Tag: taxes

IRS Expansion Led To 53% Increase In Prosecutions

Additional staffing and a post-pandemic focus on tax fraud have led to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) prosecuting 53 percent more tax offenders in the past two years, according to a December report from Scholaroo. According to its research, in a state-by-state breakdown, those attempting fraud against the IRS in the states of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wyoming had the greatest chance of getting caught.  

But according to Scholaroo’s research, to be in the IRS crosshairs, you must make some serious money. “The IRS suggests that approximately 75 percent of tax fraud is committed mainly by individuals in the middle-income range,” the Scholaroo data team shared in a written statement to The Epoch Times. “However, the highest incidence of evasion is observed among the wealthiest 5 percent, with an income of at least $200,000. In this elite group, taxpayers hide more than 20 percent of their income from the tax authorities.”

Scholaroo has made its mark as an online college scholarship cloud platform and has recently gotten involved in the data research business. The report comes as some taxpayers have been concerned about the purpose of the Biden administration’s plan to add 30,000 IRS employees over the next two years as part of an $80 billion funding mandate from the Inflation Reduction Act passed in the summer of 2022. 

Initially, the concern was that the additional IRS employees would target independent contractors and small-business owners. But Robert Nassau, a law professor and director of the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic at Syracuse University, told The Epoch Times that making less-than-honest claims on tax forms will still get you in trouble no matter your income level. 

“Those independent contractors who get audited must have a stamp on their head that says audit me. It’s complete BS. The wealthier people who are going to get audited are engaged in more sophisticated planning,” he said. “Occasionally, I have seen business expense audits, and I’ll tell you some of those people frankly are idiots. They haven’t embraced the saying ‘the pigs get fat and the hog gets slaughtered.’ Obviously, you’re going to get audited if you show $41,000 in income and $75,000 in write-offs four years in a row.”

Scholaroo’s U.S. Tax Evasion report, examined tax evasion behavior among Americans and found that the average loss in these crimes in fiscal year 2022 was $301,009. 

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AS U.S.-FUNDED WARS RAGE IN ISRAEL AND UKRAINE, PENTAGON WATCHDOG WARNS OF MILITARY FAILURES

AS CALLS GROW in Congress to condition aid to Israel and halt funding to Ukraine altogether, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General issued a report that details widespread failures in the Pentagon’s operations. 

In a semiannual report to Congress, the watchdog found a breakdown in the process to provide care for sexual assault survivors, damaged artillery earmarked for Ukraine, and continued failures to monitor the Defense Department’s single most expensive program, the scandal-ridden F-35 fighter jet. Taken together, the inspector general’s findings paint a picture of a sprawling military-industrial complex that, while providing billions in aid to foreign militaries, has failed to solve long-standing issues that result in extreme levels of taxpayer waste. 

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Taxpayer-Subsidized Seminars Train Cops To Violate the Constitution

If a driver looks away while passing a police car, cops learn from a checklist promoted at an October 2021 conference in Atlantic City, that is suspicious. But if a driver stares at the police car, that is also suspicious. Hats work both ways too: Wearing one “low to cover [your] face” is suspicious, but so is removing a hat when you are stopped by the police. Other telltale signs of criminal activity, according to Street Cop Training’s list of “reasonable suspicion factors,” include texting, smoking, lip licking, yawning, stretching, talking to a passenger while keeping your eyes on the road, signaling a turn early or late, maintaining “awkward closeness” or “awkward distance” during a stop, standing parallel or perpendicular to the car, saying you are heading to work or heading home, questioning the reason for the stop, and refusing permission for a search.

That Street Cop Training checklist, which offers handy excuses for officers keen to conduct searches for drugs or seizable cash, figures prominently in a recent report from Kevin Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller. The report criticizes the New Jersey company for encouraging officers to make or extend stops without reasonable suspicion and for promoting a “warrior” mentality that fosters the excessive use of force. “We found so many examples of so many instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal,” Walsh said when he released the report this week. “The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms—and New Jersey dollars paid for it—is outrageous.”

Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, who was a Woodbridge, New Jersey, police officer until 2015. Each year the company, which Benigno describes as “one of the largest, if not the largest, police training providers in the United States,” trains about 25,000 officers from agencies across the country. The six-day Atlantic City seminar that Walsh describes in his report attracted nearly 1,000 officers, including 240 from New Jersey. Their employers covered the expenses, which included a $499 fee for each officer, travel and lodging, and paid time off.

What did taxpayers get for their money? Potentially, Walsh argues, greater exposure to more expenses down the road, including millions of dollars spent to litigate and settle civil rights lawsuits. “This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents,” Walsh’s report says. “The costs of attendance for training like this is small in comparison to the potential liability for lawsuits involving excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and harassment and discrimination.”

While “some of the observations and reasoning” described in Street Cop’s checklist “find support in case law,” Walsh says, “others appear to be arbitrary and contradictory.” Officers who follow Benigno’s advice therefore may end up violating the Fourth Amendment by making or prolonging stops based on factors that fall short of reasonable suspicion. If so, any resulting searches also would be unconstitutional, making any evidence they discover inadmissible.

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Congress Spent $7.5 Billion on E.V. Chargers. After 2 Years, None Are Built.

President Joe Biden has made a transition to electric vehicles (E.V.s) a key part of his presidency, spending billions of dollars both to help companies build them and to help customers afford them.

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $7.5 billion to build 500,000 public charging stations across the country. Under the program, states can qualify for as much as 80 percent of the cost to build chargers and bring them online. But as Politico reported this week, not a single charger funded by the program is yet operational.

It’s the latest setback as Biden attempts to change consumer preference by force rather than allowing the free market to innovate its way there.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency mandated that by 2030, half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. must be electric. This will require an enormous ramp-up in resources, especially around charging infrastructure. As Politico notes, “consumer demand for electric vehicles is rising in the United States, necessitating six times as many chargers on its roads by the end of the decade, according to federal estimates.”

Other estimates are even more dire: In January, Stephanie Brinley at S&P Global Mobility wrote that “even when home-charging is taken into account, to properly match forecasted sales demand, the United States will need to see the number of EV chargers quadruple between 2022 and 2025, and grow more than eight-fold by 2030.” As of this writing, there are just under 158,000 public chargers, meaning there may need to be more than 1 million to support the Biden administration’s timeline.

The federal program is off to a slow start: Politico reports that while more than $2 billion has been given out, only two states—Ohio and Pennsylvania—have actually broken ground on chargers, while just six others have awarded contracts. Fewer than half of U.S. states have even submitted a proposal for funds.

What’s the hold-up? “The slow rollout…primarily boils down to the difficulties state agencies and charging companies face in meeting a complex set of contracting requirements and minimum operating standards for the federally-funded chargers, according to interviews with state and EV industry officials,” the article notes.

Even with federal funds, part of the problem may also be cost, because the chargers are quite expensive to build and maintain. The types of chargers mentioned in the law are either Level 2 or Level 3, also known as Direct Current Fast Charging (DCFC). Level 2 chargers use alternating current electricity and take between four and 10 hours to charge an E.V., while DCFCs use direct current and can charge an E.V. in less than an hour.

Any long-term solution would prioritize DCFCs—no road-tripper will want to wait all day for their car to charge when fueling up a gas burner takes minutes. But DCFCs are considerably more expensive to install: A 2019 study by the Department of Energy found that while Level 2 chargers can cost up to $6,500 to install, DCFCs can cost as much as $40,000. Depending on factors like hardware costs, other estimates have put the price between $50,000 and $100,000.

Maintaining the faster chargers can be quite expensive as well. Mark Mills, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote in August 2022 that a single DCFC “requires electrical infrastructure equivalent to that needed for 10 homes.”

And yet the Biden administration is plowing ahead, apportioning billions of dollars for states to build exorbitantly expensive chargers and requiring half of all cars to be electric by 2030, even as E.V. demand has softened in recent months. In surveys, consumers indicate that higher prices have eclipsed range anxiety as the primary source of their hesitation.

“Implementation is everything,” says Bill Klehm, a former Ford Motor Co. executive who is now the CEO of e-bike manufacturer eBliss. Klehm sees “a lack of true coordination with industry and local government.”

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WHO Calls for Punitive Booze and Soda Taxes on the Anniversary of Prohibition Repeal

How do you mark the anniversary of Prohibition’s repeal? At Reason we celebrate the hard-won victory of (relative) sanity that led to the passage of the 21st Amendment repealing the 18th Amendment and clearing the way for Americans to again (legally) consume alcoholic beverages. We also point to lessons that can be learned from failed efforts to use the force of law to prevent people from making their own choices.

But if you’re an international nanny-stater, you use the day to call for restrictions on popular beverages.

“WHO calls on countries to increase taxes on alcohol and sugary sweetened beverages,” the World Health Organization headlined a December 5 press release, precisely 90 years after the ratification of the 21st Amendment. “The World Health Organization (WHO) is releasing today new data that show a low global rate of taxes being applied to unhealthy products such as alcohol and sugary sweetened beverages (SSBs). The findings highlight that the majority of countries are not using taxes to incentivize healthier behaviours.”

Admittedly, WHO is a meddlesome world organization, so one can’t expect it to always be aware of important political dates in any one country. Still, the irony is rich enough to make you reach for something sweet and buzz-inducing. Why not double down on control-freakery on a day when Americans with a modicum of historical awareness reflect on the defeat of such efforts?

That said, WHO didn’t call for outright bans on sweet and boozy drinks. The idea is to hike prices through the tax system so that people—presumably those with less money—can’t afford them and therefore become slimmer and more sober.

“Taxes that increase alcohol prices by 50% would help avert over 21 million deaths over 50 years and generate nearly US$17 trillion in additional revenues,” insists WHO.

WHO also points to polling data showing that majorities in multiple countries support sin taxes on alcohol, sugary drinks, and tobacco. Presumably, those surveyed could purchase fewer such products of their own accord but want pressure applied from above on those who might choose differently.

But what people support in the abstract isn’t the same thing as what they actually do when living under real-life policies. Laws and unintended consequences have a funny way of colliding again and again.

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New York Will Charge Drivers $15 To Enter Lower Manhattan

After a grueling, yearslong, process, New York area commuters finally know how much in new congestion charges they’ll pay for driving into lower Manhattan. Actually getting the published tolls approved is going to require more process still.

Earlier this week, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)—the state agency that runs rail and bus service in the New York City area—gave initial approval to a toll schedule that will charge the average driver $15 to enter lower Manhattan during peak times (5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends).

Trucks, buses, and vans will pay $24 per day for the same privilege, while larger vehicles like multiunit trucks and sightseeing buses will pay $36 per day. Included in the schedule are discounts for low-income drivers and credits for people using already-tolled tunnels.

Vehicles without an E-ZPass will pay higher rates, ranging from $22.50 for passenger cars to $54 for larger trucks.

The revenue from these congestion tolls will go toward covering the MTA’s budget deficits.

The board’s vote this week merely kicks off an additional round of public input and review scheduled to last four months, during which more changes could be made. This latest stage of public review is in addition to the 19 outreach sessions the MTA held during the yearslong federal environmental review process. The agency has already received 28,000 pages worth of public comments as well.

So, congestion tolls won’t be implemented until spring 2024 at the earliest.

New York’s long road to congestion pricing started back in 2019 when the New York Legislature approved a plan to toll drivers entering lower Manhattan as part of that year’s budget agreement.

The intent of the new tolls was to raise money for the city’s cash-strapped subway system and reduce rush-hour gridlock. London, Singapore, and Stockholm all have tolled congestion zones covering their city centers.

Economics and transportation policy wonks tend to love congestion pricing as an efficient means of rationing scarce road space. Done right, it can be a real benefit to commuters who benefit from more predictable travel times and free-flowing traffic.

From the get-go, however, New York primarily pitched its congestion pricing plan as a means of raising money for the city’s subway system. That helped alienate drivers who’d have to pay it.

“They didn’t lead with, ‘We’re going to stabilize traffic flow and therefore benefit you as motorists,'” Marc Scribner, a transportation policy researcher at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), told Reason earlier this year. “You can understand the knee-jerk reaction from a lot of motorists is that this is a cash grab.”

The political opposition from motorists has only complicated what was always going to be a fraught, prolonged implementation process.

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Collaborative Combat Aircraft Cost, Capability Concerns Emerge In Congress

Members of Congress want the U.S. Air Force, as well as the U.S. Navy, to better explain how they plan to keep down the costs of their future Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones, or CCAs. Legislators also want more information about the expected capabilities of those uncrewed aircraft and how they will slot into both services’ larger tactical aviation plans. The War Zone just recently published a deep dive about how the Air Force looks to be leaning toward CCA designs with less range and higher performance than previously expected, and that are at the top end of previously stated estimated price ranges.

Congressional concerns about the two separate, but heavily interconnected CCA programs are contained in a new draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2024. This bill, details about which were released yesterday, is a compromise that members of the House and Senate have been negotiating the specifics of for weeks.

“The conferees agree that CCAs, procured affordably with reasonably defined capability requirements, fielded in sufficient capacity, based on thoroughly considered analysis and successfully demonstrated concepts of operations and employment beforehand, have the potential to significantly increase the lethality of existing tactical fighter aircraft,” according to a report accompanying the new draft NDAA.

“Unfortunately, neither the Secretary of the Air Force nor the Secretary of the Navy has sufficiently explained to the congressional defense committees: (1) How the Departments can acquire the vehicles affordably in sufficient numbers to execute the concept of operations; or (2) How the program is being defined to apply to challenges in the near-, mid-, and long-terms, particularly as it relates to unpiloted CCA capabilities that may be used in either an attritable or expendable mission taskings,” the report adds.

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The Crippling Economic Costs Of Green Energy Subsidies

The green energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) have been justified by the Biden Administration as a booster of U.S. economic growth and jobs.  But when the subsidies are tallied and the overall impacts evaluated, the IRA is a job and economic growth killer. 

Under the IRA, the lion’s share of subsidies will be paid to wind and solar developers.  The subsidies will not expire until electric industry carbon emissions fall by at least 75% below 2005 levels, after which they will gradually decrease.  Even the most optimistic forecasts prepared by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that this will not occur until at least 2046.  Thus, the subsidies for wind and solar will continue unabated for decades.  In total, the subsidies will far exceed what the U.S. government spent in today’s dollars to combat the Great Depression.

The single largest subsidy is the federal investment tax credit (ITC).  Most wind and solar projects will be able to claim a minimum 30% ITC, plus be eligible for an additional 10% credit if the projects rely on domestic manufacturing for components.  

The EIA’s optimistic forecast projects about 900,000 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaics, 350,000 MW of onshore wind turbines, and 24,000 MW of offshore wind by 2046.  If all of this generation is built, it will result in direct ITC subsidies totaling between $500 billion and $1 trillion, depending on construction costs.  The greater the costs, the larger the subsidies.  Although wind and solar proponents still claim costs are falling, the reality is the opposite.   Offshore wind developers, especially, are clamoring to renegotiate contracts they signed previously, including guaranteed price adjustments for increasing costs, and relaxing the domestic content requirement so they can claim the additional 10% ITC.

Despite spiraling deficits – almost $2 trillion in the fiscal year that ended this past October – green energy subsidies will be financed with still more government debt.  With the increase in interest rates to normal levels, financing costs will soar, adding an estimated $500 to $800 billion to the bill costs, almost as much as the subsidies themselves. 

The envisioned spending and subsidies for green energy, several hundred billion dollars annually just for wind and solar generation, will distort energy markets.  First, they will crowd out more productive private investment in the energy sector and reduce the resources available for more efficient forms of generation, especially small modular reactors.  Second, as the deficit increases further, higher interest rates will crowd out private investment in more productive private sectors of the economy.

Along with the Administration’s push to “electrify” the economy, such as higher vehicle mileage standards that act as a de facto mandate for electric vehicles and proposed bans on natural gas appliances, the result, as has been experienced in Europe, will be soaring electricity prices.  Those higher prices will reduce economic growth and employment, far more so than the green energy investments can boost it.  Although the subsidies will benefit wind and solar developers, but the overall economic impacts for the country will be crippling.

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Hunter Biden Indicted on Nine Tax-Related Charges, Three Felonies

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has been indicted on nine charges, including three felonies, for allegedly failing to file taxes, evading an assessment, and filing a fraudulent form.

The 56-page indictment filed in a federal court in Los Angeles on Thursday alleged that the president’s son “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle” rather than pay his taxes, per NBC News. The indictment also alleges that Hunter Biden “willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes.”

Special counsel David Weiss brought the charges, and the case was assigned to Donald Trump-appointee Judge Mark Scarsi.

Neither the White House nor Hunter Biden’s attorneys have responded to the indictment.

David Weiss, who started serving as U.S. attorney in Delaware following Trump’s appointment in 2017, said in a statement that Hunter Biden “engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel in August to oversee the investigation into Hunter Biden.

“As special counsel, he will continue to have the authority and responsibility that he has previously exercised to oversee the investigation and decide where, when and whether to file charges,” Garland said in August. “The special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department, but he must comply with the regulations, procedures, and policies of the Department.”

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Biden: If Ukraine Aid Is Not Passed, U.S. Troops Will Be Deployed to Fight Russia

President Joe Biden echoed the warnings of his defense secretary in an address to the public this week, saying if Congress does not pass $64 billion in aid to Ukraine, U.S. troops will end up fighting Russia in Europe.

“This cannot wait. Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. It’s as simple as that,” Biden began.

He then accused skeptical Republicans in Congress of being “willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for and abandon our global leadership not just to Ukraine, but beyond that.”

He argued that Putin has committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians and that Russian forces are committing war crimes.

“It’s as simple as that. It’s stunning. Who is prepared to walk away from holding Putin accountable for this behavior? Who among us is really prepared to do that?”

He then argued that if Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine, “he’s going to keep going.”

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