I don’t know why they would bother, nothing has happened to the IRS for targeting only conservative political actions committees and organisations.
The dirty little secret is that both sides have progressives that want to use the power of the IRS to their own advantage. If we will ever be free of the threat of this tyranny we need to get the federal government out of the collection business altogether.
Divide the federal budget by the number of the states and then let the states collect it. There is no need for federal government to be concerned with collections from individuals at all.
Their tactics have changed.
They target small business owners, essentially with extortion.
They disallow ALL except perhaps 10-20% of itemized deductions from a tax return.
Safety equipment and uniforms no longer allowed because the employee knows he expected to wear these at work, so it’s his choice when he hired on to the business. Business can’t give them to him because he is an individual, not a recognized charity.
So let’s say you brought in $80k and took out single deduction on the W4, but were married and filed as a couple. You should have a lot coming back. If you itemized, you might have $10-15k coming back after having $18k withheld. Standardized deduction returns you maybe half of that.
In order to defend yourself and take it to court, it will cost you $2500 min + $300-$600/hr of attorney fees.
By the time its all said and done, you risk dropping $50k out of cash you don’t have to retrieve say $7500 which you already had received. Multiply that times three, for the year preceding and following the audit, and it’s a $50k cost to defend $18k to $25k max loss even as a personal loan to pay it off.
You pay it as standardized deduction and mark up your costs for the next billing cycle on future work.
The people staffing the IRS as as liberal as they come. They think all of society’s woes are due to greedy capitalists and they feel business expenses are a loophole they want to close.
Medical expenses won’t go beyond ObamaCare, even if they were 3 years old. $5k cap on personal liability, so its not over the 8% min cap to deduct. Won’t get itemized.
It doesn’t matter if all you expenditures have been based on the tax codes to live efficiently. They intend to extort the taxpayer and you never get a fair hearing.