Sorry, but in your first link it literally says “But, audit rates have dropped for all income levels—with audit rates decreasing the most for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more. IRS officials said audit rates declined due to staffing decreases and because it takes more staff time and expertise to handle complex higher-income audits.” So I am confused by that reference, as it seems to be exactly what I said.
My general point was however not about taxes specifically, I just thought taxes might be one example. I am more generally surprised that people think for crimes overall that the wealthy are more persecuted. My impression is that most of human history indicates the opposite.
I misunderstood, perhaps. Audit rates are primarily a function of funding—so marginal funding goes directly to those audits, because they are the most important. But if the US government wasn’t being insane, it would fund audits until the marginal societal cost of the audit was roughly equal to the income by the state. The reason I thought this disagreed with you point is because I thought you were disagreeing with the earlier claim that “This is going to lead to billionaires’ actions being surveilled more and thus gone after for crimes more often than the average person. The reward makes it worth it. Billionaires will have far more legal/monetary resources and thus you should naively expect more settlements, particularly without an admission of wrongdoing.” This seems to be borne out by the model it seems we’re both agreeing with, that higher complexity audits are more worthwhile in terms of return.
And yes, I think that per person, the ultra-wealthy, rather than just the people making 200k+, are far more likely to be investigated and prosecuted for white collar crime, because they get more scrutiny, rather than based on whether or not they commit more crime, even though they are more likely to get off without a large punishment via lawyers. But the analysis looked at rates of guilt, not punishment sizes.
Data seems to indicate otherwise.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104960
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/11/09/irs-uses-funding-to-audit-wealthy/71486513007/
Sorry, but in your first link it literally says “But, audit rates have dropped for all income levels—with audit rates decreasing the most for taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more. IRS officials said audit rates declined due to staffing decreases and because it takes more staff time and expertise to handle complex higher-income audits.” So I am confused by that reference, as it seems to be exactly what I said.
My general point was however not about taxes specifically, I just thought taxes might be one example. I am more generally surprised that people think for crimes overall that the wealthy are more persecuted. My impression is that most of human history indicates the opposite.
I misunderstood, perhaps. Audit rates are primarily a function of funding—so marginal funding goes directly to those audits, because they are the most important. But if the US government wasn’t being insane, it would fund audits until the marginal societal cost of the audit was roughly equal to the income by the state.
The reason I thought this disagreed with you point is because I thought you were disagreeing with the earlier claim that “This is going to lead to billionaires’ actions being surveilled more and thus gone after for crimes more often than the average person. The reward makes it worth it. Billionaires will have far more legal/monetary resources and thus you should naively expect more settlements, particularly without an admission of wrongdoing.” This seems to be borne out by the model it seems we’re both agreeing with, that higher complexity audits are more worthwhile in terms of return.
And yes, I think that per person, the ultra-wealthy, rather than just the people making 200k+, are far more likely to be investigated and prosecuted for white collar crime, because they get more scrutiny, rather than based on whether or not they commit more crime, even though they are more likely to get off without a large punishment via lawyers. But the analysis looked at rates of guilt, not punishment sizes.