Merry Christmas if you're rich and feel like skirting your taxes!

[LC]

https://www.salon.com/2018/12/26/ho-ho-ho-irs-cuts-audits-of-rich-steps-up-audits-of-poor-after-budget-cuts/

 

Ho ho ho: IRS cuts audits of rich, steps up audits of poor after budget cuts

 

According to the report, the IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did seven years earlier. Because of the repeated cuts, the IRS has drastically stopped pursuing “nonfilers” who do not submit their tax returns. The number of investigations into nonfilers fell from 2.4 million in 2011 to 362,000 in 2017. The agency has also drastically reduced its investigations of filers who do not pay their tax debts. In 2010, the IRS let $482 million in old tax debt lapse, but by 2017, that number increased to $8.3 billion.

 

Corporations and billionaires have been the “biggest beneficiaries” of the IRS cuts, because large-scale audits require specialized personnel, ProPublica reported, noting that the federal government has left 18 to 20 percent of potential tax revenues uncollected as a result.

 

But even as the cuts have gutted the IRS’ ability to go after rich tax evaders, the agency, “under continued pressure from Republicans,” has made auditing the working poor who receive the earned income tax credit, one of the largest anti-poverty programs in the country, a higher priority.

 

The average earned income tax credit recipient earned less than $20,000 last year. Despite that, 36 percent of last year’s IRS audits targeted EITC recipients, who are now “ examined at rates similar to those who make $500,000 to $1 million a year,” ProPublica reported, adding that “only people with incomes above $1 million are examined much more frequently.”

 

“The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe,” wrote The New York Times editorial board.

 

[Gregmal]

Please, more liberal bullshit. This is easily the most abused program out there.

 

You do realize that like 90% of the audits relating to EITC are because of non filed form EIC? Or widespread fraud?

 

"The IRS has estimated that between 21% and 25% of this cost ($11.6 to $13.6 billion) is due to EITC payments that were issued improperly to recipients who did not qualify for the EITC benefit that they received. For the 2013 tax year the IRS paid an estimated $13.6 billion in bogus claims. In total the IRS has overpaid as much as $132.6 billion in EITC over the last ten years.

 

The IRS said it does try to crack down on bad EITC payments. Americans who claim the tax credit are already audited at twice the rate of other taxpayers."

 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/22/irs-paid-132B-bogus-tax-credits-over-last-decade/

 

 

[LC]

So the IRS should be focusing on the 13B that is fraudulently claimed, as opposed to the 140B that is fraudulently unreported? Conservative logic to counter that liberal bullshit, right?  ;D ;D

 

And even if one follows your conservative "logic", you would think with such widespread tax fraud taking place, the IRS budget would be expanded?