Rich people and corporations need to pay up, says IRS head as agency looks to collect $1 trillion in unpaid taxes
CBSN
The Biden administration and Democrats have a key message to corporate America and the wealthy: It's time to pay up in full. Officials have raised tax enforcement as a priority in recent months as the administration seeks to fund its priorities.
The Internal Revenue Service has seen a dramatic decrease in funding and staff in recent years and its commissioner suggests the United States is missing out on collecting as much as $1 trillion a year. The service estimates $441 billion in taxes owed went unpaid each year from 2011 to 2013. Through enforcement, officials collected $60 billion of those unpaid taxes, reducing the gap to $381 billion annually. On Tuesday, Commissioner Charles Rettig told senators that figure did not include cryptocurrency as well as much information on foreign source incomes and illegal source incomes.An Arizona grand jury indicted 18 people Wednesday in the ongoing investigation into an alleged attempt to use alternate electors after the 2020 presidential election as part of a wider alleged conspiracy to falsely declare then-President Donald Trump the winner, the state's attorney general announced.
Almost four out of every 10 people in the United States live in a place where air pollution is considered bad enough to put their health at risk, the American Lung Association warned in its latest "State of the Air" report released on Wednesday. That proportion of people — about 39% of the population — had risen sharply since earlier rounds of pollutant data were analyzed for the annual report last year, and the trends were especially pronounced in certain parts of the country.