Congratulations on surviving another tax day! While ordinary Americans like us paid about 29.8% of our pretax earnings in Federal taxes, the richest Americans paid a laughable ‘true tax rate’ of 3.4%.
Meanwhile, the IRS, as much as we hate them, is begging for an additional $8 billion/year in funding to help them hire new civil servants who will be able to help them clear their backlog of delayed tax refunds for Americans who depend on that extra bit of cash, and step up enforcement of our tax laws on the rich. Between 1995 and 2020, the IRS criminal division went from employing 3,797 investigators to only 2,005, a staggering 47% decrease.
Unfortunately (and predictably), congressional Republicans are “staunchly opposed” to providing the IRS with the funding it needs to properly police the tax-cheating mega-rich, which means it falls on Democrats to find a way to wrangle this funding into law.
Today’s action: tell our MoCs to fight to properly fund the IRS
Contact your Senators:
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Maria Cantwell: 202-224-3441 or https://www.cantwell.senate.gov/contact/email/form
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Patty Murray: 202-224-2621 or https://www.murray.senate.gov/write-to-patty/
Contact your Representative:
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Pramila Jayapal: 202-225-3106 or https://jayapal.house.gov/contact
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Adam Smith: 202-225-8901 or https://adamsmith.house.gov/contact
Sample script:
Hi, my name is {NAME}, and I live in {CITY, ZIP}. I just finished paying my Federal taxes. Unlike the mega-rich, I did the right thing and paid my fair share in taxes. Now, I expect that you will do the right thing and fight to increase the IRS’s funding by $8 billion/year so that they can clear the backlog of tax refunds to Americans who depend on that money and hire more criminal investigators to force the wealthiest to pay their fair share, too.
Background
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“Treasury makes a plea for more I.R.S. funding on Tax Day” – http://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/business/tax-day-irs-funding.html
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“The IRS is underfunded, but it needs more than cash to stop tax cheats” – http://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/06/irs-tax-evasion-funding/
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“Richest 25 Americans reportedly paid ‘true tax rate’ of 3.4% as wealth rocketed” – http://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/08/richest-25-americans-jeff-bezos-elon-musk-tax
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“The U.S. Tax Burden on Labor” – http://taxfoundation.org/us-tax-burden-on-labor-2020/
