Joe Lancaster & Thomas J. Healey: How Should the IRS Be Reformed?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Future of Freedom – "Joe Lancaster & Thomas J. Healey: How Should the IRS Be Reformed?"

Episode Information

• Title: Future of Freedom
• Host/Author: America's Talking Network
• Episode: Joe Lancaster & Thomas J. Healey: How Should the IRS Be Reformed?
• Release Date: December 20, 2024

Introduction In this episode of Future of Freedom, host Scott Bertram delves into the contentious debate surrounding the reform of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the broader income tax system. The discussion features two prominent voices: Joe Lancaster, Assistant Editor at Reason, who advocates for abolishing the IRS and income tax, and Thomas J. Healy, Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, who presents a case for reform rather than abolition. The conversation navigates through moral arguments, systemic complexities, the role of artificial intelligence, and the influence of tax preparation services.

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Joe Lancaster: The Case for Abolishing the IRS and Income Tax

Moral and Power-Based Arguments Joe Lancaster opens the dialogue by presenting a two-pronged argument against the IRS and income tax: the moral case and the power dynamics involved.

• Moral Case: Lancaster compares income taxation to an inherently dehumanizing process where a third party arbitrarily takes a portion of one's earnings. He states, “It's kind of inherently dehumanizing for some third party to step in before you can collect your earnings and say, well, I get. I need a cut of that” (00:56).

• Power Dynamics: He emphasizes the Supreme Court Justice John Marshall’s assertion that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” highlighting how the IRS's extensive reach enables potential social engineering through tax code manipulations (02:50).

Impacts on Nonprofits and Political Scrutiny Lancaster discusses how IRS decisions, such as altering deductions for charitable donations, can have wide-ranging effects on nonprofit organizations and their funding. He cites historical examples of the IRS targeting politically charged organizations, which can lead to decreased donations and operational hindrances (03:40).

Complexity and Inherent Difficulties of the Tax System Addressing the complexity of the tax filing process, Lancaster argues that the convoluted tax code, laden with deductions and credits, makes filing burdensome and prone to errors. He humorously likens the system to splitting a restaurant bill with unexpected discrepancies, illustrating the lack of transparency and predictability (06:16).

Tax Compliance and Fraud Lancaster highlights that simplifying the tax system could reduce inadvertent errors and increase compliance. He references IRS data showing high false positive rates in fraud detection, where over half of the flagged cases were not fraudulent, thereby delaying legitimate refunds and causing unnecessary stress (09:16).

Privacy Concerns While acknowledging privacy issues inherent in any tax system, Lancaster suggests that alternative systems, such as a tariff-based approach, might mitigate the extensive data collection required by the IRS. However, he notes that the specifics would depend on the replacement mechanism (13:11).

Appetite for Systemic Change Lancaster recognizes the public's inertia regarding the tax system, as many Americans are accustomed to income tax withholding and perceive it as convenient. He advocates for a more deliberate approach to taxation, where citizens actively consider how they pay taxes and what services they fund, rather than accepting the current passive system (15:07).

Notable Quote:

“I feel like in a lot of cases, people are just accustomed to it... We really don't think about it and who knows what's happening while we're not paying attention.” – Joe Lancaster (15:22)

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Thomas J. Healy: Reforming the IRS through Minimal Taxation and Technological Innovation

Minimal Taxation and Government Functions Thomas J. Healy underscores the necessity of taxes as a "necessary evil" to facilitate government functions. He advocates for minimizing taxation to only essential services, such as national security, public safety, and education, arguing that the current broad tax system leads to unchecked government spending driven by political incentives (18:00).

Critique of Reduced IRS Enforcement Healy counters the argument that cutting IRS enforcement would lower taxes, asserting that it would instead lead to decreased collection of rightful taxes. This, he notes, negatively impacts taxpayers who comply with tax laws by unfairly increasing the tax burden on honest citizens (19:40).

Artificial Intelligence in Tax Administration Healy is a proponent of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning into IRS operations to enhance efficiency and fairness. He explains how AI can handle the complexity of tax returns, identify anomalies without human bias, and automate interactions with taxpayers. For instance, AI could detect unusually high charitable deductions and request verification without prejudgment (21:04).

Return-Free Filing Highlighting global practices, Healy points out that most European Union countries utilize return-free filing systems for the majority of taxpayers, where the IRS can automatically calculate tax liabilities based on pre-reported income data. He advocates for adopting similar systems in the U.S. to simplify the filing process and reduce costs associated with tax preparation (25:24).

Influence of Tax Preparation Services Healy discusses the significant influence wielded by tax preparation lobbyists, which has historically hindered reforms aimed at simplifying the tax system. He argues that these services thrive on the complexity of the tax code and have successfully lobbied for maintaining a system that requires professional assistance, thereby perpetuating their own profitability (27:47).

Notable Quote:

“Artificial intelligence can say, well, that's a potential anomaly. Investigate. And the artificial intelligence can write me a letter and say, Mr. Healy, your charitable contributions look like they're out of line... it's done mechanically, it's done easily, it's done fairly because it's done mechanically.” – Thomas J. Healy (21:56)

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Conclusion: Balancing Abolition and Reform

The episode presents a compelling debate between abolishing the IRS and income tax outright versus reforming the existing system to enhance efficiency and fairness. Joe Lancaster passionately advocates for dismantling the IRS due to moral objections and the potential for governmental overreach. In contrast, Thomas J. Healy offers a pragmatic approach, emphasizing the necessity of taxes while proposing technological innovations to streamline the tax process and reduce unnecessary complexities.

Key Takeaways:

• Abolition vs. Reform: The discussion highlights the fundamental divide between those seeking to eliminate the IRS and income tax entirely and those aiming to reform the system to make it more efficient and less intrusive.
• Role of Technology: Integrating AI and machine learning into tax administration is seen as a viable solution to handle complexities, reduce errors, and ensure impartiality.
• Influence of Lobbyists: Tax preparation services have a vested interest in maintaining a complex tax code, influencing legislative processes to preserve their role in the tax ecosystem.
• Public Perception and Inertia: While there is significant dissatisfaction with the current tax system, public inertia and the comfort of existing processes pose challenges to implementing substantial reforms.

This episode of Future of Freedom provides a thorough examination of the contentious and multifaceted issues surrounding IRS reform, encouraging listeners to consider both the ethical implications and practical solutions for a more equitable tax system.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Joe Lancaster (00:56): “It's kind of inherently dehumanizing for some third party to step in before you can collect your earnings and say, well, I get. I need a cut of that.”
• Joe Lancaster (15:22): “I feel like in a lot of cases, people are just accustomed to it... We really don't think about it and who knows what's happening while we're not paying attention.”
• Thomas J. Healy (21:56): “Artificial intelligence can say, well, that's a potential anomaly. Investigate. And the artificial intelligence can write me a letter and say, Mr. Healy, your charitable contributions look like they're out of line... it's done mechanically, it's done easily, it's done fairly because it's done mechanically.”

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References: For more insights and episodes, visit americastalking.com or access the podcast through your preferred audio platform.

Transcript

[Scott Bertram]

Welcome to Future of Freedom. I'm your host, Scott Bertram. Future of Freedom is a production of America's Talking Network. You can check out all of our great [e-mail] to support great podcasts like this one, please donate by clicking the link in the show description. We bring you interviews today from different sides of the debate over reform at the irs. In a little bit, we'll be joined by Thomas J. Healy, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and former Assistant secretary of the U.S. treasury under President Ronald Reagan. First, we talk to Joe Lancaster, assistant editor at Reason. Joe, you want to go all the way. This [e-mail] abolish the IRS and the income tax too. Tell us about your proposal or at least the argument behind it.

[Joe Lancaster]

The piece that, that I wrote, it was for our abolish everything issue. So we pretty much anything that wasn't in the Constitution, a lot of us, you know, we each took a swipe at something that, that we thought should be abolished. And so I, I volunteered for, for not just the irs, but also just the income tax in general. And I, I tackled it really from two different angles, both the moral case and I guess, kind of the power angle. So the moral case, on the one hand, if you take, just, if you take a job from somebody and the two of you negotiate your wage, you set a price for your labor, the two of you agree to it when it comes time for you to actually get paid. It's, it's kind of inherently dehumanizing for some third party to step in before you can collect your earnings and say, well, I get. I need a cut of that. You know, I mean, that's, that's literally what Tony Soprano would do on the show the Sopranos, for the guys who, the guys under him. And yet functionally, that is very similar to what the IRS does every time you get paid is, well, you know, they step in and they take a cut of what you make simply by virtue of you being legally and gainfully employed in this country. And the, the power element is, was just the fact that, you know, a couple hundred years ago, the Supreme Court Justice John Marshall said that the power to tax involves the power to destroy. And that is much more so the case now even than it was then, simply because of how much of our lives is available, is available on paper to the federal government and how much of our lives taxation now touches. So there is just infinite possibilities for how many different ways the IRS can engage in social engineering simply by just tweaks to the Tax code.

[Scott Bertram]

Well, we just had a conversation somewhat recently about the deductions for charitable donations, what that number should be, what it would be in the future, how that might affect nonprofit agencies across the country. A single decision like that can affect not just you as an individual, but many entities all across the country.

[Joe Lancaster]

Absolutely. I mean, I work for a magazine that's published by a non profit, so, you know, I mean, I, I can't even, I can't even put into words how much a decision like that could influence, you know, my, my business and the work that we do. You know, and this certainly is not without precedent. You know, I mentioned in the piece, you know, we, people with a little bit of a longer, longer memory can remember, you know, about 10 or 15 years ago during the Tea Party movement, it came out that the organization, the entity within the IRS that kind of polices nonprofit status of organizations was taking a more, taking extra steps to verify organizations that had words like phrases like Tea Party or patriot in their names. You know, was making them go through additional hoops, which inspector general report later kind of affirmed it was absolutely political in nature. But, but it goes back, you know, decades further than that. During John F. Kennedy's administration, he singled out organizations on the far right, like the John Birch Society and organizations like that for additional scrutiny for, you know, making them go through additional, make additional steps, additional verification measures before they would be granted nonprofit status. And you know, on, on one level, it's not, you know, there's nobody's kicking in the door and, you know, shutting these places down. But at the same time, you know, you are structured as a nonprofit. You're kind of banking on this nonprofit status. Your, your donors certainly are. And so if the IRS is just kind of, for no discernible reason other than personal animus, is making you go through these additional hoops. It has the effect of potentially starving out those donations because, you know, your donors are, are accounting on this, you know, deduction that the IRS has built into the system that they're just not letting you have because, because they would rather not at the moment.

[Scott Bertram]

Joe, we spend billions of dollars every year trying to file taxes. We spend hours and hours trying to file taxes. Most Americans, I would say, have a negative perception of the entire process. Why is it so difficult to make things easier? Or is it complex on purpose?

[Joe Lancaster]

I would, I would hate to apply any sort of, or speculate on anyone's, what's in anybody's heart, but it absolutely feels like it is on some level on purpose. You know, I mean, I mentioned the, the credits and deductions a moment ago. A lot of the complexity is born out of that process because sure, it absolutely feels like we, you know, we have tax rates enshrined into law. If you make income within certain ranges, you have, there is a fixed number and that's the percentage that you pay. And so that feels like it should be simple, but it's not because we have all of these additional qualifications, qualifications for deductions, for credits, for, you know, write offs, write downs, you know, depreciation, amortization, all these, all these different, you know, multi syllable words that can either raise or lower your actual income tax liability. And that's ultimately the reason why it is, why it takes so much time and effort and in a lot of cases, money to file your taxes. You know, it, it's not like the government doesn't already know what you make and what you owe. You know, this is, we live in a time where this is all easily verifiable. You know, we receive our W2s and 1099s and our mortgage interest statements and our charitable giving statements, like all these different things, these different pieces of paper that we have to collect and put together. And so we file this form and then at the end of it, if we make a mistake and they catch it, well, then whether we intended to or not, that's a whole other headache. But yes, it's absolutely the case that the sheer breadth of the tax code, the growth and the increasingly convoluted carve outs and credits, all those types of things are what contribute to it being such a hassle to file every year. It's just because of all the different additional considerations we have put on what, whether you like it or not, as a system, the tax system should be relatively pain free, at least as it is pitched on paper.

[Scott Bertram]

Joe, we often hear about people not paying well. We'll say fair share of taxes or people using loopholes, or people, well, using the word fraud. Right, there's some tax fraud. How much of this is just simple errors, goodwill mistakes from people, people who are confused or don't know how to follow the reams of instructions from the irs. In essence, if the process were simpler, would actually more money flow into the Treasury.

[Joe Lancaster]

That's absolutely possible. I mean, like I said, so much of it involves a process that I heard a joke a few years back, I think it was even on a late night show that the, the income tax system in the US is akin to like if you and a friend go out to dinner and you decide ahead of time that you're going to split the bill. And then when the bill comes, the waiter hands it to your friend and you say, well, how much do I owe you? And your friend says, well, how much do you think you owe? And you say, I don't know, 50 bucks. And your friend says, actually it's 52. And now you're in trouble. And that's, that's kind of how the income tax system feels like it functions because like I said, all of this information is available. There's no reason that the government wouldn't know already how much you owe. So. And it says there's no reason that this shouldn't be equivalent to just a utility sending you a bill and you writing a check. You know, it's, it's not like when you get your gas bill every month that you have to go in and calculate, know how much you used, you know, calculate the, your, your rate versus how many therms were, were expended. No, the gas company knows how much you used, they send you a bill. And if it seems wildly out of proportion with what you're expecting, you know, you can reach out and kind of hammer something out. But the, the complexity of the tax code is, is such that the latest statistic I saw from the National Taxpayer Union Foundation, Americans spent an estimated $133 billion filing their tax returns this year and about six and a half billion hours preparing and filing. To your question about, you know, whether it's, whether it's fraud, whether it's, you know, simple mistakes, absolutely, there is fraud. I would never, you know, suggest that there isn't human beings, you know, we are, we are a fallen people. So absolutely people are going to misbeh. But even the IRS's internal mechanisms admit, you know, there's a report I mentioned in the piece Between January 1st and September 30th of 2018, the IRS has, you know, fraud detection systems that will flag certain things as potentially being fraudulent. And they say that between in that about nine month period in 2018, the detection systems caught about $7.6 billion in fraud, but they also delayed the processing of almost $20 billion in legitimate refunds. So simply false positives that were incorrectly flagged as fraud over the same, about the same amount of time. They found that the agency's false positive rates for fraud were 63 and 81%. So they divided it up into one was fraud related to identity theft and the other was fraud not related to identity theft. And between those two, the false positive rates for one were 63%. The false positive rates for the other were 81%. So more than half of what the IRS's fraud detection system is flagging is not fraud at all.

[Scott Bertram]

Joe, there are privacy concerns too. It seems often we have stories about someone's returns being leaked, many times the wealthier Americans, but still, theoretically, those should not be leaked, no matter what. Those are private returns that are submitted to the irs. If there is no irs, if the income tax is changed, abolished, those privacy concerns still a reality.

[Joe Lancaster]

It would depend on what we replace it with. But, but, yeah, depending on what, what took its place. It Absolutely, you know, there is certainly a scenario in which we would not need that, that sheer amount of information about people. You know, I mean, one of the, I know one of the proposals that the incoming presidential administration has apparently floated behind the scenes is, you know, replacing the entire income tax system with a tariff system. Now that, that's an entire other kettle of fish that I, you know, I'm not prepared to get into at this moment. But the, it would at least have the benefit of, well, this is, this is not something where I need to know just entire reams of data about each individual person, what they, what they make, where they work, you know, the, the types of things, especially when you get into the deductions, you know, whether they own a home, whether, you know, whether they give to charities, what charities they give to. So, absolutely. Like the form of the IRS and the income tax system as it is currently constituted does necessitate a certain amount of information, a certain amount of, a lack of privacy that most other replacement systems simply would not require.

[Scott Bertram]

Talking to Joe Lancaster, Assistant editor at reason, [e-mail] if the income tax is abolished, there are a number of possibilities. Flat tax, some sort of national sales tax or consumption tax. Americans have grown accustomed to the income tax over the years. Certainly. Is there an appetite for really a massive change in the way that you lay out?

[Joe Lancaster]

Honestly, I, I don't know. I, I, I think you're, I think you're right that there is a certain, I think, what's, what's the term existence bias, something like that, where.

[Scott Bertram]

Inertia. Right, yeah, sure, yeah.

[Joe Lancaster]

It's like you said, it, it is what we've had for, well, for everybody. It's, it's what we've always had, you know, as we've had it now. We've had it since 1913. So, you know, it's like the, seen in 1984 where, you know, Winston goes out looking for people who can Remember what, what the government was like before Big Brother. And nobody can remember. It just is always as, as it has been. So I, I certainly would love if, you know, there were some kind of, you know, a general popular revolt against, against the system. But I feel like in a lot of cases, people are just accustomed to it. You know, I've heard, you know, people talk about the concept of income tax withholding. Just, you know, people I' through the course of my life who just kind of, they, they kind of prefer it because then they don't have to worry about, you know, what they owe or they don't have to keep, worry about keeping track of it. It's just, it's taken out of their check. They don't have, they don't have to think about it. You know, and so on one level, sure, that's convenient, but on the other, I don't know. I, I think there should be, it should be a little bit more deliberate if, if we're, if we've accepted a system where, you know, we, we all have to pay in some amount of money to keep the government going, whether we like it or not. You know, as a society, we've, we've decided on that there should at least be a little bit more active thought about the money that does go into it, how we pay for it, how much we pay for it, what it pays for. And yeah, as it is right now, as it exists right now, I feel like a lot of that just, it just kind of happens subconsciously. We really don't think about it and who knows what, what's happening while we're not paying attention.

[Scott Bertram]

Joe Lancaster is assistant editor@reason Reason.org Joe, thanks so much for joining us here on Future of Freedom.

[Joe Lancaster]

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

[Scott Bertram]

Now to hear another side of the argument about reform at the irs, we talk with Thomas J. Healy, senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, also founder of Healy Development and former Assistant secretary of the U.S. treasury under President Ronald Reagan. Thomas, thanks so much for joining us here on Future of Freedom. Talking today about the irs, the Internal Revenue Service. It is, I think we would both admit, not the most popular governmental organization in the country. There are some who would say, well, let's minimize it, let's get rid of it, let's make it, let's totally turn it down on its head. What's the best argument for perhaps moving in a different direction, meaning reflection, form it, perhaps strengthen it in some areas?

[Thomas J. Healy]

Right. Everyone hates the irs. No one likes to pay taxes. That's a Given it's a necessary evil to make our government function. There are many, including me, who think that the goal should be to do minimum amount of taxation, bigger function. And then we can argue what are the minimum necessary functions of the government. Clearly, protecting the safety of the country is one. Protecting the safety of the people is one. Most would agree. Providing some kind of safety net under the disadvantaged is one. The education system. I could go on with the list, but where does that stop? And the problem is the basic system of taxation is set up in the Congress in our country. And the tendency to spend more is very attractive. Almost no senator or congressman has ever gotten not reelected because they said we should cut the budget. Everyone has a tendency, even the most conservative members of the congress, to spend for their district and then go back and say, gee, I put a new. We put a new dam in or a new road or a new building or whatever, because that attracts votes. My argument is fine if we have taxes. My argument is we have to have taxes. I cheerfully pay my taxes, but I want to pay the fair amount of taxes. I don't want to pay too much. I want to minimize the amount of taxes I have to pay. And so that gets me to the question of enforcement. And what is happening is many on the right are saying, we hate taxes. Let's cut the budget on the irs. We'll reduce enforcement and that'll reduce taxes. Well, reducing enforcement doesn't reduce taxes. All it does is it reduces the collection of fair taxes, and that hurts all of us who pay the right amount.

[Scott Bertram]

You know, you've written a few op Eds on the topic of reform. And you've mentioned using artificial intelligence, using machine learning to help find fraud, to find cheating, to either identify behavior that likely leads to fraud, or detection software for issues. What's stopping the implementation of that sort of software, that sort of intelligence right now with the irs?

[Thomas J. Healy]

Well, you said it very well. One of the most exciting innovations in the next decade is going to be artificial intelligence, where we're at the top of the first inning in what the implications are going to be from artificial intelligence because of its ability to deal with massive amounts of information very efficiently. And that's what the ir. That's what the tax system is. Our tax system is enormously complicated. I happen to have a fairly complicated tax return. My tax return, if I turned it in by paper, I don't. It's turned in electronically. It last year was 1400 pages.

[Scott Bertram]

Goodness.

[Thomas J. Healy]

Almost impossible. Certainly impossible for me to understand. I don't know how an IRS Agent can understand. I just have investments. And each investment provides 20 pages of information. And you multiply that by 100 investments and all of a sudden you're at 2,000 pages of a tax return. So there is a lot of information about taxable income. It's reported by investment companies, it's reported by employers. It's all collected from all over for a lot of people, and it has to be collected from a lot of sources. And all the IRS really cares about is my tax information and wants to put it together and see how much tax I pay. That's a perfect hyper complicated financial calculation that perfectly accessible to the power of artificial intelligence. All the information to collect it, to figure out exactly how much I should pay. The analytical part of artificial intelligence can then go and say, well, everybody like Tom Healy typically has charitable contributions of, let's say, $10,000 a year. Tom Healy has declared $200,000 of charitable contributions. That's out of line. It may be exactly correct. But artificial intelligence can say, well, that's a potential anomaly. Investigate. And the artificial. You don't even need an agent. The artificial intelligence can write me a letter and say, Mr. Healy, your charitable contributions look like they're out of line. Would you please provide substantiation for your charitable deductions? But we haven't had an agent. We haven't had an individual involved. It's all done. It's all done mechanically. It's done easily. It's done fairly because it's done mechanically. The anomaly isn't picked out by some agent who's mad at Tom Healy or mad at People Jersey. It's done by a machine, arbitrarily and without prejudice. And it's a perfect of many good uses of artificial intelligence and how we as a society benefit from artificial intelligence.

[Scott Bertram]

Occasionally you'll hear someone perhaps say, why don't they just bill me if they know what I owe in taxes, if they can tell me that I'm wrong when I fill out my forms, why don't they just tell me what I owe? You have written about return free filing for at least perhaps some Americans. What does that look like? And how is that effort going?

[Thomas J. Healy]

Well, let me note that almost every country in the European Union has returned free filing. So we are the anomaly. If I could continue to overuse that word, we as a country are the anomaly that we don't have that. And return free filing for 95% of the people in the United States and in Europe. Their returns are very simple. They don't have the 2,000 page return that I do because their income is basically their salary. They'll have some standard deductions and maybe some small deductions. But people's salaries, which is the basic income for the vast majority of the country, is reported directly to the irs. And the IRS can calculate for a school teacher what he got paid, what his standard deduction should be. He's reported how many children he has, et cetera, and can calculate to the penny what that person should owe, unless that person has some anomaly, has excess deductions, or unfortunately has medical bills or other things that are deductions. So other than the differences, the IRS can easily calculate an accurate tax return. And that means that that teacher doesn't have to go to a. It's complicated enough even if you're a teacher that you have to go to a. Most people have to go to a tax return service and pay a fee in order to file their taxes. This would eliminate that.

[Scott Bertram]

I've read that the tax preparation lobby, the tax preparation services, we all know the names. How big of an influence do they have? Can they have on these potential reforms to IRS policy or the way we file our taxes?

[Thomas J. Healy]

Historically, they've had a lot of influence. It doesn't take a lot of money to influence, to have at least an influence work a legislature. Here's the argument. The argument that the government filing the taxes is unpleasant because we hate taxes, because the bias towards taxes and tax collection is so high. There's no congressman who is for higher taxes. There's no inheritable case for better. For better tax collection. They have expanded. I understand, and my facts may be a little bit imprecise, but I have an anecdotal understanding that they have expanded that system to more states. Here. The original experiment was started in states that had no state tax system. There are a number of states like Florida that don't have state taxes. So all you have to do is calculate the federal. If you live in New Jersey like I do, New Jersey has its own tax system, which sadly is not based on the federal tax system. So it makes the filing of the New Jersey tax return much harder even for AI to do. And so you need a much more comprehensive AI system. And this is really a big point, not a little point into making the whole tax system more taxpayer friendly. I would investing money in the investigation of tax returns. I would put a lot more money into making it easier for taxpayers when they have questions to get answers. I'm going to not get these statistics right, but several years ago there were tens of millions of unanswered tax questions that taxpayers had asked the IRS and hadn't had the chance to answer. And there were tens of millions of unexamined tax returns that have been filed and hadn't yet been analyzed. Both of those things are subject to significant improvement in client service by investing in technology. You shouldn't have to wait an hour and a half on the phone to get an answer from the irs. It's just a question of spending the money and the effort to make that user friendly.

[Scott Bertram]

Thomas J. Healy is Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, former Assistant Secretary of U.S. treasury under President Ronald Reagan, and founder of Healy Development. Thomas, thank you so much for joining us here on Future of Freedom.

[Thomas J. Healy]

Pleasure.

[Scott Bertram]

We thank both of our guests for joining us Joe Lancaster, assistant Editor at Reason, and Thomas J. Healy, Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School and former Assistant Secretary of the treasury under President Ronald Reagan. For additional episodes of the Future of Freedom podcast and other fine podcasts from America's Talking network, check out americastalking.com or anywhere you find your audio. Thank you for listening to Future of Freedom, presented by America's Talk Walking Network.