Improving Tax Administration Today

Comments for the Record

United States Senate

Committee on Finance

Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight

Hearing on Improving Tax Administration Today

Thursday, July 26, 2018, 10:30 A.M.

By Michael G. Bindner

Center for Fiscal Equity

Chairman Portman and Ranking Member Warner, thank you for the opportunity to submit these comments for the record to the Taxation and IRS Oversight Subcommittee.  Recent tax legislation has not met the Center’s policy goals, nor America’s, nor the goals of other advocates with similar proposals, for example the advocates of the FairTax, who were disappointedly silent in the last round of debate. While recent legislation will likely help, radical change is needed to really help the average family.

As you may know, we did raise our voices and will continue to, as the recent law will still have all of the flaws of the prior system as well as the asset inflation that would have made another Great Recession inevitable were not for the new biennial spending targets and appropriations, including much needed help for the IRS. Still, we withdraw none of our proposals. Therefore, as usual, we will preface our comments with our comprehensive four-part approach, which will provide context for our comments.

• A Value Added Tax (VAT) to fund domestic military spending and domestic discretionary spending with a rate between 10% and 13%, which makes sure very American pays something.
• Personal income surtaxes on joint and widowed filers with net annual incomes of $100,000 and single filers earning $50,000 per year to fund net interest payments, debt retirement and overseas and strategic military spending and other international spending, with graduated rates between 5% and 25%.  
•  Employee contributions to Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) with a lower income cap, which allows for lower payment levels to wealthier retirees without making bend points more progressive.
• A VAT-like Net Business Receipts Tax (NBRT), which is essentially a subtraction VAT with additional tax expenditures for family support,  health care and the private delivery of governmental services, to fund entitlement spending and replace income tax filing for most people (including people who file without paying), the corporate income tax, business tax filing through individual income taxes and the employer contribution to OASI, all payroll taxes for hospital insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and survivors under age 60.

The collection of the Employee Contribution to Social Security will be exactly as it is now. Like proposals for a FairTax, the Value Added Tax and NBRT/Subtraction VAT will be collected by the states. If the basic structure of reform is adopted in the states, the biggest change will be the need for a common base between federal and state consumption taxes.

Shifting from retail sales taxes and gross receipts taxes to value added taxes and VAT-like net business receipts taxes will change the nature of most state taxation, while enabling ease of collection of taxes on online sales, since taxes would be levied at every stage of the production process. The IRS will assist states in this process, which will likely take the form of some federal-state compact commission to draft and approve the transitional rules.

If a common base agreement can be negotiated for these taxes, state treasurers can collect both their own taxes and the federal taxes, as well as analytical information on tax credit usage, which can then be shared with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in order to track income accruing to payers of the federal high income surtax, as well as to recipients of the federal child tax credit, which would be paid to employees with wages under the NBRT and then verified by a mailing from both the employer and the Internal Revenue Service, with employees verifying that their employees paid every dollar to them reported as a credit. There will likely be problems to resolve in our proposed system, where the states collect by the Value Added Tax and the Net Business Receipts Tax and forward the money and records to the Internal Revenue Service. This will not impact most taxpayers, since once they have bought a product, no further action is necessary.

The IRS will likely supplement state-based auditing with reviews of their own, but this is a small price to pay for a reform that will reduce the income tax payment and audit workload by at least 80%. Indeed, income tax simplification (through the elimination of all but a few deductions), will further eliminate the workload generated by remaining income tax payers.

Employees with children will need to annually verify the information provided by employers and, if they received less than was reported to the government, notify the IRS who will send a refund and collect the difference from the employer. This may trigger a dispute, but likely most employers will simply pay if there was an error. Fraud is another matter, which is criminal not a dispute to be settled. Other disputes may involve parents double dipping on two jobs or two earners, but these will likely work out a payment plan or contact their divorce lawyers to negotiate who pays.

Whenever an employee or an heir is paid interest, a dividend, a capital gain or an heir sells an inherited asset, information will be transmitted to the IRS, as well as sales to a qualified Employee Stock Ownership Program (untaxed) and aggregated by Social Security Number. Verification will be accomplished to make sure that tax avoidance does not occur through use of multiple SSNs.

Another option is to charge value added taxes on any capital gain at sale, with losses taxed at the average VAT payment of the last two sales. In this case, the NBRT of Lawrence B. Lindsey could be used to tax dividends paid and excess salaries paid at a higher rate, this making all income tax collection unnecessary.

If income taxes are retained, individuals making over $50,000 per year and joint filers making over $100,000 will have their information stored to compare to tax filings, unless the Congress authorizes an automatic filing system where all income surtax payers will receive notification when all data should have arrived and what their refund or payment will be once they correct the information or certify it is correct already. Banking information should be on file, so authorization for payment, either at once or installments should be easy.

Very little IRS Administration will be required to do this. Indeed, data management and mailing could be contracted out. All IRS employees could fit in a bathtub with room for Grover Norquist.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee.  We are, of course, available for direct testimony or to answer questions by members and staff.