Tag: irs

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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IRS To Require Facial Recognition To View Tax Returns

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has partnered with a Virginia-based private identification firm which requires a facial recognition selfie among other things, in order to create or access online accounts with the agency.

According to KrebsonSecurity, the IRS announced that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log into irs.gov will be through ID.me. Founded by former Army Rangers in 2010, the McLean-based company has evolved to providing online ID verification services which several states are using to help reduce unemployment and pandemic-assistance fraud. The company claims to have 64 million users.

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IRS Watching Your $600+ Payments To Venmo, PayPal, Others

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress passed a new rule that requires payment companies and cash applications such as Venmo and PayPal to report $600 or more of payments to the Internal Revenue Services.

The law was included in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, which was passed with only Democratic votes through budget reconciliation to avoid the Senate filibuster. The new rule took effect at the beginning of this month.

The requirement covers payments received for good and services. The rule would apply to payment services like PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App and others.

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