The IRS Has Millionaire Tax Cheats Running Scared
This is what Republicans have been working so hard to prevent: Rich scumbags paying what they owe.
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Ever since Biden and the Democrats fully funded the IRS, the Republican Party has been in a state of near-constant meltdown. Did you know the IRS is going to send an army of agents with guns to your community to…I dunno, kick down your door and steal your gold fillings? Sounds legit.
The rampant fear-mongering was not really about thousands of gun-toting IRS agents (which do not exist) or that the IRS would crack down on millions of average American families and small businesses (which they did not). It was all about the IRS having the resources to go after millionaire and billionaire tax cheats. Which they did and, damn!, did they start raking in the tax dollars!
There are few things Republicans hate more than the rich paying taxes: Hungry children being fed. Women having rights. Black people voting. But, seriously, rich people paying taxes offends the GOP on a primal level.
Unfortunately, all of their efforts to fully defund the IRS a second time have failed and the agency is targeting the greediest assholes in the country:
WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has a message for high-wealth tax cheats who are wrongly deducting private jet travel and otherwise shorting the government on their taxes: Pay your fair share so “others aren’t shouldering the burden of funding our government.”
…
Werfel, who will hit the one-year mark at the helm of the IRS in April, said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press that the agency will expand its pursuit of high-wealth tax dodgers with new initiatives in the coming months and is using tools like artificial intelligence to ferret out abuses and taking the fight to sophisticated scammers.
So will rich tax-cheating assholes get the message? Werfel had some thoughts:
But efforts to crack down on high-wealth tax cheats are starting to bite, he says, and that should mean more money coming in to fund the government.
“It’s having an impact,” Werfel said. Large corporate filers and others are “taking notice that the IRS is ramping up our scrutiny, and I think that will inevitably result in more compliance” — and revenue.
But will it? The wealthy have long thought themselves above the law and are completely untouchable. They paid Republicans a lot of money to protect them and it worked for an awfully long time.
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Buuuuuut those days appear to be over and the rich are scrambling to cover their asses:
Wealthy taxpayers who haven’t filed in years are beginning to get their returns in order, even if they haven’t received collection notices from the IRS.
The IRS said in February it’s going after rich taxpayers who haven’t been filing their returns, an announcement hailed as a sign the agency was getting back on track after pandemic delays and decades of underfunding.
Now tax professionals are fielding an increasing number of calls from wealthy clients who haven’t received notice from the IRS but want to file in case they get collection letters.
That’s precisely what Werfel said would happen and here we are. It’s weird…when the rich see that they cannot evade the law, they start acting like law-abiding citizens. Who would have thunk it?!
Once upon a time, the rich understood that paying taxes was the cost of doing business in the society that enabled them to amass their fortunes. They got rich and in return, they helped build a healthy country that would grow and provide the customers, talent, and resources the rich needed to stay rich.
Every now and then, the rich forget that they do not exist in isolation. That they can’t drain the world of every penny and hoard it forever. A broken country and a failed society are bad for business.
The greedy rich also forget that most important lesson that kings and emperors and dictators have learned over and over again, usually right before a very painful death: We outnumber them. By a lot. All the money in the world won’t protect you when the mob comes to drag you out of your palace and remove your head after too many years of “let them eat cake.”
The wealthy tax cheats are running scared. A little fear is a good thing. It keeps the 1% in line because if they persist in trying to turn our world into a nightmare while they live in obnoxious luxury, they’re going to be very surprised when it’s their turn at the guillotine.
Just pay your fucking taxes and stop your whining, you greedy shits.
Now, for your enjoyment, is how I imagine the IRS treating billionaire tax cheats:
Ahhhh…an ogre can dream, can’t he?
There are 167 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
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Sweet! Now, tax the churches.
I pay my taxes with little complaint. I want our government funded so life is better for everyone (even assholes). The cheats don’t care about that but are happy to complain. Everyone needs to pay in so things get done and not just on the backs of the 99%.
Fun fact: I blew my electronic filing twice, because I used a new service and couldn’t remember the correct pin (my previous service automatically rolled it over each year). I finally figured it out (it’s on the IRS site if you have an account), but it raised a red flag that someone might be impersonating me. Same with my state return since both are filed together. It all worked out, but I appreciate the IRS being funded so they catch this stuff.