每天一篇经济学人 | Taxation in America 美国的税收（...
“Now you may only see a pile of receipts. But I see a story. I can see where this story is going. It does not look good.” These lines, spoken by an Internal Revenue Service agent in “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, a dark sci-fi comedy now showing in cinemas, is perfectly calibrated to strike fear into the hearts of Americans ahead of their tax-filing deadline on April 18th. The agent has a paper trail neatly arrayed on her desk as she conducts an audit. Reality is more frightening, for the exact opposite reason. “Paper is the IRS’s kryptonite,” Erin Collins, a watchdog within the IRS, recently told Congress. “The agency is buried in it.”
在你可能只会看到一堆收据。但我看到了一个故事。我知道接下来会发生什么了。看起来不太好。” 在一部正在影院上映的黑色科幻喜剧片《瞬息全宇宙》中，美国国税局的一名探员说了这句话。在4月18日报税截止日期之前，这句话完美地植入了美国人心中的恐惧。探员在进行审计时，她的办公桌上整齐地摆放着一份文件。现实更可怕，原因恰恰相反。“纸张是国税局的致命弱点，”国税局内部监督人员Erin Collins最近告诉国会。“国税局深陷其中。”
The IRS entered this tax season with a backlog of 24m returns, 20 times worse than normal, as it struggled to recover from pandemic disruptions. Good luck to anyone wanting help by phone: just one in nine callers reached an agent last year, according to Ms Collins. Now in the midst of a hiring drive, the IRS thinks it can clear the backlog by the end of 2022. But it will be up to two years late in processing many returns. “It’s a crisis,” says Mark Everson, former head of the IRS. “Millions of people and businesses who were due tax refunds don’t have that money yet. This is very detrimental for compliance.
进入这个纳税季节，美国国税局正艰难地从疫情中断中恢复过来，其积压了2400万份报税表，比正常情况糟糕20倍。祝任何想通过电话寻求帮助的人好运:根据Collins女士的说法，去年只有九分之一的打电话者找到了国税局探员。现在，在招聘热潮中，美国国税局认为可以在2022年底前解决积压的工作。但在处理许多报税表方面，它将晚两年。美国国税局前局长Mark Everson表示：“这是一场危机，数以百万计的个人和企业应该得到退税，但他们还没有拿到这笔钱。这对合规性非常不利。”
Even without the pandemic, the IRS was struggling, the victim of chronic underfunding. Spending on the agency has declined by nearly 20% since 2010. At the same time, the number of tax returns has increased by 20%. The backbone of the system, a nationwide taxpayer database, is built on top of a 1960s computer language rarely taught in schools. One major element of President Joe Biden’s legislative programme is a funding boost for the IRS. Yet that is stalled, along with much of the rest of his agenda.
即使没有大流行病，国税局也在挣扎，其是长期资金不足的受害者。自2010年以来，国税局的支出下降了近20%。与此同时，纳税申报表的数量增加了20%。该系统的主干是一个全国性的纳税人数据库，它是建立在一种20世纪60年代的计算机语言之上的，这种语言在学校里很少教。乔•拜登(Joe Biden)总统立法计划的一个主要内容是增加国税局的资金。然而，这一计划和他的大部分其他议程都被搁置了。
It is hard for lawmakers to summon enthusiasm for the IRS. Who enjoys paying taxes? Even for those who recognise the social value, the act of filing tax returns is a hassle. The 1040 form, the basic document for personal-income-tax reporting, came with just one page of instructions when introduced in 1913. This year’s version has 230 pages of instructions when counting all the branches added to it, reckons Demian Brady of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, an advocacy organisation.
【背景】1040表格是一份基本的美国联邦所得税表格。1040表格是美国最常见的税务文件之一，每年都有许多美国人填写。表格包括两个主要部分：一个是报告收入和家庭信息，另一个是适用于纳税义务的允许扣除、抵免和其他考虑。
立法者很难对国税局产生热情。谁喜欢纳税? 即使对那些认识到其社会价值的人来说，申报纳税也是一件麻烦事。1040表格是申报个人所得税的基本文件，1913年推出时只有一页说明。国家纳税人联盟基金会(一个倡导组织)的Demian Brady估计，今年的版本如果包括所有新增分支机构，其有230页的说明。
Like any good story, though, there is also a plot twist. Despite its awful backlog, the IRS has, from another perspective, had a very good pandemic. It has played a critical role in delivering support to Americans. And it has been surprisingly efficient at it. For each of the three rounds of stimulus payments, the IRS was the conduit. Within two weeks of Mr Biden’s signing of the stimulus bill in March 2021, for instance, it sent out $325bn via 127m separate payments, mainly by direct bank deposit. Some people fell through the cracks and cheques took longer. But most got the money quickly. The IRS operated at even greater frequency in making child-tax-credit payments every month.
不过，就像任何好故事一样，故事情节也有转折。尽管积压如山，但从另一个角度来看，美国国税局在新冠大流行下表现很好。它在向美国人民提供支持方面发挥了关键作用。它在这方面的效率惊人。在这三轮刺激支付中，美国国税局都是传导渠道。例如，在拜登于2021年3月签署经济刺激法案后的两周内，政府通过1.27亿笔单独支付，主要是通过银行直接存款，发放了3250亿美元。有些人被遗漏了，拿到支票花的时间更长。但大多数人很快就拿到了钱。美国国税局每月在儿童税收抵免付款方面的频率甚至更高。
Along with doling out vast sums of cash, the IRS also took less in. The government gave the unemployed tax breaks on their benefits and gave businesses tax breaks for retaining workers. It also expanded the earned-income tax credit, a subsidy given to low earners, one of America’s biggest anti-poverty programmes. Putting it together, a poor family with two young children could expect $20,000 from the IRS last year, double what they would normally receive. In all, the agency paid out more than $600bn in pandemic-related support in 2021, equivalent to about two-thirds of Social Security spending in the federal government’s budget. “We have seen a substantial share of what used to be the social safety-net migrate from the public-expenditure side of the federal ledger to being run through the tax code,” points out Gordon Gray of the American Action Forum, a think-tank.
除了发放大量现金外，美国国税局的收入也减少了。政府为失业者的福利提供税收减免，并为留住工人的企业提供税收减免。它还扩大了劳动所得税收抵免，这是一项给予低收入者的补贴，是美国最大的扶贫项目之一。加在一起，一个有两个孩子的贫困家庭去年可以从美国国税局获得2万美元，这是正常情况下的两倍。该机构在2021年总共支付了6000多亿美元的大流行病的相关支持，相当于联邦政府预算中约三分之二的社会保障支出。智库美国行动论的Gordon Gray指出:“我们已经看到过去社会保障网的很大一部分从联邦分类账的公共支出部分转移到了税法中”。
By the agency’s own count, Americans spend about 13 hours doing their taxes on average—mostly condensed into one frantic spring weekend. In fact this is an improvement: in 2010 the estimate was 18 hours. Increased use of software such as TurboTax, made by Intuit, has sped up the filing process. More could be done: the IRS provides a free-software option for poorer Americans but does a bad job advertising it (the Federal Trade Commission is suing Intuit for allegedly attracting customers in the belief that filing would be free, only to charge them). There are also perennial calls for the IRS to collect tax via withheld pay, allowing many to avoid filing returns altogether, as is common elsewhere, including Britain.
【背景】美国联邦贸易委员会在联邦法院起诉 Intuit，声称它多年来一直欺骗客户，将其 TurboTax 软件作为免费软件进行营销，然后在大多数用户提交所得税时向他们收取费用。根据 Inuit 1 月份的股东介绍，2021 年约有 5,600 万人使用 TurboTax 报税。该公司表示，这些人提交了 5,400 万份 W-2 和 4,000 万份 1099 税表。
FTC 在美国加州北区地方法院起诉 Intuit，要求立即停止其「假」广告，因为纳税人急于在 4 月 18 日的最后期限前提交 2021 年所得税。该机构周一还发布了一份平行的行政投诉，称该诉讼将确定 Intuit 的行为是否违反了 FTC 法案。FTC 表示，Intuit 的大部份广告都告诉消费者，他们可以使用 TurboTax 网络免费提交所得税，但对于大多数用户来说并非如此，包括获得 1099 税表，零工经济中的独立合约员工。
根据国税局自己的统计，美国人平均花13个小时报税，大部分都集中在一个狂乱的春季周末。事实上，这是一个进步:2010年的估计是18个小时。Intuit公司的TurboTax等软件的使用增加，加快了申报过程。还可以做得更多: 美国国税局为较贫穷的美国人提供了免费软件的选择，但在宣传方面做得很差(联邦贸易委员会正在起诉Intuit公司，理由是Intuit公司让人们相信可以免费报税，但却向他们收费，从而吸引客户)。还有一些人长期呼吁美国国税局通过代扣代缴税款来征税，这样许多人就可以完全避免提交报税表，这在其他地方很常见，包括英国。
That, however, misses the point about the IRS as a welfare provider. It needs a range of information from taxpayers in order to assess their eligibility. “We don’t look at stores like Walmart and say, oh, it’s so complicated. We say, hey, that’s convenient. A similar thing should apply to some extent to the income-tax system,” says William Gale of the Brookings Institution, another think-tank. Using the 1040 form as the gateway to multiple social programmes and tax credits means that people do not have to go to a series of different agencies for each payout.
然而，这并没有抓住国税局作为福利提供者的意义。它需要纳税人提供一系列信息，以评估他们的资格。另一家智库布鲁金斯学会的William Gale说：“我们不会看着沃尔玛这样的商店说，哦，这太复杂了。我们会说，嘿，这很方便。类似的事情也应该在一定程度上适用于所得税制度”。使用1040表格作为多个社会项目和税收抵免的入口，意味着人们不必为每一笔支出去找一系列不同的机构。
Eventually, the IRS will hack its way through the pandemic backlog. That, however, will do nothing to fix another serious problem: the degradation of its auditing abilities. About a fifth of agency staff are eligible for retirement, and many have taken covid as the moment to leave. “We’re losing exactly the kind of people we need to be able to maintain enforcement scrutiny,” says a senior Treasury official. The IRS audited 0.3% of corporate tax returns filed in 2018, down from 1.6% in 2010. The number this year may well be lower. Charles Rettig, who leads the agency as its commissioner, has estimated that the government loses about $1trn in tax revenues annually because of cheating. The agency is “outgunned” against big companies, he says.
最终，国税局会设法解决大流行的积压。然而，这无助于解决另一个严重问题:审计能力的下降。大约五分之一的国税局工作人员符合退休条件，许多人因感染新冠肺炎而离开。美国财政部一位高级官员表示:“我们正在失去的正是我们需要的那种人，他们能够维持执法审查。”2018年美国国税局审计了0.3%的企业纳税申报单，低于2010年的1.6%。今年这一数字可能会更低。作为主管该机构的专员，Charles Rettig估计，政府每年因欺诈损失约1万亿美元的税收。他说，与大公司相比，该机构“火力不足”。
The answer to so many of the IRS’s woes—antiquated tech systems, congested phone lines, threadbare enforcement—is more funding. It stands as one of the few federal agencies that would generate a large and nearly immediate return on investment were the government to spend more on it. The hope for the harried tax agents is that the highs and lows of IRS performance during the pandemic will have earned it grudging support in Washington, demonstrating that it is both overstretched and indispensable.
要解决国税局众多的问题(陈旧的技术系统，拥挤的电话线路，老一套的执法)需要更多的资金。如果政府在这方面投入更多资金，它将成为少数几个能够产生巨大且几乎立即的投资回报的联邦机构之一。对于饱受困扰的税务人员来说，他们希望疫情期间美国国税局起起伏伏的表现能让他们在华盛顿获得勉强的支持，这表明国税局的工作负担过重，而且不可或缺。
