This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Ah-ha, I knew there was a reason. And here I thought they were just incompetent.
The IRSā difficulty in swiftly getting payments to Americans has a basic, root cause: There are multiple private actors sitting between the IRS and tax filers.
Trump Regimeās MAGA Way:
Shovel buckets of gold to Wallstreet
Callous Incompetent delays to the few pieces of silver to the poorest Mainstreet
Way to go Covidiot Bleacher IMPeetusā¦
If you canāt kill them from hunger, hopelessness and humiliationā¦
You are advocating to kill them with bleach injection!
This is beyond criminal negligenceā¦
This is beyond 25thA
Straight to the loony bin!
This is on you 52 āBleacherā/KAG (Kill American Geriatrics) RethugniCONS who acquitted this Crazy Covidiot Bleacher IMPeetus!
Various people within the Trump Administration have made it ABUNDANTLY clear that they do not think poor people deserve so much as a dime.
Current Occupant: āLook at my poooooor people over there! See how much they love me? I could leave them all to die in a pandemic and no one in my administration would do anything about it. Thatās because they know I have a good brain, which they do not, and the Democrats hate me for that. But my poooor people? They love me.ā
Itās not a bug, itās a feature.
Reformers have been saying for years that the IRS could simply do these filersā taxes for them: they already have all the info needed to do the taxes of poor and working class people who, it goes without saying, donāt have any complicated investments. The IRS could send them a draft form, saying, āif anythingās wrong with this return, fix it and send it back; otherwise, just sign and return.ā
But that would put an end to the astonishing amount of grift this article details, so of course itās never gotten very far in Congress.
Even though Iām a born-again Christian, I donāt believe in a Biblical Hell. But if there were one, and the people who make their living by fleecing the poor this way were to go there (as the Bible suggests they would), I doubt I would feel the least bit sorry for them.
Tax prep industry is in damage control mode as this catastrophe is exposing their grift.
Posted on another thread - but so worth the watch. A foul mouthed rant about the incompetence of āthe bailout planā.
iām a social security recipient and still have not received the stimulus payment. and this is one group that should have been easiest to provide it to ā all the information is already in the system as payments are made monthly.
I hope someone does an investigation into the distribution of these checks and how quickly they were disseminated by zip code/support for trump. I have no doubt that was a factor.
Amen
Whenever I hear how casually some (and steadily more and more) would suggest letting the USPS fail and be dissolved, I think that itās a way for the banking industry to disrupt any further discussion of postal banking that would eliminate so many barriers for many to getting basic financial services and simplifying tax payments and rebates.
So I got the payment in my checking account last week. I have a good job and so far this virus has had no financial impact on me so I paid it forward to the local foodbank. Not looking for credit of any kind - I would have felt like a jerk keeping the money. I was sort of disappointed that I didnāt get the check in the mail because I wanted to write sociopath-in-chief under Tās name. But then a funny thing happened - yesterday I got a letter from the IRS. In the envelop there was a letter from DJT letting me know about the check and talking about āthe invisible enemyā that āwe are working against.ā He does give Congress credit to be sure. But I guess we just paid for another campaign mailer from DJT.