Tag: irs

Supersizing the IRS: Another Big, Bad Biden Idea

The Biden administration is dead-set on taking your money. 

Plan A was to repeal the entire Trump tax cut and vastly increase corporate and individual income taxes on top of new taxes on energy. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have slowed this down, reduced the size of any final tax cut, and perhaps killed tax cuts before the 2022 midterm elections. So plan B is to give the IRS vast new powers to squeeze more money out of taxpayers using the current code. And then there’s plan C: inflation. Print more dollars and spend them. 

While the world talks about possible tax hikes and the painful reality of inflation, they’re missing the disturbing developments in plan B — developments that would adversely affect the lives of all tax-paying citizens.

The Democrats want to supersize the IRS.

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden agree that they want to double the size of the IRS and spend even more tax dollars to harass and audit taxpayers. But wait. There’s more. They also want to give IRS bureaucrats new powers to monitor the bank accounts of taxpayers and have the IRS make out your tax return and simply send you a bill for what the IRS thinks you owe.

Keep reading

IRS Stole Money and Hid the Details for Years

The Internal Revenue Service demands transparency when its agents conduct audits. They open ledgers, snoop through bank accounts, and review receipts. But its appetite for disclosure disappears when the roles reverse.

The IRS stonewalled for more than six years when our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, sought access to the agency’s forfeiture database. Initially, the IRS wanted $750,000 in fees before it would accommodate the request—an unreasonable demand that would render the Freedom of Information Act useless for all but the wealthiest citizens.

Once in court, the IRS attempted a bait and switch. Rather than provide the actual data, it released a summary report that was 99 percent redacted. It then declared that it had gone above and beyond the legal requirements. The ruse worked at the district court level, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the agency in 2019. After a second trip to the district court, the IRS finally coughed up the full database in April 2022.

For anyone without a law degree or the resources to endure a long legal battle, the message from the IRS is clear: Do not try this at home. Accountability is good for the taxpayer, but not for the tax collector.

Keep reading

White House, IRS, CDC, and many other US government websites sending data to Big Tech via Google tracking code

Most of the major US federal government websites and numerous state and local government websites are sending real-time surveillance data back to Google as users browse their websites. Even websites where users are submitting sensitive or personal information, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) tips page and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website, contain tracking code that sends real-time visitor data back to Google.

Most of these government websites contain tracking code from the web traffic analytics tool Google Analytics. This code collects detailed user data which is sent to Google’s servers, analyzed, and presented to website owners via an online dashboard.

Google Analytics automatically collects data on the pages visited, the time and duration of each visit, and other visitor data (such as the device, browser, operating system, and screen resolution of visitors). It can also be configured to collect data on more specific actions such as when users click or tap specific links, download content, or fill out forms.

Some government websites also have code from other Google services (such as DoubleClick, Google Adsense, Google Maps, Google Play, and YouTube) and other tech giants (such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter) embedded on some of their pages.

The US government openly admits to using Google Analytics tracking code on 400 executive branch domains and 5,700 total websites. It even displays this surveillance data publicly via a real-time online dashboard which also tracks visitors with Google Analytics.

Keep reading

IRS gave $64 million in stimulus checks to dead people

The Internal Revenue Service sent $64 million in erroneous payments to as part of the American Rescue Plan due to a computer error of which the agency was aware but did not fix, according to an inspector general report.

Nearly 45,000 payments totaling $64 million were sent to people for their deceased dependents, who died before Jan. 1, 2021, making them ineligible for Biden’s stimulus payments of up to $1,400.

“We alerted the IRS to this programming error in April 2021. IRS management agreed that these payments were issued erroneously. However, IRS management did not provide their corrective action to address future erroneous payments,” the treasury inspector general stated in a report released last week.

The IRS went on to issue more than 400 additional incorrect payments for those with a deceased dependent after being alerted to the issue, the watchdog said.

In total, more than $100 million was incorrectly issued due to computer programming errors up to September 2021, the inspector general stated.

Keep reading

BLM’s charity status at risk over solicitation of funds to elect Democrats, watchdog says

The embattled national Black Lives Matter group used its charitable resources to solicit funds for its affiliated political action committee Tuesday, a move one expert called a “clear violation” of IRS charity rules.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the charity that represents the national BLM movement, voluntarily shut down its ability to raise money Feb. 2 following a Washington Examiner investigation into its lack of financial transparency that prompted multiple states to issue demands to the group to cease its fundraising activities.

Since then, BLM had refrained from using its email list to solicit contributions — until Tuesday, when it sent a message to its supporters that was signed “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation” and contained what appeared at first glance to be a donation button to support the charity.

When clicked, however, the donation button sends supporters to a fundraising page for Black Lives Matter PAC, BLM’s affiliated political group that has worked to elect Democrats across the country since its launch in October 2020.

“BLM PAC is preparing for the most critical midterm election yet. Every single race is an opportunity to build Black political power,” the fundraising page linked in BLM’s charitable email states. “If you’re ready to continue the electoral fight for Black lives, chip in to our efforts and start building for the 2022 midterms.”

Paul Kamenar, an attorney for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, told the Washington Examiner that BLM’s use of charitable resources to solicit funds for overtly political activities “appears to be a clear violation of the IRS rules prohibiting charities from soliciting contributions to a political action committee.”

Keep reading

The IRS already has all your income tax data – so why do Americans still have to file their taxes?

Doing taxes in the U.S. is notoriously complicated and costly. And it gets even worse when there are delays and backlogs, making it especially hard to reach the Internal Revenue Service for assistance.

But to me this raises an important question: Why should taxpayers have to navigate the tedious, costly tax filing system at all?

The case for a ‘simple return’

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan promised a “return-free” tax system in which half of all Americans would never fill out a tax return again. Under the framework, taxpayers with simple returns would automatically receive a refund or a letter detailing any tax owed. Taxpayers with more complicated returns would use the system in place today.

In 2006, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, suggested a “simple return,” in which taxpayers would receive already completed tax forms for their review or correction. Goolsbee estimated his system would save taxpayers more than US billion a year in tax preparation fees.

Though never implemented, the two proposals illustrate what we all know: No one enjoys filling out tax forms.

So why do we have to?

As an expert on the U.S. tax system, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo.

A costly and time-consuming system

Return-free filing is not difficult.

At least 30 countries permit return-free filing, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Keep reading

Nearly Half Of IRS Audits Target Poorest Taxpayers, Report Finds

Nearly half of all IRS audits in 2021 targeted the nation’s poorest taxpayers, according to a new study.

A report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) on Tuesday said that about 307,000 of the nearly 660,000 audits conducted by the IRS in 2021 were among taxpayers who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit intended for those making the lowest incomes in the nation, those earning less than $25,000 in total gross receipts.

The poorest families in the study were audited at five times the rate of other Americans.

“Even taxpayers with total positive income from $200,000 to $1,000,000 had only 1/3 the odds of audit compared with these lowest-income wage earners: 4.5 out of every 1,000 compared to 13.0 out of every 1,000 of lowest-income earners,” the study noted.

Keep reading