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The vigilantism aspect is a guilty pleasure when reading this — with the IRS being deliberately defunded to facilitate tax cheating I read about this guy and he

The vigilantism aspect is a guilty pleasure when reading this — with the IRS being deliberately defunded to facilitate tax cheating I read about this guy and hear in my head "this is the hero we need".

Spooky23 2y ago
The IRS vilification is gross. I had a relative who was a revenue agent with a couple of highly specialized areas of expertise. When he started in the mid-80s, his unit had about 250 agents nationally. When he retired circa 2010, there was 4. He retired earlier than he wanted because the travel was difficult and he was developing some health issues. The cases they prosecuted were people cheating society out of hundreds of millions, or in one case, billions of taxes. He characterized the scope of what wasn’t even looked at as 15k cases annually where at least $10M of taxes were notn paid. They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M. We should be vilifying the people doing this. Some of these crooks avoid taxes equivalent to 10,000 or more well paid professional like myself and my colleagues. You also have issues with some cases where the tradition of allowing Senators to nominate US Attorneys and hyper-political judges means that certain crimes are effectively not crimes in certain districts.
- photonthug 2y ago
  You explained yourself the same problem that you’re trying to dismiss. The vilification will continue until the emphasis is placed where it needs to be, ie going after big fish instead of little ones, regardless of which fish are easy targets and easy wins for enforcement quotas, and regardless of whether the enforcement team is 4 people or 4000.
  - rectang 2y ago
    I'm confused. It seems like "They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M" describes "going after big fish instead of little ones".
    - photonthug 2y ago
      Yeah but then it’s explained why catching the big fish is hard, and a plea for sympathy due to staff cuts. That won’t work until/unless tax enforcement overall shifts from disproportionately affecting the poor to disproportionately affecting the rich, regardless of some special team of four people that targets big fish. The situation that we actually have is like if a one stoplight town is setting a speed trap because they need revenue.. but they target only old broken minivans going 5mph over, because they know corporate trucks and private red sports cars going 20 over the limit are more likely to have lawyers that buck the speeding ticket, and cost the town revenue instead of collecting it. Is adding more cops to pull over more old minivans really going to help the town buy a public park, or stop sports cars from speeding? It’s not only unfair, but also completely ineffective. Staffing/funding is always going to be a bullshit complaint because structurally, enforcement quotas and complex compliance requirements are always going to tend to create a preference for bureaucracies to punch down at soft targets. Similar to how militarizing police doesn’t actually help fix problems with law enforcement, adding additional “support” (ie weapons) for other institutions that have fundamentally broken politics/policies is not a good idea.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    You read it wrong and frankly don’t get it. With the limited resources they have, it only makes sense to pursue the most egregious offenders for complex crimes. Enforcement is like fixing shipped code - expensive and difficult. Effective enforcement shapes people’s risk assessment and behavior. You need to work the middle of the bell curve so that people believe there’s risk. It’s funny… the people who push the “starve the beast” agenda want to “back the blue”, as long as they are looking in the direction they prefer.
    - photonthug 2y ago
      > With the limited resources they have, it only makes sense to pursue the most egregious offenders for complex crimes. With few resources the wrong people are targeted and I think that’s well established https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2023/01/29/the-irs-continues-to-focus-its-audits-on-poor-people-not-millionaires/# https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2023/01/29/the-irs-... With more resources, there’s every reason to believe that more of the wrong people will be targeted. Why would you believe otherwise?
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        Forbes, seriously?
    - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        This just sounds like a dime a dozen Libertarian attitude
        johnisgood 2y ago
        Libertarians are not against private police though.
- jonathanyc 2y ago
  > They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M. I got a letter from the IRS for ~$300. I’m pretty sure the first letter was sent by some automated system of theirs with a bug, and the subsequent letters were some IRS employee trying to cover their ass. Here’s the sequence of events. - IRS: You misreported your gain on this one specific trade. - Me: I checked and the trade is listed with the amounts you claim on the broker’s 1099-B that I sent to you. Here are the 1099-Bs with the transaction highlighted. - IRS: We’ve already seen your 1099-Bs. Please prove to us the amounts sum to the aggregate. - Me: Here is a spreadsheet showing all the transactions and the sums. - IRS: OK OK. What about this other totally unrelated transaction then that is now being mentioned for the first time? With every single reply, the IRS took months to respond. Each reply was literally just one sentence. They sent me periodic form letters just saying “we’re working on a reply” because apparently there’s some law saying they are required to reply within some number of days. The phone number they provided for me to call was literally just an automated system. The unrelated transaction was for a huge amount on some stock I had not traded at all. At this point a friend referred me to a tax lawyer who told me to just pay the $300 so the IRS would stop harassing me. Paraphrasing the lawyer: “my rate is a lot higher than $300.” This incident turned me against the IRS. I’m sorry about your relative but I have no hesitation vilifying them. In contrast, the CA DMV once sent me a letter asking for $300 because a vehicle’s old registration hadn’t been cancelled. It was a hassle but every time I called in I got a human being, and on the last call the collections person saw the error in their database and fixed it on the spot. Frustrating but not malicious. The IRS on the other hand…
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    You’re an easy mark to hit a quota. Thats unjust. I’m not a defender of the IRS. I’ve worked for my share of large corporate and government bureaucracy. They are dumb organizations if you design them to be. The folks who have controlled the purse at the committee level in congress want that org to be dumb. I’ve consulted for a few DMVs. Fundamentally, they are tax agencies. They sell stickers and plates. They are unique, however, as they are one of the few state level organizations that directly interact with the entirety of the public. They often do a mediocre job, but they see themselves as customer service orgs and make effort to give you a positive experience. Most states have governance structures where individual legislators cannot micromanage agency functions as well.
ipaddr 2y ago
[flagged]
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  > Doesn't the IRS get more money than homeland, border services, secret service and the FBI combine? No. IRS budget is $16B, DHS alone is $60B. [0][1] > > Wasn't there a recent bill authorizing 80,000 new employees? No. [2] Where are you getting this incorrect information from? 30 seconds on DDG is all it takes to know that is wrong. [0] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce [1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024_0311_fy_2025_budget_in_brief.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024_0311_fy... [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irs-87000-new-agents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irs-87000-new-agents/

Spooky23 2y ago

The IRS vilification is gross. I had a relative who was a revenue agent with a couple of highly specialized areas of expertise. When he started in the mid-80s, his unit had about 250 agents nationally. When he retired circa 2010, there was 4. He retired earlier than he wanted because the travel was difficult and he was developing some health issues. The cases they prosecuted were people cheating society out of hundreds of millions, or in one case, billions of taxes. He characterized the scope of what wasn’t even looked at as 15k cases annually where at least $10M of taxes were notn paid. They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M. We should be vilifying the people doing this. Some of these crooks avoid taxes equivalent to 10,000 or more well paid professional like myself and my colleagues. You also have issues with some cases where the tradition of allowing Senators to nominate US Attorneys and hyper-political judges means that certain crimes are effectively not crimes in certain districts.

photonthug 2y ago
You explained yourself the same problem that you’re trying to dismiss. The vilification will continue until the emphasis is placed where it needs to be, ie going after big fish instead of little ones, regardless of which fish are easy targets and easy wins for enforcement quotas, and regardless of whether the enforcement team is 4 people or 4000.
- rectang 2y ago
  I'm confused. It seems like "They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M" describes "going after big fish instead of little ones".
  - photonthug 2y ago
    Yeah but then it’s explained why catching the big fish is hard, and a plea for sympathy due to staff cuts. That won’t work until/unless tax enforcement overall shifts from disproportionately affecting the poor to disproportionately affecting the rich, regardless of some special team of four people that targets big fish. The situation that we actually have is like if a one stoplight town is setting a speed trap because they need revenue.. but they target only old broken minivans going 5mph over, because they know corporate trucks and private red sports cars going 20 over the limit are more likely to have lawyers that buck the speeding ticket, and cost the town revenue instead of collecting it. Is adding more cops to pull over more old minivans really going to help the town buy a public park, or stop sports cars from speeding? It’s not only unfair, but also completely ineffective. Staffing/funding is always going to be a bullshit complaint because structurally, enforcement quotas and complex compliance requirements are always going to tend to create a preference for bureaucracies to punch down at soft targets. Similar to how militarizing police doesn’t actually help fix problems with law enforcement, adding additional “support” (ie weapons) for other institutions that have fundamentally broken politics/policies is not a good idea.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  You read it wrong and frankly don’t get it. With the limited resources they have, it only makes sense to pursue the most egregious offenders for complex crimes. Enforcement is like fixing shipped code - expensive and difficult. Effective enforcement shapes people’s risk assessment and behavior. You need to work the middle of the bell curve so that people believe there’s risk. It’s funny… the people who push the “starve the beast” agenda want to “back the blue”, as long as they are looking in the direction they prefer.
  - photonthug 2y ago
    > With the limited resources they have, it only makes sense to pursue the most egregious offenders for complex crimes. With few resources the wrong people are targeted and I think that’s well established https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2023/01/29/the-irs-continues-to-focus-its-audits-on-poor-people-not-millionaires/# https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2023/01/29/the-irs-... With more resources, there’s every reason to believe that more of the wrong people will be targeted. Why would you believe otherwise?
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      Forbes, seriously?
  - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      This just sounds like a dime a dozen Libertarian attitude
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        Libertarians are not against private police though.
jonathanyc 2y ago
> They didn’t even bother to think about anything less than $100M. I got a letter from the IRS for ~$300. I’m pretty sure the first letter was sent by some automated system of theirs with a bug, and the subsequent letters were some IRS employee trying to cover their ass. Here’s the sequence of events. - IRS: You misreported your gain on this one specific trade. - Me: I checked and the trade is listed with the amounts you claim on the broker’s 1099-B that I sent to you. Here are the 1099-Bs with the transaction highlighted. - IRS: We’ve already seen your 1099-Bs. Please prove to us the amounts sum to the aggregate. - Me: Here is a spreadsheet showing all the transactions and the sums. - IRS: OK OK. What about this other totally unrelated transaction then that is now being mentioned for the first time? With every single reply, the IRS took months to respond. Each reply was literally just one sentence. They sent me periodic form letters just saying “we’re working on a reply” because apparently there’s some law saying they are required to reply within some number of days. The phone number they provided for me to call was literally just an automated system. The unrelated transaction was for a huge amount on some stock I had not traded at all. At this point a friend referred me to a tax lawyer who told me to just pay the $300 so the IRS would stop harassing me. Paraphrasing the lawyer: “my rate is a lot higher than $300.” This incident turned me against the IRS. I’m sorry about your relative but I have no hesitation vilifying them. In contrast, the CA DMV once sent me a letter asking for $300 because a vehicle’s old registration hadn’t been cancelled. It was a hassle but every time I called in I got a human being, and on the last call the collections person saw the error in their database and fixed it on the spot. Frustrating but not malicious. The IRS on the other hand…
- Spooky23 2y ago
  You’re an easy mark to hit a quota. Thats unjust. I’m not a defender of the IRS. I’ve worked for my share of large corporate and government bureaucracy. They are dumb organizations if you design them to be. The folks who have controlled the purse at the committee level in congress want that org to be dumb. I’ve consulted for a few DMVs. Fundamentally, they are tax agencies. They sell stickers and plates. They are unique, however, as they are one of the few state level organizations that directly interact with the entirety of the public. They often do a mediocre job, but they see themselves as customer service orgs and make effort to give you a positive experience. Most states have governance structures where individual legislators cannot micromanage agency functions as well.

ipaddr 2y ago

[flagged]

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
> Doesn't the IRS get more money than homeland, border services, secret service and the FBI combine? No. IRS budget is $16B, DHS alone is $60B. [0][1] > > Wasn't there a recent bill authorizing 80,000 new employees? No. [2] Where are you getting this incorrect information from? 30 seconds on DDG is all it takes to know that is wrong. [0] https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce [1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024_0311_fy_2025_budget_in_brief.pdf https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-04/2024_0311_fy... [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irs-87000-new-agents/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irs-87000-new-agents/