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IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

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Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#191

Post by bryanrasmussen »

worik wrote: post #188
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the searching for the keys under the streetlight joke is funny because you will never find the keys under the streetlight no matter how nice it might be to search for them with a good light source, whereas you will be able to relatively easy find small sums of money and make people it from the poor families under discussion here.

> you will never find the keys under the streetlight That is a strong statement! It is not true, some times that is where they are. Actually if it is the only place you could find them (the rest of the street is too dark, you do not have a torch to see or fingers to feel....) it is an optimal, albeit dismal, strategy Loving digression.....

evidently you used the phrase without familiarity with its origin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

>A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".

Hence, the drunk and the policeman are never going to find the keys under the streetlamp because they were lost in the park.

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#192

Post by toast0 »

kyleblarson wrote: post #116

And the bill that just passed adds 87000 new IRS agents. Additionally every single democrat voted against an amendment that would have prevented new agents from auditing individuals and small businesses with less than $400,000 of taxable income.

> Additionally every single democrat voted against an amendment that would have prevented new agents from auditing individuals and small businesses with less than $400,000 of taxable income.

How do you know how much taxable income someone has if you're unwilling to audit them?

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#193

Post by mindslight »

ghaff wrote: post #186
LorenPechtel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the rich guy probably has a CPA filing their taxes. It's quite unlikely there will be anything in there that's easily detected.

Or that is a flat-out mistake. You're right that wealthier people probably aren't going to commit obvious fraud like "forgetting" a 1099. But, assuming they are not deliberately committing fraud, their CPA will probably not make any obvious errors either.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I just got a letter from the IRS pointing out an error in an amended return my CPA had filed, presumably with the help of software. They tallied total taxable income to a nonzero amount, but then put a zero for the tax due on that amount. I missed it on my own review because it was one of many returns I had to file.

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#194

Post by albatross13 »

trebbble wrote: post #180
albatross13 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take that wager- the IRS will audit you back what six years if they want to? The smart money says a government that's 24 trillion in debt, beholden to a private central bank that printed 16 trillion to keep alive a fake economy in the face of a flu, will probably up its FY 2021 audit rate. I'll check back with you in a few years to see how I did ;)

Since they're already unable to keep up with their current workload, and it will take time for them to staff up, no, I don't think this will give them enough staff to do substantially more auditing of 2021 taxes unless, for some reason, they decide to keep neglecting more recent years in order to do that. Some? Sure. A lot more, enough to make the audit-rate graph in the article look noticeably different? Nah, doesn'…

I think you are unironically dumb as fuck, my first response to you was me asking if I misread something.

Turn off your internet.

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#195

Post by trebbble »

albatross13 wrote: post #194
trebbble wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since they're already unable to keep up with their current workload, and it will take time for them to staff up, no, I don't think this will give them enough staff to do substantially more auditing of 2021 taxes unless, for some reason, they decide to keep neglecting more recent years in order to do that. Some? Sure. A lot more, enough to make the audit-rate graph in the article look noticeably different? Nah, doesn'…

I think you are unironically dumb as fuck, my first response to you was me asking if I misread something. Turn off your internet.

Pretty sure the whole exchange speaks for itself to anyone else reading it, and doesn't convey what you hope/believe it does. HAND.

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#196

Post by ghaff »

mindslight wrote: post #193
ghaff wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that is a flat-out mistake. You're right that wealthier people probably aren't going to commit obvious fraud like "forgetting" a 1099. But, assuming they are not deliberately committing fraud, their CPA will probably not make any obvious errors either.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I just got a letter from the IRS pointing out an error in an amended return my CPA had filed, presumably with the help of software. They tallied total taxable income to a nonzero amount, but then put a zero for the tax due on that amount. I missed it on my own review because it was one of many returns I had to file.

Hence probably. I have no doubt CPAs like every professional including developers make mistakes. Although I assume they're probably mostly obvious one which can be corrected fairly easily. I'm also sure there are outliers.

>I missed it on my own review because it was one of many returns I had to file.

Honestly, I look through my returns but they're way past the point where I could find most errors even though my finances aren't especially complex.

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#197

Post by camel_Snake »

kyleblarson wrote: post #116

And the bill that just passed adds 87000 new IRS agents. Additionally every single democrat voted against an amendment that would have prevented new agents from auditing individuals and small businesses with less than $400,000 of taxable income.

This article about Janet Yellen instructing IRS not to use any additional funding to audit individuals or businesses making less than 400k contradicts you. [0]

> The bill itself says the new funding is not "intended to increase taxes on any taxpayer or small business with a taxable income below $400,000."

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/10/politics/yellen-new-irs-fundi...

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#198

Post by kyleee »

josephcsible wrote: post #100
rglover wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wouldn't it make more sense to focus on the big fish first? Of course, but the reason they don't is that the tax system is a psychological control mechanism disguised as "doing good" (I make that assertion by looking at the utter amount of careless, unaccountable waste in government despite the endless gaslighting about "muh roads"). Why? Because if you can keep the majority in the psychological bracket of being th…

> Everyone above that pays 10%. I hope you mean 10% of the amount of the part of their income that's above the line, and not 10% of their total income. Otherwise, this would cause a horrible welfare cliff.

yes, basically flat tax of say 10% on everything above a reasonable cutoff, say 100k and then maybe states can get a similar 5%. a beautiful dream

Re: IRS audits poorest families at five times the rate for everyone else

#200

Post by kyleee »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #120

I really wish they would quit calling the simple these-numbers-don't-match correspondence things "audits". It gives a very different picture to what's happening. Yeah, if you're poor you're a lot more likely to be doing your taxes by hand and thus you have much more room to make a copied-the-number-wrong mistake. Hence a high rate of "audits" in lower incomes. There's also more room to misunderstand something and ent…

yes the "audit" word is a bit too formal and has very bad/strong connotations related to a full tax audit, i propose "reconciliation"
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