Jeremy [Iowa]@midwest.social
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Could seems to be doing some heavy lifting here. What are you deriving that from?

    They find that while it's much more expensive to audit the wealthiest tax payers, it's still a hearty return on investment. Auditing the top 1% yields $4.25 per dollar spent, and that number soars to $6.29 when auditing the top 0.1%.

    Top 1%: $4.25 yield per $1

    Top 0.1%: $6.25 yield per $1

    What do these points actually mean?

    Per DQYDJ:

    What is the top one percent household income in the US in 2022?

    In 2022, the threshold for a household to be top 1% was $570,003 in earnings.

    Sure, that's hard to do by all standards, even silicon valley. The article goes out of its way to highlight the Top 1% and above are "adept" at evading taxes.

    But what's this about Top 10%?

    Summary bullet-point:

    Economists find that every extra dollar spent on auditing the top 10% of taxpayers yields $12 in revenue.

    Content:

    And pouring even just a bit more money into auditing the rich could yield a lot more revenue, with every additional dollar yielding up to potentially $12 in revenue from the top 90th percentile of earners.

    So, they really mean Top 10%.

    Top 10%: $12 yield per $1

    Weirdly enough, the article does not speak to this group beyond potential profit. No mention of tax evasion, no mention of avoidance, just profit. One must assume it's much easier to squeeze that ~33.2 million people (10% population) million via audits.

    What does top 10% actually mean?

    Per DQYDJ:

    What was the top 10% household income percentile in 2022?

    The threshold to be in the top 10% of household incomes in 2022 in the United States was $212,110.

    That's... a bit odd. 212k household is pretty easy to do even here in Des Moines for any two professional or STEM earners.

    Per SoFI, the average salary in the US is $60,575. Double that to approximate household and you're at $121,150. If we shift to median to help rule out outliers, $56,420/$112,840.

    With a median of $112, it's hard to see how "top 10%" is only double. This screams of an outsize "middle" range. Shift back to the DQYDJ page and the chart shows exactly that: roughly linear scaling from the 10% mark up through 90%, with a severe spike at 99%.

    It's quite clear something is up with the >=99% spike, worthy of audits and scrutiny.

    The callout of 10% - despite significant drop in household earnings - makes a person wonder when the focus will shift to 15%, then 25%, etc. We've left the land of clear problem and seem to be opportunistically extracting revenue at that point.