[HN Gopher] In 2022, the IRS Went After the Poorest Taxpayers
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In 2022, the IRS Went After the Poorest Taxpayers
Author : radicaldreamer
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-01-06 18:56 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reason.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reason.com)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The irs has outright said that the return on investment for
| auditing a rich person with purposefully convoluted taxes usually
| doesn't make it worth it. Especially when that rich person has
| already paid off lawmakers so that what they are doing is in a
| Grey area of legality, anyway.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's worth noting that the vast majority of "going after poorest
| taxpayers" is sending them a little letter saying "hey we noticed
| you missed this, here's how much you owe", and if you continue to
| ignore that letter they will eventually confiscate income tax
| returns.
|
| If you aren't flagrantly insulting them in your non-payment, or
| otherwise being a purposeful ass in your tax fraud, the IRS will
| largely just send you a bill, because they'd rather you do your
| normal life so you can make money to pay them.
|
| People push this IRS boogieman angle because they are politically
| motivated to make people hate taxes, but I neglected to report an
| entire W2 once, ignored all their letters, and they never so much
| as gently threatened me. Stamps and letterhead is really cheap,
| and they have processes in place to get the money you owe them.
| They don't WANT to put you in jail, or even interact with you,
| they just want your tax dollars.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >sending them a little letter saying "hey we noticed you missed
| this, here's how much you owe"
|
| Yes. This is usually a fully automated, computer-generated
| correspondence known as a CP2000 letter or "Automated Under
| Reporter" (AUR). I think the article is deliberately being
| vague about what they call a "correspondence audit" so that
| people mistakenly think it includes AUR letters.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Agreed. I messed up filing last year due to not understanding
| how RSUs worked when I eventually sold some. They sent me a
| nice letter, told me what I owed and that was that. Paid it off
| and haven't heard anything since.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| I got into an extremely confusing situation where I worked
| across state lines. You have to report the income in both
| states, and both want to take the entire amount, unless those
| states have a reciprocity agreement.
|
| I ended up filing incorrectly, claiming several hundred extra
| dollars in returns that I (probably?) didn't actually earn.
| This really looks like someone fraudulently claiming a credit
| for extra money.
|
| The IRS sent me an email and a letter basically saying "hey you
| filed this wrong, but we fixed it, your actual return amount is
| this much less". End of story. I got my returns as expected and
| nothing else happened.
|
| Honestly the simplest experience I have ever had with _any_
| agency of any government.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Does the effect persist if you don't count people who obviously
| took Earned Income Credit money that they weren't allowed to?
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| What this article conveniently overlooks is the distinction
| between the high-income person who takes aggressive tax positions
| to minimize the tax money they pay on their income, and the low-
| income person who pays little or no _income_ tax and instead
| _receives_ refundable Earned Income and Child Tax credits.
|
| It's not like the IRS is "going after" poor people who are trying
| to evade paying their taxes; they are trying their best to carry
| out the Congressional mandate to administer a welfare system via
| the tax collection process while countering the massive fraud
| that such easy handouts attracts.
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(page generated 2023-01-06 23:02 UTC)