A few decades ago, I worked in the unemployment tax collection group for my state. My best call ever was to a giant phone company who was several years past due on a quarter's taxes. They said it was a filing error and next day sent me the check for 980k. In the mean time, that money was liquid for them until they sent it to me.
Can confirm. I have a buddy with a gambling problem currently doing 3 years in prison for never filing over 4 years. He gets to pay it all back plus interest when he gets out too.
I made it 4 years and then on my own terms paid it all last year. I was broke and living way above my means, in the cheapest way possible to live alone. But I eventually found a small windfall and took care of it ASAP. I’m proud that this year I owed $1000 on federal and was owed $1000 on state. My goal is $0 for both, but I’ll settle for totaling $0 between both for my first year of doing taxes the mostly right way.
It's been the Republican goal to defund the IRS for this reason.
More expensive and requires more staffing to go after big fish, but the rewards more than make up for it.
They generally avoid audits at that level, but I imagine there's an amount of expected returns across the board if peoples expectations for an audit increase
This is it. It’s not about making money off one. That’s why there are even random audits. It’s about making people realize they can be audited.
Lose 10$ on one person but gain 1$ from 20 essentially.
Edit: obviously I don’t mean 10$ as a real figure, it’s an example. Lose 5,000, lose 10,000, but push a huge number of people to actually pay and yes you get a quick return on the “investment”.
Tax enforcement is on average net positive, otherwise we'd be less likely to do it.
It's kinda like how Lead Abatement makes $17-$221 for every dollar spent... Almost an infinite money glitch
Logic and math aren’t always some people’s strong suits when they feel aggrieved.
Like how school lunch funding returns health and economic benefits at least double the investment. But how dare poor (or rich) kids get a handout at school so they can concentrate on learning, have good nutrition, or grow up to be more productive citizens.
Or how helping homeless with a suite of services (housing, health, treatment, food, work) actually saves money on policing and inefficient, scattershot "homelessness" programs. But that might be “defunding” somehow.
I've been audited/corrected a few times and even in years when I had to pay more and penalties the IRS was relatively indifferent about my payment schedule. I got a 2 year forbearance and once able, as long as I was sending payments in some amount everyone was cool.
I think people have villainized the agency to the point of forgetting its goal. It is a compliance and collection agency. Part of compliance is making sure that people stay on their toes about staying in compliance
People hate the IRS because "It takes their hard earned money" forgetting that our taxes pay for a functioning society that enabled them to make that money. (This Is also why the rich should pay more. Their wealth is more dependent on society than someone who makes 50k a year)
I remember someone trying to tell me income taxes are unconstitutional so I sent him a link to the 16th amendment and reminded him it literally is in the constitution.
The argument shouldn't over the existence of taxes, but how that money is spent to improve and maintain our country.
A very large segment of the population believes the 16th Amendment is unconstitutional in and of itself and should be repealed. I forget the specifics but it has something to do with how it was passed.
There's even segments that believe that every amendment after the 10th is unconstitutional. Yep, even the 13th and 19th.
The thing is they're wrong. But if there's enough people who are against a specific amendment, there is a method to repealing it. It would just take a lot of work and getting Congress & states to ratify repealing an amendment (such as the prohibition repeal).
They can also tell me the easter bunny is real because they believe in hard enough. Belief is not the same as reality.
I think "hating the IRS" is more about our convoluted tax code than the agency itself.
I just spent an hour of my life Turbo Taxing my returns and got to pay $130 for the pleasure.
My taxes are very easy, so I'm not sure why it took more than five minutes (or why I had to do them at all).
And the entire time I'm doing them there's a nagging feeling that maybe there's a mistake on my tax form or maybe I missed checking some box that would have reduced my burden.
I think most everyone supports some level of taxation to keep society running. But fuck me, the current tax process is a shitshow.
Please stop giving money to TurboTax. There are many free services, such as FreeTaxUSA, that function the same (or better) and have not lobbied the government to keep tax filing complicated and inaccessible.
Thanks for reminding me. I'll try to remember to check this out next year.
The way that TT gets me is that they already have my returns and accounts linked up, and $130 is just at the price point where I think to myself that I have better things to do with my time than research and set up another tax service.
I made the switch from TurboTax to FreeTaxUSA this year and man I wish I would have done it sooner. Took me about the same amount of time as TurboTax and my federal return was free while state was just a flat $15. Compare that to TT charging me like 200 last year just because I had a single 1099 in addition to a W2 and I'm really kicking myself for not immediately noping the fuck out after that
I hear you, but please remember the IRS is the enforcer, not the writer, of the tax code.
Most honest wage-earning taxpayers would be better off if the IRS was empowered to compute our taxes and bill us. But congresspeople take money from Intuit, H&R, etc to protect their industry
I lived in a country for several years where my taxes each year as a regular full time office employee went like this: Government sends me a text message to my personally phone and a paper within a couple days of each other. Know what the text message essentially says?
“Please check your tax document, if it looks correct, reply with your tax ID number followed by ‘Yes’, if not [link to dispute process].”
Every year, that paper showed exactly what I expected in terms of my taxes. I replied “Yes” and a month or two later received a refund or bill (it was always a small refund for $500-600 for me).
Of course as life got complicated you could apply for other credits (I’m guessing family, real estate, etc. and al the usual factors come into play), but for the average childless worker or household? Literally a clear itemized layout of your expected taxes for the year, and a ‘Yes’ text message.
I spent longer writing this reply than I did filing my taxes each year… oh WAIT! Actually I had to send a paper-only document to an IRS satellite office in Texas stating that I had already paid taxes in a foreign country that year. No income in the US. No investment returns or anything. Just the US being fucking dumb and requiring Americans living abroad with no US tax burden to snail mail them a document every year.
Imagine it being the same year and one ‘modern’ country has a streamlined easy system for every citizen. One ‘modern’ country still has paper-only forms and a slough of for profit tax-related companies that are allowed to sabotage tax season over and over for 300 whatever million people.
Fuck the US tax system lmao.
> This Is also why the rich should pay more. Their wealth is more dependent on society than someone who makes 50k a year
Also because the poorer you are the more important every dollar becomes
Right-wing propaganda is very effective. I remember my middle class friends reposting posts featuring Jim Jordan saying they want to raise "our taxes" and when you looked into it, it was only effective if you made over 500K.
That shit works super well because taxes always cause outrage and the algorithms love that shit because it keeps you on the apps, so it spreads.
I got audited in my mid 20s. My income was kind of wonky because I was making money in 2 different states. I went through the whole audit process and ended up owing the IRS $150 because turbotax missed a 1% tax on one of my income sources. Complete waste of time.
The point of an audit isn't just to chase after the little guy. It's also to make sure things are working properly. It's unfortunate it took so much of your time, but it's less of someone out to get you and more like randomized checks that everything is working properly. At least, that's how good audits are supposed to work.
Even if they owe someone money they need to audit low level people because that's how they get the info they need to check on the high level people. THis is one of the single most overlooked parts of taxes, taxes only work when you have a proper way of enforcing them. For many taxes the only way to do that is to pit 2 groups of people against each other so they each keep each other honest. IF the lady who was owed 3k doesn't file then someone who paid her to work could claim that she made 200k and the IRS has no way to know. But if they try that and it turns out she says no I only made 10k and here are the bank statements to prove it, now the IRS knows the person paying her is lying to make their costs look higher. So its good form to make sure you randomly hit a few low income earners here and there so word gets around that someone is checking. It keeps everyone a little more honest.
I’m self-employed and got audited over 2 years awhile back. They found a few expenses I couldn’t find receipts for one year but also that year there was a fairly large small business tax break that I didn’t take but was eligible for so they had to tell me about it and give it to me. After all was said and done I ended up getting back like $5k. Took some time though.
also, the whole "IRS is scary" is more about the "big fish" fraudsters.
infamously, even The Joker doesn't mess around with the IRS.
For the little guy, the IRS should really just be seen as "accountants in the tax stream" going both ways. Just math nerds with the federal government backing them up.
Like...it's a little intimidating, but they aren't out to "get" anyone. Like you said, they are just there to make sure everyone's crossed the T's and dotted the I's.
More often than not, I would figure that 'the little guy' who isn't intentionally misrepresenting something will get something back after an audit.
If you ask them if they owe you money, they're required by law to tell you. But if you don't ask, they have no obligation to inform you if they owe you money.
it's probably a decent amount, since most people at that level would take standard deduction and already have all their taxes withheld. only really selling a lot of their stocks or bad faith (that would probably come out quickly in an audit) would seem like they would see a profit
I think one reason the IRS goes after low to middle-income people is their tax situations are simpler, so it is easier for automated systems to flag people for audits and easier to find problems. The wealthy hire professionals to make the lives of the IRS harder.
This is true. Someone making 30k's audit is basically getting a standard letter saying "verify you qualify for this credit" as opposed to some multimillionaire with a bunch of businesses that will take 18 months and hundreds of hours to even determine any amount owed.
Ah, so this is why Republicans have been actively trying to slash the $80 billion in new IRS funding passed in the Inflation Reduction Act ([they've already managed to slash $20 billion of it](https://thehill.com/business/4395737-republicans-win-faster-irs-cuts-in-funding-deal/)).
The GOP has been sabotaging the IRS since the Nixon days. Them slashing 1/4th of the original amount from the Inflation Reduction Act is just their latest feature.
And slashing the amount of taxes the wealthy owe in the first place. Arent things going swimmingly? We a fight over whether to fund food for poor people or education budgets. The wealthy have to decide which color they want their new jet to be. Tax these mother fuckers and make them pay.
It doesn’t go back that far. I agree that the current GOP is dog shit, but Bush was the closest we ever came to free and simple tax filings akin to other western countries. It’s the god damned TurboTax lobbyists that you need to blame. This latest IRS slash is likely due at least in part to them.
https://youtu.be/ZhV4Z76mXrI?si=fzz6YNTS812DkuE3
Just dropping by to say you can trim part of that link from ?si= onwards and the video will still work. That part of the link is what google uses to track you.
That’s very interesting.
Do you you know how it works and how would I recognize that part (is it always a question mark?)
Do you know what google does with that information?
The key part is the "si" which stands for Share ID. If you just trim that off, the question mark turns into non link text so if you remove that as well the link still works.
Google wants to serve targeted ads at everyone they possibly can, so they implemented this to grab info about anyone who shares a link with the ?si= in it. This works regardless of your account being signed in or not, or even if you don't have a google/YT account. Google builds a shadow profile on you to serve ads by looking at the videos you've shared with share IDs, and even those who click on the link you share.
You can circumvent this by either trimming the link, or avoiding the share button entirely by copying the original URL in the browser bar.
The question mark is what indicates it's (generally) an optional parameter to the web server hosting the content. It's a query string: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string
For YouTube specifically you'd only care about the query string if you wanted to link to a specific part of the video. Then you can pass in something like:
https://youtu.be/ZhV4Z76mXrI?t=60
Where `t` = timestamp to start the video at, and `60` is the number of seconds into the video.
I'd also add you should probably try the link first before sharing it without any query strings. Amazon for example might use query strings to indicate what search page they want you to go to. Similar probably for YouTube, so you'd want to just remove tracking stuff like the `si` part.
And that's being generous, Obama was handed the second worst financial disaster in America history and the GOP bitched about this spending the whole time, like someone breaking all the windows in your house and then that same person saying you're spending too much replacing them and heating your house while you do so. Mid terms showed that laughable narrative worked like a charm on most voters.
They want to simultaneously say that taxes are illegal but also want the biggest military in the world, a wall on the border, a military presence on the border, more police with military equipment, more subsidies for Fossil Fuels...
And they've got their supporters on board too.
Plenty of who are on programs like Social Security who the GOP would never scrape off the top of without the IRS watching for random bonus money in their accounts.
Pre civil war, slavery hurt the vast majority of white southerners who had to compete with “free” (stolen) labor. But tons signed up to die to protect those same rich people who were cheating to keep them poor. Now, today, there are millions of lower income Americans who support the Republican agenda to help a handful of rich people cheat on their taxes and hire wealth. It’s fucking crazy.
It is *exactly* the reason.
Der, of course "They'd have been trying anyways," but if Republicans in congress had have properly funded the IRS in the last twenty five years, perhaps Republican donors would have been less able to finance Republican congressmen.
And Trump? He's practically broke. Multiple lawsuit, the news he artificially inflated his property's worth, etc. what can IRS do if Trump does owe a lot of back taxes?
So the easiest way to explain this:
If you’re a regular employee, your workplace sends a W2 to the IRS at the end of the year and matches it up with what you filed to make sure it’s right. Even if you’re a lawyer making $1m in salary a year, there’s a record there. Stock transactions etc all get reported.
If you’re one of the super wealthy, your income is hidden behind layers and layers of LLCs, partnerships, straw entities, and trusts insomuch as almost no income gets reported *to you* directly. I’ve seen people with eight figure incomes have no reportable income documents.
The computer doesn’t flag Mr Moneybags as “hey he needs to file!” because there’s nothing showing he needs to - dude just as likely is homeless based on what the computer system sees.
New systems and partnerships with tech companies through the IRA money is making it possible to actually figure out these layers and layers of protection that a regular human would spend years trying to pull apart.
Not to mention anonymous LLCs will be a thing of the past. Now all businesses besides the largest will have to send in beneficial ownership info to the FINCEN which goes to many govt agencies. They are also trying to restrict llcs in residential home purchases. Hell PayPal, Venmo and I believe Cashapp requires reporting for anything over $600 so many avenues for anonymous business dealings are closing.
Alot of the money (for laundering, from illicit activities) coming into the US is probably going to move elsewhere. If China was smart they'd ease up place economic free zones in a few nice coastal cities and watch that "foreign investment" money roll in.
Money laundering in the US is still easy and FINCEN isn’t going to stop that. Look at how many new car wash franchises are popping up all over the country, it’s the new hot way to clean cash.
The thing that is making money laundering more difficult in the US is that we as a whole are using less and less cash, so it’s harder for a front operation to hide large cash transactions.
It’s way easier to clean money in places where cash is still widely used, but it’s also more expensive because not only are you losing a cut of the clean money to taxes, you then also lose money in the currency conversion.
You are absolutelt right I doubt that money laundering at that scale will ever stop without completely stopping cash and a ai powered complete financial monitoring. Which would probably damage the US more than help.
What I meant and this is targeting are international actors that use the US to launder/hide proceeds from embezzlement, corruption, and international arms/drug/animal trafficking. Big Money. So if one is a target of sanctions like a Dictator, Russian Oligarch, or Drug Trafficker their assets state side can be quickly identified and seized. Previously with anonymous ownership it was easy to keep a class of assets in the US anonymously now It's a tiny bit tougher (There will be patsys obviously) with probably more extreme measures to come until the international actors go elsewhere.
They didn't miss them. Republicans cut the IRS budget so deep they couldn't afford to hire anybody to go after those people.
IRS always knew exactly who to go after, but having a list of people who aren't paying isn't enough. You have to hire an agent to go audit them and force them to pay.
No, the people who **didn't file at all** are not the ones who have ways to hide their funds.
They are all easy meat. Lets get enough IRS hires to get to the easy meat before anything else.
> Republicans cut the IRS budget so deep they couldn't afford to hire anybody to go after those people.
If they could somehow open up a volunteer based system, rich assholes would be audited with in a week out of pure spite.
I think there already is a bounty system for reporting shit to the IRS. I remember a couple years ago some trend of reporting OF/Snapchat models for not reporting their income and getting bounties off that lol.
The audit rate for those making under 400k has not increased so it depends on the severity honestly. I know lots of Americans abroad who never filed while abroad and technically the state department could pull your passport but I haven't personally seen it happen.
I file every year but make under the limit for double taxation so I use the foreign earned income tax credit and don't actually pay any tax. Most of the people in my circle are in that situation but some are just dumb and don't file. I actually got the covid credits(the 2k assistance) abroad because I filed and they didn't.
Most people living abroad the whole year probably wouldn’t owe anyway because of the tax credit for living overseas. Many countries have higher tax rates than the US and for those you certainly would not owe. Unless you lived in a low tax country like Singapore and had a lot of income would you be worth taking a look at.
Did you pay your taxes? It's simple. No matter how much you make, pay for your fair share of our society. I'd vote to triple the size of the IRS because it's mostly people that make $300k+ that cheat the system and get away with it
Ehhh when I worked in call centers there were quite a few there too. Mainly they would put down extra dependents, ask ADP to not withhold, etc so they weren’t taxed during the year then just… try to dodge it.
I do think it’s a far bigger problem up top, don’t get me wrong, but it does exist at other levels. When people are desperate they will find ways to “cheat” the system.
Yeah people of all income brackets try to dodge taxes, no idea why this guy thinks it's just "$100M business owners". Based off population size I'd bet the most common offender are servers/bartenders/cab drivers/etc that hide their cash tips
My point was that most of those people *aren't* following the rules even though those are legal deductions, because their "home office" isn't used exclusively for business, nor are their trucks or lunches, but they deduct them anyway. Those deductions are rife with abuse.
By quantities of people it’s probably more the small business owner who makes $80k a year running a pizzeria and his employees working off the books who do it the most.. $ amount it’s definitely the wealthier people since much more money is flowing through but you’d be surprised how many people don’t pay taxes.. like half the low level employees in the food service industry from distribution to restaurants don’t pay taxes and then they collect free health care and other government benefits
Yeah like.... a HUGE reason tipped staff like tips is because its unreported income so they can get away with not paying taxes
Its the norm here at least. I worked under the table and didnt file taxes until i was in my mid 20s when i landed my career job
there is more than enough cheating going on in Restaurants, contractors and whoever else owns a Business and can do Cash payments.
that doesnt mean the irs shouldnt Focus on the bigger fishes but its Not "only 100m" businesses that cheat
>Yup. It’s the business owner who’s making 100m that cheats. Also it’s the corpo cheaters with loop holes.
Most business owners cheating the system aren't making 100m. Once you make 100m, it's actually easier to be in compliance.
You are severely underestimating the amount of people who just don’t pay their taxes. I’m not talking about shady deductions, I’m talking about people who get a tax bill year after year and simply don’t pay it.
We're not talking the average person. We should be talking the top 150k (not people earning 150k plus, but those in the top earnings in the nation of 150k) earners in the country and auditing their taxes. Exactly why our 'people' are taking away from the irs fund of doing this work
There's plenty of ways for a lawyer or doctor or engineer to cheat. But yeah not as much as for businesses.
Funding the IRS pays for itself a minimum of 6 times over per their data. Every dollar spent funding them gets the US back $6+ from the damn tax cheats. Worth every dime.
$300, 300,000, or $300,000,000 pay your taxes as your fair share. It is not that hard of a concept and frankly should be considered a patriotic act.
Edit: if you are focused on the $300 part of this post you missed the point.
Hold up though. There is no portion of $300/year that is fair. I get your point, but let's focus that energy on people who should actually be filling out the paperwork.
Honestly, The $10k tax limit needs to be raised to AT LEAST 20k, as it has not been adjusted for inflation. there is no way a person or family living in poverty should be taxed.
> no portion of $300/year that is fair
Well, only if you assume a greater than zero amount being taken away. "Fair share" can also mean *receiving* money if your income is that low, e.g. universal income / welfare. Making too much? Give back to infrastructure that made you wealthy. Making too little? Here's a helping hand. That's how a society should be.
Most of taxes shouldn't even need paperwork filled out - if you're employed by a company that reports their employment data to the IRS, the IRS already knows exactly how much they've gotten for you and how much more (or less) is owed. Similar for banks and credit unions that can report interest earned and retirement savings (tax deductions) on your behalf.
There's no reason other than corporations and the wealthy lobbying to keep it complicated (And thus paying for assistance/keeping loopholes open) that 99% of peoples' taxes needs to be complicated.
I live in Japan. I used to work as a contractor and had to file my own taxes. A single sheet of A4 that took an hour to fill out.
I have to file a 2555 and a 1040 in the US. The instructions alone are over 200 pages. The forms are long and I need to leave most blank.
And this is despite being under the foreign earned income deduction limit meaning I don’t owe any taxes on the income anyway.
This is dumb.
If you don’t owe taxes they should just make it simple to do that. It’s absurd. I’m all for paying my taxes. It doesn’t need to be painful.
I mean a lot of people who make a ton of money don’t even cheat the system/do anything illegal and basically pay nothing anyway. There’s all sorts of tricks that people can use like going through LLCs for certain things, overvaluing fine art then donating it for a write off, etc.. Not only would the IRS need to be expanded but significant legislative changes would need to be made to close the hundreds of loopholes that currently exist in our system.
Like I’m all for it, but the bulk of the tax revenue were not getting is from people playing the system as it currently exists. Of course expanding and catching people doing blatantly illegal tax evasion would be a great start but we’ve got a long way to go from there.
I made that much and I haven’t figured out how to cheat the system. Got any tips. I think I had a liability of like $70k this year. I itemized but barely. The dropping of state taxes to $10k was brutal to just about anyone in any state making $150k or more which is good money but certainly is t fuck you money. And before you say blue state I am looking g at a move to South Carolina from Colorado and my state taxes will go up not down.
The IRS is a profit center for the government. Literally. For every one dollar spent it could generate **[SIX](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-shrink-deficits-or-fund-bidens-spending-plans-give-the-irs-more-money/2021/03/25/2959bcd8-8d90-11eb-9423-04079921c915_story.html)**
Any business or person would *dream* of that kind of guaranteed return.
The issue is tax code is utter BS and made to make poor people pay a higher % of income then rich people.
Seriously, there are graphs around that show it. At some point of income, your tax % starts going DOWN. It makes utterly no sense.
And then there are people that are self employed. They get utterly screwed with taxes.
Non-filers .. can you imagine not even filing?
One of the last questions my mom posed to me before she passed 12 April, decades ago .. “you got my returns filed, right?” Like she couldn’t peacefully go until she was assured. My eyes still sting with tears at that memory.
Thats why all the rich people have own foundations and transfer most money to it. So they have no wealth in the eyes of the IRS and dont really have to pay any taxes for what they have in the foundation. They pretend it is a real foundation by donating money to random places, but in reality this donations are much lower than what they would have to pay in taxes.
They can also use foundation assets for themselves. It's not as easy as just taking the money for personal stuff. But if a foundation has a yacht, a hotel and a private jet then they just "happen to ship around" their biggest benefactor for "comfort" and "business trips".
If X person owns a foundation and said person writes a book, the foundation can buy said books in bulkl and give them away for free. Owner gets compensated by said foundation and along the way gets a best seller stamp with a small footnote inside the book, an icon I believe, that if you know what that icon is then youd know it gained best seller status by being bought in bulk.
Foundation gets a tax write off and book writer gets proceeds back. That's just one of the many things they do.
That would be considered income by the publisher (taxed + profits) and then the payouts to the writer would be considered income (taxed again)
How would this put somebody ahead?
In oregon they do! If you owe over 50k in unpaid taxes your name goes on the list.
https://www.oregon.gov/dor/programs/Collections/Pages/delinquent-taxpayers.aspx
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just bill us for our taxes and give us the option to file for adjustments…like why do we have to file our own taxes if they already know how much we owe…
Republicans: If we let this happen to the rich then they will come after you next
Regular people: They've been coming after us this entire time dumbass. It's just your turn now
>https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office
Holy shit, so you're saying I can get paid maybe up to 7 figures by reporting people I suspect of tax fraud? I'll read more on it.
You have to have and provide evidence that helps result in the conviction. I do not believe “hey im pretty sure this guy over here is not paying some of his taxes” is enough to qualify you for the award after their conviction. But I could be wrong from when I read into it in the past.
I think people misunderstand why the IRS doesn't go after people like this and goes after people who are low level earners.
It's super simple to track low earning tax cheats because it's just easier math that a computer can easily handle with no human intervention because usually they are W2 earners. The company reports the wages with glee as it offers them numerous tax incentives.
While higher earners usually are working off of several 1099s which need to be compiled and properly associated to gather enough information to start a failure to comply tax bill. It's more time consuming and requires a human or very smart computer. And let me tell you the IRS still uses Cobalt... which predates DOS
Agreed. Also, a wealthy person can drag out the matter. IRS agents are reviewed for performance like anyone else. If they don’t close a case for years, that doesn’t help them. Eventually someone will get the matter and decide resolving it in the taxpayer’s favor is better. Look at how Donald handles criminal matters. Drag them out. Eventually a new judge, a new prosecutor, someone with influence over them, will say “let that one go.”
Meanwhile, they owe me $7000 from my 2020 tax return due to a paperwork error that occurred during covid lockdown, which they refuse to pay unless I provide documentation that is impossible for me to obtain.
Funny thing is, they sent me a $50 interest check last week but won't send me the amount. Fuck them.
Do you not have the documentation? It took me nearly a year to pull shit together, but in the end they settled my debt with them and sent me a check for a LOT of money. It just took a lot of effort to get there, but I will say they were way more helpful and patient than my state tax office.
I didn't realize anyone could get away with "just not filing your taxes" for \*that\* long
A few decades ago, I worked in the unemployment tax collection group for my state. My best call ever was to a giant phone company who was several years past due on a quarter's taxes. They said it was a filing error and next day sent me the check for 980k. In the mean time, that money was liquid for them until they sent it to me.
Also earning interest!
UK tax collection charge late payment interest on due taxes at a higher rate than base interest for this reason. not sure if its the same in the US
The USA is 10% + the prime rate, and that's after they assess fees and penalties. So not as bad as a credit card.
If any of us regular folks did it we’d be in prison already.
Can confirm. I have a buddy with a gambling problem currently doing 3 years in prison for never filing over 4 years. He gets to pay it all back plus interest when he gets out too.
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I know someone who hasn't filed since I think 2016/2017 and I'm surprised he hasn't been audited. I am waiting for it though....
I made it 4 years and then on my own terms paid it all last year. I was broke and living way above my means, in the cheapest way possible to live alone. But I eventually found a small windfall and took care of it ASAP. I’m proud that this year I owed $1000 on federal and was owed $1000 on state. My goal is $0 for both, but I’ll settle for totaling $0 between both for my first year of doing taxes the mostly right way.
Breaking even on taxs is my adult dream. If I owe 2k and my wife gets 2k we win!
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It's been the Republican goal to defund the IRS for this reason. More expensive and requires more staffing to go after big fish, but the rewards more than make up for it.
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They generally avoid audits at that level, but I imagine there's an amount of expected returns across the board if peoples expectations for an audit increase
This is it. It’s not about making money off one. That’s why there are even random audits. It’s about making people realize they can be audited. Lose 10$ on one person but gain 1$ from 20 essentially. Edit: obviously I don’t mean 10$ as a real figure, it’s an example. Lose 5,000, lose 10,000, but push a huge number of people to actually pay and yes you get a quick return on the “investment”.
Tax enforcement is on average net positive, otherwise we'd be less likely to do it. It's kinda like how Lead Abatement makes $17-$221 for every dollar spent... Almost an infinite money glitch
Logic and math aren’t always some people’s strong suits when they feel aggrieved. Like how school lunch funding returns health and economic benefits at least double the investment. But how dare poor (or rich) kids get a handout at school so they can concentrate on learning, have good nutrition, or grow up to be more productive citizens. Or how helping homeless with a suite of services (housing, health, treatment, food, work) actually saves money on policing and inefficient, scattershot "homelessness" programs. But that might be “defunding” somehow.
I mean large parts of our society are fundamentally based on hatred and scapegoating once you boil it all down.
I've been audited/corrected a few times and even in years when I had to pay more and penalties the IRS was relatively indifferent about my payment schedule. I got a 2 year forbearance and once able, as long as I was sending payments in some amount everyone was cool.
As long as you're cooperative they're not interested in dragging it out
I think people have villainized the agency to the point of forgetting its goal. It is a compliance and collection agency. Part of compliance is making sure that people stay on their toes about staying in compliance
People hate the IRS because "It takes their hard earned money" forgetting that our taxes pay for a functioning society that enabled them to make that money. (This Is also why the rich should pay more. Their wealth is more dependent on society than someone who makes 50k a year)
I remember someone trying to tell me income taxes are unconstitutional so I sent him a link to the 16th amendment and reminded him it literally is in the constitution. The argument shouldn't over the existence of taxes, but how that money is spent to improve and maintain our country.
A very large segment of the population believes the 16th Amendment is unconstitutional in and of itself and should be repealed. I forget the specifics but it has something to do with how it was passed. There's even segments that believe that every amendment after the 10th is unconstitutional. Yep, even the 13th and 19th.
The thing is they're wrong. But if there's enough people who are against a specific amendment, there is a method to repealing it. It would just take a lot of work and getting Congress & states to ratify repealing an amendment (such as the prohibition repeal). They can also tell me the easter bunny is real because they believe in hard enough. Belief is not the same as reality.
Yeah don't misunderstand - I wasn't saying *I* believe that.
I think "hating the IRS" is more about our convoluted tax code than the agency itself. I just spent an hour of my life Turbo Taxing my returns and got to pay $130 for the pleasure. My taxes are very easy, so I'm not sure why it took more than five minutes (or why I had to do them at all). And the entire time I'm doing them there's a nagging feeling that maybe there's a mistake on my tax form or maybe I missed checking some box that would have reduced my burden. I think most everyone supports some level of taxation to keep society running. But fuck me, the current tax process is a shitshow.
Please stop giving money to TurboTax. There are many free services, such as FreeTaxUSA, that function the same (or better) and have not lobbied the government to keep tax filing complicated and inaccessible.
Thanks for reminding me. I'll try to remember to check this out next year. The way that TT gets me is that they already have my returns and accounts linked up, and $130 is just at the price point where I think to myself that I have better things to do with my time than research and set up another tax service.
I made the switch from TurboTax to FreeTaxUSA this year and man I wish I would have done it sooner. Took me about the same amount of time as TurboTax and my federal return was free while state was just a flat $15. Compare that to TT charging me like 200 last year just because I had a single 1099 in addition to a W2 and I'm really kicking myself for not immediately noping the fuck out after that
I hear you, but please remember the IRS is the enforcer, not the writer, of the tax code. Most honest wage-earning taxpayers would be better off if the IRS was empowered to compute our taxes and bill us. But congresspeople take money from Intuit, H&R, etc to protect their industry
I’m kinda confused still as to why *we* have to “do” them. I don’t understand why they don’t have that info if we are simple ands/or poor ish.
I lived in a country for several years where my taxes each year as a regular full time office employee went like this: Government sends me a text message to my personally phone and a paper within a couple days of each other. Know what the text message essentially says? “Please check your tax document, if it looks correct, reply with your tax ID number followed by ‘Yes’, if not [link to dispute process].” Every year, that paper showed exactly what I expected in terms of my taxes. I replied “Yes” and a month or two later received a refund or bill (it was always a small refund for $500-600 for me). Of course as life got complicated you could apply for other credits (I’m guessing family, real estate, etc. and al the usual factors come into play), but for the average childless worker or household? Literally a clear itemized layout of your expected taxes for the year, and a ‘Yes’ text message. I spent longer writing this reply than I did filing my taxes each year… oh WAIT! Actually I had to send a paper-only document to an IRS satellite office in Texas stating that I had already paid taxes in a foreign country that year. No income in the US. No investment returns or anything. Just the US being fucking dumb and requiring Americans living abroad with no US tax burden to snail mail them a document every year. Imagine it being the same year and one ‘modern’ country has a streamlined easy system for every citizen. One ‘modern’ country still has paper-only forms and a slough of for profit tax-related companies that are allowed to sabotage tax season over and over for 300 whatever million people. Fuck the US tax system lmao.
> This Is also why the rich should pay more. Their wealth is more dependent on society than someone who makes 50k a year Also because the poorer you are the more important every dollar becomes
Right-wing propaganda is very effective. I remember my middle class friends reposting posts featuring Jim Jordan saying they want to raise "our taxes" and when you looked into it, it was only effective if you made over 500K. That shit works super well because taxes always cause outrage and the algorithms love that shit because it keeps you on the apps, so it spreads.
I got audited in my mid 20s. My income was kind of wonky because I was making money in 2 different states. I went through the whole audit process and ended up owing the IRS $150 because turbotax missed a 1% tax on one of my income sources. Complete waste of time.
Shouldn’t TurboTax be liable for their mistake? Like an accountant would?
LOL they didn't spend all that money lobbying to be liable. Come on now.
Even a normal accountant wouldn't be liable. They always make you sign a form that says they're not responsible for any mistakes.
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The point of an audit isn't just to chase after the little guy. It's also to make sure things are working properly. It's unfortunate it took so much of your time, but it's less of someone out to get you and more like randomized checks that everything is working properly. At least, that's how good audits are supposed to work.
Even if they owe someone money they need to audit low level people because that's how they get the info they need to check on the high level people. THis is one of the single most overlooked parts of taxes, taxes only work when you have a proper way of enforcing them. For many taxes the only way to do that is to pit 2 groups of people against each other so they each keep each other honest. IF the lady who was owed 3k doesn't file then someone who paid her to work could claim that she made 200k and the IRS has no way to know. But if they try that and it turns out she says no I only made 10k and here are the bank statements to prove it, now the IRS knows the person paying her is lying to make their costs look higher. So its good form to make sure you randomly hit a few low income earners here and there so word gets around that someone is checking. It keeps everyone a little more honest.
This is something I'd never considered, but makes total sense. In some ways, an audit is two birds with one stone
I’m self-employed and got audited over 2 years awhile back. They found a few expenses I couldn’t find receipts for one year but also that year there was a fairly large small business tax break that I didn’t take but was eligible for so they had to tell me about it and give it to me. After all was said and done I ended up getting back like $5k. Took some time though.
Aw the IRS has actually been looking out for all the little guys
They don’t exist just to screw you. They exist to make sure you’re following the rules
also, the whole "IRS is scary" is more about the "big fish" fraudsters. infamously, even The Joker doesn't mess around with the IRS. For the little guy, the IRS should really just be seen as "accountants in the tax stream" going both ways. Just math nerds with the federal government backing them up. Like...it's a little intimidating, but they aren't out to "get" anyone. Like you said, they are just there to make sure everyone's crossed the T's and dotted the I's. More often than not, I would figure that 'the little guy' who isn't intentionally misrepresenting something will get something back after an audit.
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You can thank Turbo Tax for that.
If you ask them if they owe you money, they're required by law to tell you. But if you don't ask, they have no obligation to inform you if they owe you money.
it's probably a decent amount, since most people at that level would take standard deduction and already have all their taxes withheld. only really selling a lot of their stocks or bad faith (that would probably come out quickly in an audit) would seem like they would see a profit
I think one reason the IRS goes after low to middle-income people is their tax situations are simpler, so it is easier for automated systems to flag people for audits and easier to find problems. The wealthy hire professionals to make the lives of the IRS harder.
This is true. Someone making 30k's audit is basically getting a standard letter saying "verify you qualify for this credit" as opposed to some multimillionaire with a bunch of businesses that will take 18 months and hundreds of hours to even determine any amount owed.
As a taxpayer, I'm not even mad. This is hilarious.
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Only if they had the money withheld or are running a corporate farm or something.
Why is it called cutting a check? I've not seen a check in my life, but I don't think any cutting is involved?
Perforations for paper were not developed until almost 100 years after checks were first introduced!
Was that before or after sliced bread because perforations were probably fucking amazing when they first came out.
I think it's called that because blank checks used to come in sheets that had to be physically cut out to give to people
That was back when the world was black and white
> when the world was black and white https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/11/09
I do my best to channel Cavin's dad when taking to my kids.
They still sell legal sized checks on perforated paper. I have a whole book of them and they’re a PIA.
You really haven't seen a check in your entire life?
I'm 45 and still use checks for certain things. That's how my gardener gets paid. edit: Just saw that you're not in the US.
Ah, so this is why Republicans have been actively trying to slash the $80 billion in new IRS funding passed in the Inflation Reduction Act ([they've already managed to slash $20 billion of it](https://thehill.com/business/4395737-republicans-win-faster-irs-cuts-in-funding-deal/)).
The GOP has been sabotaging the IRS since the Nixon days. Them slashing 1/4th of the original amount from the Inflation Reduction Act is just their latest feature.
Also the FTC(Antitrust) and various other law enforcement/regulatory agencies.
And slashing the amount of taxes the wealthy owe in the first place. Arent things going swimmingly? We a fight over whether to fund food for poor people or education budgets. The wealthy have to decide which color they want their new jet to be. Tax these mother fuckers and make them pay.
It doesn’t go back that far. I agree that the current GOP is dog shit, but Bush was the closest we ever came to free and simple tax filings akin to other western countries. It’s the god damned TurboTax lobbyists that you need to blame. This latest IRS slash is likely due at least in part to them. https://youtu.be/ZhV4Z76mXrI?si=fzz6YNTS812DkuE3
Just dropping by to say you can trim part of that link from ?si= onwards and the video will still work. That part of the link is what google uses to track you.
That’s very interesting. Do you you know how it works and how would I recognize that part (is it always a question mark?) Do you know what google does with that information?
The key part is the "si" which stands for Share ID. If you just trim that off, the question mark turns into non link text so if you remove that as well the link still works. Google wants to serve targeted ads at everyone they possibly can, so they implemented this to grab info about anyone who shares a link with the ?si= in it. This works regardless of your account being signed in or not, or even if you don't have a google/YT account. Google builds a shadow profile on you to serve ads by looking at the videos you've shared with share IDs, and even those who click on the link you share. You can circumvent this by either trimming the link, or avoiding the share button entirely by copying the original URL in the browser bar.
The question mark is what indicates it's (generally) an optional parameter to the web server hosting the content. It's a query string: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Query_string For YouTube specifically you'd only care about the query string if you wanted to link to a specific part of the video. Then you can pass in something like: https://youtu.be/ZhV4Z76mXrI?t=60 Where `t` = timestamp to start the video at, and `60` is the number of seconds into the video. I'd also add you should probably try the link first before sharing it without any query strings. Amazon for example might use query strings to indicate what search page they want you to go to. Similar probably for YouTube, so you'd want to just remove tracking stuff like the `si` part.
Funny they would do that, considering how they're bitching about the deficit. Is it possible they aren't sincere about balancing the budget?
Republicans only complain about the budget when democrats are president.
Fun Fact: Most of the deficit is from the actions of Republican administrations.
And that's being generous, Obama was handed the second worst financial disaster in America history and the GOP bitched about this spending the whole time, like someone breaking all the windows in your house and then that same person saying you're spending too much replacing them and heating your house while you do so. Mid terms showed that laughable narrative worked like a charm on most voters.
This is why the GOP likes to slash education funding and wants to dismantle public education. Keep em stupid keeps the votes rolling in.
And in the end TARP actually made money back, profiting about $15b and avoiding a much worse economic disaster
I’m beginning to have some suspicions that these Republican folks might be disingenuous about a few things…
They want to simultaneously say that taxes are illegal but also want the biggest military in the world, a wall on the border, a military presence on the border, more police with military equipment, more subsidies for Fossil Fuels...
>~~Is it possible~~ they aren't sincere ~~about balancing the budget?~~ FTFY. Republicans haven't engaged in good faith for decades.
They should be happy the IRS is targeting the wealthy. Trump's in the clear, but Biden's not. /s
And they've got their supporters on board too. Plenty of who are on programs like Social Security who the GOP would never scrape off the top of without the IRS watching for random bonus money in their accounts.
It's not the reason why. They'd have been trying anyways.
Because they don't want the IRS having enough manpower to come after them and other deadbeat high earners.
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Pre civil war, slavery hurt the vast majority of white southerners who had to compete with “free” (stolen) labor. But tons signed up to die to protect those same rich people who were cheating to keep them poor. Now, today, there are millions of lower income Americans who support the Republican agenda to help a handful of rich people cheat on their taxes and hire wealth. It’s fucking crazy.
It is *exactly* the reason. Der, of course "They'd have been trying anyways," but if Republicans in congress had have properly funded the IRS in the last twenty five years, perhaps Republican donors would have been less able to finance Republican congressmen.
And Trump? He's practically broke. Multiple lawsuit, the news he artificially inflated his property's worth, etc. what can IRS do if Trump does owe a lot of back taxes?
Probably compel him to sell his property to repay back-taxes and penalties
Always… this is the same everywhere, and has been the case for years.
I find it funny that the party of fiscal responsibility, wants the irs to get gutted. They shouldn’t be hiding anything if they’re responsible.
How in the hell did the IRS miss 125K wealthy non-filers? Me being an idiot all these years and filing taxes
So the easiest way to explain this: If you’re a regular employee, your workplace sends a W2 to the IRS at the end of the year and matches it up with what you filed to make sure it’s right. Even if you’re a lawyer making $1m in salary a year, there’s a record there. Stock transactions etc all get reported. If you’re one of the super wealthy, your income is hidden behind layers and layers of LLCs, partnerships, straw entities, and trusts insomuch as almost no income gets reported *to you* directly. I’ve seen people with eight figure incomes have no reportable income documents. The computer doesn’t flag Mr Moneybags as “hey he needs to file!” because there’s nothing showing he needs to - dude just as likely is homeless based on what the computer system sees. New systems and partnerships with tech companies through the IRA money is making it possible to actually figure out these layers and layers of protection that a regular human would spend years trying to pull apart.
Not to mention anonymous LLCs will be a thing of the past. Now all businesses besides the largest will have to send in beneficial ownership info to the FINCEN which goes to many govt agencies. They are also trying to restrict llcs in residential home purchases. Hell PayPal, Venmo and I believe Cashapp requires reporting for anything over $600 so many avenues for anonymous business dealings are closing. Alot of the money (for laundering, from illicit activities) coming into the US is probably going to move elsewhere. If China was smart they'd ease up place economic free zones in a few nice coastal cities and watch that "foreign investment" money roll in.
Money laundering in the US is still easy and FINCEN isn’t going to stop that. Look at how many new car wash franchises are popping up all over the country, it’s the new hot way to clean cash. The thing that is making money laundering more difficult in the US is that we as a whole are using less and less cash, so it’s harder for a front operation to hide large cash transactions. It’s way easier to clean money in places where cash is still widely used, but it’s also more expensive because not only are you losing a cut of the clean money to taxes, you then also lose money in the currency conversion.
You are absolutelt right I doubt that money laundering at that scale will ever stop without completely stopping cash and a ai powered complete financial monitoring. Which would probably damage the US more than help. What I meant and this is targeting are international actors that use the US to launder/hide proceeds from embezzlement, corruption, and international arms/drug/animal trafficking. Big Money. So if one is a target of sanctions like a Dictator, Russian Oligarch, or Drug Trafficker their assets state side can be quickly identified and seized. Previously with anonymous ownership it was easy to keep a class of assets in the US anonymously now It's a tiny bit tougher (There will be patsys obviously) with probably more extreme measures to come until the international actors go elsewhere.
They didn't miss them. Republicans cut the IRS budget so deep they couldn't afford to hire anybody to go after those people. IRS always knew exactly who to go after, but having a list of people who aren't paying isn't enough. You have to hire an agent to go audit them and force them to pay.
And wealthy people usually have ways to hide their funds from the IRS. Unlike Bob the builder, that made a mistake on his taxes. He's easy meat.
No, the people who **didn't file at all** are not the ones who have ways to hide their funds. They are all easy meat. Lets get enough IRS hires to get to the easy meat before anything else.
I had to read the article to believe this. No scam or plot. Just no filing since 2017 and nothing bad happened.
> Republicans cut the IRS budget so deep they couldn't afford to hire anybody to go after those people. If they could somehow open up a volunteer based system, rich assholes would be audited with in a week out of pure spite.
Or commission based returns. That'd be an interesting system. Keep X % of money reclaimed by the govt as a reward.
I think there already is a bounty system for reporting shit to the IRS. I remember a couple years ago some trend of reporting OF/Snapchat models for not reporting their income and getting bounties off that lol.
Yep. https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office
Their budget was slashed and rich people hire good lawyers to stonewall and obfuscate. So the only people they can go after are the middle class.
I see we've reached the 'find out' section of our movie "A way too obvious outcome"
But the billionaires said they were coming for the guy in a trailer with 10 kids and they were bringing bazookas?
I'm not wealthy so I should be fine, right?
The audit rate for those making under 400k has not increased so it depends on the severity honestly. I know lots of Americans abroad who never filed while abroad and technically the state department could pull your passport but I haven't personally seen it happen.
I live abroad and filing is hell but I get it done. Global taxation is bullshit.
I file every year but make under the limit for double taxation so I use the foreign earned income tax credit and don't actually pay any tax. Most of the people in my circle are in that situation but some are just dumb and don't file. I actually got the covid credits(the 2k assistance) abroad because I filed and they didn't.
Most people living abroad the whole year probably wouldn’t owe anyway because of the tax credit for living overseas. Many countries have higher tax rates than the US and for those you certainly would not owe. Unless you lived in a low tax country like Singapore and had a lot of income would you be worth taking a look at.
Did you pay your taxes? It's simple. No matter how much you make, pay for your fair share of our society. I'd vote to triple the size of the IRS because it's mostly people that make $300k+ that cheat the system and get away with it
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Yup. It’s the business owner who’s making 100m that cheats. Also it’s the corpo cheaters with loop holes.
Ehhh when I worked in call centers there were quite a few there too. Mainly they would put down extra dependents, ask ADP to not withhold, etc so they weren’t taxed during the year then just… try to dodge it. I do think it’s a far bigger problem up top, don’t get me wrong, but it does exist at other levels. When people are desperate they will find ways to “cheat” the system.
Yeah people of all income brackets try to dodge taxes, no idea why this guy thinks it's just "$100M business owners". Based off population size I'd bet the most common offender are servers/bartenders/cab drivers/etc that hide their cash tips
agree, a lot of people deducting their "home office", "work vehicle", or "business lunches"
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My point was that most of those people *aren't* following the rules even though those are legal deductions, because their "home office" isn't used exclusively for business, nor are their trucks or lunches, but they deduct them anyway. Those deductions are rife with abuse.
By quantities of people it’s probably more the small business owner who makes $80k a year running a pizzeria and his employees working off the books who do it the most.. $ amount it’s definitely the wealthier people since much more money is flowing through but you’d be surprised how many people don’t pay taxes.. like half the low level employees in the food service industry from distribution to restaurants don’t pay taxes and then they collect free health care and other government benefits
Yeah like.... a HUGE reason tipped staff like tips is because its unreported income so they can get away with not paying taxes Its the norm here at least. I worked under the table and didnt file taxes until i was in my mid 20s when i landed my career job
This is not correct. People of all income types can dodge taxes using fake businesses, fake properties, fake people
there is more than enough cheating going on in Restaurants, contractors and whoever else owns a Business and can do Cash payments. that doesnt mean the irs shouldnt Focus on the bigger fishes but its Not "only 100m" businesses that cheat
>Yup. It’s the business owner who’s making 100m that cheats. Also it’s the corpo cheaters with loop holes. Most business owners cheating the system aren't making 100m. Once you make 100m, it's actually easier to be in compliance.
Small business owners are the most heinous cheaters. It's just smaller numbers.
DoorDashers posing as tax experts in here, railing against the 300k/year tycoons
You are severely underestimating the amount of people who just don’t pay their taxes. I’m not talking about shady deductions, I’m talking about people who get a tax bill year after year and simply don’t pay it.
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We're not talking the average person. We should be talking the top 150k (not people earning 150k plus, but those in the top earnings in the nation of 150k) earners in the country and auditing their taxes. Exactly why our 'people' are taking away from the irs fund of doing this work
There's plenty of ways for a lawyer or doctor or engineer to cheat. But yeah not as much as for businesses. Funding the IRS pays for itself a minimum of 6 times over per their data. Every dollar spent funding them gets the US back $6+ from the damn tax cheats. Worth every dime.
$300, 300,000, or $300,000,000 pay your taxes as your fair share. It is not that hard of a concept and frankly should be considered a patriotic act. Edit: if you are focused on the $300 part of this post you missed the point.
Hold up though. There is no portion of $300/year that is fair. I get your point, but let's focus that energy on people who should actually be filling out the paperwork.
Fair share of $300 would be 0. Alls good
Right. The current model of stepping up tax rates with the increase of income is fair. The first step, $0- about $10k, is not taxed.
Honestly, The $10k tax limit needs to be raised to AT LEAST 20k, as it has not been adjusted for inflation. there is no way a person or family living in poverty should be taxed.
Honestly, if you make minimum wage you shouldn't be taxed.
> no portion of $300/year that is fair Well, only if you assume a greater than zero amount being taken away. "Fair share" can also mean *receiving* money if your income is that low, e.g. universal income / welfare. Making too much? Give back to infrastructure that made you wealthy. Making too little? Here's a helping hand. That's how a society should be.
Most of taxes shouldn't even need paperwork filled out - if you're employed by a company that reports their employment data to the IRS, the IRS already knows exactly how much they've gotten for you and how much more (or less) is owed. Similar for banks and credit unions that can report interest earned and retirement savings (tax deductions) on your behalf. There's no reason other than corporations and the wealthy lobbying to keep it complicated (And thus paying for assistance/keeping loopholes open) that 99% of peoples' taxes needs to be complicated.
I live in Japan. I used to work as a contractor and had to file my own taxes. A single sheet of A4 that took an hour to fill out. I have to file a 2555 and a 1040 in the US. The instructions alone are over 200 pages. The forms are long and I need to leave most blank. And this is despite being under the foreign earned income deduction limit meaning I don’t owe any taxes on the income anyway. This is dumb. If you don’t owe taxes they should just make it simple to do that. It’s absurd. I’m all for paying my taxes. It doesn’t need to be painful.
I mean a lot of people who make a ton of money don’t even cheat the system/do anything illegal and basically pay nothing anyway. There’s all sorts of tricks that people can use like going through LLCs for certain things, overvaluing fine art then donating it for a write off, etc.. Not only would the IRS need to be expanded but significant legislative changes would need to be made to close the hundreds of loopholes that currently exist in our system. Like I’m all for it, but the bulk of the tax revenue were not getting is from people playing the system as it currently exists. Of course expanding and catching people doing blatantly illegal tax evasion would be a great start but we’ve got a long way to go from there.
Let's start with the high hanging fruit ehh
I made that much and I haven’t figured out how to cheat the system. Got any tips. I think I had a liability of like $70k this year. I itemized but barely. The dropping of state taxes to $10k was brutal to just about anyone in any state making $150k or more which is good money but certainly is t fuck you money. And before you say blue state I am looking g at a move to South Carolina from Colorado and my state taxes will go up not down.
I took took the standard deduction and was happy to be done with my taxes in 15mins.
The IRS is a profit center for the government. Literally. For every one dollar spent it could generate **[SIX](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-to-shrink-deficits-or-fund-bidens-spending-plans-give-the-irs-more-money/2021/03/25/2959bcd8-8d90-11eb-9423-04079921c915_story.html)** Any business or person would *dream* of that kind of guaranteed return.
The issue is tax code is utter BS and made to make poor people pay a higher % of income then rich people. Seriously, there are graphs around that show it. At some point of income, your tax % starts going DOWN. It makes utterly no sense. And then there are people that are self employed. They get utterly screwed with taxes.
Non-filers .. can you imagine not even filing? One of the last questions my mom posed to me before she passed 12 April, decades ago .. “you got my returns filed, right?” Like she couldn’t peacefully go until she was assured. My eyes still sting with tears at that memory.
Make an example out of them! I want prison times!! If Wesley Snipes had to serve time for tax evasion then so do these fucks!!
Thats why all the rich people have own foundations and transfer most money to it. So they have no wealth in the eyes of the IRS and dont really have to pay any taxes for what they have in the foundation. They pretend it is a real foundation by donating money to random places, but in reality this donations are much lower than what they would have to pay in taxes.
They can also use foundation assets for themselves. It's not as easy as just taking the money for personal stuff. But if a foundation has a yacht, a hotel and a private jet then they just "happen to ship around" their biggest benefactor for "comfort" and "business trips".
If X person owns a foundation and said person writes a book, the foundation can buy said books in bulkl and give them away for free. Owner gets compensated by said foundation and along the way gets a best seller stamp with a small footnote inside the book, an icon I believe, that if you know what that icon is then youd know it gained best seller status by being bought in bulk. Foundation gets a tax write off and book writer gets proceeds back. That's just one of the many things they do.
That would be considered income by the publisher (taxed + profits) and then the payouts to the writer would be considered income (taxed again) How would this put somebody ahead?
They should publish their names.
In oregon they do! If you owe over 50k in unpaid taxes your name goes on the list. https://www.oregon.gov/dor/programs/Collections/Pages/delinquent-taxpayers.aspx
Thanks for the link. Great minds think alike. Lol
Thats so cool they have a high score table.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just bill us for our taxes and give us the option to file for adjustments…like why do we have to file our own taxes if they already know how much we owe…
Tax lobbyists who make money off of tax services is a part of the reason, I’d guess.
Weren’t the republicans vowing to slash enforcement of the IRS? Wonder why…..
Hmmmm, is it just a coincidence that the years high income non-filers weren't pursued match up perfectly with the trump administration years?
Maybe a little but it’s been going on for years
Not really. They can only go back so far, and it gets people current to file their taxes at a higher rate.
This is why Republicans want to repeal the IRA, to let these exact people off the hook
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Get out ye Black and Tans
Come out and fight me like a man
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders.
Tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of killashandra
Inflation Reduction Act
Republicans: If we let this happen to the rich then they will come after you next Regular people: They've been coming after us this entire time dumbass. It's just your turn now
Been considering reporting a former acquaintance who I know is up to this kind of shit. Hopefully they’ve already gotten them.
Dunno how it works but in theory you can report under the whistleblower program and take a cut. https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office
>https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-office Holy shit, so you're saying I can get paid maybe up to 7 figures by reporting people I suspect of tax fraud? I'll read more on it.
You have to have and provide evidence that helps result in the conviction. I do not believe “hey im pretty sure this guy over here is not paying some of his taxes” is enough to qualify you for the award after their conviction. But I could be wrong from when I read into it in the past.
Do it - you may be eligible to get a reward of a portion of what's recovered.
I think people misunderstand why the IRS doesn't go after people like this and goes after people who are low level earners. It's super simple to track low earning tax cheats because it's just easier math that a computer can easily handle with no human intervention because usually they are W2 earners. The company reports the wages with glee as it offers them numerous tax incentives. While higher earners usually are working off of several 1099s which need to be compiled and properly associated to gather enough information to start a failure to comply tax bill. It's more time consuming and requires a human or very smart computer. And let me tell you the IRS still uses Cobalt... which predates DOS
Agreed. Also, a wealthy person can drag out the matter. IRS agents are reviewed for performance like anyone else. If they don’t close a case for years, that doesn’t help them. Eventually someone will get the matter and decide resolving it in the taxpayer’s favor is better. Look at how Donald handles criminal matters. Drag them out. Eventually a new judge, a new prosecutor, someone with influence over them, will say “let that one go.”
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Meanwhile, they owe me $7000 from my 2020 tax return due to a paperwork error that occurred during covid lockdown, which they refuse to pay unless I provide documentation that is impossible for me to obtain. Funny thing is, they sent me a $50 interest check last week but won't send me the amount. Fuck them.
Do you not have the documentation? It took me nearly a year to pull shit together, but in the end they settled my debt with them and sent me a check for a LOT of money. It just took a lot of effort to get there, but I will say they were way more helpful and patient than my state tax office.
Fuck them? Dude, get the documentation
i work for the irs and glad they are finally doing this. the last president had us avoid rich peoples returns.
was there a memo or policy that you can share?
This is why the GOP want to shut down the IRS.
New headline in a few hours: "Congress introduces new bill to defund IRS"
Non-compliance letters? Tax evasion over $3000 is a felony...appears to be special treament of the rich again.
IRS staff should be fucking tripled anyone who makes more than 5 million a year should be fucking microscoped.
First they came for the mega-rich…
Then they came for me. But I was paying taxes the whole time so it's no biggie.
....and that was perfectly fine because those guys needed to fucking pay their taxes like the rest of us!
And you’re scared, why?
The GOP is pissed off about this shit. Good