Originally published at: IRS targets poorest households in U.S., study finds | Boing Boing
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The poor and middle class are paying taxes,
the rich are paying accountants
and the wealthy are paying politicians.
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One of the many ways in which the richer you get the smaller the proportion of your wealth you end up spending. TPTB always come for the poor people first.
See also the Sam Vines Boots theory.
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What exactly does “audited” consist of, though?
Are we talking about the traditional situation with an IRS agent grilling you, or are we talking about “audits” when the computer kicks out some minor error? You’ve got $21 in interest and mistakenly put down $12 instead–the computer squawks about the missing $21, you amend the return, pay your tax on the errant $9 and that’s it.
Since the poor are less likely to be using a tax program there’s more potential for such mistakes and therefore will likely be more such “audits”.
How long have you been working at the IRS? Just kidding, I think…
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You jest, yet…
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And yet again, Right Now.
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the why doesn’t the computer just file your tax return for you since they already have all the correct information, just like every other 1st world nation.
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Humanity has got a planetary oligarch problem. I can think of ways to treat it, but they all involve fire.
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A household in the US surviving on $25K per year or less really shouldn’t even be paying taxes aside from the stuff that’s baked into consumption, like sales taxes and gas taxes (and some would argue not even those, but that’s a different matter).
So…
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Last time I checked, an official IRS audit didn’t involve mere interface alerts about one’s return from TaxAct or TurboTax.
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I have a question related to this. I get the impression that in the US more or less everyone is required to do their taxes. Is that reasonably accurate?
The reason I ask is that I am in my 40s and I have never done my taxes. I am a single employee and my only other income is a miniscule amount from securities held with a domestic broker (taxes withheld automatically). Because all my income has been taxed already and there are no complicating factors I don’t have to. And my potentially deductable expenses are low enough that I don’t expect it to make much sense to file voluntarily.
So my fellow boring taxpayers and I don’t really have to deal with that kind of thing.
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IME, yes.
In college, living on less than $6,000 per year, I still had to file and even pay additional taxes (ETA, this was in the late '90s, early oughts, for reference). It’s really quite a fucked up system we’ve got, that someone eking out a living on less than $30K has to pay a fair amount of their income to taxes and social security, even though it puts them at risk of not being able to eat or afford housing, but incomes above certain thresholds don’t have to pay into certain safety programs (SS), or incomes earned in certain ways (NOT though physical labor, big surprise) are taxed at much lower rates.
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There’s a simple, one-word answer to that question (rhetorical or not): LOBBYING.
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Well, they are all traditionally stupid too, so how could they? Seems legit.
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Not all
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Don’t forget they are also “undeserving.”
/s
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