'Shrivel and die': How a DOGE cut means paying taxes may become 'voluntary' for billionaires

Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall was surprised Tuesday that the Department of Justice’s impending closure of its Tax Division — ordered by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — has not gotten more news coverage, especially considering how much the removal of vital accountants can helps billionaires avoid paying taxes.

“Like a body sliced into a hundred pieces, [the department] will simply shrivel and die. And that, more or less, will be the end of the Tax Division,” Marshall wrote. "When you combine this with the gutting of IRS itself it basically means a radical diminution of tax enforcement in the United States. If you make more than say a million dollars a year paying taxes is probably going to be voluntary going forward. It’s a new feature of billionairedom.”

Marshall claims he was told the Trump administration is due to make the announcement on April 14. A March 25 Department of Justice memo reveals the Trump administration wants to reassign Tax Division personnel to various U.S. Attorneys’ Offices while maintaining "a core team of supervisory attorneys to administer relevant provisions of the Justice Manual."

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Marshall sees this as dispersing professional accountants and attorneys to the nation’s 93 US Attorney’s Offices, leaving only “a small managerial layer in Washington D.C." despite its effectiveness at recouping money.

Last December, the IRS reported it had recovered $4.7 billion. This included $2.9 billion related to IRS Criminal Investigation work into tax and financial crimes, including drug trafficking, cybercrime and terrorist financing and $475 million in proceeds from criminal and civil cases attributable to whistleblower information. This also included more than $1.3 billion from "high-income, high-wealth individuals" who had not paid overdue tax debt or filed tax returns.

Courts have found billionaire President Donald Trump’s own companies guilty of a long-running criminal tax fraud scheme that lasted into his first presidency. And a New York judge ordered Trump and his companies to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties after they engaged in a years-long scheme to mislead banks and lending agencies with inflated financial statements of his wealth.

A host of tax attorneys wary of the consequences sent an April 2 letter to Trump's Deputy Attorney General Todd W. Blanche, who as a private attorney defended Trump at a hush money criminal trial. A New York jury found Trump guilty on all charges in that case as well.

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The tax attorneys warned Blanche that “dismantling the Tax Division would do a grave disservice to tax administration by destroying consistent and competent application of our tax laws.”

“Our tax system touches every citizen and resident of the United States. It is fundamental that the tax system be enforced consistently nationwide, so that no matter where a business is organized or an individual lives, they can expect that everyone is subject to the same rules,” the letter read.

Click here to read Marshall's full article in Talking Points Memo.

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