Mar 9, 2023
שואלין ודורשין בהלכות הפסח קודם הפסח שלשים יום • לא מדובר רק על הלכות חמץ ומצה • חייבים להתכונן להקרבת הפסח • ללמוד ולשנות את המצב בהר הבית • כבר מאוחר • חייבים להזדרז • הרב אליהו ובר • בית המדרש בהר הבית
I understand they also have a FB group (Rachmana Litzlan!).
We already noted the gross bookkeeping fiction in speaking of federal “employees” paying taxes.
But, guess what? Some of them don’t pay taxes even nominally!
Assorted excerpts from Washington Times:
More than 42,000 federal employees repeatedly failed to file their taxes with the IRS, according to a new audit that said the government is limited in its ability to punish the cheats.
But the IRS devotes little effort to targeting federal nonfilers, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. And the law restricts how much information the IRS can share with other federal agencies, so they’re limited in their ability to prod or punish the employees, the audit found.
As of 2021, delinquent federal employees owed $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes.
… tax compliance among federal employees has been trending down in recent years. As recently as 2017, just 108,000 employees were delinquent in filing or paying. But in 2021, that rose to 149,000 cases, out of a federal workforce of 3 million.
The delinquents generally avoid punishment, the inspector general said, though the exact number of cases referred for criminal investigation was redacted in the new report.
And just 28 of the federal nonfilers were slapped with civil penalties.
Lia Colbert, the commissioner of the IRS’ small business and self-employed division, said nearly 80% of the delinquencies the audit found were “resolved” by last September.
“We identified over 17,000 repeat Federal civilian employee nonfilers who had not filed an income tax return for three or more years. Yet, these employees continued in their Federal jobs, with pay and benefits, without adequate IRS enforcement scrutiny,” the audit concluded.
Maybe. Wait and see!
Quoting Rabbi Mordechai Kornfeld:
All the difficulties seem to have been adequately dealt with — except for one. What is the once-in-seven(ty)-years cycle of “coming up” (“Oleh Echad L’Shiv’im Shana”) mentioned by the Gemara? Does the Murex Trunculus snail show any unusual prominence every seventy (or seven) years? So far, no such behavior has been determined in the Murex. It should be pointed out, however, that much of the headway made in Chilazon research is quite recent, and there has not yet been sufficient opportunity to study the nature of the Murex snail. We may yet discover that there is indeed some sort of regular periodical occurrence involved in Murex’s life cycle. It is interesting to note that a few kilometers north of Haifa there is a ravine known to the Arabs as Wadi Hilzun, which is near a mountain called Mount Chilazon. Rashi (Megilla 6a, Sanhedrin 91a — see also Rashi Menachot 44a) explains the “coming up” of the Chilazon, as the Chilazon emerging from the sea and ascending the mountains. Is it possible that every few years (or decades) there is some sort of mass migration of these snails through Wadi Hilzun and up Mount Chilazon, from which these places may have been given their names in ancient times? Only time will tell!
Of course, one could mention other points in this connection, but the straightforward approach here caught my eye.