The man's response back was, ... "Who did I leave out ?"
Posted on 10/02/2019 1:31:15 PM PDT by Red Badger
Congress asked the IRS to report on why it audits the poor more than the affluent. Its response is that it doesn’t have enough money and people to audit the wealthy properly. So it’s not going to.
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he IRS audits the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1%. Now, in response to questions from a U.S. senator, the IRS has acknowledged that’s true but professes it can’t change anything unless it is given more money.
ProPublica reported the disproportionate audit focus on lower-income families in April. Lawmakers confronted IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig about the emphasis, citing our stories, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Rettig for a plan to fix the imbalance. Rettig readily agreed.
Last month, Rettig replied with a report, but it said the IRS has no plan and won’t have one until Congress agrees to restore the funding it slashed from the agency over the past nine years — something lawmakers have shown little inclination to do.
On the one hand, the IRS said, auditing poor taxpayers is a lot easier: The agency uses relatively low-level employees to audit returns for low-income taxpayers who claim the earned income tax credit. The audits — of which there were about 380,000 last year, accounting for 39% of the total the IRS conducted — are done by mail and don’t take too much staff time, either. They are “the most efficient use of available IRS examination resources,” Rettig’s report says.
On the other hand, auditing the rich is hard. It takes senior auditors hours upon hours to complete an exam. What’s more, the letter says, “the rate of attrition is significantly higher among these more experienced examiners.” As a result, the budget cuts have hit this part of the IRS particularly hard.
For now, the IRS says, while it agrees auditing more wealthy taxpayers would be a good idea, without adequate funding there’s nothing it can do. “Congress must fund and the IRS must hire and train appropriate numbers of [auditors] to have appropriately balanced coverage across all income levels,” the report said.
Since 2011, Republicans in Congress have driven cuts to the IRS enforcement budget; it’s more than a quarter lower than its 2010 level, adjusting for inflation.
Recently, bipartisan support has emerged in both the House and Senate for increasing enforcement spending, but the proposals on the table are relatively modest and would not restore the budget to pre-cut levels. However, even a proposed small increase might not come to pass, because it’s unclear whether Congress will actually pass any appropriations bills this year.
In response to Rettig’s letter, Wyden agreed in a statement that the IRS needs more money, “but that does not eliminate the need for the agency to begin reversing the alarming trend of plummeting audit rates of the wealthy within its current budget.”
Or we could save a lot of money and stop doing audits altogether. Just don’t tell anyone.
I didn’t know there were any other kind.....................
Some cops seem to act similar. Way more apt to pull over a poor person or middle class than a gang banger that might shoot at them or rich person that could actually cost the county/city money when they win.
Does the money they get thru audits greatly exceed the salaries and bennies of the government thugs that do them?
A few years back, the county next to ours, found out that the tolls to cross a certain tollbridge were barely enough to pay the tollbooth workers salaries and bennies.
They discontinued the tolls, laid off the toll workers and tore down the tollbooths..................
What do they mean by audit? For example, a few years ago my accountant notified me that the IRS had disputed a small deduction. We both agreed it wasn’t worth contesting.
Does that count as an audit, or are they talking about a formal process?
ABOLISH the IRS.
Exactly. If you have 100 million it’s well worth it to hire some good attorneys and accountants to shield a big part of it, if you have ten grand in the bank, not so much.
Point taken
Matter of perspective.
We should abolish the INCOME TAX and replace it with a CONSUMPTION TAX, similar to a Sales Tax, but only on NEW items, not used items. Not on food or Medicines, either..............
The writer writes poorly. If the rich and poor are both audited at a proportion of one percent, there is not a “disproportionate” focus on the poor.
Just a lot more of them.....................
Maybe President Trump can issue an executive order directing the IRS to cease audition families earning less than 250,000 dollars a year.
Excellent analogy!
Fixed it.
“cease auditing”
The man's response back was, ... "Who did I leave out ?"
What do they mean by audit?
As I recall, there are broadly two types of audit. The first audit is a query about specific items in the return, or information the IRS believes is missing. The second type of audit is the research audit, where the IRS goes over EVERYTHING in your return.
I'm not a tax expert by any means, but the first form of audit is used on "the little guy" and is based on all the reports sent to the IRS from service providers (think banks, employers, clients, brokers) about your business with those providers. The times I've been audited, it's been a letter from the IRS and perhaps a phone call.
The 1% audits, on the other hand, may well be full-blown research audits, or cover so many IRS irregularity claims, that it takes many man-hours of both taxpayer and bureaucrat time.
Research audits can backfire. One of my accountants told me a story about one of his clients who was subjected to a research audit. Two weeks and 7 years worth of tax returns later, the IRS ended up owing the taxpayer around eight hundred thousand dollars. So there is a risk. (Don't know all the details.)
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