Not surprising when we have a Tax Cheat-in-Chief?
Drowning the government in a bathtub after we starve it almost to death, chapter 2.
What a coincidence. /s
Trump: “Promises made. Promises kept.”
Welp, trump should feel pretty good about the inability of the IRS to cat h tax cheats.
Bug Feature
OT Thankfully, Grassley’s farm isn’t facing collapse.
Gosh! Golly! I am amazed. I can’t wait until tax time. Maybe I can cheat the bloodsuckers out of a few bucks. It’s something to live for!
Tax cuts and no audits on the tax cheating rich.
Lucky rich folks,
Which I am not, unfortunately.
win / win / win / win
Big timers get off, keep their money
IRS accused of failing at their job
IRS lawyers go to work for big timers
Budget has to be cut even further
@wagonmound : watch it. I made a tepid snark remark along the lines of “who wouldn’t lie to keep a little more money” during the Manafort trial, and got my ass handed to me.
Note this started over 10 years ago.
This is Republicans implementing another prong of Starve the Beast - cut income.
From their POV it’s working as designed.
All in the plan. We are broke,time for social programs to go…
If you continually harass a department’s personnel and refuse them money for upgrades then yes this starving them.
And note that it’s the big guys that continually whine that they pay the most in taxes, and yet they’re the slowest in paying their taxes.
So, for those who don’t know, there is a gradation of “advice of counsel defense” letters tax lawyers will write you (if “you” happen to be rich) to protect you from criminal liability for taking what accountants and tax lawyers call an “aggressive position.” There are magic words they use to slot into each of the state of minds used to determine the size of your civil penalty when the Service nails you.
There are a bunch of rich people cheating like motherfuckers on their taxes right now because their tax lawyers and accountants assure them that the audit risk is so low they’ll get away with taking an “aggressive positions” under the least helpful of these letters. None of them seem to consider it possible that once the Democrats are back in office, they are going to staff the IRS back up and nail their fat asses to the wall.
After working for 23 years for the IRS my brother retired early because of the extreme budget cuts.
The entire Financial Crimes bureau was disbanded (they are the ones that investigated big money tax cheats.)
The number of tax audits was cut by 80%, especially in the High-Tax brackets because that required lots of expertise in financial instruments and documentation.
On top of that the pay freezes, pension cuts, hiring freezes, and general depressing state of support from the Congress (and active hatred from the Republicans) made him hang it all up early. He said he just could not face the prospect of having his legs cut out from under him again every time he filed a new action against a corporate tax cheat.
After Budget Cuts, The IRS’ Work Against Tax Cheats Is Facing ‘Collapse’
By design…
This is the case at many (most?) federal agencies. It is damaging. This cannot be reversed fast enough.
And then crowing about how “it doesn’t work.” Disgusting hypocrisy, but I expect nothing else from the GOP/Koch crowd.
