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

I see $90B in economic aid to Israel, but under the graph titled,

> Israel Is the Largest Cumulative Recipient of U.S. Aid Total aid from fiscal years 1946 to 2024

!!!

It's also worth noting that usually military aid numbers include the cost of the hardware we send over. It's a $300 aid package to Ukraine, but we are sending old M1 tanks and a small bit of the existing ATACMS inventory we've been stockpiling since the 80's.