What a frigging disgrace.
A few decades ago, I dealt with the IRS all the time, representing taxpayers. Virtually without exception, IRS employees were professional, dedicated and hard-working. They would often accept the taxpayerâs position, when it was explained to them, sometimes even if we were asking them to trust the taxpayerâs honesty (in situations, of course, where there was no evidence of dishonesty). The IRS wasnât popular then, but employees of the Service had the respect of those who dealt with them, and an esprit de corps.
I donât want to think what the atmosphere in the IRS is like today, after decades of Republican attacks and efforts to undermine it.
There is so much work to be done to restore the basic administrative and equitable norms in this country. The Republicans have very significantly weakened our institutions and our civic culture. Democrats need to look in the mirror too, and decided whether they want to stand up to this stuff or to continue the failed strategy of accommodating the right. Thatâs why Pelosi got such props yesterday. Americans are sick and tired of being gaslit and bullied by a Republican party that simply has lost its bearings.
Well OF COURSE. In Trumplandia poor is a crime. Pure and Simple. They are responsible for every âbadâ thingâŚand while you are BLAMING them Trump etal are grifting in front on you and the deplorables just canât quite âseeâ it.
âYou have the right to food money
Providing of course
You donât mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitationâ
I think this is a place where mileage varies. Iâve had good experiences and bad ones. (The bad ones were mostly when I didnât follow my mother-the-CPAâs advice to take a witness to meetings.) The main problem is that people who donât have money for representation and/or donât have the time to hash things out often find it easier and cheaper (!) to accept an adverse judgement and move on rather than carry a dispute to the bitter end. And the evil of underfunding the IRS is that it makes the process slower and more likely to drag out.
Iâm guessing that there is a simpler way to accomplish what the EITC does. In other countries their tax service figures out your taxes and you OK it.
Meanwhile, and maybe itâs the same elsewhere, I very seriously suspect that most income tax cheating (outside of corporations using all kinds of provisions to not pay millions) is with small businesses of all kinds, including home based businesses which have proliferated with the internet and independent contractors, many of whom should be employees getting a paycheck.
If you just get a paycheck and pay a mortgage everything is already reported. There isnât a lot of room for making stuff up.
The article does not mention that Republicans have cut the budget of the IRS and defamed the operation in general with the phony Obama-IRS-attack on saintly right wing tea party nonprofit lobbying and propagandizing operations. What a few IRS employees did in that case is exactly what any good manager would do to maximize effectiveness given the shortage of budget - do some checking of new actually political operations that were dedicated to the idea that taxation is theft. But Republicans turned it into a phony scandal knowing it would go over given Republican antipathy to paying taxes at all and the IRS being the evil perpetrator of this injustice.
David Cay Johnston reported this all the way back in 2003 in his definitive work Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Richâand Cheat Everybody Else. He also described why EITC recipients are subjected to so many audits: Itâs written into the EITC legislation. (Based on the erroneous, yet Gospel-belief among Republicanâts and Neoliberal Democrats that the poors are also massive cheaters.) Furthermore, he provided statistical evidence from the IRS that, at that time, the vast majority of recipients who were audited claimed too little credit and were awarded larger refunds! So not only were they spending inordinate sums of money to brutalize the poor, they had to pay out more than poor people claimed, all while the super rich laughed all the way to their Cayman Islands banksâŚ
Letâs not kid ourselves; It wasnât any different in the 70âs, 80âs, 90âs or 2000âs.
It is a fantastic book. Everybody should read it! Many great example of the difference between legal & right.
Of course, the EITC is also another giveaway to large corporations. A subsidy to companies who underpay & under-employ folks. But sugarcoated so that folks get the thrill of getting some money back.
I was representing taxpayers as an attorney, so the situations were probably different from yours. Also, I suspect Iâm older than you, so my experience with the IRS was from a time when things were different.
I think you may have hit the sweet spot. (And my attitudes toward them were no doubt shaped by my parentsâ experiences in the 50s through 70s, which included one deficiency claim that was only resolved by intervention from their congressperson, and an audit where the closing line was reportedly âI knew you were entitled to that deduction, but I wasnât going to give it to you unless you knew your were entitled to it.â)
A few years ago, I had a small issue with the IRS. It had to with my being an official and if per diems were taxable. To clarify my response, which outlined existing tax law, they suggested I call their Austin office. No big deal. Just the other side of town.
I called and was on hold for a full 85- minutes before an extremely pleasant gentleman come on the line. We wrapped up the issue and all was done. Took all of five minutes and most of that was his comparing my letter and reference to the tax code.
When we were done, he asked if I was satisfied. I said I was, except for the extraordinary time on hold. He apologized, and the clearly told me that staff were being gutted and the only solution would be for taxpayers to contact their representatives to stop cutting IRS funding, and support staffing and newer technologies. Otherwise, he said, it is going to get much, much worse.
It is worse now because nothing has been done.
As part of our social contract, we agree to pay taxes to support what we know government provides. When funded and done right, governmental agencies can be run well and efficiently. We see it everyday with the essential services of police, fire, water, parks, etc. Yet, we have any number of elected officials who have one goal - âto drag government into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.â
There is a reason we donât fund infrastructure, health care, the VA and much more. Somehow, one entire party of our two party system has decided their goal is feed the rich and starve everyone else.
We are seeing the worst of what the last few years have wrought. We have a chance to change our direction. The mid-terms were just the beginning.
(Hadnât really planned on going down that trail, but I get really âtinkledâ about this crap!)
Youâre almost thereâŚDemocrats learned to play the crimes of omission game. Just play the culture war game, keep everyone pissed and screaming about racism, misogyny or any other fucking thing except that our government has been hijacked. This didnât happen overnight and there are enough Democrats who go along to get along to get all the corporate cash.
The thing for me is that I donât get pissed off at the wolf for trying to run off with a sheep or two, theyâre wolves, thatâs what they do. But when the shepherd starts handing over the sheep to the wolves for a fee, I get pissed off at the shepherd. Democrats until about 1996, you were that shepherd looking out for the flock of people who arenât rich or politically connected and have to work jobs they arenât necessarily in love with, in other words, the vast majority of Americans. Bailed on the unions, got in good with the banks. Biden with his fucking Bankruptcy bill.
But hey if you need to believe that this is the result of one party to sleep at night, go for brokeâŚ
Nope, I donât need that to sleep at night. Democrats are equally guilty. I can, we can, wonk the history of the corruption of our process for many days and nights and never sleep.
But, from my vantage point, I have never seen the corruption to be so in my face than from the current Republicans.
I am more suggesting we not think the mid-terms have solved the problem and go about our merry way. There is more to be done and it will take the same enthusiasm going forward to not regret missing this opportunity.
I am concerned that we who are on the left, no matter what we might call ourselves (Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists, etc.) donât spend our time pissing on each otherâs shoes (we have a documented history of being our own worst enemy) when we should be focusing on the long game.
That is what keeps me up at night . . . .
You are one hundred percent correct, but what keeps me up at night is that we may be past the point of no return. Iâm not sure electing a moderate, corporate owned Democrat(about 90% of Democrats who seem to be thinking about running) really does anything but make you feel better for a couple months.
Either this gets fixed, or these elections really donât matter except window dressing. Social issues are going to mean jack shit if weâre in a Depression. And we are heading for a Depression, we were minutes away in 2008.
Iâll give you that.
I invite everyone to take a hard look at BETO.
I believe in him but still mulling his ability to take on the party and the right at the same time. But, he does bring new and seemingly capable blood to a campaign. But, can he lead?
Donknow yet
This, one thousand times! Everything from SNAP, to Medicaid to the EITC are massive, taxpayer subsidies not to undeserving poors, but to cheap, chisling, immoral employers.
You know what? Fuck Republicans. Just fuck 'em. They are so thoroughly steeped in performative cruelty toward the less fortunate that I have zero tolerance for them. Until they demonstrate to me unequivocally that they have abandoned their âkick the disadvantagedâ main platform, they are dead to me.