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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

#221

Post by josephcsible »

rglover wrote: post #152
josephcsible wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You wouldn't need welfare in this scenario and that's the point. Let people keep all or the majority of their money (thus enabling more potential for prosperity if the individual is responsible). If the point of tax dollars is to fund some form of socialism (e.g., for the disabled or others who can't care for themselves), then allocate the majority of tax revenue to that and strip down the federal government to bare…

By "welfare cliff", I meant a situation where slightly increasing your gross income could significantly reduce the money you actually have available to spend. You don't actually need a welfare system for that to happen.

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

#222

Post by josephcsible »

pgodzin wrote: post #205
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.

Why would anyone want to pass a law saying that anyone below a certain income threshold can cheat on their taxes and it's illegal for anyone to look into?

Especially given that in practice, such a law would mean that anyone who claims to be below a certain income threshold can cheat on their taxes and it's illegal for anyone to look into.

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

#223

Post by picsao »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #123
moomin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ignore much larger sums. The real reason they’re targeted is that, quite simply, they’re unable to fight back. It’s the equivalent of searching for your keys under the streetlight.

> they ignore much larger sums Not really [1]. When you make more than $500k, your audit rate doubles from the national average of 0.25%. It doubles again at $1mm and more than doubles once more at $5mm. EITC-only returns are audited around the frequency (0.77%) of someone making $500k to $1mm. I'm not sure why $1 to 25k is audited at the same frequency as $500k to $1mm. But given "from fiscal years 2010 to 2021, the…

No post body was provided.

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

#224

Post by klyrs »

jeffbee wrote: post #140
OrvalWintermute wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In recent years after Reagan, both the Executive branch and Legislative branch have been dominated by the same party, at various times Congress | House | Senate | Presidency | Status 101st (1989–1991) Democrats Democrats Republican (G.H.W. Bush) Divided 102nd (1991–1993) Democrats Democrats Republican (G.H.W. Bush) Divided 103rd (1993–1995) Democrats Democrats Democrat (Clinton) Unified 104th (1995–1997) Republicans…

And yet, oddly, only one party has the platform of "drowning the government in a bathtub" which, if you think about it, is isomorphic with "defund the police".

Haven't you heard, Republicans are all about defunding or murdering the police all of the sudden. Or maybe just the FBI?

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

#225

Post by Test0129 »

jmyeet wrote: post #201
jcranmer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you applied capital gains tax to grandpa's modest gift to his grandchildren the grand children may very well end up with nearly nothing. Quiz time: Capital gains is 0% for anything less than $40k, 20% for anything over than $400k, and 15% for everything in the middle. How much do you have to inherit for the total effective tax rate to be greater than 95%? > In many states property taxes are reassessed upon prope…

I pretty much agree but want to add some clarifications. > The only state where property taxes aren't regularly reassessed appears to be California. Technically, property taxes are reassessed in California but because of Prop 13, passed in the 1970s, the increase cannot exceed 2% per year. With in inflation in the 70s and 80s, this was a massive boon to incumbent homeowners and their descendants (since that favorable…

> This gives people a choice: stay in their family home and pay taxes when the houses are inherited or downsize to save on taxes.

This sounds like an end-around to the word "theft" to me. This is stealing property. There is no other word for it.

> This has the added benefit of freeing up housing stock.

Theft is theft no matter how you call you it.

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

#226

Post by jeffwask »

areyousure wrote: post #209
jeffwask wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Panama papers should be all the proof we need. The Panama papers had enough data to chase tax cheats for decades. The Panama paper resulted in zero.

> zero https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/us-tax... https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/us-acc...

Fine so one of the biggest financial crime leaks in history implicating the wealthy and powerful all over the world resulted in one unknown old man and his accountant getting a couple years. Cool.

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

#227

Post by rglover »

josephcsible wrote: post #221
rglover wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't need welfare in this scenario and that's the point. Let people keep all or the majority of their money (thus enabling more potential for prosperity if the individual is responsible). If the point of tax dollars is to fund some form of socialism (e.g., for the disabled or others who can't care for themselves), then allocate the majority of tax revenue to that and strip down the federal government to bare…

By "welfare cliff", I meant a situation where slightly increasing your gross income could significantly reduce the money you actually have available to spend. You don't actually need a welfare system for that to happen.

> Welfare cliffs are an unfortunate feature of the American welfare system. They occur when a family’s breadwinner, or an individual, discovers that his or her family will become worse off economically by earning more money. It sounds paradoxical, but it happens whenever the loss in welfare benefits exceeds the additional take-home pay.

Had to double-check...what I said still stands. If people are retaining more of what they earn (nationally, not just on an individual basis), market dynamics should play out that costs are lower, too, meaning you're not chasing increasing prices all the time with the same money (if we were on a Bitcoin standard, that would be even more true as there'd be no means for manipulating the money supply).

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

#228

Post by koheripbal »

drewbug01 wrote: post #219
int_19h wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so automated, why require people to submit tax returns at all? Just calculate everything and send them the breakdown along with the check.

Lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

This is obviously wrong. The reason is that they need people to affirm ALL sources of income, not just their W2.

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

#229

Post by shkkmo »

tomohawk wrote: post #106
shkkmo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we're now going to get 87,000 more auditors. This is the largest increase in the federal police force (they are all armed) ever. This is factually incorrect in so many ways. Please vet your sources better.

Articles are all over the place. It's not like its a state secret. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2022/08/11/irs-to-ad...

That's a crypto scare piece using misinformation to drive his own business.

The "87,000 agents” number is a partisan piece of talking point misinformation. The numer comes from this report: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Fami...

The number describes the total number of new employees that would be added over the next 10 years and most of that increase would happen over the second half of that period.

So no, there are not 87,000 new agents and neither the new IT personel nor the the new customer service personel will be carrying guns.

Yes this is a significant increase in IRS funding, but it happens on the heels of a decade of significant cuts to the IRS. It is impossible to have a proper discussion on this topic when it is dominated by people spreading misinformation.

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

#230

Post by int_19h »

koheripbal wrote: post #228
drewbug01 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying. https://www.propublica.org/article/filing-taxes-could-be-fre...

This is obviously wrong. The reason is that they need people to affirm ALL sources of income, not just their W2.

If this is obviously wrong, then how and why does it work in most countries other than US? Most people don't have sources of income other than employment (or other sources that are similarly transparent to the tax authorities already). Most tax systems, accordingly, are structured around that, and only those who have unusual income sources have to submit documentation about them.
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