IRS collects milestone $1B in back taxes from high-wealth taxpayers

During Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the IRS collected nearly $4.7 trillion in gross taxes, processed almost 271.5 million tax returns and other forms, and issued about $659.1 billion in tax refunds. [1]

IRS’s actual expenditures were just over $16.1 billion for overall op­erations in Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. [2]

[1] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book

[2] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce

More context:

- The US Defense Budget alone is $842 billion for 2024 [1] - The US has given over $90 billion to Israel and Ukraine in 2024 [2]

All funded by debt. $1 billion here is theater to make us feel good about "sticking it to the rich"

We talk about getting the rich to "pay their fair share" as if the whole tax system isn't designed to get that money into the hands of whoever is greasing our politicians' palms. Good ol' military industrial complex.x

[1] https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/332687... [2] https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts

How is it all funded by debt? OP says the IRS collected $4.7T in taxes. So the military budget is 17% of the collected taxes, and the aide to Israel/Ukraine is <2% of all the collected taxes.

Why does debt matter?

The US pays over 1T in interest for its debt per quarter at this time [1]. Pretty much all collected income taxes go into debt servicing. Debt matters because if you keep doing this you run out of taxes to service the debt and then people will stop lending (buying your debt) while you still have to repay the debt you accumulated before so you will devalue your currency and have real inflation when nobody will hold cash at all. Other countries that went into this state got by with using USD instead of the national currency, the US won't have such an option.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA