7 ms·
The IRS already openly admits to not auditing the rich as its too complicated and to instead going after the less wealthy.
by backtobecks 7y ago
The IRS already openly admits to not auditing the rich as its too complicated and to instead going after the less wealthy.
- BurningFrog 7y agoNot true. This is a "viralization" of the article linked below, with this very clear headline: The IRS Now Audits Poor Americans at About the Same Rate as the Top 1% That's of course a problem in itself, but very far from the "internet truth" that the rich don't get audited at all. https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-americans-at-about-the-same-rate-as-the-top-1-percent https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-now-audits-poor-ameri...
- diffeomorphism 7y agoSo totally true, but using not perfectly precise language for the sake of brevity, got it.
- BurningFrog 7y agoNo. "The rich are not audited" is not an imprecise way of phrasing "The rich are audited at much as everyone else".
- diffeomorphism 7y agoYes, you misread a chart and did not read the article you linked yourself.
- NovemberWhiskey 7y agoWhy "instead"? The IRS has identified that certain refundable credits (EITC) have a very high error rate (25-30%). As I understand it, it has created a mostly-automated mechanism to identify the filing errors that lead to these issues. Should the IRS not be doing that because it lacks the resources to perform audits which are less subject to automation? Or should it not be doing that because EITC is only paid to lower-income households? Some fraction of the incorrect EITC filings are undoubtedly fraudulent. What, in your view, is the acceptable rate of potential fraud that the IRS should detect, but ignore, based on income level?