Posted on 01/14/2023 6:25:51 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The new Republican-controlled House of Representatives got off to a bumpy start by attempting to repeal last year’s addition of of $71.5 billion to the IRS budget. It’s a political stunt with no chance of passing the U.S. Senate.
Hamstringing the taxman doesn’t make taxes go away, but it does make it harder for taxpayers to pay them, the government to collect them and public agencies to function. Defunding the IRS would aggravate an already egregious problem: Billions of dollars of uncollected taxes, mostly from corporations and the wealthy.
From 2014 to 2016, the IRS estimated $500 billion per year in taxes that were owed but not collected. The government recovers less than 15% of that through enforcement actions — so $71.5 billion to narrow the gap isn’t a bad investment. This is a fundamental issue of fairness.
Most uncollected taxes come from higher income taxpayers and corporations, whose tax returns are often incredibly complicated. Because the IRS doesn’t have the manpower to go after all the big fish, 53% of its audits focus on people making less than $50,000, reports a Syracuse University study.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
“Because the IRS doesn’t have the manpower to go after all the big fish, 53% of its audits focus on people making less than $50,000”
What?
It IS a political stunt, but only because the GOP knows it won’t pass (they like taxes and intimidating people as much as the Dems do).
Get rid of the $600 income from sales gimmick...
No its great idea. 87000 more govt agents is a joke.
These people are broken. The “rich” follow the laws the govt produces. Look no further than DJT. Loopholes are loopholes… you need to change the law if you want to get the “big fish”.
Ah, another daily dose of ineptness of such a magnitude that it could only be produced by a weak-minded journalist. (Yes, I repeated myself ...’weak-minded journalist’.)
Must are a millennial. Can't do logic. Never occurred to the author that the IRS could simply task their goons to focus on big fish for the big bucks instead of deploying their briefcase army to go out and nickel and dime truck drivers and grocery store workers for pennies they missed on their 1040 EZ forms.
Must are a millennial. Can't do logic. Never occurred to the author that the IRS could simply task their goons to focus on big fish for the big bucks instead of deploying their briefcase army to go out and nickel and dime truck drivers and grocery store workers for pennies they missed on their 1040 EZ forms.
Everyone pays 10%. Its the old saying, its good enough for God its good enough for me.
Come on men, even the “big guy” only demands 10%.
Why do these newspaper propagandists think that they have an opinion that is worth anything at all? What did they do that qualified them to know anything other than to lie and steal for a living?
The 1099-K’s used to only go to people who had $20,000 or more of income and 200 or more sales total in a certain venue, such as Venmo or Paypal. Then they reduced it to $600 and any number of sales for Tax Year 2022.
Don’t need 87,000 more IRS agents. Need one software application.
Not only am I in favor of defunding the IRS, I’m for defunding/slashing budgets of EVERY government agency, projects, plans and foreign aid. I’m also in favor of eliminating ALL unnecessary departments and massive decreases in the individual budgets of the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court. A massive overhaul and reduction of publicly provided transportation (vehicles, aircraft) and the elimination of foreign “fact finding” trips.
If small business owners have to survive with their meager budgets, so should the government agencies.
WE, THE CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS OF THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT BE PAYING FOR THE UNNECESSARY ACTIVITIES AND PERKS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS.
They went after employees of the Trump organizations for padding their expense accounts. Fine, if it’s legitimate, stop it and fine them accordingly. But how about going after these public employees that are using our taxpayer funds to finance their things such as alcohol cabinets, flowers for their offices and plane, whimsical travels, dinners and other activities?
While we’re at it, let’s have a look at the taxes and incomes of ANY current or former public official (and family members) who’s net worth has increased disproportionately to their public salaries.
Gee, I wonder what we’ll find . . .
But being a government agency, they will hire 88,000 software engineers (probably with a Twitter work ethic) to manage said application.
And it will still never work as intended.
(Unless that was the intent ...)
Oh noes not an “egregious problem “
The statement makes no sense because the fewer agents you have the only fish you should go after are the huge ones.
I don’t think it would work for the IRS to just task their jackbooted agents to focus on the “big fish”.
I have heard it said, and I believe it, that going after rich people who may have tried to avoid taxes is a a task with diminishing returns.
People with a lot of money can hire lawyers to fight back, so I suspect you get diminishing returns the higher you go because you have to engage courts and resources on the government side, and they do have limits of a sort. Heck, I’ll wager even the IRS has to take into account allocating monies in their budgets to pay for agents who have to appear in court, prepare cases, etc.
People with little money may not even pay any taxes. So you can’t go after them.
I presume there is a “sweet spot” for those bastards, and that “sweet spot is largely in the middle class. Somewhere between those who don’t pay taxes at all, and those who pay, but can and will fight back.
They can go after people who may have had enough money to try to pay less and done so erroneously or illegally, but don’t have enough means to hire a lawyer.
In any case, those middle class taxpayers are probably more likely to have broken a law inadvertently, given the byzantine nature of tax law.
Wealthy people can hire talented, knowledgable accountants to do their taxes, people who know the law, know the legal loopholes, and can exploit those loopholes with confidence.
The IRS probably knows all this very well, and they hired these 87,000 new agents to come after the middle class.
To come after us.
And I’m supposed to read an article like this from the PPG and agree?
See my post above. I don’t think it is all about going after the “ big fish”, and I think they knew this damn well when the legislation was created.
They simply lied to sell it, IMO.
After all, what constituent is going to vote for a candidate who set the IRS on them?
But there are enough Class Warriors in the electorate who are fully on-board with this to make it a viable, and valuable lie to get it sold and passed. Hell, my entire cursed state just passed a ballot question to allow levying more taxes on “rich” people.
There is a bottomless pool of unthinking people (voters) who see that as a great idea.
And those creating the legislation knew this fully.
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