Word: taxed
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...processing problems forever, the IRS before long found itself with old and outdated equipment. A plan to upgrade its machines was defeated in Congress during the 1970s, when the agency fell prey to suspicions generated by Watergate. Legislators feared that some day an Administration might use a centralized computer tax system to harass citizens. In January 1980 the IRS at last issued a call for bids on a new computer to replace its old Honeywell and Control Data machines. The contract was awarded to Sperry 18 months later, but the agency did not complete its order for the new computers...
Problems with the hastily installed machines began to crop up immediately. Two of the computers had to be sent back to Sperry when technicians at the IRS offices in Memphis and Atlanta could not get them started. At other centers tape drives storing tax-return information persistently malfunctioned. In addition, a program developed to allow computers that suddenly crashed to resume processing where they left off mysteriously failed as well. Each time the system went down, operators had to start the work from scratch. Says Thomas Laycock, the IRS assistant commissioner of computers: "There were things that...
Despite Stockman's public support of Reaganomics, in private he doubted that the President's edicts forbidding new taxes or cuts in military spending and his political timidity in tackling Social Security left room for a responsible fiscal policy. Those doubts first surfaced in the Atlantic in December 1981, when Stockman denigrated the supply-side faith that tax cuts could increase Government revenues through added growth...
Concerned that Reagan's 1981 tax cut could exacerbate rather than cure the looming deficits, Stockman began to fall away from supply-side theology and line up with such pragmatists as former Chief of Staff James Baker and his assistant Richard Darman, now Secretary and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Together they battled to scale back increases in defense spending, with little success until this year. Though they helped enact a few "revenue-enhancing" measures, they could not persuade the President to consider more serious tax increases...
...phony." Said Gray: "Look, it doesn't do either of us any good to describe our plans this way." The President was riled, but he did not actually throw down his pencil until two Senators, Republican Slade Gorton and Democrat Lawton Chiles, started to talk about the need for tax increases. Said Reagan: "You can't show me a time in history when a major tax cut did not result in greater revenue...