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The administration plans to hire 87,000 more agents, effectively doubling its size to… be citizen friendly? They’re going to use audits like the Death Star. htt

The administration plans to hire 87,000 more agents, effectively doubling its size to… be citizen friendly? They’re going to use audits like the Death Star. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-489830 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/20/irs-funding-boost-4...

overtonwhy 5y ago
Holding tax cheats to account benefits all of society that plays by the rules.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
I don’t see the problem, as someone who pays their tax due and isn’t aggressively avoiding paying taxes. As the saying goes, “I like taxes, with them I buy civilization.”
- prepend 5y ago
  I pay my taxes too. But hiring more audit agents will have them finding work to do. An audit for me, even though I’ve kept good records and everything is on the up and up, is a lot of time and money and I want to avoid. This sounds like all those police departments who hire cops and then end up writing lots of speeding tickets to pay for the cops.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    The IRS has traditionally not audited high net worth individuals proportionally to all taxpayers due to a lack of resources. This hiring is to support auditing those taxpayers (based on news reports and administration communication).
  - n8ta 5y ago
    When the IRS is underfunded they unable to expend the funds needed to tackle complex audits. Who has complex audits? The wealthy 1. 100M & billionaires 2. multi-national corporations 3. venture capital tax schemes. According to the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 "CBO estimates that increasing the IRS’s funding for examinations and collections by $20 billion over 10 years would increase revenues by $61 billion and that increasing such funding by $40 billion over 10 years would increase revenues by $103 billion." Additionally the poor are now being audited as much as the rich (but not the super rich). Maybe this could be seen as IRS incompetence but I think given proper funding and motivation they'd be happy to turn this around. The decline of the auditing of the wealthy went hand in hand with IRS de-funding. "Americans who receive the earned income tax credit, one of the country’s largest anti-poverty programs, are audited at a higher rate than all but the richest taxpayers. " https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-americans-at-about-the-same-rate-as-the-top-1-percent https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-ameri...
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Revenue isn't the metric they should be using. For the good of the economy, they should be looking at how much hiring an auditor and doing more audits helps the economic outlook of the whole USA. Audits on honest people cost those people time they could use to generate economic value. Audits on the dishonest might prevent dishonesty, but the economic value gained for the country isn't equal to that collected from the dishonest person - since you are reducing their spending on rolexes...
charwalker 5y ago
Budget and resources to pursue tax frauds that currently can't be bothered thanks to cuts: https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea... This should be good news for the regular tax payer and incentivize those making $400k+/yr to play by the rules or risk jail time. Stop stealing from the treasury and start helping your fellow citizen.

overtonwhy 5y ago

Holding tax cheats to account benefits all of society that plays by the rules.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

I don’t see the problem, as someone who pays their tax due and isn’t aggressively avoiding paying taxes. As the saying goes, “I like taxes, with them I buy civilization.”

prepend 5y ago
I pay my taxes too. But hiring more audit agents will have them finding work to do. An audit for me, even though I’ve kept good records and everything is on the up and up, is a lot of time and money and I want to avoid. This sounds like all those police departments who hire cops and then end up writing lots of speeding tickets to pay for the cops.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  The IRS has traditionally not audited high net worth individuals proportionally to all taxpayers due to a lack of resources. This hiring is to support auditing those taxpayers (based on news reports and administration communication).
- n8ta 5y ago
  When the IRS is underfunded they unable to expend the funds needed to tackle complex audits. Who has complex audits? The wealthy 1. 100M & billionaires 2. multi-national corporations 3. venture capital tax schemes. According to the CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56467 "CBO estimates that increasing the IRS’s funding for examinations and collections by $20 billion over 10 years would increase revenues by $61 billion and that increasing such funding by $40 billion over 10 years would increase revenues by $103 billion." Additionally the poor are now being audited as much as the rich (but not the super rich). Maybe this could be seen as IRS incompetence but I think given proper funding and motivation they'd be happy to turn this around. The decline of the auditing of the wealthy went hand in hand with IRS de-funding. "Americans who receive the earned income tax credit, one of the country’s largest anti-poverty programs, are audited at a higher rate than all but the richest taxpayers. " https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-americans-at-about-the-same-rate-as-the-top-1-percent https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-ameri...
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Revenue isn't the metric they should be using. For the good of the economy, they should be looking at how much hiring an auditor and doing more audits helps the economic outlook of the whole USA. Audits on honest people cost those people time they could use to generate economic value. Audits on the dishonest might prevent dishonesty, but the economic value gained for the country isn't equal to that collected from the dishonest person - since you are reducing their spending on rolexes...

charwalker 5y ago

Budget and resources to pursue tax frauds that currently can't be bothered thanks to cuts: https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea... This should be good news for the regular tax payer and incentivize those making $400k+/yr to play by the rules or risk jail time. Stop stealing from the treasury and start helping your fellow citizen.