Tag: irs

IRS Hiring Another 3,700 Tax Enforcers, Watchdog Warns Those Earning Under $400,000 Could Be Targeted

IRS hiring 3,700+ tax enforcers to audit higher earners but a watchdog worries about audits for those under $400,000 due to unclear “high-income” definition.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking to hire over 3,700 additional tax enforcers as it ramps up its audit crackdown of higher-earning taxpayers, though a watchdog warns that Americans making less than $400,000 could get caught in the dragnet because the agency doesn’t have a clear definition of “high-income.”

The IRS said on Sept. 15 that it had opened over 3,700 positions nationwide to assist  with “expanded enforcement work” that focuses on complex partnerships, large corporations, and high-income earners.

The compliance positions will be open in more than 250 locations across the United States and are part of a “sweeping, historic” tax enforcement crackdown that leverages cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, to catch tax evaders more effectively.

The hiring will be for higher-graded revenue agents, with the IRS calling on people in the financial services industry—such as tax accountants, forensic accountants, auditors, and controllers—to apply.

The IRS is flush with cash from a recent congressionally-mandated infusion of $60 billion in new funding, with some of the money already having bolstered the tax agency’s ranks substantially. Recent reports indicate that hiring is up around 13 percent over the past year, allowing the IRS to hit a decade-high of nearly 90,000 staffers.

But while the recent batch of new hires was focused on taxpayer service positions, the newly announced hiring thrust is looking to give the IRS more enforcement muscle.

“This next wave of hiring will help the IRS add key talent like tax accountants to help reverse a decade-long decline of audits for the wealthy as well as complex partnerships and corporations,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement.

“These new employees will be focused on higher-income and complex tax areas like partnerships, not average taxpayers making less than $400,000,” Mr. Werfel added.

But Mr. Werfel’s pledge not to target Americans earning under $400,000 rings hollow, given a recent watchdog report that called into question the ability of the IRS to make good on this pledge because it either lacks a clear definition of “high-income” or uses outdated tax examination activity codes that put the threshold for high earners at $200,000.

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Hunter Biden Sues His Dad’s Government For ‘Embarrassing’ And ‘Targeting’ Him

Attorneys for Hunter Biden on Monday filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging the Internal Revenue Service “targeted and sought to embarrass” their client by mishandling its investigation into his tax returns and, ironically, cited testimony by whistleblowers they once threatened with legal action.

Biden’s lawsuit, according to Fox News, accused the IRS of “willfully, knowingly, and/or by gross negligence, unlawfully disclosing Mr. Biden’s confidential tax information.” The suit cites testimony by IRS career bureaucrats Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two whistleblowers who have claimed the agency’s handling of the investigation was ripe with political interference culminating in a sweetheart deal that would have resulted in no prison time for the son of President Joe Biden.

In addition, Biden is seeking $1,000 in compensation for “each and every unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns” which occurred as the case gained notoriety and was further investigated by House Republicans who demanded documentation from the IRS as they sought to tie President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland to the case.

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IRS Announces New Plan To Hire More Agents for High-Dollar Cases

U.S. taxpayers with more than $1 million incomes and owing more than $250,000 in taxes will be stringently scrutinized under a new collection initiative announced Friday by the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS will contact about 1,600 taxpayers in this category who owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, according to an agency statement.

“By the end of the month, the IRS will open examinations of 75 of the largest partnerships in the U.S. that … each have more than $10 billion in assets,” an agency spokesperson stated.

The new initiative is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated billions to the IRS, according to a CBS News report.

A portion of the funds appropriated for IRS use will be used for identifying millionaire tax evaders. The IRS plans to deploy “dozens of revenue officers” in fiscal year 2024 to focus on high-value collection cases.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 allocated $80 billion to the IRS. More than half of that amount is designated for hiring more enforcement agents.

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Digital Asset Sales To Come Under Increased IRS-Treasury Scrutiny

The U.S. Treasury and the IRS have proposed new reporting requirements for digital asset brokers like cryptocurrencies and NFTs in an attempt to “crack down on tax cheats” and help citizens assess tax dues arising from such asset transactions.

Regulations “would require brokers of digital assets to report certain sales and exchanges,” the U.S. Treasury said in an Aug. 25 press release. The proposed regulations “is part of a broader effort at Treasury to close the tax gap, address the tax evasion risks posed by digital assets, and help ensure that everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Brokers would be required to report on the sale and exchange of digital assets in 2026 for activities that took place during the prior year.

In an Aug. 25 press release detailing the new proposed regulations, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said that a critical part of the rules is that it “fits in with the larger IRS compliance focus on wealthy taxpayers.”

“We need to make sure digital assets are not used to hide taxable income, and the proposed regulations are designed to provide a clearer line of sight into activities by high-income people as well as others using them,” he said.

“We want to make sure everyone pays what they owe under the tax laws, and our research and experience demonstrate that third-party reporting improves compliance.”

A Barclays analysis released last year estimated that the IRS could be missing out on more than $50 billion annually due to crypto traders not paying their taxes.

The new rules will also help taxpayers in filing their returns, the Treasury stated.

Under current laws, citizens owe tax on gains made on the sale or exchange of digital assets and can deduct losses on such activity. However, “for many taxpayers it is difficult and costly to calculate their gains.”

The proposal would require that digital asset brokers “provide a new Form 1099-DA to help taxpayers determine if they owe taxes, and would help taxpayers avoid having to make complicated calculations or pay digital asset tax preparation services in order to file their tax returns.”

“These regulations align tax reporting on digital assets with tax reporting on other assets, and, as a result, avoid preferential treatment between different types of assets,” the treasury stated.

The agency cited figures from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) which estimated that the new rules could raise almost $28 billion in revenues for the government over a decade.

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IRS agent accidentally shot, killed by fellow agent during training at gun range

An agent with the IRS is dead after being accidentally shot by another agent during a training exercise Thursday at a federal gun range, according to officials.

Arizona’s Family reports a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incident occurred at its gun range in the Phoenix area. The gun range was reportedly being utilized by multiple federal agencies at the time of the shooting through an interagency agreement.

A spokesperson said no Federal Bureau of Prisons employees were injured.

Charlotte M. Dennis with the Phoenix Field Office of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division confirmed she was aware of an “incident” involving a special agent.

Dennis said the agent was taken to the HonorHealth Deer Valley Medical Center where they died.

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Does the IRS think you’re DEAD? Taxman has incorrectly ‘deceased locked’ 90,000 accounts despite filers still being alive

More than 90,000 taxpayers have had their IRS accounts locked because the government agency incorrectly thought they were dead, a new watchdog report states.

The blunder – which the IRS blamed on ‘human and computer programming issues’ -has left legitimate and living citizens unable to file tax returns and receive rebates. They were also then lumped with the burden of rectifying the issue.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) issued a report last week claiming that prior to January 2022 it identified 77,868 accounts with potentially erroneous locks and a further 20,222 over the next ten months.

The IRS has since confirmed those affected can notify the service and file new returns once their accounts are unlocked.

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The IRS Misplaced Millions of Taxpayer Records. Again.

Do you know where your tax records are? It’s a serious question in the case of millions of Americans whose records the IRS carelessly misplaced. That’s the big reveal in a recent inspector general’s report telling us that the federal mugging agency continues to be mindbogglingly incompetent at safeguarding the sensitive financial information it forcibly extracts from us all.

“The IRS was unable to locate any of the FY 2010 microfilm cartridges that should have been sent from the Fresno Tax Processing Center to the Kansas City Tax Processing Center,” the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in an August 8 report on the tax agency’s data-handling practices. “As a result of the lack of adequate inventory controls, the IRS cannot account for thousands of microfilm cartridges containing millions of sensitive business and individual tax account records.”

That’s bad—remarkably bad given the bait the information in those records represents for criminals inclined “to commit tax refund fraud identity theft,” as the report goes on to warn. You could omit the “tax refund” part since the details we’re required to submit to the IRS could enable scammers to rob us blind in a host of ways that don’t matter to the government but are extremely serious to anybody on the receiving end.

As you might expect of a government agency, the incompetence doesn’t stop there.

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Dozens of Armed IRS Agents In Tactical Gear Raid Florida Business

Dozens of armed IRS agents recently raided a Florida business, with witnesses telling a local news outlet that they were stunned by the show of force by the tax agency.

At least 25 to 30 IRS agents in tactical gear executed a search warrant at a business in Stuart, Florida, last week, according to Fox 29.

“It was like a scene from a movie,” an unnamed witness told the outlet. “They had the big gear, tactical gear because they probably didn’t know what they were walking into.”

An IRS spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the agents were from the IRS Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) unit, a division whose agents investigate crimes like fraud and tax evasion.

The agents, who are authorized to carry guns as their work can be dangerous, were at the location on “official business,” the spokesperson added.

The unnamed witness told Fox 29 that it appeared that the agents were removing evidence from the business in bags and boxes.

While details remain scant on the raid, the show of force by IRS agents was noteworthy as it recalled Republican criticism of a funding boost to the agency amid concerns that it would be used to hire more tax enforcers who would target ordinary Americans.

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Media Use Failed Russia ‘Coup’ To Knock Bombshell Biden Scandal Off The Front Page 

Last Thursday, House Republicans released two explosive testimonies from IRS whistleblowers that, if true, further suggest President Joe Biden sold his political power for profit from our enemies abroad via his son Hunter’s business dealings. Moreover, they allege the Department of Justice has done everything in its power to for years protect the Bidens, even to the point of massively interfering in an American election.

This story is huge — bigger than Monica Lewinsky and Watergate combined. If confirmed, it means that the sitting President of the United States is potentially compromised by our nation’s adversaries, and the intelligence apparatus are enabling his corruption. We have no choice but to tear it down.

Yet you wouldn’t know any of that from the headlines this weekend. Sunday’s premiere, front-page stories in each of America’s biggest newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The Washington Post — were all about the quick and unsuccessful “coup” in Russia. Mentions of the Biden scandal were scant. The New York Times’ only featured Biden scandal article, titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga,” reads like satire, dismissing all the mounting allegations against the president and even praising him as a “model of … love and support” for people with drug-addicted family members.

It’s pretty interesting that almost immediately after the publication of the IRS whistleblower testimonies, the White House and State Department began sounding alarm bells over a “coup” that was over almost as soon as it started. Naturally, the corporate media was grateful to be handed a distraction story on a silver platter. The short-lived mutiny has not only dominated the headlines this weekend but was also granted wall-to-wall coverage on every major TV news channel. CNN, in particular, has really taken advantage of the Russia “coup,” using it as an opportunity to extol Biden for his “mastery of foreign policy.”

None of this is to say that this alleged attempted coup against the Kremlin isn’t newsworthy. The story has its place in the “world news” section. However, a foreign uprising that may or may not impact a war America has no business participating in should not be commanding the front pages for days on end, especially when we have far bigger fish to fry.

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16 Bombshells on Hunter Biden From The IRS Whistleblowers

Two IRS whistleblowers leveled serious allegations about Hunter Biden and the government’s investigation of the troubled first son, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

The whistleblowers, IRS supervisory criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second unnamed IRS investigator, provided evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee that top Justice Department officials stonewalled an investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business ventures. They also call into question President Biden’s repeated denials that he has no knowledge of his son’s business dealings.

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