Posted on 12/08/2021 4:04:21 PM PST by ransomnote
The Democrats’ Build Back Better Act pending in the U.S. Senate includes a proposal to allocate $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to hire nearly 87,000 additional agents – a plan opposed by a majority of voters recently polled.
The BBBA proposal also comes after numerous reports show years of examples of agency problems costing taxpayer money.
According to a new HarrisX poll, 58% of likely voters said they think increased enforcement would impact middle class taxpayers the most; 23% said it would only impact the wealthy.
Their inclination appears to be accurate, according to the House version of the bill. Half of the expected 1.2 million new audits would target households earning less than $75,000.
The majority of the proposed funding – $44.9 billion – would go toward IRS enforcement compared to $1.93 billion to help taxpayers with services like pre-filing assistance and education, filing and account services, and taxpayer advocacy.
While large corporations employ a staff of lawyers and accountants who help lower their tax responsibilities, most small businesses don’t. Because the IRS already audits large corporations, new agents would likely focus on small businesses that depend on cash transactions, CNBC reports.
“Certain small businesses may face an audit under the plan. I think the industries that should be concerned are those in cash,” Luis Strohmeier, a partner at Octavia Wealth Advisors, told CNBC. Strohmeier said it’s likely the new agents would scrutinize cash-only small businesses like restaurants, retail, salons and other service-based companies.
To put the number of 86,852 new IRS agents into perspective, Americans for Tax Reform said, that’s more than the population of Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Biden's proposal comes after reports show years of mismanagement of taxpayer money by the IRS.
According to a 2021 IRS audit by the Treasury Inspector General, the IRS achieved only 37% of its hiring goal because it was “difficult to find working copiers … to be able to prepare training packages.” One notable reason was because employees didn’t replace ink cartridges.
A 2020 National Taxpayer Advocate report to Congress showed the IRS hadn’t hired over 5,000 full time employees for which it had the funding because of disorganization, incompetence, and labor union rules promoting “needless bureaucracy.”
And in 2017, the Treasury Inspector General found that the IRS rehired more than 200 employees who had been fired for misconduct or performance issues.
Likewise, existing employees were having difficulty performing their jobs, the 2021 Treasury audit found. More than 8.3 million individual tax returns and transactions remained to be processed as of the end of Calendar Year 2020.
“As of March 5, 2021, the IRS had 4,434 Submission Processing function positions that remain unfilled or for which employees are not working for various reasons,” the audit found. “As of March 1, 2021, IRS management stated that they have more than 31,000 boxes (approximately 4.7 million documents) that need to be refiled or retired to a Federal Records Center location. As of March 1, 2021, the IRS estimated there were approximately 70,000 tax return requests that need to be fulfilled.”
Before COVID-related closures, the IRS was already ranked last among federal agencies for its failure to provide quality communication, and reports continued to detail examples of mismanagement.
In a 2018 National Taxpayer Advocate Annual Report to Congress, the IRS was ranked last out of 15 federal agencies for its communication because taxpayers who called the agency were often “left floundering on the rocks of confusion, frustration, and misinformation.”
Every year, the IRS hangs up on millions of callers through a practice called “Courtesy Disconnects.” Currently, if taxpayers try to reach a person answering the phone at an IRS office, they have 1-in-50 chance of success, The Washington Post reported.
Government watchdog Open The Books notes that in 2018, the IRS website was down on its most important day of the year: Tax Day. When millions of taxpayers tried to file their 2017 tax returns, there was a system-wide computer failure and filers were told there was a “planned outage: April 17, 2018 – December 31, 9999…” and their “tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available."
Open The Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski said the website failure “certainly wasn’t for a lack of payroll.” He pointed to the fact that 1,511 IRS employees received $173 million in annual compensation in 2017, with more than 500 employees receiving bonuses of up to $61,766 each.
Open the Books has also raised concerns about the militarization of the IRS. It found that from 2005 through 2014, 2,316 special agents spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, nearly $5,000 per agent.
ATR has also raised concerns about the IRS spending money on highly partisan union activity. Because taxpayer-funded lobbying isn’t banned at the federal level, IRS employees can perform union duties during work hours.
In 2019, 1,421 IRS and Treasury Department employees spent 353,820 work hours performing union-related duties, costing the federal government and taxpayers $17.27 million. Likewise, the National Treasury Employees Union contributes 97% of its PAC money to Democratic campaigns.
Despite the BBBA being a Democratic-backed plan, some Democratic senators have expressed concerns about several of its proposals, including expanding IRS auditing powers.
Estimated 40%-65% of funds to protect teachers, students, from virus go to new tracks, tennis courts, stadium expansion, and, security cameras.
Excerpted
I hear there’s an opening for Chrissy at Cuomo’s spot.
4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4
Praying Medic
Tyrannical measures will increase until compliance improves.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-boris-johnson-address-nation-25679093
https://t.me/praying_medic/7405
How is RedPill allowed to attend?
A top adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing calls to recuse herself from the Justice Department's investigation of the Trump-Russia probe, which has looked into the actions of her husband, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Margaret Goodlander serves as counsel to Garland, who oversees Special Counsel John Durham's investigation. Garland has oversight of Durham's budget, the scope of the investigation, and the release of a report Durham is believed to be writing. Sullivan, who married Goodlander in 2015, has been referenced in Durham's indictment of a cybersecurity lawyer who worked for the Clinton campaign. While there is no indication that Durham is targeting Sullivan, the national security adviser could be a witness for the investigation given that he was a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Durham's report could also reveal embarrassing details about Sullivan's work on the campaign to dig up dirt on Donald Trump's possible links to Russia.
A spokesman for the Justice Department said Goodlander "has no role in Mr. Durham's investigation," but it is unclear whether she has formally recused herself from the matter or whether the Durham probe is outside her Justice Department portfolio. Fox News reported that Goodlander advises Garland on antitrust and international issues.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and the watchdog group Empower Oversight say Goodlander should be formally recused from the Durham investigation to maintain public trust in the probe.
"The Justice Department's standing guidance calls for employees to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest, especially when it comes to ongoing criminal investigations," said Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"It’s in Garland's best interest—and he's obligated—to be transparent about whether his department is walling off officials who have a real or even perceived conflict, just as prior administrations have done," Grassley told the Washington Free Beacon.
Jason Foster, the founder and president of Empower Oversight, said the decline in public confidence in the Justice Department makes it "critical that decisions about Special Counsel Durham's investigation are insulated from the political biases and personal interests of senior DOJ officials."
"It would be no imposition on [Goodlander] or AG Garland to simply recuse herself from providing any advice to him in relation to that investigation—and thus reassure the public that she will continue to have no role in the future," Foster told the Free Beacon.
The Justice Department did not respond to additional questions about whether Goodlander has formally recused herself from the Durham probe. The White House did not respond to questions about whether Sullivan has been contacted by Durham's team.
As a Clinton adviser, Sullivan had contact with the campaign lawyers who commissioned the Steele dossier, the infamous British spy report that made false allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Sullivan is the Clinton adviser referenced in Durham's indictment of cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann. Sussmann, a former partner at the firm Perkins Coie, is accused of lying to an FBI lawyer about his reasons for investigating suspicious computer traffic between Trump's real estate company and Alfa Bank, a Russian bank. Durham alleges that Sussmann said he did not have a client with interest in the information when he was in fact working for the Clinton campaign.
According to the indictment, Sussmann's former Perkins Coie partner, Marc Elias, in September 2016 briefed Sullivan and others on the Clinton team about his firm's efforts to investigate the Alfa Bank data. Sullivan days before the election issued a statement that cited the Alfa-Trump allegations as evidence of collusion. It was unknown at the time that the Clinton campaign was investigating the Alfa Bank issue. The FBI later determined that there was no nefarious link between the bank and Trump.
Elias was the attorney who hired Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. Durham indicted the primary source for the dossier, Igor Danchenko, on charges that Danchenko lied to the FBI about the identity of his sources. Dancheko allegedly lied by saying that a longtime Democratic operative, Charles Dolan, was not one of his sources.
Grassley and Empower Oversight have pressed the Justice Department over the recusal of another official, Susan Hennessey, who has pushed the false claim that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Hennessey, who serves in the national security division, last year criticized Durham's investigation, calling it "partisan silliness."
Grassley said Garland has stonewalled his requests for information about Hennessey and other Justice Department officials' conflicts of interest.
"I've raised concerns about potential conflicts of several Biden Justice Department officials and can't get a straight answer from the attorney general," he told the Free Beacon.
from the Devolution article..
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I cannot stress to you how important it is to go through and read the linked pamphlet. The pamphlet discusses secret documents going back as far as 5000 BC and discusses that that whoever possesses these documents will have power over everything and everyone else. I’m not telling you to believe story as presented in the pamphlet, you need to decide that for yourself. At the end of this pamphlet there is something that seemed to jump off the page for me. When I read it, I actually got goosebumps. This is where we find our Prussian connection:
I agree. Amazing he hasn’t been xxxxxed
That pamphlet says Western Union existed when the Chinese Empire was formed...🧐
“Wallace, whose contract at Fox News ends this month, was considered the most even-handed journalist at the conservative-leaning Fox News. An 18-year veteran of the channel, he was the anchor of its Sunday roundtable show “Fox News Sunday.” FROM THE ARTICLE...boy no bias on part of LA TIMES writer who wrote that. IF CHRIS WALLACE is even handed then the EASTER BUNNY is real! Course the writer thinks the LA TIMES is a real newspaper an not the propaganda arm of the deep state but i repeat myself!!!
on the other hand...the Coumo’s are unemployed, Rittenhouse is acquitted and Smollett is guilty of hoax. It will be a Merry Christmas!!!
lex
Mark
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4020497/posts?page=1
Our Woke Military Will Be Deadly For Us.
Townhall.com ^ | December 12, 2021 | Bill Wenger
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