The Briefing Room
General Category => Politics/Government => Topic started by: rangerrebew on January 07, 2023, 01:21:34 pm
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Poor People Five Times More Likely Than Average Earner To Be Audited by Biden IRS
Just 1 percent of those making $1 million per year in income faced a regular audit
Getty ImagesJoseph Simonson • January 7, 2023 5:00 am
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Poor people faced a significantly higher chance in 2022 of being audited by President Joe Biden's IRS than both rich and middle-class earners, according to a Syracuse University study.
In fact, no group faced as much scrutiny from the IRS as those who made below $25,000, the university's data-gathering center found. Among families that benefited from the earned income tax credit, a rebate on income and payroll taxes made available to the nation's poorest families, 1.27 percent were audited. The IRS in 2022 audited just 0.19 percent of the vast majority of taxpayers, meaning the poorest families were at least 550 percent more likely to have the IRS knock on their door than the average filer.
These families were also more likely to receive a regular audit by the IRS than families that reported over $1 million in income, of which just over 1 percent faced regular audits. In total, the IRS audited a total 626,204 taxpayers out of more than 164 million in the 2022 fiscal year. The bulk of those audits were of filers in the lowest income group.
https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/poor-people-five-times-more-likely-than-average-earner-to-be-audited-by-biden-irs/
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I would imagine illegal aliens are totally exempt. :pondering:
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@rangerrebew
No big surprise there.
After all,who is the least likely to be able to afford to hire and accountant and a lawyer if the IRS tries to seize their assets or put them in jail?
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Just think what these guys can do with 85,000 more gun toting agents. :thud:
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There are reasons for this, including the fact that the earned income credit is a refundable credit, which means that if the amount of the credit exceeds your tax, you get a refund of the excess.
There are other related fraud issues as well, including unreported income, which often implicates other government-provided benefits, such as Medicaid.
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The REAL reason so many working-class people get audited by the IRS is they don't have enough money to hire lawyers to represent them in court against the all-powerful gooberment.
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Somehow I doubt all the 'poor' illegals that have been given tax ID's by the InfernalRevenueService, and don't report their under the table earnings and bloat their dependents to the max to steal even more taxpayer dollars with huge returns on taxes they never paid, are ever audited by the socialist controlled government agency.
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Chasing after the poor to get money they don't have, it provides cover for the ultra rich to hide their crimes, while the IRS is busy elsewhere.
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I am gonna just throw this against the wall, perhaps poor folks cheat more, perhaps they are less educated and make mistakes more often.
Fire Away...
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Another point is that the article doesn’t specify what type of audit it’s using for comparison. Audits range from a simple correspondence audit, where the IRS simply sends a taxpayer a letter requesting substantiation on an item that was reflected on the taxpayer’s return, all the way up to a full-blown request for copies of all underlying data and documentation that justifies all material positions taken on the return.
For example, if one is claiming a foreign tax credit on income from services (e.g., a person who works both in the US and outside the US as an independent contractor), one may be subjected to a day-count audit, where one has to prove that one actually spent the number of days working outside the US that we’re used to compute the amount of the foreign tax credit claimed (assuming that one did not qualify for, or did not elect to take, the foreign earned income exclusion). A day-count audit is much more involved and “painful” than a simple correspondence audit asking one to provide copies of certain documents. Particularly if the focus is on proving workdays, not just days of physical presence outside the US.
So, given that there is a wide degree of different types of audits, it would not surprise me in the least if the claimed disparity was because most of the lower-income audits were simple correspondence audits, while the high-income audits were full blown actual audits requiring a review of underlying books and records, and substantiation of amounts claimed in various financial statements.
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Another point is that the article doesn’t specify what type of audit it’s using for comparison. Audits range from a simple correspondence audit, where the IRS simply sends a taxpayer a letter requesting substantiation on an item that was reflected on the taxpayer’s return, all the way up to a full-blown request for copies of all underlying data and documentation that justifies all material positions taken on the return.
For example, if one is claiming a foreign tax credit on income from services (e.g., a person who works both in the US and outside the US as an independent contractor), one may be subjected to a day-count audit, where one has to prove that one actually spent the number of days working outside the US that we’re used to compute the amount of the foreign tax credit claimed (assuming that one did not qualify for, or did not elect to take, the foreign earned income exclusion). A day-count audit is much more involved and “painful” than a simple correspondence audit asking one to provide copies of certain documents. Particularly if the focus is on proving workdays, not just days of physical presence outside the US.
So, given that there is a wide degree of different types of audits, it would not surprise me in the least if the claimed disparity was because most of the lower-income audits were simple correspondence audits, while the high-income audits were full blown actual audits requiring a review of underlying books and records, and substantiation of amounts claimed in various financial statements.
@Kamaji
Makes sense,thanks!