4 ms·

This just doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint. It seems doubtful the money recovered covers the cost of the audits.

throwaway292939 4y ago
Perhaps the idea of audits would discourage people from committing fraud in the first place.. so it may make sense
trebbble 4y ago
From the article: > A large increase in federal income tax audits targeting the poorest wage earners allowed the Internal Revenue Service to keep overall audit numbers from further declines for Americans as a whole during FY 2021. I'm guessing low-income people are, for a bunch of reasons including having simpler finances and ~no ability to hire legal counsel or other outside help, way cheaper to audit than those with more money are. This passage suggests they shifted focus there to keep their total-audits number from dropping even further. The IRS is experiencing a many-years-long deliberately-inflicted severe staffing shortage. IOW this was probably done to keep a metric someone cared about from dropping without requiring more funding, not because it's efficient or just or anything like that.
- albatross13 4y ago
  >without requiring more funding I might be missing something here, but are you disregarding the 80bn the IRS just got for another 87,000 auditors? Or are we talking funding for something else?
  - shkkmo 4y ago
    That is funding that has just been allocated, the results of that funding obviously won't be seen in data that predates that funding..
    - albatross13 4y ago
      >article about IRS auditing >person I'm replying to is talking about funding for auditing >IRS says they're going to hire 87,000 more auditors Gee I wonder what the results will be.
      - trebbble 4y ago
        > Gee I wonder what the results will be. On the FY 2021 audit rate? Little or no effect, I expect.
        albatross13 4y ago
        I'll take that wager- the IRS will audit you back what six years if they want to? The smart money says a government that's 24 trillion in debt, beholden to a private central bank that printed 16 trillion to keep alive a fake economy in the face of a flu, will probably up its FY 2021 audit rate. I'll check back with you in a few years to see how I did ;)
        trebbble 4y ago
        Since they're already unable to keep up with their current workload, and it will take time for them to staff up, no, I don't think this will give them enough staff to do substantially more auditing of 2021 taxes unless, for some reason, they decide to keep neglecting more recent years in order to do that. Some? Sure. A lot more, enough to make the audit-rate graph in the article look noticeably different? Nah, doesn't make sense, even if their motivations and purposes are what you imply. So no, that's not what the "smart money" says. If the staff increase were 2x what's proposed, sure, maybe. As it is I expect them to mostly use those resources to make the chart in the article go up for FY 2022 and on, though I'll be surprised if they manage to reach 1990s levels of audit rates. I think what's happened here is you got caught either misreading or deliberately ignoring parts of my post in order to bring up something that's bugging you and you wanted an excuse to post about, and instead of going "oops, my bad" you're digging in. So now you're trying to relate your thing back to 2021 so you can pretend it was ever relevant to the discussion. That's not making it look any better, incidentally.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > the 80bn the IRS just got It's not got. (It passed the Senate on Sunday and is scheduled to be passed by the House tomorrow.)
    - albatross13 4y ago
      Acting like this dog shit house, senate, and president won't pass this is disingenuous. Your government wants to do nothing but take from you, the money is got.
  - alphakappa 4y ago
    The 87,000 additional auditors is a misleading interpretation [1] Summary: - IRS used to have over 100,000 employees a decade back. This number has fallen due to funding cuts etc to less than 78,000 today. - The employees are not just auditors - they are support people for tax filing, IT etc. - There will be further employee attrition over the next decade that would need to be backfilled. - What Congress has given them is funding to cover hiring of 87,000 employees over the next decade. This will cover backfill for employee attrition + new employees that will include auditors, enhanced support, IT etc. The total growth (again over the next decade) is expected to be 20-30,000 with will bring the IRS back to last decade levels. TL;DR: IRS isn't going out and hiring 87,000 new (and in some misleading reports, gun toting) agents tomorrow and doubling their workforce. Instead, they are bringing their employee count (auditors and others) back to last decade levels and also replacing departing employees. 1. https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/ https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/
    - albatross13 4y ago
      > and in some misleading reports, gun toting Is that why they posted this job description, and then deleted it? https://web.archive.org/web/20220804060409/https://www.jobs.irs.gov/resources/job-descriptions/irs-criminal-investigation-special-agent https://web.archive.org/web/20220804060409/https://www.jobs.... Good luck in what's to come, friend. I hope you're ready :)
dheera 4y ago
I mean the reality is they can fine the poor however much they want and the poor can't afford lawyers. Fining rich people doesn't pay because they'll lawyer up. Reality.
- throwaway292939 4y ago
  I think the reality is they can probably fine up to upper middle class..
marwatk 4y ago
> IRS accomplished over 650 thousand audits last year by jacking up its already high reliance on so called “correspondence audits” – essentially a letter from the IRS asking for documentation on a specific line item on a return. I can't imagine those are very expensive.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  ~19 cents in postage and a few cents more for the envelope and letter.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Is the IRS not postage exempt?
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      "USPS bills the IRS monthly via the Intra-governmental Payment and Collection (IPAC) system for one-twelfth of the yearly postage estimate" https://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-022-004 https://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-022-004

throwaway292939 4y ago

Perhaps the idea of audits would discourage people from committing fraud in the first place.. so it may make sense

trebbble 4y ago

From the article: > A large increase in federal income tax audits targeting the poorest wage earners allowed the Internal Revenue Service to keep overall audit numbers from further declines for Americans as a whole during FY 2021. I'm guessing low-income people are, for a bunch of reasons including having simpler finances and ~no ability to hire legal counsel or other outside help, way cheaper to audit than those with more money are. This passage suggests they shifted focus there to keep their total-audits number from dropping even further. The IRS is experiencing a many-years-long deliberately-inflicted severe staffing shortage. IOW this was probably done to keep a metric someone cared about from dropping without requiring more funding, not because it's efficient or just or anything like that.

albatross13 4y ago
>without requiring more funding I might be missing something here, but are you disregarding the 80bn the IRS just got for another 87,000 auditors? Or are we talking funding for something else?
- shkkmo 4y ago
  That is funding that has just been allocated, the results of that funding obviously won't be seen in data that predates that funding..
  - albatross13 4y ago
    >article about IRS auditing >person I'm replying to is talking about funding for auditing >IRS says they're going to hire 87,000 more auditors Gee I wonder what the results will be.
    - trebbble 4y ago
      > Gee I wonder what the results will be. On the FY 2021 audit rate? Little or no effect, I expect.
      - albatross13 4y ago
        I'll take that wager- the IRS will audit you back what six years if they want to? The smart money says a government that's 24 trillion in debt, beholden to a private central bank that printed 16 trillion to keep alive a fake economy in the face of a flu, will probably up its FY 2021 audit rate. I'll check back with you in a few years to see how I did ;)
        trebbble 4y ago
        Since they're already unable to keep up with their current workload, and it will take time for them to staff up, no, I don't think this will give them enough staff to do substantially more auditing of 2021 taxes unless, for some reason, they decide to keep neglecting more recent years in order to do that. Some? Sure. A lot more, enough to make the audit-rate graph in the article look noticeably different? Nah, doesn't make sense, even if their motivations and purposes are what you imply. So no, that's not what the "smart money" says. If the staff increase were 2x what's proposed, sure, maybe. As it is I expect them to mostly use those resources to make the chart in the article go up for FY 2022 and on, though I'll be surprised if they manage to reach 1990s levels of audit rates. I think what's happened here is you got caught either misreading or deliberately ignoring parts of my post in order to bring up something that's bugging you and you wanted an excuse to post about, and instead of going "oops, my bad" you're digging in. So now you're trying to relate your thing back to 2021 so you can pretend it was ever relevant to the discussion. That's not making it look any better, incidentally.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the 80bn the IRS just got It's not got. (It passed the Senate on Sunday and is scheduled to be passed by the House tomorrow.)
  - albatross13 4y ago
    Acting like this dog shit house, senate, and president won't pass this is disingenuous. Your government wants to do nothing but take from you, the money is got.
- alphakappa 4y ago
  The 87,000 additional auditors is a misleading interpretation [1] Summary: - IRS used to have over 100,000 employees a decade back. This number has fallen due to funding cuts etc to less than 78,000 today. - The employees are not just auditors - they are support people for tax filing, IT etc. - There will be further employee attrition over the next decade that would need to be backfilled. - What Congress has given them is funding to cover hiring of 87,000 employees over the next decade. This will cover backfill for employee attrition + new employees that will include auditors, enhanced support, IT etc. The total growth (again over the next decade) is expected to be 20-30,000 with will bring the IRS back to last decade levels. TL;DR: IRS isn't going out and hiring 87,000 new (and in some misleading reports, gun toting) agents tomorrow and doubling their workforce. Instead, they are bringing their employee count (auditors and others) back to last decade levels and also replacing departing employees. 1. https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/ https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/
  - albatross13 4y ago
    > and in some misleading reports, gun toting Is that why they posted this job description, and then deleted it? https://web.archive.org/web/20220804060409/https://www.jobs.irs.gov/resources/job-descriptions/irs-criminal-investigation-special-agent https://web.archive.org/web/20220804060409/https://www.jobs.... Good luck in what's to come, friend. I hope you're ready :)

dheera 4y ago

I mean the reality is they can fine the poor however much they want and the poor can't afford lawyers. Fining rich people doesn't pay because they'll lawyer up. Reality.

throwaway292939 4y ago
I think the reality is they can probably fine up to upper middle class..

marwatk 4y ago

> IRS accomplished over 650 thousand audits last year by jacking up its already high reliance on so called “correspondence audits” – essentially a letter from the IRS asking for documentation on a specific line item on a return. I can't imagine those are very expensive.

missedthecue 4y ago
~19 cents in postage and a few cents more for the envelope and letter.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Is the IRS not postage exempt?
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    "USPS bills the IRS monthly via the Intra-governmental Payment and Collection (IPAC) system for one-twelfth of the yearly postage estimate" https://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-022-004 https://www.irs.gov/irm/part1/irm_01-022-004