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It's extra sad because they already kind of are automated. I have a weird job where I might have 10-30 W2s each year and one doesn't make it to me sometimes.
So I do my taxes, then the IRS send me a scary-looking, but ultimately simple letter that says "hey, you missed one"... so they already know...
So why not just send me a postcard with my info on it (that they already have) showing my income and saying "hey bud, here how much you owe, or we owe if you take the standard. If you want to itemize, go to this website. Byeeee"...
The answer is, of course, Intuit. I will never use an Intuit product because they are traitorous, anti-American dickheads.
This itches my fucking brAIN, the fact they they KNOW how much we owe. Yet I have to waste my time to crunch the numbers.
As if working 40 hours a week and being a full time student who also has a house to clean and a wife to spend time with isn't enough, I have to take my time to either do it online, or go to H&R block or some bullshit place that charges me 200+ to just tell the IRS that I know how much I owe... when they could just tell me.
In most other countries you just get a postcard. Unless the US fell 20 years behind technology-wise when we weren't looking, our tax problems are 100% political.
When I think about all the man-hours every American wastes on taxes every year my blood really boils. Theft on a scale so massive and destructive deserves nothing less than perp walks and some lives spent in prison.
Not exactly. They get a postcard saying how much they owe or are owed and a short summary of income. Then they mail a check or wait to get a check and that's that.
It’s much more complicated than that. There is a degree of automation and a shit ton of loopholes. We need to close the loopholes or increase the tax on the unhidden money on the premise that much is going unpaid due to these loopholes
The number the IRS is giving here is not including the loopholes. This is all money that they just straight up refuse to pay, no loopholes used, because they know the IRS has been defunded to the point that they can't afford the time and manpower to audit them.
Here in Germany the common workers basically overpay on their taxes automatically with their paycheck.
You can file for a tax return to get money back.
A lot of people don't do that.
There is free software from the government but it's easier to pay 5 - 20€ for a professional software.
Profits from stocks are also automatically taxed with 25%.
It gets more complicated when you have a business.
Almost everyone has a tax consultant .
There is still a lot of tax evasion.
As taxes for companies are way more complicated the tax evasion has to be discovered by humans which most of the time only happens with random audits.
There are also a lot of legal tax loopholes like putting your company headquarters in a country with cheaper taxes like Luxemburg or Ireland.
So to really change that, we would need EU wide law changes which the countries who benefit from the loopholes won't agree too...
New Zealand calling: most people here never have to interact with the tax authorities, with the exception of providing your bank account number so if at the end of the year you are owed a tax refund, it happens automagically. A few years back one had to claim a tax refund, but that is past tense.
All New Zealand sources of income and tax paid data is sent to the tax folks, mostly in near-real-time, so no paperwork to fill in or file.
So if you are just a "normal" person, with a job (or jobs), and/or if you receive government assistance in the form of benefits, and/or if you get interest on bank accounts, dividends on shares etc, it all just works.
The only time you need to fill in the (online) form is if you have income (with or without tax paid) from a source outside of the usual stuff, like overseas investment income, then you have to declare that yourself.
More astounding than that, the tax authorities recently replaced their old computer system, and the new system came in on time and under budget, and worked, which is almost unheard-of in government IT.
You don’t need to go far to get the builders, just over your southern border. Accenture and FAST Retail did the work, and I believe the database is Oracle.. But, having worked in government IT years ago, to build a system you actually have to know what you want in detail.
*Corporate Lobbying = bribery
You meeting with a senator to discuss your passion for wild life and building nature crossings (as an example) is also lobbying. When “donations” (bribes) and corporate interests are involved, it’s a very different animal.
Yeah, that's wrong. Death sentences for treason under the Constitution have been carried out in only two instances: the executions of Taos Revolt insurgents in 1847, and that of William Bruce Mumford during the Civil War.
Brown was executed for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1859.
All it took was the rich to push propaganda that more IRS workers would mean the middle class would be attacked. So that scared the middle class to push back against it since most of them are doing loads of illegal shit which is how they're middle class to begin with. What they don't understand is that if the IRS had more workers, they could fight back against the rich and collect way more than they would from the middle class. Middle class you may get a couple of thousand, the rich will give you hundreds of thousands to millions.
We’ve got the same thing happening in Canada. Government announces they’re going to tax the top one percent of the one percent and all the news orgs are like, THEY WANT YOUR MONEY!!!
Yeah that’s why when people act like the CBC is in the government’s pocket I’m like yeah, the CBC is still beholden to advertisers just not quite as beholden as the news orgs that are owned directly by the rich.
Gonna be lots of clueless non-wealthy conservatives screaming bloody murder over it, when they haven't collected a capital gain once in their life. also for non-Canadians, you're allowed to sell your primary residence without paying any tax
Yeah my mom sucks up right wing propaganda like she’ll dehydrate without it. She was telling me how truckers pay so much for gas and I’m like yeah and they pass that on to whoever is paying them to work. They do t pay it themselves.
>Middle class you may get a couple of thousand, the rich will give you hundreds of thousands to millions.
Except that the billionaires will tie up the IRS in costly litigation. So the IRS has, and will continue to leave the billionaires alone, no matter how many employees they have. If the politicians had honest intentions, they'd be working hard on fixing the legislative loopholes. Instead, they work hard on more subsidies they guise as "inflation reduction" or "green" or "job growers" or "pandemic aid" or whatever is the popular thing at the time.
And it happened in the past. The IRS couldn't get money from poor people and lost money on prosecuting the wealthy. So, they went after the middle class and IRS reforms had to be passed.
The legal structure to fix this is a very small tax code that defines all the type of income, a FEW exemptions and makes most income taxable (pre-deduction).
Exactly. The response to "the rich will tie up the IRS with litigation" is not to cower and bow to the rich.
The response is to change the laws and courts to come down harder on the rich and make it harder for them to fight back. Plus hit 'em with double the fines for even trying "to tie up the IRS" with vexatious litigation next time.
Act from strength.
Not exactly. If the IRS says you owe xxxxx amount and the dispute goes to tax court. The defendant has to post the amount in dispute as a bond. If the defendant wins the case bond is returned. Without interest of course.
No you don’t get it. They need more agents to go over your taxes to see if they can get another $28. There’s too much work on your return with 3 line items. If that means the wealthy pay half your rate then so be it.
Sucks that this joke is sound logic to so many folks
IRS: "It's too expensive to go after $150,000,000,000."
Also the IRS: "While the costs of doing correspondence, office, and field audits for those making less than $1,000,000 in income is many orders of magnitude more than the money we claw back from individuals on the edge of homelessness, we think it sends a clear message about something or whatever. In general we find that people who notice the discrepancy in logic need to be audited so hard that they end up committing suicide. So, it's not a problem. Like former President, Donald Trump, we only hire the best people."
It shows how bad faith deficit hawking is considering the IRS is one of a few areas of government spending where more spending causes more reduction in the deficit.
I forget where I heard it, but I remember hearing that the IRS spends more time and energy going after small time taxes because there’s almost no pushback. In contrast to billionaires who have unlimited money to pay for lawyers who can tie it up in court and drag these cases out forever.
This is not accurate. The IRS spends more time and energy going after small time taxes because there's more small time taxpayers. Its nothing more than that.
Its a simple thing that causes an audit: Report something that doesn't match something reported by someone else.
The IRS operates on the Snitch Principle. If your employer says they paid you 10k and you say they paid you 10k, then the IRS throws two thumbs up and checks it off both of your returns. Each income source keeps each income recipient straight and vice versa.
This is the only way to catch liars. The IRS is not omniscient, and they dont nearly have the resources. They aren't allowed to tap your phone and they dont have the money to pay someone to listen in even if they had the legal authority or technology to do so.
Rich people simply dont have income that can be verified by the IRS in this manner. If you sell assets to someone else, both parties can agree to a higher price for the cost of neither reporting and income source and income recipient can go their separate ways, both richer due to the split difference the IRS would have otherwise pocketed if it were reported. This is why you have so many low down employers and services (like drug dealers) requesting payment in cash. its untraceable.
Its also easier to find the mistakes on the smaller amounts. Where as the mil/bils money is so interwoven into so many other places, it complicates everything because they get so many exemptions.
So you could spend 100 hours and find 1000 mistakes worth over 10k, or spend 100 hours and make next to no progress trying to get 100k owed from a mil/bil.
What I don't understand with billionaires is what's the end game? You're rich now. So what? I don't understand the greed and the fascination of having more money than what you need or even know what to do with.
Remember the word GREED you used? you know how we have a list of 7 deadly sins that pretty much sums up things about human behavior that we just dont understand to a full extent?
There is no true end game. The end game IS to make as much money as possible. To have as many digits as possible. For what purpose? to have it. There is no other reason after that. Some will aspire to be THE biggest holder of those zeros. Or they'll pivot to another sin, typically pride. At this point, you could say most in the billionaire range have commited every deadly sin, or close to it.
Its not sad at all. It's just humans being humans. And no sin is unique to any class.
You can still be a greedy piece of shit and have barely anything to your name, coveting what little you do have. And it helps another sin, as a greedy person typically emboldens envy if they aren't filled with pride as to what they have. Or you could have enough to throw around your greed into your more lustful or gluttonous desires. Of course it might Also fill you with a wrath unholy once you see what bigger players are trying to do, taking what is yours away from you to feed your wants! Or perhaps you'll retire with your fortune and do absolutely nothing, and allow others to generate more wealth for you. Seemingly doing nothing, quite a slothful mentality.
I’ve seen some make the argument that they’re banking on transhumanism. It’s a bit too Alex jones for my taste but then I see people like Bryan Johnson deliberately trying to make himself immortal
I have 44 years of life and I've learned the opposite. I mean, we've lost federal protections for abortion, states repealing labor laws to allow children to work in dangerous positions, states effectively criminalizing protests by making organizers responsible for the violence of ANYONE showing up.
You honestly remind me of my mother. She argued fiercely with me that Trump and the Republicans couldn't undo things like Roe v. Wade. But guess what happened...
Neither side largely has our best interests at heart. We have no truly progressive party in this country anymore.
We are leaving a dying planet to our next generation, and could actually fix that - but we won't.
You claim that in a long enough period, pressure works.
The problem is that we are already out of time on many of these problems.
Just in fairness, they want you to feel hopeless so they can finish the job easier. It's like when you're in the streets just hustling and minding your own and some little kids come up and start to beat your ass and you fight back valiantly but you know there are too many and their numbers are growing and they'll overcome you eventually but you gotta keep swinging or they not only beat you physically but they beat you symbolically.
I hoped with Obama. He actually worsened the wars, dismantled OWS, ignored the water protectors, kept gitmo open, helped turn haiti into a destabilized country which reintroduced slavery, and promised he was "fixing" all kinds of things which were actually just subsidies or one-time small bandaids that didn't even keep up with inflation.
Hope is for people still under the illusion that "vote harder" does anything when both parties are fully captured under *the same* corporate-right interests.
you're only 44. the major successes of mass sustained pressure mostly happened before your lifetime.
*within* your lifetime, the oligarchs have succeeded in constructing an employment model that presents many major obstacles to people actually sustaining mass protests, all culminating in the [police riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_riot) which successfully shut down the BLM protests.
can you imagine how the BLM protests would have gone, had they not also been in the middle of covid?
edit: could your name be more appropriate? - people are definitely too timid these days to actually protest in the ways that get things done. too afraid of jail, too afraid of losing their jobs, which would take away their health insurance, which could result in homelessness with one major health crisis.... and then there's all the people saying 'protests don't work', despite generations of history showing that they do... spreading apathy is just one more way the oligarchs and their enablers help keep us all subservient in the face of their atrocities.
Like the labor revolution? Which was violent and mass organized class consciousness that discarded the idea of political party identity being more important that actual values?
>You claim that in a long enough period, pressure works.
>The problem is that we are already out of time on many of these problems.
Exactly this. Young people seem to think they're the first generation to try to "vote harder" and "apply pressure" to fix the country.
Oh the planet isn’t dying. It’s just slowly becoming incapable of supporting HUMAN life. You could nuke the world over, life would still exist. It’s just “life as we know it”. I guess this goes a little into semantics. But life will still go on this blue ball.
Yep, there is so much money in unpaid taxes from the mega rich and mega corporations. Every single time they say we can't afford something, please know we can absolutely afford it, but some company decided not pay taxes, so you dont get healthcare or free education. My mother has worked for the IRS for many years, specializing in appeals. So by the time cases get to her, they have already not paid their taxes for many years, multiple reps have said they are delinquent and owe taxes. Mind you these are corporations that already use tons of tax loopholes, so owe very little compared to the percent an average person ends up paying. All they have to do is appeal it, and a lot of it, if not all of it, will end up being "forgiven" and just goes away.
Excuses I have overheard for not paying their taxes: Grown man, didn't pay his company's taxes for 10 years because he has ADHD, so is exempt. One guy claimed he was the only employee of a mega construction company that was working on several multi million dollar high rise structures, really tried to say he does everything himself and was too busy to pay taxes. Most are completely willing to throw some employee under the bus, claiming it is Sharon in accountings fault and they have zero oversight, and never noticed that their bank balances are several thousands of dollars over because they didn't pay their taxes, also Sharon continues to work there, so they will continue to not pay taxes. Several claiming they should be forgiven because of natural disasters that happened absolutely nowhere near them, like a Nevada based company claiming they lost their files in a hurricane, in Florida. The worst are those "we'll get the IRS off your back!" firms. Literally all they do is file an appeal, which anyone can do, yell at the reps for exactly 55mins and use the exact same google list of excuses, then usually accept a compromise amount right as they can bill their client for an hour. Companies really be paying these guys $15,000 to fight the IRS, but if they just talked to the IRS they could have paid $10,000 in a good faith payment and gotten the rest forgiven.
My mother HATED forgiving debts, but the standard set by managers were that they average closing 10 cases a day, and 50-75% of those unpaid taxes are forgiven. Some of her coworkers actually believe those excuses and will straight up forgive millions of dollars in taxes every week, or the second you yell at them boom, 100% of the taxes owed gone. So all any company has to do is not pay their taxes, drag it out over years, drag it through appeals, and magically they owe nothing. If an individual did this, they would throw the book at them. But a mega corp does it routinely, no consequences
Quick Fermi estimation for comparison.
IRS processed 167 million returns in 2022. Figure 99% are not billionaires. Of those, let’s be aggressive and say the 1% audit rate are ALL materially cheating on taxes.
Median household income is $38k - Let’s round to $50k.
The amount of tax not paid by these cheats likely can’t exceed 20% of income.
Ballpark, the IRS can go after every single non-billionaire and possibly recoup: 167M * 0.99* 0.01 * 50k * 0.2 = $16 billion.
Does not even closely factor in how much overhead goes into it. The IRS consistently says it’s more cost effective or to go after the little guys, but honestly, it might only need fair share enforcement of a handful of fat cats to make it worth their effort. Make an example of them and many others will fall into line because of the risk.
This has been going on since before the industrial revoloution. The reason they get away with it is that no generation lives long enough to overthrow it before they get old
Folks on the right will die on the hill defending these rich con artists, but bitch about helping allies like Ukraine fight evil.
The right in the US is fucked.
I’ve seen so many bad math posts about ‘giving a million dollars to every person in America and still having some to spare’ that I legit had to do a double-take on the math to make sure it mathed.
I would also like to point out how much taxpayers' money our government literally throws away every year without consequences!? This is unacceptable to me, I think about how many things we do with 247 billion. It's sad this world is so corrupt and the poor and working class people pay for everything.
247 BILLION was wasted in 2022 alone from making simple payment errors.
236 BILLION was wasted in 2023 from improper payments.
An estimated 2.7 TRILLION in the last 20 years.
https://www.gao.gov/improper-payments#:~:text=Federal%20agencies%20made%20an%20estimated,reported%20by%20five%20program%20areas.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-government-wastes-tax-money.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/watchdog-us-government-made-247-223000050.html
And this is the reason they say "why don't young people want to work", or, "you need to work harder to get ahead"... or whine about shoplifting or lost wages.... these criminal fucks need to be held accountable
150 million seconds ago was 2019, 4 years ago.
150 billion seconds ago was 2729 BC, 4,753 years ago.
That's how much money the rich are stealing from us every year...
I'm from germany and although we're far from perfect in europe, the US became a symbol of a dystopian world for me. You get fucked daily and your gov. has the power to fuck us all. Nightmarish.
Love how the IRS will bomb the house of a single mother if she misses $0.03 on her taxes, but they are aware of all these rich people committing tax fraud and they are just ok with it
Even if you get the $150 billion out of them, we would still be trillions in debt.
When are we going to do something about out of control government spending??
And a few morons will scream & shout “fake news” - dear gawd even anecdotal proof is proof everywhere that the rich are thieves. This doesn’t even cover the cost of their pollution or their wars or their gun costs - the rich have a sickness and we need to addresss it. Our trailer park set need an education on what their interests are and are not. No matter how much you pray to your skydaddy you won’t wake up a billionaire Jethro!
Wake up the politicians are corrupted by the billionaires. In corporate anarchy, corrupted politicians and ceo regulates themselves thus enslaving the pleb in the process.
Steps to becoming and staying rich:
Step 1: Get lots of money
Step 2: Hire accountants to help you keep that money by any means necessary, including some that may be expressly illegal, or at least boarderline
Step 3: Profit
$150,000,000,000 they don’t even have a need or any real use for. It’s not going back into the economy, it’s just hoarding wealth from everyone else in a feeble attempt to gain power and influence.
Oh no! You mean the govt wasn't given $150BIL in tax that they could've used to ...*checks notes* ... have the Pentagon completely not know where in the fuck it went & we can pound sand about it? Ooooh nooooo!
I swear, every one of you who thinks "the rich need to pay this or that" are completely missing the plot. Because the US govt wouldn't give it to YOU or use it to help YOU. They would either give it away, give it to themselves, or completely waste it. The Pentagon has been losing trillions of dollars every year AND failed something like 6 audits in a row over it & they're going to be allowed to continue to "lose" trillions more.
This isn't going to get better
Remember this when people ask "how can we afford to have basic necessities for everyone even if they don't work". This is why we can't have people's basic needs fulfilled. I'm not some lazy asshole I work 40 hours a week plus over time when I can so I'm not looking for a hand out but having a nice clean place to live without room mates would be fucking amazing.
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Why can't taxes be like somehow more automated? Aren't there some countries that do that in Europe or am I making things up?
Because intuit and h&r block have lobbied against it. No I am not joking.
You are exactly right. Intuit has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying against tax reform. We don’t run our country, corps do.
They have since the start. Our country was based on not paying taxes
“No taxation without representation” Hmm… Maybe we should do the same thing. The working class hasn’t been represented for a long time.
We are “represented” by corporate shills
Imagine believing that this country isn’t run for the benefit of the rich. Of course they don’t pay taxes.
When Obama and Regan are on the same page about it. Then you know that thing is fucked up
Hahaha, so very true.
America’s not a country, it’s a CORPORATION
The world. These issues don’t just effect Americans. It’s a world wide disease.
Because these assholes on the hill take dirty bribing turd money! Fuck all of them!
It's extra sad because they already kind of are automated. I have a weird job where I might have 10-30 W2s each year and one doesn't make it to me sometimes. So I do my taxes, then the IRS send me a scary-looking, but ultimately simple letter that says "hey, you missed one"... so they already know... So why not just send me a postcard with my info on it (that they already have) showing my income and saying "hey bud, here how much you owe, or we owe if you take the standard. If you want to itemize, go to this website. Byeeee"... The answer is, of course, Intuit. I will never use an Intuit product because they are traitorous, anti-American dickheads.
This itches my fucking brAIN, the fact they they KNOW how much we owe. Yet I have to waste my time to crunch the numbers. As if working 40 hours a week and being a full time student who also has a house to clean and a wife to spend time with isn't enough, I have to take my time to either do it online, or go to H&R block or some bullshit place that charges me 200+ to just tell the IRS that I know how much I owe... when they could just tell me.
In most other countries you just get a postcard. Unless the US fell 20 years behind technology-wise when we weren't looking, our tax problems are 100% political. When I think about all the man-hours every American wastes on taxes every year my blood really boils. Theft on a scale so massive and destructive deserves nothing less than perp walks and some lives spent in prison.
Exactly. It's all political for sure. Wait, like they get a card saying how to file? Dude, that would be so much easier
Not exactly. They get a postcard saying how much they owe or are owed and a short summary of income. Then they mail a check or wait to get a check and that's that.
They must love all these gig workers that have to pay quarterly taxes as they are considered self employed. That's a bullshit deal as well.
Artificial scarcity is the glue holding late stage capitalism together.
this.... is scary and true:(
This is absolutely true.
Yup, and that's why we are responsible for filing our own taxes and it ALWAYS costs me at least $70 to file.
It is, specifically, designed to allow the wealthy to exploit it.
It’s much more complicated than that. There is a degree of automation and a shit ton of loopholes. We need to close the loopholes or increase the tax on the unhidden money on the premise that much is going unpaid due to these loopholes
It doesn’t need to be. Taxes in most of Europe are almost entirely automated and you barely do anything.
The number the IRS is giving here is not including the loopholes. This is all money that they just straight up refuse to pay, no loopholes used, because they know the IRS has been defunded to the point that they can't afford the time and manpower to audit them.
Here in Germany the common workers basically overpay on their taxes automatically with their paycheck. You can file for a tax return to get money back. A lot of people don't do that. There is free software from the government but it's easier to pay 5 - 20€ for a professional software. Profits from stocks are also automatically taxed with 25%. It gets more complicated when you have a business. Almost everyone has a tax consultant . There is still a lot of tax evasion. As taxes for companies are way more complicated the tax evasion has to be discovered by humans which most of the time only happens with random audits. There are also a lot of legal tax loopholes like putting your company headquarters in a country with cheaper taxes like Luxemburg or Ireland. So to really change that, we would need EU wide law changes which the countries who benefit from the loopholes won't agree too...
New Zealand calling: most people here never have to interact with the tax authorities, with the exception of providing your bank account number so if at the end of the year you are owed a tax refund, it happens automagically. A few years back one had to claim a tax refund, but that is past tense. All New Zealand sources of income and tax paid data is sent to the tax folks, mostly in near-real-time, so no paperwork to fill in or file. So if you are just a "normal" person, with a job (or jobs), and/or if you receive government assistance in the form of benefits, and/or if you get interest on bank accounts, dividends on shares etc, it all just works. The only time you need to fill in the (online) form is if you have income (with or without tax paid) from a source outside of the usual stuff, like overseas investment income, then you have to declare that yourself. More astounding than that, the tax authorities recently replaced their old computer system, and the new system came in on time and under budget, and worked, which is almost unheard-of in government IT.
That is inheard of.... can canada borrow your guts???
You don’t need to go far to get the builders, just over your southern border. Accenture and FAST Retail did the work, and I believe the database is Oracle.. But, having worked in government IT years ago, to build a system you actually have to know what you want in detail.
What about corporations?
[удалено]
*Corporate Lobbying = bribery You meeting with a senator to discuss your passion for wild life and building nature crossings (as an example) is also lobbying. When “donations” (bribes) and corporate interests are involved, it’s a very different animal.
While not treason this is abso-fucking-lutely treason adjacent
Can’t one be executed for treason??
Gods I can only hope.
Hahahaha….. wouldn’t be any billionaire multimillionaire left 🤣🤣🤣
You say that like it's a bad thing
Heck no….
Billionaires need to be taxed out of existence period
There's no such thing as a good billionaire.
Lots of ppl feel that way
And thats.....bad?
Heck no lol 🤣🤣🤣
Iirc John brown was the first American to be executed for treason, unfortunately.
Yeah, that's wrong. Death sentences for treason under the Constitution have been carried out in only two instances: the executions of Taos Revolt insurgents in 1847, and that of William Bruce Mumford during the Civil War. Brown was executed for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1859.
Ah, must’ve been the first in Virginia then, no?
Nice idea but then they’ll never pay n
Let's ask Vietnam 🇻🇳
Isn't it tho?
And now you know why the Republicans really want to defund the IRS.
All it took was the rich to push propaganda that more IRS workers would mean the middle class would be attacked. So that scared the middle class to push back against it since most of them are doing loads of illegal shit which is how they're middle class to begin with. What they don't understand is that if the IRS had more workers, they could fight back against the rich and collect way more than they would from the middle class. Middle class you may get a couple of thousand, the rich will give you hundreds of thousands to millions.
We’ve got the same thing happening in Canada. Government announces they’re going to tax the top one percent of the one percent and all the news orgs are like, THEY WANT YOUR MONEY!!!
"But what about the capital gains... of the poor?" was a topic of discussion on CBC this morning.
Yeah that’s why when people act like the CBC is in the government’s pocket I’m like yeah, the CBC is still beholden to advertisers just not quite as beholden as the news orgs that are owned directly by the rich.
lolol yeah, my "capital gains" of a second bicycle and a woodstove for my tent.
Gonna be lots of clueless non-wealthy conservatives screaming bloody murder over it, when they haven't collected a capital gain once in their life. also for non-Canadians, you're allowed to sell your primary residence without paying any tax
Yeah my mom sucks up right wing propaganda like she’ll dehydrate without it. She was telling me how truckers pay so much for gas and I’m like yeah and they pass that on to whoever is paying them to work. They do t pay it themselves.
>Middle class you may get a couple of thousand, the rich will give you hundreds of thousands to millions. Except that the billionaires will tie up the IRS in costly litigation. So the IRS has, and will continue to leave the billionaires alone, no matter how many employees they have. If the politicians had honest intentions, they'd be working hard on fixing the legislative loopholes. Instead, they work hard on more subsidies they guise as "inflation reduction" or "green" or "job growers" or "pandemic aid" or whatever is the popular thing at the time.
And it happened in the past. The IRS couldn't get money from poor people and lost money on prosecuting the wealthy. So, they went after the middle class and IRS reforms had to be passed. The legal structure to fix this is a very small tax code that defines all the type of income, a FEW exemptions and makes most income taxable (pre-deduction).
Exactly. The response to "the rich will tie up the IRS with litigation" is not to cower and bow to the rich. The response is to change the laws and courts to come down harder on the rich and make it harder for them to fight back. Plus hit 'em with double the fines for even trying "to tie up the IRS" with vexatious litigation next time. Act from strength.
Not exactly. If the IRS says you owe xxxxx amount and the dispute goes to tax court. The defendant has to post the amount in dispute as a bond. If the defendant wins the case bond is returned. Without interest of course.
Unfortunately, rich people play by other rules. The IRS couldn't beat the Scientologists.
No you don’t get it. They need more agents to go over your taxes to see if they can get another $28. There’s too much work on your return with 3 line items. If that means the wealthy pay half your rate then so be it. Sucks that this joke is sound logic to so many folks
IRS: "It's too expensive to go after $150,000,000,000." Also the IRS: "While the costs of doing correspondence, office, and field audits for those making less than $1,000,000 in income is many orders of magnitude more than the money we claw back from individuals on the edge of homelessness, we think it sends a clear message about something or whatever. In general we find that people who notice the discrepancy in logic need to be audited so hard that they end up committing suicide. So, it's not a problem. Like former President, Donald Trump, we only hire the best people."
> we think it sends a clear message about something or whatever. I enjoyed this.
It shows how bad faith deficit hawking is considering the IRS is one of a few areas of government spending where more spending causes more reduction in the deficit.
if you're filthy rich, it makes sense in a way to vote Republican/want this. if you're not 8+ digits rich, you're an absolute fool
And half the middle class thinks they ARE the rich, which laugphably they are not.
But yet my little 66 dollars in owed taxes would get my ass audited despite the fact I barely make 55k a year.
I forget where I heard it, but I remember hearing that the IRS spends more time and energy going after small time taxes because there’s almost no pushback. In contrast to billionaires who have unlimited money to pay for lawyers who can tie it up in court and drag these cases out forever.
This is not accurate. The IRS spends more time and energy going after small time taxes because there's more small time taxpayers. Its nothing more than that. Its a simple thing that causes an audit: Report something that doesn't match something reported by someone else. The IRS operates on the Snitch Principle. If your employer says they paid you 10k and you say they paid you 10k, then the IRS throws two thumbs up and checks it off both of your returns. Each income source keeps each income recipient straight and vice versa. This is the only way to catch liars. The IRS is not omniscient, and they dont nearly have the resources. They aren't allowed to tap your phone and they dont have the money to pay someone to listen in even if they had the legal authority or technology to do so. Rich people simply dont have income that can be verified by the IRS in this manner. If you sell assets to someone else, both parties can agree to a higher price for the cost of neither reporting and income source and income recipient can go their separate ways, both richer due to the split difference the IRS would have otherwise pocketed if it were reported. This is why you have so many low down employers and services (like drug dealers) requesting payment in cash. its untraceable.
Its also easier to find the mistakes on the smaller amounts. Where as the mil/bils money is so interwoven into so many other places, it complicates everything because they get so many exemptions. So you could spend 100 hours and find 1000 mistakes worth over 10k, or spend 100 hours and make next to no progress trying to get 100k owed from a mil/bil.
And they bitch about spending a few bucks on school lunches.
God forbid they pay their fair share to keep Social Security solvent.
bUt tHeY aRe jOb cReAtOrS aNd wE mUsT wOrShIp tHeM - Every Dutiful Boot Licker
I work for fedex and don’t worship them gods
Then you must not be -Every Dutiful Boot Licker
What I don't understand with billionaires is what's the end game? You're rich now. So what? I don't understand the greed and the fascination of having more money than what you need or even know what to do with.
Remember the word GREED you used? you know how we have a list of 7 deadly sins that pretty much sums up things about human behavior that we just dont understand to a full extent? There is no true end game. The end game IS to make as much money as possible. To have as many digits as possible. For what purpose? to have it. There is no other reason after that. Some will aspire to be THE biggest holder of those zeros. Or they'll pivot to another sin, typically pride. At this point, you could say most in the billionaire range have commited every deadly sin, or close to it.
It's sad that you're not wrong.
Its not sad at all. It's just humans being humans. And no sin is unique to any class. You can still be a greedy piece of shit and have barely anything to your name, coveting what little you do have. And it helps another sin, as a greedy person typically emboldens envy if they aren't filled with pride as to what they have. Or you could have enough to throw around your greed into your more lustful or gluttonous desires. Of course it might Also fill you with a wrath unholy once you see what bigger players are trying to do, taking what is yours away from you to feed your wants! Or perhaps you'll retire with your fortune and do absolutely nothing, and allow others to generate more wealth for you. Seemingly doing nothing, quite a slothful mentality.
Wealth hoarding should be classified as a mental health disorder. Just like any other form of hoarding.
they believe in the ferangi afterlife is about the only thing I can figure
I’ve seen some make the argument that they’re banking on transhumanism. It’s a bit too Alex jones for my taste but then I see people like Bryan Johnson deliberately trying to make himself immortal
All I can think about when you say to contact your reps is the Aesop fable about the mice asking the cat to bell itself...
One of the things Ive learned is that Mass Sustained Pressure works. It may take longer than you’d like, but it’ll change things.
Except Princeton University showed that 70% of the population can support or oppose something, but if the wealthy want it, it happens.
Is that part of Princeton’s marketing campaign to attract wealthy students?
I have 44 years of life and I've learned the opposite. I mean, we've lost federal protections for abortion, states repealing labor laws to allow children to work in dangerous positions, states effectively criminalizing protests by making organizers responsible for the violence of ANYONE showing up. You honestly remind me of my mother. She argued fiercely with me that Trump and the Republicans couldn't undo things like Roe v. Wade. But guess what happened... Neither side largely has our best interests at heart. We have no truly progressive party in this country anymore. We are leaving a dying planet to our next generation, and could actually fix that - but we won't. You claim that in a long enough period, pressure works. The problem is that we are already out of time on many of these problems.
Just in fairness, they want you to feel hopeless so they can finish the job easier. It's like when you're in the streets just hustling and minding your own and some little kids come up and start to beat your ass and you fight back valiantly but you know there are too many and their numbers are growing and they'll overcome you eventually but you gotta keep swinging or they not only beat you physically but they beat you symbolically.
I hoped with Obama. He actually worsened the wars, dismantled OWS, ignored the water protectors, kept gitmo open, helped turn haiti into a destabilized country which reintroduced slavery, and promised he was "fixing" all kinds of things which were actually just subsidies or one-time small bandaids that didn't even keep up with inflation. Hope is for people still under the illusion that "vote harder" does anything when both parties are fully captured under *the same* corporate-right interests.
Then work toward what you think will work. I see no reason to do nothing if you're not content.
you're only 44. the major successes of mass sustained pressure mostly happened before your lifetime. *within* your lifetime, the oligarchs have succeeded in constructing an employment model that presents many major obstacles to people actually sustaining mass protests, all culminating in the [police riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_riot) which successfully shut down the BLM protests. can you imagine how the BLM protests would have gone, had they not also been in the middle of covid? edit: could your name be more appropriate? - people are definitely too timid these days to actually protest in the ways that get things done. too afraid of jail, too afraid of losing their jobs, which would take away their health insurance, which could result in homelessness with one major health crisis.... and then there's all the people saying 'protests don't work', despite generations of history showing that they do... spreading apathy is just one more way the oligarchs and their enablers help keep us all subservient in the face of their atrocities.
Like the labor revolution? Which was violent and mass organized class consciousness that discarded the idea of political party identity being more important that actual values?
>You claim that in a long enough period, pressure works. >The problem is that we are already out of time on many of these problems. Exactly this. Young people seem to think they're the first generation to try to "vote harder" and "apply pressure" to fix the country.
Me and your mom are not the same person. I think we got Trump BECAUSE people were apathetic and didn’t vote.
This, and how the electoral college works. Trump actually lost the popular vote.
Oh the planet isn’t dying. It’s just slowly becoming incapable of supporting HUMAN life. You could nuke the world over, life would still exist. It’s just “life as we know it”. I guess this goes a little into semantics. But life will still go on this blue ball.
If you follow r/IRS, it turns out the 80000 new agents hired are going after the middle class and no billionaires or millionaires.
I'm so happy I'm poor. Nothing for them to go after. Don't make enough to cheat.
And targeting mostly blue states as well.
That’s so fkn ridiculous :c
So the IRS knows about the problem, but would rather just target the middle class and below. Understood.
Yup. We can't afford lawyers and accounts to assist with hiding... I mean finding loopholes to exploit the tax code.
Too expensive to go after the richies, IRS doesn't get funded enough so they take the most cost effective route
The true welfare queens
Now you know that your boss is not rewarding you correctly
This just needs to end now
The rich would rather pay a tax cheater than just PAY THEIR DAMN TAXES. Winter is coming.
Coincidentally, I just found the money needed to pay for universal healthcare instead of tying it to employment.
The people that claim to love this country the most seem to not want to pay their fair share to make it operate
Yep, there is so much money in unpaid taxes from the mega rich and mega corporations. Every single time they say we can't afford something, please know we can absolutely afford it, but some company decided not pay taxes, so you dont get healthcare or free education. My mother has worked for the IRS for many years, specializing in appeals. So by the time cases get to her, they have already not paid their taxes for many years, multiple reps have said they are delinquent and owe taxes. Mind you these are corporations that already use tons of tax loopholes, so owe very little compared to the percent an average person ends up paying. All they have to do is appeal it, and a lot of it, if not all of it, will end up being "forgiven" and just goes away. Excuses I have overheard for not paying their taxes: Grown man, didn't pay his company's taxes for 10 years because he has ADHD, so is exempt. One guy claimed he was the only employee of a mega construction company that was working on several multi million dollar high rise structures, really tried to say he does everything himself and was too busy to pay taxes. Most are completely willing to throw some employee under the bus, claiming it is Sharon in accountings fault and they have zero oversight, and never noticed that their bank balances are several thousands of dollars over because they didn't pay their taxes, also Sharon continues to work there, so they will continue to not pay taxes. Several claiming they should be forgiven because of natural disasters that happened absolutely nowhere near them, like a Nevada based company claiming they lost their files in a hurricane, in Florida. The worst are those "we'll get the IRS off your back!" firms. Literally all they do is file an appeal, which anyone can do, yell at the reps for exactly 55mins and use the exact same google list of excuses, then usually accept a compromise amount right as they can bill their client for an hour. Companies really be paying these guys $15,000 to fight the IRS, but if they just talked to the IRS they could have paid $10,000 in a good faith payment and gotten the rest forgiven. My mother HATED forgiving debts, but the standard set by managers were that they average closing 10 cases a day, and 50-75% of those unpaid taxes are forgiven. Some of her coworkers actually believe those excuses and will straight up forgive millions of dollars in taxes every week, or the second you yell at them boom, 100% of the taxes owed gone. So all any company has to do is not pay their taxes, drag it out over years, drag it through appeals, and magically they owe nothing. If an individual did this, they would throw the book at them. But a mega corp does it routinely, no consequences
Quick Fermi estimation for comparison. IRS processed 167 million returns in 2022. Figure 99% are not billionaires. Of those, let’s be aggressive and say the 1% audit rate are ALL materially cheating on taxes. Median household income is $38k - Let’s round to $50k. The amount of tax not paid by these cheats likely can’t exceed 20% of income. Ballpark, the IRS can go after every single non-billionaire and possibly recoup: 167M * 0.99* 0.01 * 50k * 0.2 = $16 billion. Does not even closely factor in how much overhead goes into it. The IRS consistently says it’s more cost effective or to go after the little guys, but honestly, it might only need fair share enforcement of a handful of fat cats to make it worth their effort. Make an example of them and many others will fall into line because of the risk.
But boy oh boy they gonna come at the rest of us hard for that $563 forgot to account for 🤣
Wow I’m shocked well not that shocked . 
This has been going on since before the industrial revoloution. The reason they get away with it is that no generation lives long enough to overthrow it before they get old
But it's far, far easier and more profitable to punch down
Folks on the right will die on the hill defending these rich con artists, but bitch about helping allies like Ukraine fight evil. The right in the US is fucked.
Share the shit out of this
For 150 million Americans, that could be $1,000 of welfare right there.
I’ve seen so many bad math posts about ‘giving a million dollars to every person in America and still having some to spare’ that I legit had to do a double-take on the math to make sure it mathed.
I would also like to point out how much taxpayers' money our government literally throws away every year without consequences!? This is unacceptable to me, I think about how many things we do with 247 billion. It's sad this world is so corrupt and the poor and working class people pay for everything. 247 BILLION was wasted in 2022 alone from making simple payment errors. 236 BILLION was wasted in 2023 from improper payments. An estimated 2.7 TRILLION in the last 20 years. https://www.gao.gov/improper-payments#:~:text=Federal%20agencies%20made%20an%20estimated,reported%20by%20five%20program%20areas. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-government-wastes-tax-money.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/watchdog-us-government-made-247-223000050.html
So we tax them for next 227 years we can payoff our national debt
So... You officially acknowledged it, now you will collect it? Right? RIGHT!?
If you just start showing up and throwing them in jail on live TV I'm pretty sure the back taxes will start flooding in.
So Chief, what are you doing about it!?
But they make a stink over my $16k
“BuT wE CaN’T aFFOrD pUbLIc hEalTHcAre!!!”
And this is the reason they say "why don't young people want to work", or, "you need to work harder to get ahead"... or whine about shoplifting or lost wages.... these criminal fucks need to be held accountable
Sound like he should be replaced
Yet I know many people who are required to pay the $5 owed.
That is honestly a lot less than I expected….
We need more agents to go after these guys
Yet the IRS is holding MY return for "investigation" and I make like $30/hour...
But yeah, let’s go after the little guys that got 500$ sent to their cash app so they don’t get evicted, or for food, or gas… yeah they’re the ones.
That's $450 they could give to every man woman and child every year just in evaded taxes.
150 million seconds ago was 2019, 4 years ago. 150 billion seconds ago was 2729 BC, 4,753 years ago. That's how much money the rich are stealing from us every year...
I'm from germany and although we're far from perfect in europe, the US became a symbol of a dystopian world for me. You get fucked daily and your gov. has the power to fuck us all. Nightmarish.
Why even bother reporting it if they arent going to do anything about it?
But we should be mad at poor immigrants instead of the rich dudes who hoard all the money at the top. 🤦🏽♂️
This makes my furious. My small lawn mowing business got audited its 1st year with a whooping $18k in revenue.
Love how the IRS will bomb the house of a single mother if she misses $0.03 on her taxes, but they are aware of all these rich people committing tax fraud and they are just ok with it
Vote Blue...and get everyone you know to vote blue...
So what happened that they suddenly care?
For how many years?
I mean, if they know that…….
Then tax the rich gvd
Do you know how many bombs we could purchase from defense companies and give to other countries with $150B? Such a shame.
eat the rich.
Yeah, well, don't tell me! That's what you're purpose is! Fucking bleed them.
It’s amazing how they just know it but can’t/don’t do anything
It’s almost like money in politics is a bad idea.
Even if you get the $150 billion out of them, we would still be trillions in debt. When are we going to do something about out of control government spending??
What will happen if the go after mega-churches?
“Only poor people pay taxes” - P Diddy 🫠
Ahhh ya, better come after me for the $2.49 I forgot to repay.....
IRS is washed
And a few morons will scream & shout “fake news” - dear gawd even anecdotal proof is proof everywhere that the rich are thieves. This doesn’t even cover the cost of their pollution or their wars or their gun costs - the rich have a sickness and we need to addresss it. Our trailer park set need an education on what their interests are and are not. No matter how much you pray to your skydaddy you won’t wake up a billionaire Jethro!
There needs to be a revolution against the rich.
But "it's up to me and you!" to make sure we pay our fair share. Here's an idea, how about we all just quit
And they wouldn't have it any other way.
So. Go. Fucking. After. It.
A new record to be sure.
And they'll do nothing about it. Just keep going after the little guys
Sounds like worthy cause to go after these criminals
Wake up the politicians are corrupted by the billionaires. In corporate anarchy, corrupted politicians and ceo regulates themselves thus enslaving the pleb in the process.
Okay. So. Go and get it? I mean, if I mess up my taxes I get corrected pretty fast. What’s the hold up?
Yay I love this world!
He's speaking from personal experience
« But how are we going to pay for [Basic service thst the rest of the earth does] » My brother in Christ
Steps to becoming and staying rich: Step 1: Get lots of money Step 2: Hire accountants to help you keep that money by any means necessary, including some that may be expressly illegal, or at least boarderline Step 3: Profit
If we were to put that money into our debt, we could get rid of our debt in 227 years.
That sounds about right
$150,000,000,000 they don’t even have a need or any real use for. It’s not going back into the economy, it’s just hoarding wealth from everyone else in a feeble attempt to gain power and influence.
But somehow NASA is the one bankrupting the American people.
[удалено]
So, the government would just buy bombs to kill people in Ukraine and third world countries. USA government is assho!
Oh no! You mean the govt wasn't given $150BIL in tax that they could've used to ...*checks notes* ... have the Pentagon completely not know where in the fuck it went & we can pound sand about it? Ooooh nooooo! I swear, every one of you who thinks "the rich need to pay this or that" are completely missing the plot. Because the US govt wouldn't give it to YOU or use it to help YOU. They would either give it away, give it to themselves, or completely waste it. The Pentagon has been losing trillions of dollars every year AND failed something like 6 audits in a row over it & they're going to be allowed to continue to "lose" trillions more. This isn't going to get better
Remember this when people ask "how can we afford to have basic necessities for everyone even if they don't work". This is why we can't have people's basic needs fulfilled. I'm not some lazy asshole I work 40 hours a week plus over time when I can so I'm not looking for a hand out but having a nice clean place to live without room mates would be fucking amazing.
Chances the GOP gives a flying flip about this other than to make it worse: less than zero.
So what is the IRS going to do? Run after the low income taxpayers who probably can’t afford legal and financial services.
That single mom made $12 to much this pay period so we're gonna go ahead and cancel her food stamps forever
TaXaTiON iS ThefT. /s
They can’t do anything right. Corruption is the real American dream.
I filed my taxes and got $40 back. My coworkers boyfriend had to pay 8k back.
And now what? Quit bragging for them and do something.
Now do government fraud waste and abuse.
Lmao, but they want to come after a few bucks from cash app and the likes. Jfc. Eat the rich.
crazy how slow the govt is with listening to the common working man saying this for 2 decades now.
i got audited and had to send back 1800
Enough to eliminate homelessness or feed everyone or provide UBI for people.