Richard Rubin

It lays out the exact sort of return on investment from the government perspective, return on investment for tax enforcement that

every IRS commissioner I've ever covered has talked about.

And then they do that and say, and we're going to cut it.

So there's definite risk that both tax crimes and civil tax violations will be missed.

There's no doubt that the fewer people in the system to look at things, the less that they will do.

From the tax lawyers that I've talked to, the retrenchment of the IRS is creating a mindset among some taxpayers that getting away with things is going to be easier than it's been.

People, I think, want a tax system that is fairly and evenly enforced, right?

So there are all sorts of laws and norms built into the way that we do tax enforcement.

Trying to have even-handed

tax enforcement that holds high-income people, middle-income people, and low-income people accountable across the system so that people feel confident that everyone is paying helps sort of that norm of compliance.

We have a very strong norm of people wanting to do the right thing.

Right.

Right.

And they find the law confusing and difficult and stressful to deal with.

But I think by and large, people want to comply and want, however, to find a fair system.

Medium.

Republicans tried to cut taxes in 2017 for the 2018 year.

That really people didn't notice so much.

And so this year, they're really trying to make them very visible as these lump sum refunds and tell people who's responsible for them.

The issue is twofold.