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What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

brookings.edu

21–30 of 188 posts

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intentional budget cuts and a harder target. https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea... > 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…

Budget increases will not increase enforcement of rich, politically connected individuals. It will just increase the number of "low hanging fruit" middle-class people they will go after. Besides, many of the best tax evasion strategies are legal -- you just need an army of lawyers and a large pile of cash to deploy them.

interesting. what makes you think so?

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#22

Hey everyone, the wording dictates how you are misled. Think about the alternate title for these benign actions: Annual Report on Isle of Man financial sector Hackers breach Cayman National Bank and Trust’s Isle of Man subsidiary, the second of major breaches for this institution Post-Mortem, Cayman National Bank and Trust breach and client behavior Aggregating Customer trends sourced from hacked bank, using pytorch

misled how?

"man dies after impact with car"

is rightly reported as

"man booked for manslaughter after hit-and-run"

the technical details are perhaps not as important than the criminality that transpired

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registrars don't enforce TLDs in the way you implicitly assume.

Care to explain or just snark? As best I can tell, Brookings would not be eligible since the rule change in 2001 but was grandfathered in before this (domain goes back to 1996). It's not clear why they weren't purged with the other non-universities squatting on edu in 2003 - I'd guess Brookings's political connections, frankly.

[deleted]

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#25
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Budget increases will not increase enforcement of rich, politically connected individuals. It will just increase the number of "low hanging fruit" middle-class people they will go after. Besides, many of the best tax evasion strategies are legal -- you just need an army of lawyers and a large pile of cash to deploy them.

interesting. what makes you think so?

With enough lawyers you can get a low settlement value if you are found wrong.

Your average middle class person can't afford to risk taking the irs to court.

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#26
post #3

I find it odd that the IRS does a lot of heavy lifting to go after Joe-Blue-Collar but completely seems blind to the thousands of money launderers both individuals and corps. Personally, I think the entire financial system is broken and should be squashed.

The IRS doesn't do a lot of heavy lifting. The IRS does a lot of stuff that can be easily handled by a computer--matching up data from various sources to make sure it agrees. Once it needs a human eyeball, though, they do very little. It's just your Joe-Blue-Collar guy has most of his finances already reported to the IRS, anything wrong and the matching computer will catch it.

This is the truth of the matter. Most errors/fraud for Joe-Blue-Collar revolves around refundable tax credits as there's a pretty good chance he's not even paying any income tax.

The EITC is particularly complex (blame Congress) and therefore error/fraud-prone, but many aspects of typical errors/fraud can be mechanically detected (is this a qualifying child? is this qualifying child being claimed on another return? is there undocumented non-W2/1099 income being used to support this claim?).

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Budget increases will not increase enforcement of rich, politically connected individuals. It will just increase the number of "low hanging fruit" middle-class people they will go after. Besides, many of the best tax evasion strategies are legal -- you just need an army of lawyers and a large pile of cash to deploy them.

interesting. what makes you think so?

[deleted]

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#28
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Budget increases will not increase enforcement of rich, politically connected individuals. It will just increase the number of "low hanging fruit" middle-class people they will go after. Besides, many of the best tax evasion strategies are legal -- you just need an army of lawyers and a large pile of cash to deploy them.

interesting. what makes you think so?

If you doubled or tripled the number of cops in LA, would they solve more difficult crimes in the monied and lawyered Hollywood Hills? Or would they go after more petty crime in South Central, where it’s easy to get a conviction?

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain or just snark? As best I can tell, Brookings would not be eligible since the rule change in 2001 but was grandfathered in before this (domain goes back to 1996). It's not clear why they weren't purged with the other non-universities squatting on edu in 2003 - I'd guess Brookings's political connections, frankly.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: What lies beneath: Evidence from leaked account data on offshore banking use

#30
post #3

I find it odd that the IRS does a lot of heavy lifting to go after Joe-Blue-Collar but completely seems blind to the thousands of money launderers both individuals and corps. Personally, I think the entire financial system is broken and should be squashed.

Most countries around the world did not have an income tax for people before the WWI. It was introduced as a way to fund the wars (defense, akhem), and as a way to come out of the ruins. It was only meant to be a temporary measure. A century later, we're still paying the income tax, and for some countries that's still funding defense/wars...

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/tax/10/history-taxes.a...

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