Summary
Mass firings at the IRS under the Trump administration threaten ongoing audits of wealthy individuals and corporations, potentially leading to millions in lost tax revenue.
The cuts primarily impacted employees in the Large Business & International Division, many of whom had extensive tax expertise.
With fewer agents and specialists, complex cases may be prematurely closed, undermining enforcement against high-end tax evasion.
Critics warn this weakens IRS oversight and emboldens tax avoidance among the ultrawealthy.
It doesn’t make sense to me because there are fewer ultra wealthy people in America than there are poor people.
so with staff getting cut in half, you’d think it would be better to focus on the smaller group.
The rich have more assets and income sources and have staff who do a bunch of financial chicanery to try to hide their tax evasion. Auditing the rich requires significantly more work than the poor.
These decisions are not about doing what makes sense. The IRS is a revenue generator. Spending money on the IRS brings in significantly more money in unpaid taxes than it costs.
The goal is not to do what’s best for the government’s budget. Its really about ensuring that their criminal friends can continue to get away with it.
but the payback from auditing the rich and finding cheats is way more than the few cents per poor.
It’s high risk/high reward, vs low risk/low reward for lower income households. However I’m sure there are things like qoutas, etc. that push auditors to go after the easy wins.
Not to mention you loose some big cases against wealthy people cause they have a lot of money, and they come after your job or make the IRS look ineffective.
Smaller group with more to pay. It’s a no-brainer if you’re acting in good faith and not a complete moron. So obviously not what the current administration is going to do.
I can only assume it’s because rich people’s audits are highly complex
This is just the continued pushing of the tax burden onto the middle class. Which really got started good under Reagan. I think this is just the result of the uneducated GOP supporters winning this election. Now it is just a constant flood of them having no idea how government functions while ruining stuff for the rest of society,
And low info,.plus bigotry too.
But they’re winning! And fucking over “the libs” at the same time!
Auditing the less wealthy is already automated.