Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Syt]

Nice to see that my family has room for Josh Hawley on their timeline.

[The Minsky Moment]

The more we learn the worse this gets, is a pretty good summary of Hawley's Senate tenure.

[Valmy]

DEI is the new euphemism for the n word I guess.

[Razgovory]

Well, my brother in law has it all figured out.

This is one I don't get.  People don't want the tax laws enforced?  You'd just rather have taxes voluntary for the rich?

[Valmy]

Rules are for poors?

Better enforcement might allow for lower taxes. Just saying.

[Syt]

Isn't most auditing happening on lower income levels because they're easier to do and IRS has less and less resources?

[Valmy]

Isn't most auditing happening on lower income levels because they're easier to do and IRS has less and less resources?

No idea. But there are a lot more poors and thus more stupid ones who would attempt to cheat in stupid and obvious ways so it wouldn't surprise me.

"Mr. Simpson, this government computer can process almost four tax returns a day. Did you really think you could fool it?"

[Syt]

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/taxes/what-is-an-irs-audit-and-who-gets-audited-what-you-need-to-know/

An article from April:

[...]

Who gets audited?

According to the General Accounting Office, audit rates have decreased among all income levels in recent years, in large part because of a lack of funding.

On average, the odds of being audited dropped from 0.9% in 2010 to 0.25% in 2019.

Errors or missing information on a return is the surest way to get a notice from the IRS. Audits can also be triggered randomly, or if your return is linked to someone else being audited, like an investor or business partner.

But higher-income earners can face increased scrutiny. The odds rise for those reporting income over $200,000 and, according to research from Syracuse University published in January, millionaires are the most likely to be audited out of any income bracket.

Declaring little or no income at all is a red flag, too, though. The audit rate for the lowest-income Americans was 1.27%, more than five times the national average.
"Lower-income audits are generally more automated, allowing [the] IRS to continue these audits even with fewer staff," according to a GAO report from May 2022.
Taxpayers with incomes above $25,000 and below $500,000 have been audited the least in recent years, according to IRS data.
In August 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said small businesses or households earning $400,000 or less a year "will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited."

Danny Werfel, President Joe Biden's nominee for IRS commissioner, reiterated that pledge in his Senate confirmation hearing in February.

Is there racial bias in who gets audited by the IRS?

Black taxpayers are disproportionately likely to be audited, according to a Stanford University report released in January. The research team found that Black taxpayers receive audit notices at least three times more often than non-Black taxpayers.

Depending on their income, household size and filing status, they may be as much as 4.7 times more likely to be audited.
Stanford law professor Daniel Ho, who led the research, said the disparity likely isn't intentional but the result of cost-cutting measures and the secret algorithm governing the IRS' audit selection methods.
Budget cuts have cost the agency more than 20% of its examiners over the past 10 or more years, according to Ho's team, many of whom had the necessary expertise to investigate more complex tax issues. As a result, audit rates among higher tax brackets have declined while those for lower-income taxpayers haven't. 
The IRS is also leaning into correspondence audits, which are "easy to trigger, cost very little and require minimal effort by IRS personnel," compared to in-person field audits, the researchers said. Some 70% percent of IRS audits are through the mail.
The researchers found the program the IRS uses to flag problems on returns and generate automated letters, the Dependent Database, tends to home in on errors involving eligibility for money back rather than on mistakes related to high-dollar amounts.
Half of all IRS audits, for example, involve taxpayers claiming the earned income tax credit. 

According to Ho's team, EITC-related audits are more likely to hit "lower-income individuals whose tax returns are less complex and less likely to lead to litigation."

The program is also likely to target claimants with no business income because they are cheaper and easier to resolve.
Black taxpayers make up only 10% of EITC claimants reporting business income, the report found, but 20% of EITC claimants who do not.

 "Racial disparities in income are well known, and what the IRS chooses to focus on has big implications for whether audits complement, or undercut, a progressive tax system," Ho said in a statement.

These factors don't account for the full disparity in who gets audited, the researchers said. Black taxpayers make up 21% of EITC claimants, for example, but were the focus of 43% of EITC-related audits.

The inconsistency persists regardless of gender, and marital or parental status, but is most pronounced among single Black men with dependents who claim the EITC. They're nearly 20 times more likely to be audited as a non-Black couple filing jointly and claiming the same credit.
The researchers said they believe the IRS is also under pressure by lawmakers to go after individuals unduly receiving a refund over people committing tax evasion.
Filers claiming the EITC can receive a refund even if they paid no taxes that year.

"We're not treating the dollar that is going toward the earned income tax credit as the same dollar that might be evaded by a high-income taxpayer," Ho told USA Today. "If we treated those similarly, our evidence shows that the disparity would go down significantly."

[...]

Links to sources in article.

[Syt]

[Zanza]

The poster probably speaks from own experience.

[Tamas]

Will be interesting to see whether painting the "jolliness" of Harris as a bad thing is going to work for them or not. Because it IS a stark contrast to Trump being all doom and gloom and endless rants of personal affronts taken.

It's sad enough that half of the population still would rather go with Trump when he has nothing to offer than the promise to extend their own misery to other people.

[Josquius]

What does this even mean.

I could understand the analogy in the sense of voting for someone awful because you like some really irrelevant minor policy of theirs and didn't pay attention to the rest*.
But arguing with someone?...


*for instance voting for trump for being pro Israel ignoring that he's also Russias puppet and totally messed up things with China.

[Valmy]

Well that sounds massively more pleasant than arguing with a Trump supporter.

[Darth Wagtaros]

They do seem to revel in being disgusting whenever possible. 

[Jacob]

A Trump supporter shitting their pants and then changing their shirt sounds about right for their approach to politics.