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hnburnsy | 5 days ago

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.

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axus|5 days ago

And I would estimate 30% of people using tax shelters are underpaying their taxes. If there's profitable work to do for tax auditors, hire more auditors and cover both problems.

mothballed|5 days ago

Even if you change the view to it's mostly the poor who are the tax scammers it doesn't degrade the counterpoints that these auditors were by far mostly going after the middle class and poor -- you're just asserting the poors are *disproportionately tax cheats that perhaps deserve it.

*edit: since my words were take in bad faith

hnburnsy|5 days ago

They wrote a program years ago to data match EITC, little to no extra manpower from the IRS is needed, that is the point.

fwipsy|5 days ago

I think you're strawmanning a bit. They're not saying poor people are tax cheats, just that tax cheats tend to be poor. This makes sense for the same reasons other types of crime are also associated with poverty. This is not to say that wealthy people do not also evade taxes, but they do so in ways that are harder to catch and prosecute. You're implying that going after poor people is some sort of classist discrimination but I think it's far more likely that there are good reasons for it.