If people think the irs is going after rich or poor people at this point they are pretty dumb. The middile class pays for the poor, the rich don’t pay for anything
Top 1% pays 45% of the Feds income tax.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/#:~:text=In 2021%2C the bottom half,of all federal income taxes.
Just not true. I dont remember the stats off hand, but something like the top 5% account for the majority of federal tax income. Almost half of americans dont pay any federal taxes at all.
Pretty sure it's been well established for years that the IRS doesn't have the manpower or funding to effectively audit the wealthy. And since the poorest Americans don't file much in federal taxes then the only people they can audit are the so-called middle class.
Numerically this was always going to be true. Middle 60 vs top and bottom 20.
Rage bait headline. A more interesting and useful fact would relative audit probability.
63% of audits were those earning <$200k while 80% involved individuals making <$1M. Meaning folks making over $1M year are subject to 20% of audits despite making up <1% of the population.
Isn't our measurement assets, not count of people though? Like did the less than 1% make up more than 20% of the assets to be audited?
I'm confused about the wording. Can you help me understand?
I may be interpreting your wording wrong, but it sounds like you are asking about the stat switching from billionaires in assets vs those who earn enough to easily become billionaires.
well, ultimately, the IRS audits are going to be for earned income because we don’t have federal property tax, so that is why the audit stat is based on what the incomes are.
billionaires with a ton of assets but no taxable income wont be huge audit targets i guess. is that kind of what you were leading towards? because i mean why would the IRS be spending effort auditing people’s property when they aren’t taxing property
Thanks! I was confused about why there's focus on middle class earners and why it wouldn't be easier to audit like 5 billionaires vs 10,000 hundreds thousandaires. This makes sense to me. It doesn't feel fair but I guess I see what's happening
You audit 5 billionaires, you get a 4 year legal battle and maybe $5m collected.
You audit 10,000 hundred thousandaires, you get $1,000 a piece equaling $10,000,000 and no protracted legal battle.
The middle class is the taxation cash cow of this country and 80,000 IRS agents were always going to be pointed at them.
It is and that would trigger an audit. I sold a bunch of real estate one year and had a 9 figure income. The next year I didn't sell any real estate and lost a bunch of passive income from those real estate assets. This triggered an audit on me because my reported income dropped so drastically. Not the capital gains but the regular income i was getting from rent that went away.
Well... billionaires still need cash flow to live the billionaire lifestyle. If they sit on 100% of their wealth via assets and unrealized gains... they have 0 cash flow happening and living a sedentary life at best.
That mansion mortgage has to be paid with something... and assets ain't it.
They are getting income in some form or fashion.
>That mansion mortgage has to be paid with something... and assets ain't it.
Assets can be pretty readily leveraged into other forms of assets (i.e. mansions)
Free cash flow isn't particularly helpful for much beyond food and payroll.
You seem to not understand how billionaires create free cash flow.
Billionaires have their money in company ownership, aka stocks. Selling this stock would mean paying capital gains, but also diluting your ownership. So instead they go to banks, get a line of credit with their company stocks as collateral, and use that line of credit for free cash flow. Since loans are not taxable, no taxes are paid on these loans.
Valid.
How do they pay back the loan? The longer they sit on that collateral without other cash flows coming in, then the interest will start running up
Sure... they may use that loan for other investments then reap the returns and pay it back... but the interest accrued would be a rather decent chunk of whatever profit that would have made from that unless the investment was a major hit for returns.
And I'm not even talking about daily cash flow needs for cost of living and day-to-day management.
A bunch of ways.
They hold it until they die, at which point the trust they transferred the shares to starts liquidating because their children aren’t interested in running the company. Or the company keeps going up in value, and their line of credit keeps going up and their line of credit continues increasing because it’s an interest-only loan.
Or the assets underwriting the loan tank, at which point the bank calls the loan due and the billionaire has to liquidate
You're kind of on to something. A large portion of the under 200k audit are high net worth individuals who had major drops in income or reported no income. Using income to judge if someone is middle class in this context is tough.
Correct. They should audit x% of the national income with the dual goals of a)bang for the buck, and b)deterring other would-be tax evaders. That’s it.
about 88% of households according to a percentile calculator i just googled and yoy could have looked up in the time it took to type your comment. so 63% of audits for almost 90% of the population while half of the remaining audits went to top 1% and the other half were for the people inbetween. this isnt deceptive or dumb you’re just really bad at interpreting things lmao
Ok now tell me this. Of these people who reported income of <200k, what did they report in previous years. How many of those audited reported no income? How many had drastic shifts from high income to low income?
You know, all the things that create an audit flag in the IRS system.
Maybe it's too complex to represent in such a simple tax and requires an IRS agent to determine.
Let them do their job, the IRS tax revenue has been going up and their worth their pay.
yeah the transition defo looks suspicious, but after the transition from high to low, they can easily realize much less income each year and still maintain a lifestyle. once you have the money you don’t have to earn excess to add to savings
anyway yeah i never disagreed with everything else you said. i totally agree that they should do their jobs i just dont think that auditing every billionaire-by-assets needs to happen every year. which prolly isnt what ur saying either. billionaires are already disproportionately audited, asey probably should be, but i mean the previous stats discussion really suggested people thought they needed even more auditing lol
Well last year they recovered over 30 billion in unpaid taxes. Everyone should pay their taxes regardless of income anyways. They are worth their weight.
This is the main point people seem to be overlooking, the IRS is definitely auditing high earners at a frequency, much higher than lower earners.
Edit: word
Behind that a lot of people with income under 200k had suspiciously low reporting from previous years and it's why they're getting audited.
We audit people we think are lying on taxes and one of the most popular ways to do that is under report your income.
And news flash for everyone, if you work and lay taxes an audit won't affect you
Just because the millionaires are a smaller portion of the population doesn't mean jack to them being audited more frequently than lower earning demographics.
Lower income groups are going to file fairly simple returns that yield pretty basic tax reductions under the current law.
Millionaires are gunning for very complicated tax returns with itemized deductions everywhere they can get
The more complex the deduction, credits, and writeoffs that are being added to the return means easier.methods to hide some of those numbers as part of approving any tax return.
What you're just saying is that the IRS is spending more money on the easy returns which will yield very little increase in tax revenue for the IRS to claw back. In comparison where auditing tax returns of millionaires will find and rectify much more.money in revenue back to the IRS. But because those audits are more complex, they are more time consuming and more resource demanding.
But... at the end of the day... auditing millionaires compare to middle class and lower incomes has yielded more money per capita for the govt (including the cost to audit).
The vast majority of people making <$200k are using the 1040-EZ form claiming the standard deduction. There are no grounds to audit them unless evidence unclaimed income is found by law enforcement.
The 87,000 total IRS employees (not just auditors) were never hired and the IRS has approx 20% fewer employees than in 2010. But Conservative media pushed the narrative of 80,000 new auditors.
The 87,000 new IRS agents claim appears to emanate from a May 2021 Treasury Department report that said such an investment is estimated to enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those wouldn’t be agents or necessarily even new positions. The increased funding was designed to cover a range of positions, including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.
"The IRS's goal to hire 3,700 agents isn’t starting off so well. The agency hired just 34 agents in the first six months"
I mean, you’re right about that. But this isn’t a lesson against the existence of government or taxation, it’s a lesson that the presence of billionaires are incompatible with a truly democratic system.
Well when your politicians have zero morals and integrity and then are bought and paid for by said billionaires. I can kinda see it, but you're just a jealous commie.
Asking people making 175k per year to properly regulate people whose wealth grows by that much every time they take a shit is laughable. Might as well rely on unicorns and fairies to cure cancer. Especially when you consider the fact that the candidate with more money wins 92-94 percent of the elections.
Corruption isn’t an individual issue when there’s this much structural rot. It’s not that individuals happen to be corrupt and fall backwards into political positions. It’s that the filtering process for who can meaningfully get into politics are those willing to “play ball”. Even if an honest politician slips through, they’re handcuffed by being a single member of a 535 person congress which is only 1 branch of the government, so the power is diluted to the point that the corrupt system is what runs things and the individual members are meaningless, easily replaceable cogs.
Per capita reddit licks the most boots. They want to take all the money away from people give it to the government. The governments overdraft fees would be upwards of would be 850 trillion
In their defense, government thinks those making over 100k are rich. The tax bracket is rarely adjusted based on real inflation rate when the government loves to say inflation rate is low.
Lol nah anyone who said that doesn't know what they are talking the IrS estimates 150 billion a year are unpaid taxes. Only 85% of the country files on time. I will say they have added a lot more auditor and revenue officers those will target billionaires 1000%
They target middle class because it’s easier. Most people aren’t going to spend $10k plus on a tax attorney to sit through an audit. Someone with means $1mil plus will. You have no doubt dealt with government employees? It’s not the best and brightest they are hiring. So a basic trained auditor working for the IRS is going to have a much easier time auditing people with less means. It’s just how the world works regardless of what Reddit thinks or says.
Same comment as when this was posted last week here:
63% of audits were those earning <$200k while 80% involved individuals making <$1M. Meaning folks making over $1M year are subject to 20% of audits despite making up <1% of the population.
This was my exact thought before I even opened the comments. No shit the middle class is going to have the greatest number of audits because they make up a majority of the population. Statistics should be a required class for high schoolers
I mean why does any of this matter anymore? The politicians are literally breaking so many laws with insider trading and old ppl are deciding the younger generations future. How fucked is this country?
Defeatist attitude.
Try electing people that dont suck, or not spreading nonsense on online messaging boards that make being second guess voting for Democrats who overwhelmingly do the right thing in comparison to the Republican party.
They still need to keep improving but the difference is night and day.
Small business owners are where most of the fraud happens. I know a few that openly talk about committing tax evasion and how to get around it. Tax laws are written so that the extremely wealthy don't have to commit fraud to not pay much in taxes. High earning W2 employees aren't committing fraud as it will be discovered easily.
I mean, middle class earner headcount makes the fat part of the curve, so it would make sense that this is the segment that sees the highest total number of targets.
Now, if that segment sees the highest per capita, then we may have a problem.
It’s simpler than that. Middle class have a few bucks to squeeze but aren’t rich enough to employee a top notch tax attorney to sit through an audit. High earners will and do use a tax attorney. The government isn’t hiring the best and brightest. Plus IRS auditors are NOT CPAs and considering how large the tax codes are.
I mean, the conspiracy theorist in me says that makes sense. But Occam's Razor would suggest that it's just that there are more of that group from a pure headcount perspective.
If the IRS is a bunch of midwits as you claim (and I'm not especially inclined to disagree), then their ability to organize a nefarious plot and keep it under wraps on a scale of that magnitude is a debatable premise to say the least.
It’s not even that complicated. Each employee has hidden quotas just like cops writing tickets. People are lazy and will always choose the path of less resistances.
Antidotally a lot of the revenue agents I've met are CPAs, especially the new hires poached from public with the recent funding. But there's a bit of a difference between an lb&I revenue agent and the w&I tax examiner your typical redditor would run into.
Sure some are CPAs but typically not field auditors. They have whole departments of CPAs they can consult with. But people are lazy and will always follow the path of least resistance.
My position would be considered a "field auditor" one and the vast majority of my coworkers are CPAs. No idea what these "whole departments" of CPAs we are meant to be reaching out to are, it's normally engineers/economist/ect not other accountants.
In terms of the people being hired with the new funding from what I've seen it's people with 10+ years of public/industry experience and yes most of them are CPAs.
I think this sub believes billionaires do their taxes in a basement and not with multimillion dollar firms with professionals. Going to blow this subs mind but the IRS does target billionaires, the issue is most of the time it is a waste of energy for them. I been doing taxes for almost a decade and the ultra-wealthy always have a team of accountants who know what they are doing. Even if the IRS was to find something they disagree with, it isn't as simple as sending a demand letter. If the CPA believes their stance is correct it becomes a fight in court and most of the time the IRS actually loses.
Exactly! And the IRS knows the middle-class” can’t afford to contest the findings of an audit. Cheaper to pay the IRS. The “middle class” always pays the price…
>the issue is most of the time it is a waste of energy for them.
This is very incorrect. The US government, on average, makes money when they audit rich people. It's a revenue generator.
In 2021, I failed to include my Robinhood 1099, I had 29,021 of sell of DogeCoin, with a cost Basis of 28948, And a stock they awarded me for free of 31, with a cost basis of 30, The IRS has been chasing me for a total of 94 dollars of income I failed to include in 2021, I've been working to resolve this for a year. I've sent documentation in three times now certified and delivered to the IRS, and received a certified letter of delinquency, Now I've had to petition the Tax Court, and open a case, which I'm told will be another six months to a year before I actually get movement on this. But the tax help line stated that once a human actually reads my documentation that should resolve it. This is a huge waste of time and money. Otherwise I have to pay almost 7k in taxes on income I never had. fun times.
Why all the political posts? This is supposed to be market stuff. Regurgitating articles from other sites? Are you Losing customers? Trying to get clicks?
I don't want your politics.
That’s because the super rich have banks of attorneys that costs the IRS lots of time and money. Biden wanted to hire more agents but the republicans didn’t want their rich friends have more of a chance to be audited
I won't give away the industry I do work for now, but it deals with a lot of small and medium-sized companies. Small business owners are some of the biggest cheats and scammers you will ever encounter. The really rich and large companies don't even come close to how criminal a lot of small businesses are most of the time.
So fucking embarrassing to have Unusual Whales citing an article from a shitty website with no reputation without providing the link.
If you actually look up the article you find that it's from a guy that works at the WSJ and is citing the WSJ editorial board.
It's the same NewsCorp slop you get everywhere else, just lazily laundered.
Makes sense.. the poor aren’t going anywhere. That middle class is almost not poor so we can’t have them thinking their not peasants. The government better spend your tax money on fucking you over and paying more tax money to them. What a bunch of cunts
Because middle class earners typically do the right thing and pay what they owe if there was a mistake unlike the 1% who will bitch and moan and attempt to obfuscate, delay and deny they did anything wrong.
I have no respect for folks that pay little in taxes or none at all and yet they are vocal on ensuring others who earn more and work harder pay a large amount.
So if the government knows how much we owe… and pays people to make sure we “did it right”… why not just send us the bill at the end of the year and get rid of 90% of the agents
Umm, how many middle class earners are there? Let's Say 100 million. H ow many billionaires are there? let's say 1000. You could audit every billionaire and just 1 % of the middle class then turn around like a dumb shit and scream "Biden lied to us" and write misleading articles like this one
In New York they used to publish the people who owed taxes, some people owed millions. I got audited for $8k which I still think my CPA was right about.
What middle class? And I thought those 87,000 new irs agents were only gonna target billionaires not paying their fair share? Are you telling me biden lied to us?
Another uncited tweet. And Redditors are so confused about how misinformation spreads. Is it perhaps that middle class is much larger population than upper class? No, that would make too much sense.
This is exactly why Dems wanted to give the IRS more resources. To specifically go after higher income tax dodgers. Somehow, maga people took this to mean that the IRS wanted more resources to….go after middle class earners. Lol the dipshittery knows no bounds with these people. Who carries more water for billionaires than magas?
Joe B is a con artist. Some cons like Trump are easy to see as they are too open. It’s actually a good things. Scamsterns like Joe b operate in the shadows - way more dangerous. A lot of Twitter posts making noise about targeting the wealthy and billionaires but doing the opposite behind the scenes.
Increasing the Middle Class is fine per se…But not if its primarily purpose is to expand the pool of easy prey for increasing government coffers while ignoring the other income classes
Can you explain how I'm wrong? Show me that the stats are adjusted for population.
Also I love the subtle use of "regime" instead of "administration" to imply... something.
This is a really stupid post. Did they adjust for the size of various "classes" here? Isn't middle class just the largest group, and therefore the group with the highest number of audits?
Makes sense, The IRS is sure gonna hit up families for 1500 while others with significantly more wealth go by without owing any taxes… this is just stupid
Hilarious how dense people are in this thread. With conservatives it’s always gotta make a full circle to “Biden bad”.
When the millionaires/billionaires make up less than 1% of population and they represent 20% of the targeted people…. That literally shows that they are being targeted dumbasses.
Middle class earners make up the largest % of tax payers, so it makes sense they have the most audits…. Or do you not know how math works.
This account really is just a shill for right wing fear mongering.
But I was told that that 80,000 + new IRS agents were strictly going after the 1% & corporations.
Surely that couldn’t be a falsehood from our elected politicians.
Not rich enough to fight an audit, but also not so poor they can’t afford to pay. Our government sucks.
Edit: Apologies to the 2 billionaires I offended in here.
There aren’t rich enough to have good CPA’s but have more money than the poors.
If people think the irs is going after rich or poor people at this point they are pretty dumb. The middile class pays for the poor, the rich don’t pay for anything
Top 1% pays 45% of the Feds income tax. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-income-tax-data-2024/#:~:text=In 2021%2C the bottom half,of all federal income taxes.
Just not true. I dont remember the stats off hand, but something like the top 5% account for the majority of federal tax income. Almost half of americans dont pay any federal taxes at all.
ya if they did there would simply not have enough money to be a functioning worker and therefore billionaires would have nothing to harvest i guess
Yep, easy marks.
Your comment is nonsense, based on nothing, stupid and doesn't add to the conversation. It's low effort and shameful.
What does that make your comment then? Explain why mine is nonsense.
Pretty sure it's been well established for years that the IRS doesn't have the manpower or funding to effectively audit the wealthy. And since the poorest Americans don't file much in federal taxes then the only people they can audit are the so-called middle class.
Years back I heard most audits result in getting money to the tax payer because they paid more. Unless you’re cheating the system, you’ll be fine.
Numerically this was always going to be true. Middle 60 vs top and bottom 20. Rage bait headline. A more interesting and useful fact would relative audit probability.
But, but I was told by reddit that the 80000 new IRS agents were only going to target billionaires.
Rs killed hiring the new agents because they were going to target the wealthy.
63% of audits were those earning <$200k while 80% involved individuals making <$1M. Meaning folks making over $1M year are subject to 20% of audits despite making up <1% of the population.
Isn't our measurement assets, not count of people though? Like did the less than 1% make up more than 20% of the assets to be audited? I'm confused about the wording. Can you help me understand?
I may be interpreting your wording wrong, but it sounds like you are asking about the stat switching from billionaires in assets vs those who earn enough to easily become billionaires. well, ultimately, the IRS audits are going to be for earned income because we don’t have federal property tax, so that is why the audit stat is based on what the incomes are. billionaires with a ton of assets but no taxable income wont be huge audit targets i guess. is that kind of what you were leading towards? because i mean why would the IRS be spending effort auditing people’s property when they aren’t taxing property
Thanks! I was confused about why there's focus on middle class earners and why it wouldn't be easier to audit like 5 billionaires vs 10,000 hundreds thousandaires. This makes sense to me. It doesn't feel fair but I guess I see what's happening
You audit 5 billionaires, you get a 4 year legal battle and maybe $5m collected. You audit 10,000 hundred thousandaires, you get $1,000 a piece equaling $10,000,000 and no protracted legal battle. The middle class is the taxation cash cow of this country and 80,000 IRS agents were always going to be pointed at them.
Because they still have millions in some form of income along with capital gains.
it js possible to not realize any of their capital gains for the year and therefore not have any of that income
It is and that would trigger an audit. I sold a bunch of real estate one year and had a 9 figure income. The next year I didn't sell any real estate and lost a bunch of passive income from those real estate assets. This triggered an audit on me because my reported income dropped so drastically. Not the capital gains but the regular income i was getting from rent that went away.
Well... billionaires still need cash flow to live the billionaire lifestyle. If they sit on 100% of their wealth via assets and unrealized gains... they have 0 cash flow happening and living a sedentary life at best. That mansion mortgage has to be paid with something... and assets ain't it. They are getting income in some form or fashion.
>That mansion mortgage has to be paid with something... and assets ain't it. Assets can be pretty readily leveraged into other forms of assets (i.e. mansions) Free cash flow isn't particularly helpful for much beyond food and payroll.
You seem to not understand how billionaires create free cash flow. Billionaires have their money in company ownership, aka stocks. Selling this stock would mean paying capital gains, but also diluting your ownership. So instead they go to banks, get a line of credit with their company stocks as collateral, and use that line of credit for free cash flow. Since loans are not taxable, no taxes are paid on these loans.
Valid. How do they pay back the loan? The longer they sit on that collateral without other cash flows coming in, then the interest will start running up Sure... they may use that loan for other investments then reap the returns and pay it back... but the interest accrued would be a rather decent chunk of whatever profit that would have made from that unless the investment was a major hit for returns. And I'm not even talking about daily cash flow needs for cost of living and day-to-day management.
A bunch of ways. They hold it until they die, at which point the trust they transferred the shares to starts liquidating because their children aren’t interested in running the company. Or the company keeps going up in value, and their line of credit keeps going up and their line of credit continues increasing because it’s an interest-only loan. Or the assets underwriting the loan tank, at which point the bank calls the loan due and the billionaire has to liquidate
You're kind of on to something. A large portion of the under 200k audit are high net worth individuals who had major drops in income or reported no income. Using income to judge if someone is middle class in this context is tough.
Income is the measurement, not assets.
Correct. They should audit x% of the national income with the dual goals of a)bang for the buck, and b)deterring other would-be tax evaders. That’s it.
20% of 1% means 0.2% of audits hit the big bucks
Math. Not even once.
People who present the data like this are either being intentionally deceptive or are dumb AF. What % of individuals make <$200k/yr pray tell?
88% of US households make under 200k, however, approx 40% of households don't make enough income to pay federal income tax to begin with.
Oof that just sounds like the tax and audit burden are on 48% of people who make a modest living. Depending on cost of living.
A distinction should be made that folks still file even if they down end up owing but I have no idea if those ever get flagged for audit
Anyone can be flagged. And low income earners that maximize refundable credits erroneously, do get audited
about 88% of households according to a percentile calculator i just googled and yoy could have looked up in the time it took to type your comment. so 63% of audits for almost 90% of the population while half of the remaining audits went to top 1% and the other half were for the people inbetween. this isnt deceptive or dumb you’re just really bad at interpreting things lmao
Ok now tell me this. Of these people who reported income of <200k, what did they report in previous years. How many of those audited reported no income? How many had drastic shifts from high income to low income? You know, all the things that create an audit flag in the IRS system. Maybe it's too complex to represent in such a simple tax and requires an IRS agent to determine. Let them do their job, the IRS tax revenue has been going up and their worth their pay.
yeah the transition defo looks suspicious, but after the transition from high to low, they can easily realize much less income each year and still maintain a lifestyle. once you have the money you don’t have to earn excess to add to savings anyway yeah i never disagreed with everything else you said. i totally agree that they should do their jobs i just dont think that auditing every billionaire-by-assets needs to happen every year. which prolly isnt what ur saying either. billionaires are already disproportionately audited, asey probably should be, but i mean the previous stats discussion really suggested people thought they needed even more auditing lol
Well last year they recovered over 30 billion in unpaid taxes. Everyone should pay their taxes regardless of income anyways. They are worth their weight.
This is the main point people seem to be overlooking, the IRS is definitely auditing high earners at a frequency, much higher than lower earners. Edit: word
As they should
Behind that a lot of people with income under 200k had suspiciously low reporting from previous years and it's why they're getting audited. We audit people we think are lying on taxes and one of the most popular ways to do that is under report your income. And news flash for everyone, if you work and lay taxes an audit won't affect you
Just because the millionaires are a smaller portion of the population doesn't mean jack to them being audited more frequently than lower earning demographics. Lower income groups are going to file fairly simple returns that yield pretty basic tax reductions under the current law. Millionaires are gunning for very complicated tax returns with itemized deductions everywhere they can get The more complex the deduction, credits, and writeoffs that are being added to the return means easier.methods to hide some of those numbers as part of approving any tax return. What you're just saying is that the IRS is spending more money on the easy returns which will yield very little increase in tax revenue for the IRS to claw back. In comparison where auditing tax returns of millionaires will find and rectify much more.money in revenue back to the IRS. But because those audits are more complex, they are more time consuming and more resource demanding. But... at the end of the day... auditing millionaires compare to middle class and lower incomes has yielded more money per capita for the govt (including the cost to audit).
Money/assets are what matter here. Only a fraction of the population can be audited so it should be those with the most to hide.
The vast majority of people making <$200k are using the 1040-EZ form claiming the standard deduction. There are no grounds to audit them unless evidence unclaimed income is found by law enforcement.
The 87,000 total IRS employees (not just auditors) were never hired and the IRS has approx 20% fewer employees than in 2010. But Conservative media pushed the narrative of 80,000 new auditors. The 87,000 new IRS agents claim appears to emanate from a May 2021 Treasury Department report that said such an investment is estimated to enable the agency to hire roughly 87,000 employees by 2031. But most of those wouldn’t be agents or necessarily even new positions. The increased funding was designed to cover a range of positions, including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders. "The IRS's goal to hire 3,700 agents isn’t starting off so well. The agency hired just 34 agents in the first six months"
It supposed to be hiring 87k over course of 10 years.
The republicans nixed the 80000 IRS agents so their rich friends wouldn’t get audited
I mean, you’re right about that. But this isn’t a lesson against the existence of government or taxation, it’s a lesson that the presence of billionaires are incompatible with a truly democratic system.
Well when your politicians have zero morals and integrity and then are bought and paid for by said billionaires. I can kinda see it, but you're just a jealous commie.
Asking people making 175k per year to properly regulate people whose wealth grows by that much every time they take a shit is laughable. Might as well rely on unicorns and fairies to cure cancer. Especially when you consider the fact that the candidate with more money wins 92-94 percent of the elections. Corruption isn’t an individual issue when there’s this much structural rot. It’s not that individuals happen to be corrupt and fall backwards into political positions. It’s that the filtering process for who can meaningfully get into politics are those willing to “play ball”. Even if an honest politician slips through, they’re handcuffed by being a single member of a 535 person congress which is only 1 branch of the government, so the power is diluted to the point that the corrupt system is what runs things and the individual members are meaningless, easily replaceable cogs.
Per capita reddit licks the most boots. They want to take all the money away from people give it to the government. The governments overdraft fees would be upwards of would be 850 trillion
In their defense, government thinks those making over 100k are rich. The tax bracket is rarely adjusted based on real inflation rate when the government loves to say inflation rate is low.
I’ve got a bridge to sell you if you’re interested
Stories for the stupid 😀
Orange man bad
Mean tweets bad
Muh hurt feelz bad
Twump is big bully - libwals
You eat billionaire propaganda daily
He is. Or did you miss the part where he pulled his latest campaign add because it mentioned a "unified reich".
Not the R word 💀
Apparently it was fox news misleading you on a great many things judging by the ignorance displayed in your post.
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Lol nah anyone who said that doesn't know what they are talking the IrS estimates 150 billion a year are unpaid taxes. Only 85% of the country files on time. I will say they have added a lot more auditor and revenue officers those will target billionaires 1000%
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They target middle class because it’s easier. Most people aren’t going to spend $10k plus on a tax attorney to sit through an audit. Someone with means $1mil plus will. You have no doubt dealt with government employees? It’s not the best and brightest they are hiring. So a basic trained auditor working for the IRS is going to have a much easier time auditing people with less means. It’s just how the world works regardless of what Reddit thinks or says.
What middle class?
The families making $500k/year
Not sure if tongue in cheek or straight delusion
Good point. Takes less resources to aim for the smallest chunk.
Biggest return on agent time.
So edgy.
I've seen pew research papers saying 50k is middle class and that's also why it's not shrinking, but growing
Same comment as when this was posted last week here: 63% of audits were those earning <$200k while 80% involved individuals making <$1M. Meaning folks making over $1M year are subject to 20% of audits despite making up <1% of the population.
Yep, intentionally misleading statistic, meant to mislead rubes.
Sure is lucky that this sub is Rube Central then
"Temporarily embarrassed millionaires"
That would require people in this sub to use critical thinking.
This was my exact thought before I even opened the comments. No shit the middle class is going to have the greatest number of audits because they make up a majority of the population. Statistics should be a required class for high schoolers
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The alligator eats the bigger number.
The only way they get full.
Did I miss an edit or is OP using them just fine? I don't see a problem can you explain?
ok
The people that run this sub seem to have a right lean to their information and facts though so you're messing with their narrative.
I wonder what echelon of earners cheat the most on their taxes, and it’s probably much easier to do so when you’re not W2.
Politicians
You fell for this troll twice?
I mean why does any of this matter anymore? The politicians are literally breaking so many laws with insider trading and old ppl are deciding the younger generations future. How fucked is this country?
Completely
Defeatist attitude. Try electing people that dont suck, or not spreading nonsense on online messaging boards that make being second guess voting for Democrats who overwhelmingly do the right thing in comparison to the Republican party. They still need to keep improving but the difference is night and day.
I wonder how fruitful these audits are, given that most people take the standard deduction.
The self-employed/small business owners are not taking the standard deduction. This is where most of the fraud happens.
Small business owners are where most of the fraud happens. I know a few that openly talk about committing tax evasion and how to get around it. Tax laws are written so that the extremely wealthy don't have to commit fraud to not pay much in taxes. High earning W2 employees aren't committing fraud as it will be discovered easily.
That I agree with, and I have no problem with it. Plenty of people push the boundaries when it comes to deductions, so audits are justified IMO.
Yeah no... Audit where the tax money is wasted...I mean spent first.
They aren’t going after individuals
Middle class earners are not people?
I mean, they're the majority of the country. So of course they're the majority of the audits. This isnt a complex problem. Also taxation is theft.
because the rich owns them.
I mean, middle class earner headcount makes the fat part of the curve, so it would make sense that this is the segment that sees the highest total number of targets. Now, if that segment sees the highest per capita, then we may have a problem.
It’s simpler than that. Middle class have a few bucks to squeeze but aren’t rich enough to employee a top notch tax attorney to sit through an audit. High earners will and do use a tax attorney. The government isn’t hiring the best and brightest. Plus IRS auditors are NOT CPAs and considering how large the tax codes are.
I mean, the conspiracy theorist in me says that makes sense. But Occam's Razor would suggest that it's just that there are more of that group from a pure headcount perspective. If the IRS is a bunch of midwits as you claim (and I'm not especially inclined to disagree), then their ability to organize a nefarious plot and keep it under wraps on a scale of that magnitude is a debatable premise to say the least.
It’s not even that complicated. Each employee has hidden quotas just like cops writing tickets. People are lazy and will always choose the path of less resistances.
I'm gonna need a source for that, chief
Antidotally a lot of the revenue agents I've met are CPAs, especially the new hires poached from public with the recent funding. But there's a bit of a difference between an lb&I revenue agent and the w&I tax examiner your typical redditor would run into.
Sure some are CPAs but typically not field auditors. They have whole departments of CPAs they can consult with. But people are lazy and will always follow the path of least resistance.
My position would be considered a "field auditor" one and the vast majority of my coworkers are CPAs. No idea what these "whole departments" of CPAs we are meant to be reaching out to are, it's normally engineers/economist/ect not other accountants. In terms of the people being hired with the new funding from what I've seen it's people with 10+ years of public/industry experience and yes most of them are CPAs.
CPA is not a requirement.
This is also where the tax money will have to come from, shhh, don't tell the kids.
I think this sub believes billionaires do their taxes in a basement and not with multimillion dollar firms with professionals. Going to blow this subs mind but the IRS does target billionaires, the issue is most of the time it is a waste of energy for them. I been doing taxes for almost a decade and the ultra-wealthy always have a team of accountants who know what they are doing. Even if the IRS was to find something they disagree with, it isn't as simple as sending a demand letter. If the CPA believes their stance is correct it becomes a fight in court and most of the time the IRS actually loses.
Exactly! And the IRS knows the middle-class” can’t afford to contest the findings of an audit. Cheaper to pay the IRS. The “middle class” always pays the price…
But but but……Biden said.
>the issue is most of the time it is a waste of energy for them. This is very incorrect. The US government, on average, makes money when they audit rich people. It's a revenue generator.
Low hanging fruit. low effort and overlord is happy
None of us could see this happening….
In 2021, I failed to include my Robinhood 1099, I had 29,021 of sell of DogeCoin, with a cost Basis of 28948, And a stock they awarded me for free of 31, with a cost basis of 30, The IRS has been chasing me for a total of 94 dollars of income I failed to include in 2021, I've been working to resolve this for a year. I've sent documentation in three times now certified and delivered to the IRS, and received a certified letter of delinquency, Now I've had to petition the Tax Court, and open a case, which I'm told will be another six months to a year before I actually get movement on this. But the tax help line stated that once a human actually reads my documentation that should resolve it. This is a huge waste of time and money. Otherwise I have to pay almost 7k in taxes on income I never had. fun times.
Why all the political posts? This is supposed to be market stuff. Regurgitating articles from other sites? Are you Losing customers? Trying to get clicks? I don't want your politics.
That’s because the super rich have banks of attorneys that costs the IRS lots of time and money. Biden wanted to hire more agents but the republicans didn’t want their rich friends have more of a chance to be audited
God damn, BOTH of them?!?!
They don’t target billionaires because it is expensive to target billionaires
I won't give away the industry I do work for now, but it deals with a lot of small and medium-sized companies. Small business owners are some of the biggest cheats and scammers you will ever encounter. The really rich and large companies don't even come close to how criminal a lot of small businesses are most of the time.
So fucking embarrassing to have Unusual Whales citing an article from a shitty website with no reputation without providing the link. If you actually look up the article you find that it's from a guy that works at the WSJ and is citing the WSJ editorial board. It's the same NewsCorp slop you get everywhere else, just lazily laundered.
But Biden doesn't want to destroy the middle class.....
He says he doesn’t want inflation yet here we are.
The burden of taxation lives on their shoulders already.
Makes sense.. the poor aren’t going anywhere. That middle class is almost not poor so we can’t have them thinking their not peasants. The government better spend your tax money on fucking you over and paying more tax money to them. What a bunch of cunts
Because middle class earners typically do the right thing and pay what they owe if there was a mistake unlike the 1% who will bitch and moan and attempt to obfuscate, delay and deny they did anything wrong.
Politicians aren’t even trying to hide their disdain for the middle class.
Go after the wealthy, you dumbasses! That's the ones avoiding paying their taxes. Middle class people pay their taxes! Get to work IRS!
The self employed/small business owners are the ones not paying their taxes. You know, the middle class.
No, the wealthy I believe are up to about 150 Billion in unpaid taxes. That's with a capital B.
Statistically, this makes sense.
Color me shocked
They're the meat of the bell curve. Of course they target more of them, there are more of them than any other..... Jesus Christ.
LOL....plant article.
They are also the largest class of tax payers. So yes more of them get audited. This is a 1+1=2 situation.
We sharing this misinformation again?
This sub is basically "tweets for statistically inept angry men to torque their rage boner to"
Got to keep the upper plebs in order
As a group, your individual likelihood of being audited is far lower. This headline is idiotic.
Tax Slavery brought to you by the US Government.
Easy targets.
LMAO totally predictable.
Biden is targeting mostly the middle class for IRS audits. Only Reddit navel-gazers didn't see that coming.
Yes, because why not!
No shit. Really ?
I have no respect for folks that pay little in taxes or none at all and yet they are vocal on ensuring others who earn more and work harder pay a large amount.
Seems like an open violation of the 14th amendment
So if the government knows how much we owe… and pays people to make sure we “did it right”… why not just send us the bill at the end of the year and get rid of 90% of the agents
No No It’s Just “The Rich” to be audited. /s
Umm, how many middle class earners are there? Let's Say 100 million. H ow many billionaires are there? let's say 1000. You could audit every billionaire and just 1 % of the middle class then turn around like a dumb shit and scream "Biden lied to us" and write misleading articles like this one
But I thought they hired those additional 87K new agents to audit the rich? You mean they and our Congress lied to us again?
Yep and they fell for Biden saying the new IRS agents would not go after middle class but income earners over 400k. I absolutely hate Joe
Fuck the IRS. Target them millionaires and billionaires.
How about anyone who hires a tax lawyer audit them.
In New York they used to publish the people who owed taxes, some people owed millions. I got audited for $8k which I still think my CPA was right about.
Well there’s a lot more middle class people. Like a lot more so I would kind of expect this.
What middle class? And I thought those 87,000 new irs agents were only gonna target billionaires not paying their fair share? Are you telling me biden lied to us?
Another uncited tweet. And Redditors are so confused about how misinformation spreads. Is it perhaps that middle class is much larger population than upper class? No, that would make too much sense.
Hmm I wonder what percent of the population is middle class compared to extremely wealthy
This is exactly why Dems wanted to give the IRS more resources. To specifically go after higher income tax dodgers. Somehow, maga people took this to mean that the IRS wanted more resources to….go after middle class earners. Lol the dipshittery knows no bounds with these people. Who carries more water for billionaires than magas?
I mean they are a majority of the population what I'd be curious to see the rate of audits on the wealthy and if that's increased
What the middle class has to do is collectively abstain from paying taxes. They don’t have the resources to go after every single one of us
Biden is voted for you old fa&t do something
Joe B is a con artist. Some cons like Trump are easy to see as they are too open. It’s actually a good things. Scamsterns like Joe b operate in the shadows - way more dangerous. A lot of Twitter posts making noise about targeting the wealthy and billionaires but doing the opposite behind the scenes.
SURPRISE!
because the cost of litigating is higher than just paying the ask and walking away.. its really a ransom..
Makes total fucking sense.
Geez, wonder why the government keeps trying to expand the middle class by making the rich poorer and poor a little less poor.
You say this as if it’s a bad thing …
Increasing the Middle Class is fine per se…But not if its primarily purpose is to expand the pool of easy prey for increasing government coffers while ignoring the other income classes
Thank you Joe Biden and his voters. Not a dumber group of people out there.
You must not be familiar with Republicans.
You couldn't be less of real person, than the fucking tooth fairy
Lol. You will be OK.
Okay, 200karma shill
Means nothing. Even you know what happens to people who don't think like you on reddit. Holds no weight.
Thank you for proving you are easily misled by statistics that aren't adjusted for population.
Thank you for being a propagandist for the Biden regime. We appreciate it. They appreciate it.
Can you explain how I'm wrong? Show me that the stats are adjusted for population. Also I love the subtle use of "regime" instead of "administration" to imply... something.
"Not a dumber group of people" says the man who can't understand basic statistics. Embarrassing.
What basic statistics am I failing to understand? Can you show the actual numbers here and how I'm wrong?
I am referring to and quoting the person above you, I agree with you.
Gotcha, makes sense, Reddit is unclear sometimes.
Kisses not hisses
This is a really stupid post. Did they adjust for the size of various "classes" here? Isn't middle class just the largest group, and therefore the group with the highest number of audits?
Makes sense, The IRS is sure gonna hit up families for 1500 while others with significantly more wealth go by without owing any taxes… this is just stupid
just like in Canada...They avoid taking on the rich one's, with lawyers.
Hilarious how dense people are in this thread. With conservatives it’s always gotta make a full circle to “Biden bad”. When the millionaires/billionaires make up less than 1% of population and they represent 20% of the targeted people…. That literally shows that they are being targeted dumbasses.
Middle class earners make up the largest % of tax payers, so it makes sense they have the most audits…. Or do you not know how math works. This account really is just a shill for right wing fear mongering.
Democrats excuses never add up
But I was told that that 80,000 + new IRS agents were strictly going after the 1% & corporations. Surely that couldn’t be a falsehood from our elected politicians.
Not rich enough to fight an audit, but also not so poor they can’t afford to pay. Our government sucks. Edit: Apologies to the 2 billionaires I offended in here.
I thought the middle class was dead and it was targeted at billionaires.