[bilekas]

> The agency has lost more than a quarter of its staff, withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters and permitted other auditing efforts to falter.

When you see a government doing this, you know they're not interested in collecting Tax from their rich buddies.

This case will sit in limbo for 20x years.

[mothballed]

>..withdrawn directives to auditors to crack down on aggressive tax shelters..

The above might be a salient point, but as for the 1/4 auditors lost and the rest:

The low income (under 25k) with EITC, were the largest audited group with 298,485 of 626,204 audits performed in 2022. The rest of those earning under 200k had 250,391 audits.[] 48% of audits were under 25k income w/ EITC. 87% of audits were people under 200k income.

Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going after the "rich buddies." They were way more about going after the poor than they were about going after the rich.

[] IRS management audit reports obtained via FOIA by via TRAC / https://tracreports.org/reports/706/

[hnburnsy]

This has been debunked as these are just data matching audits as EITC is full of fraud with an estimated 30% of over claiming and improper payments by taxpayers.

[orwin]

What percentage of that is automated audit, and what percentage is manual audit? Nowaday my country is mostly sane with tax filings, but in the weird time between the 90s and the 2010s, we had an uptick in "fraud" by low-income earners. This was caused by inconsistencies between filed data and the data the IRS equivalent had, but i guarantee you no effort was put into thsi (except secreterial manpower for the hotline/mail), that was just automated system ringing.

In fact my first college side-job was exactly that, responding to taxpayers who were "caught" by the automated system and needed a payment delay.

[jcarreiro]

There are many, many more tax returns filed by people earning under 200k adjusted gross income than those earning more, I assume. So if there's a uniform chance that a return is audited, we would expect most audits to be done on returns under that threshold.

Of course, it may not make sense to select returns uniformly at random for audits...

[idontwantthis]

Biden and democrats increased funding in order to have the resources to go after rich offenders and they were doing it successfully and earning more than it cost, but Trumpublicans immediately rescinded it. It’s all public record go look for it.

[mikestew]

Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going after the "rich buddies."

I think you misread the parent comment, who said exactly the opposite.

[yellow_lead]

Or they'll settle with Meta in a few years for a small fee with no admission of wrongdoing to save face.

[InkCanon]

Meta is actually at a huge disadvantage here. The IRS has a litigation success rate of 93%. It's an astoundingly successful legal entity.

[kgwxd]

Or they weren't happen with the amount of bribe money we already know they paid, and so now they're being made an example of. Standard Mob protocol.

[bilekas]

Happy you state the obvious side quest. But they're not made an example of.

[lenerdenator]

Ayup. Trump was able to get a stay on a case on an "allegedly" improperly-applied tax write-off for his casino's bankruptcy. It's been in limbo at least since 2016. Ten years. This is the standard operating procedure for people at that level of wealth.

Which would suggest that perhaps that level of wealth doesn't need to exist in our society.

[tempodox]

> that level of wealth doesn't need to exist in our society.

But then the inquisition arrives saying this is socialism or whatever.

[themafia]

> you know they're not interested in collecting Tax from their rich buddies.

Right.. because.. they're busy trading favors with them. It's abuse of the public coffers.

[0xy]

This is an extremely common misconception (or lie, depending on who's saying it). The IRS, even before the cuts, targets exclusively the middle class.

More agents = more middle class shake downs.

63% of the IRS' audits under the Biden admin targeted those earning sub-$200K.

People earning $25K a year are MORE likely to be audited than those earning $200K, too.

[adolph]

> 63% of the IRS' audits under the Biden admin targeted those earning sub-$200K.

In 2022 92.3% of filers reported income of less than $200K [0]. An audit rate of 63% is lower than what one would expect if audit-attracting behavior was evenly distributed across the population.

0. https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-stat...

[reactordev]

Exactly. This is just one big tech fighting another big tech using the government as a weapon.

[up2isomorphism]

It will be very naive to believe adding IRS staff will help with that. It is far easier to audit W2 employees than dealing with mega corporations.

[kccqzy]

It is very naïve to think adding staff won’t help. Just look at what the IRS did before staff was cut; they investigated Microsoft aggressively and announced $29 billion in back taxes for 2004 to 2013, plus penalties and interest.

[loeg]

> It will be very naive to believe adding IRS staff will help with that. It is far easier to audit W2 employees than dealing with mega corporations.

You're saying auditing megacorps is hard, but somehow more staff won't help? I don't buy it.

[spiderfarmer]

At what point does the term “regime” become an accurate description of that government rather than a derogatory label?

[p_j_w]

When their agents execute people in the street with no repercussions.

[tempodox]

Are you suggesting that an accurate description would not be derogatory?

[wiml]

"Regime" is mostly derogatory among the terminally online. It's an accurate description of any government, regulatory system, zone of applicability of a natural law, etc etc.

[kgwxd]

Long, long time ago. Accuracy don't matter to enough people though.