"Only 10%! That's less than 100%! What are we paying them for?!"
Posted on 05/07/2014 8:16:46 PM PDT by smoothsailing
By Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times - Updated: 10:10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.
Republicans argue that the Internal Revenue Service still hasn’t come clean about the full extent of its targeting, which swept up dozens of conservative groups.
“The committee uncovered new information indicating that after groups provided the information to the IRS, nearly one in 10 donors were subject to audit,” Rep. Charles W. Boustany Jr., Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s oversight panel, told IRS Commissioner John Koskinen at a hearing Wednesday.
“The abuse of discretion and audit selection must be identified and stopped,” he said.
Mr. Koskinen didn’t specifically address the accusations during the hearing, and the IRS didn’t respond to a request for comment late Wednesday evening.
The revelation was made on the same day that the House voted on a nonbinding resolution asking the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS targeting...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I question the numbers. Ten percent of all Tea Party donors? Most Tea Party donations were fairly small. That would be a LOT of people the IRS would be going after. Though perhaps they only went after the high-amount donors. I just want to make sure we aren’t made to look silly by using inaccurate info or numbers.
- Let Obama go on with his snorting and heavy boozing
- His Dead Pool rankings will improve…..
The House, delivered on a platter by the Tea Party, continued and continues to fund this treachery. ..two party system and divided gov’t my a**.
And, I’m supposed to just vote for any R for the sake of another majority against me...
I don’t blame the IRS! Anyone who thinks they’re “taxed enough” has got to be an antisocial(ist) nutter, who doesn’t want to do his fair share for society. Wouldn’t put it past them to try chisling the government out of its hard earned income; should audit all those tea drinking partiers! /sar
That may not be a correct assumption, depending on the makeup of the certain TP organizations. Before making a blank statement, it would be good to have some facts regarding the overall number of donors and amount of donations, and compare to overall audit rate based on donors' "financial demographics."
I would make a general assumption that small, newly formed TP orgs — and these are normally the ones which would be applying for tax-exempt status — would be initially (before broad fund-raising efforts from small donors) funded by a few well-to-do politically active individuals, i.e., the so-called 1%-ers (though some may fall well outside this income or wealth group).
In recent years IRS has been concentrating on auditing high net worth individuals — because, allegedly according to great bank robber Willie Sutton, "that's where the money is."
Now we find, from Chances of getting audited by the IRS lowest in years - CNBC / AP, 2014 April 14
..... Budget cuts and new responsibilities are straining the Internal Revenue Service's ability to police tax returns. This year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s. ..... < snip > ..... Last year, the IRS audited less than 1 percent of all returns from individuals, the lowest rate since 2005. This year, Koskinen said, "The numbers will go down." ..... < snip > Your chances of getting audited vary greatly, based on your income. The more you make, the more likely you are to get a letter from the IRS. Only 0.9 percent of people making less than $200,000 were audited last year. That's the lowest rate since the IRS began publishing the statistic in 2006. By contrast, 10.9 percent of people making $1 million or more were audited. That's the lowest rate since 2010. Only 0.6 percent of business returns were audited, but the rate varied greatly depending on the size of the business. About 16 percent of corporations with more than $10 million in assets were audited. ..... < snip > As millions of Americans race to meet Tuesday's tax deadline, their chances of getting audited are lower than they have been in years. ..... < snip >
If average annual income of donors to these small TP orgs falls somewhere between $250K and $1.5M, that would make the approximately 10% audit rate be comfortably within normal statistical probability of audit for that group.
Conservatives need to have the facts before they jump on this news, so they won't make a laughing stock of themselves and jeopardize the entire IRS fiasco (for which Democrats currently have no excuse or defense) from being dismissed as statistics-and-math-challenged "right-wing extremists."
Dems' only hope is to latch onto some Republicans' mistake and make a campaign out of it. Let's make sure they don't get this opportunity, by examining the facts first.
To have audited that many Tea Party donors would be a waste of resources as the IRS would find themselves drilling dry holes when it comes to getting moneys owed to the U.S. as opposed to “normalized” auditing percentages. Tea Party people grumble but do pay their taxes. It is harassment pure and simple.
Just a headline like this, regardless of sample composition, will choke off unknown numbers of contributions, many of them small. When the citizenry fear the government you have tyranny to quote someone and generalized fear will suppress opposition, petitions for redress, letters to Congress, etc. It is an invisible hand that aids a totalitarian government and ruling oligarchy.
> whatever it takes to hand thousands of IRS agents their pink slips.
Don’t you remember?
They hired 16,000 more agents to administer 0bamacare. I’m sure that includes cadres of paramilitary jackbooted thugs.
You have to get rid of 0bamacare as well as the Fedzilla income tax to get rid of the IRS.
My 2010 filing was audited in 2013. Went round and round over the 529 details, receipts, etc. After 4 additional filings of the same information, (and a few hundred more dollars for the accountant) I provided to begin with, they sent me a $49 check with no explanation.
Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors...
Told ya these a-holes would DOUBLE DOWN on their fascist inquisitions.
Actually, it is 1/104:
What Are the Odds That Your Tax Return Will Be Audited?
And if your return doesn't include income from a business, rental real estate or a farm, or employee business expense write-offs, the basic 1-in-104 chance of being challenged dwindles to just 1-in-250.
Wonder if odds of 1/10 for a certain group is statistically significant?
It depends on the sample size. How many people that contributed to the Tea Party were actually audited? If it was 10 out of 100, that's must less statistically significant than 1,000 out of 10,000.
And to think liberals were against PROFILING.
Lesson learned today gang, make sure when the IRS asked for a list from you, to make sure your enemies are on that list.
We went through an audit for the same 2010 tax year, but in 2012.
It was a taxpayer compliance audit: the "super-audit" that checks every little detail. The IRS never indicated any problem: the examiner's only question was why we didn't claim a small tax credit (answer: my accountant would have spent more time and money collecting the information required).
At the outset, the examiner admitted that this was a waste of his time. The audit ended with no changes, except for another bill from my accountant.
all bs :you don’t have any info on the incomes of the tea party people the IRS audited
we all know here the IRS auditing 10% of the tea party people is too high and not a coincidence
why don’t you ping your list to this too since you pinged them defending the IRS
all bs :you don’t have any info on the incomes of the tea party people the IRS audited
we all know here the IRS auditing 10% of the tea party people is too high and not a coincidence
this article states that the audit rate is too high and that’s from the Washington Times:
“Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday.
Thankfully 90 percent weren’t. I wonder if they found any of the groups owing money or anything.
I particularly like your last sentence, which - although I missed it as a concern - is absolutely spot-on.
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