I & I Editorial BoardThe Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction Act,” approved Sunday by the Senate, is primarily known as a climate and health care bill. It also includes $80 billion for the IRS, more than six times its current annual budget, increasing the agency’s enforcement funding by 69% through fiscal 2031, and adding as many as 87,000 new employees to its overall workforce.
This is not what the country needs
Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity pointed out last week that the Democrats are prioritizing IRS enforcement and bureaucracy over securing the leaky border and addressing the shortage of military recruits.
So while the Democrats will spend “$80 billion to double the number of IRS agents and auditors, the Army is falling far short of its recruitment goals for our national security. Meanwhile, the Border Patrol is running short of agents in Arizona and Texas.” In fact, after a generous injection of other people’s money, the IRS will “employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined.”
We are also reminded by the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard that, “according to a new congressional analysis, the pay for those 300 could be as high as the $235,100 given to Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Why are the Democrats re-arming an IRS that, mercifully, “went down early … went down hard,” and hasn’t “come back” from the pandemic? Is the federal government hurting for money? Not at all.
“Total federal tax collections, including payroll and other taxes, reached an all-time high in nominal terms of $4.05 trillion in fiscal year 2021, amounting to 18.1% of GDP, well above the long-run average of 17.1% over the 20 years prior to” the passage of 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, says the Tax Foundation. What’s more, “total collections are running 25% higher in fiscal year 2022.”
In April, Roll Call reported that “surging federal tax revenue” for the month “led to the largest monthly budget surplus on record.” A headline in The Hill last fall declared that federal tax receipts had seen the “biggest one-year jump since 1977 despite” the pandemic.
So if buttressing the IRS is not about revenue, then what is it about?
It’s about the left’s obsession with wealth redistribution, its naked lust to leverage other people’s money for its own gain, and the growing thuggishness of Democrats. It’s about the progressive-socialist political complex’s craving for more and more raw political power. As Ayn Rand famously wrote in “Atlas Shrugged,” government can flex its power only by cracking down on criminals, so “one declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws,”
The Internal Revenue Code, with its complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty, is perfectly suited for just that.
Continued Dr. Floyd Ferris, a weasley government gangster in “Atlas Shrugged.”
Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. … We’re after power and we mean it. … But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.
We understand that due to the IRS backup, taxpayers are waiting on refunds they deserved to receive long ago. But that is resolvable without hiring a small army of supercharged enforcement agents who will audit taxpayers who can’t afford representation; hound tens of millions without evidence as if they’re tax cheats; invade Americans’ privacy (unless they’re aligned with the ruling class); and cheerfully take orders from the Democratic Party, as it did when Barack Obama was in the White House.
If the House passes the “Inflation Reduction Act” as expected, voters should be disgusted. It should repulse them enough that, come November, they throw out the bums who forced this junk law on the country. With extreme prejudice.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Only an administrative state bureaucracy like the IRS, to whom all people residing legally in the USA must annually report the intimate details of their financial lives, is up to the task of neutralizing over 80 million Trump supporters. The FBI/DOJ can frame, persecute, and bankrupt top Trump people like General Flynn, but is not up to the task of mass neutralization of 100 million Trump supporters blocking the Dem/Marxist ascent to absolute power. Mining Facebook for “incriminating” selfies and writings is only good for netting several thousand January 6 “trespassers”. When needing to neutralize tens of millions of people, the IRS with its treasure chest of self-reported financial data is a better weapon.
Ultra-rich billionaires will be functionally exempt, having lawyers & accountants to navigate the IRS mine fields. But for the vast majority of hard-working conservatives, instead of going to jail and being fined for “lying to the FBI”, the crime will be running afoul of the IRS. Even if innocent, weeks and months and thousands of dollars will sideline and weaken Marxism’s conservative opponents. Death by attrition. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is really the Conservative (Enemies of Marxism) Reduction Act. An Exponential Police State Expansion Act, cloaked deceptively for the major media to tout excitedly in the daily news as a major victory under the false-flag banners of health care and climate change.
– Dump Facebook and Twitter. You can live without them
– Don’t feed Google in any way, shape, or form
– Don’t login to Youtube. You can watch videos without that
– Be ready. Stay prepared. Support each other.
I filed my 2021 return early last April, used TurboTax again, same as the last several years. Made an error their software failed to catch (missed reporting estimated payments that were made) before I sent documents in via e-file. Expected refund of $1,400, which I’m still waiting to receive….
State caught the error, proceeded to forward state tax refund using corrected data (payments were recorded in my account) within about three weeks of filing.
It’s impossible to get in touch with anyone by phone or mail at the IRS these days. I’ve spent over twenty hours on hold and mail sent with tracking number never show as having been received.
I’ve been a registered Republican for over four decades, not a chance I’ll be switching affiliation now.
For 2020 taxes, exhausted by COVID isolation and the online tax filing ordeal, I filed my federal and California state returns and paid taxes owed plus estimated taxes nearly in full to cover 2021. But neglected to add the 2021 estimated tax payments to the 2020 forms. A mental lapse from complete exhaustion. I file my own returns, figuring any mistakes on my part will be less money than paying an accountant; a premise that has proven true. Indeed, I have an accountant friend who advised me that I would be paying him more money than he could save me in taxes.
On the 2021 estimated taxes, the federal payment went into limbo. I got billed for it plus penalties after filing my 2021 return (giving myself credit for estimated tax payments). I sent proof of payment and a letter to the IRS along with an amended 2020 return (easy to generate with an online tax service). The IRS settled for a lesser amount corresponding to a genuine underpayment amount. The California state return was more interesting. Got an immediate refund check in 2020, with no reason stated for the refund (I figured it was connected with COVID). Then for 2021 was billed with penalties for not paying the estimated tax. To make a long convulted story short: the state nicked me with an overpayment penalty on my 2020 taxes; and then an “underpayment penalty” plus interest for not paying the 2021 estimated taxes. In other words, the state got me coming and going.
On top of that, had to pay the city of Los Angels’ass several hundred dollars in penalties for working as an independent contractor without city permission (the State shares Schedule C info with the city). According to the City, working is not a citizen’s right. Rather working is a “privilege” requiring City permission or an exemption (unless you are an illegal immigrant, in which case the City provides special hiring areas). Hence, the heavy fine (for working without a tax exemption. No doubt, the Biden IRS has similar in the works. Cracking down on “independent contractors” is a Democrat Holy Grail. Will require all the IRS stockpiled guns, ammunition, handcuffs, leg chains and SWAT squads when they go after the truckers.
The IRS is perhaps the world’s largest intelligence gathering agency. It gathers no information on the external threats to our country, but rather the biggest threat to our establishment.
Your version of “extreme prejudice” and mine differ. I’m in favor of stocking, flogging, hanging, drawing and quartering with heads on a pike. You know, pour encourager les autres.
The URS has been buying Arms and Ammunition…and hiring 87,000 more Agents to build a Domestic Army…in order subdue Patriot American Citizens,
IRS!
The Democrats never retreat because there is no real opposition. They tried to pass huge stimulus bills under Tump but were stymied by their only opposition. They removed him by fraud. Democrats then reintroduced those same bills with even more pork. Manchin held out for more, they renamed the bill that completes their entire current wish list. Recall during Covid after promising no mandates the Democrats colluded with business to force vaccine compliance ditto the military. There were real talks of re-education camps for hold outs. This is precisely when they proposed 80,000 new IRS personnel to track Americans and force compliance. That scare ended but the desire for those IRS hires remained, they are now selling it in the name of auditing those bad rich people. It is the same plan just like the inflation bill is the same as the earlier bill Manchin stopped. Opposition? Yeah right, McConnell helps them out and then gets rolled on yet another spending reconciliation bill.
I am a CPA and we have a practitioners’ hotline which by 7:01 is too busy to get through for the day. It opens at 7AM. They should be hiring additional personnel to handle the day to day issues such as routine notices and the processing of manual returns and correspondence. I have responded to notices and too often have gotten a letter stating that they need another 60 days to respond only to get another and then another letter stating they need another 60 days. I am in my 60’s and it has never been this bad.
And if the target is the top 1%, which we know it isn’t, why do they need 87000 employees. If they were all auditors that would mean that they each would get 17 1% taxpayers each. That isn’t a very high case load and yes some would be very complicated but many, even though high dollars, would not.
I worked for local government in a Dem-controlled big city, and I know the playbook: The Biden administration IRS deliberately created a backlog to produce a public outcry and justify requests for more money/agents. Easy to program IRS computers to reject e-file returns and mandate paper returns. My 2020 e-file tax returns were rejected because: “Form 1099-B – Box 1d, Total Proceeds Sales Price cannot be negative…The IRS no longer allows a negative amount for Total Proceeds on Schedule D when filing electronically. If you have reviewed your entries and they are correct, repeat the Filing steps to print and file a paper return.”
I had a -0.01 capital loss from selling a bankrupt stock where the brokerage commission was more than the amount I received, producing a negative number. Also, selling covered calls generates a negative process number due to being categorized as a short sale. So I printed out dozens of pages, drove to the post office, stood in line a half hour for certified mail. The tax agency itself says tax agents then must scan the paper returns into the same electronic computer system that rejected the e-filing. I enclosed a letter stating that if the software can detect and flag the return, then there is no need for generating a paper return requiring scanning into the IRS computer. All part of the Biden budget/funding game plan to weaponize the IRS with more agents. A game government bureaucrats play. Anyone who has worked for government can write the script in their sleep.
For 2021 return, IRS came up with a different bogus excuse for rejecting e-file and requiring a paper return; the state accepted e-file. These IRS people are working from home (if you get one on the phone, you will hear the dogs barking, babies crying, etc.). Mostly you do not get a good answer, and they are not liable for a wrong answer. Better to take your own best guess, or buy a tax guide on Amazon. IRS has a several-decade long history of inadequate computer systems that cannot be remedied by hiring more agents. A simplified tax system that average and below-average taxpayers and IRS agents can easily comply with and understand is needed. Congress could help. But the IRS PAC gives 100% of its money to Democrats. Doubling the IRS doubles Democrat party IRS PAC payola. Real Music to the ears of Sinema and Manchin.