Treasury defends IRS plan to track most bank accounts:
The Treasury is defending its proposal to track banking information for nearly all Americans, after pushback from the finance industry and Congressional Republicans made the proposal a subject of heated debate in Congress.
A senior Treasury official told CBS News that tracking a small amount of information for nearly every bank account in the U.S. would help the IRS spot high-income people who are skipping out on taxes. Tracking the information would also provide additional verification that low-income workers are meeting their obligations.
The Treasury's proposal has been criticized for a cutoff that appears exceedingly low — just $600 in a bank account, or a single $600 purchase, would be enough to trigger disclosure of that account's existence, according to an initial plan released in May. It now seems likely that number will rise to $10,000. But the financial industry claims that small business owners and independent contractors would be caught in a "dragnet" of surveillance — rather than the wealthy.
"While the stated goal of this vast data collection is to uncover tax dodging by the wealthy, this proposal is not remotely targeted to that purpose or that population," the American Bankers Association and a coalition of business groups wrote last month.
However, according to a senior Treasury official, the reason for setting the cutoff at such a low amount is not to trap low-income earners but rather to block wealthy people from sidestepping scrutiny. That's because a high threshold for disclosure — say, $100,000 — could easily be avoided if wealthy people simply moved money between several smaller bank accounts. After all, it's not uncommon for one person to have multiple bank accounts.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 18 2021, @11:59AM (1 child)
Oh yeah, fintech is SO concerned about protecting the small guy. I'm so glad they have my interests at heart!
Come on... Both fintech and the government explicitly want to keep us peons under surveillance and leave the wealthy in peace. You know how I know that? The wealthy is the crowd that runs fintech and the government. Why on Earth would they support the populace and shoot themselves in the foot?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @03:13PM
Yeah, I suspect they are already tracking almost everyone's accounts and this move is more about legitimizing it and making it public.
I've no big problems with them tracking everyone's bank accounts IF they were truly going to stamp out the top illegal stuff.
BUT that's not what has been happening and that's not what will happen. There's a poor track record for "tracking" and punishing the biggest offenders:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-230696/ [rollingstone.com]
See also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs [theguardian.com]
Cynical me thinks this would just be used for leverage (make some politician etc do what you want) making examples of a few unlucky SOBs, etc.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snotnose on Monday October 18 2021, @12:01PM (16 children)
Fuck that.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @01:15PM (15 children)
And you think they don't have ready access to all that data already?
This is just proposing giving Treasury legal access to go on fishing expeditions in data they can already access for the flimsiest of excuses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @01:59PM (8 children)
That's the thing, banks already report a bunch back to the IRS for figuring out how much people owe. There's not much reason for banks to report most of these accounts, as virtually everybody is going to have transactions over $600 a month due to rent,
This is just a way of them avoiding giving the IRS money to conduct audits of those with the most money. Virtually everybody on the billionaires list and a good chunk of those with millions should be audited every few years, at a minimum. The IRS should get virtually unlimited funding to go after the cheats and if they win in court, the defendant should be on the hook for paying for the expense the government incurs investigating and prosecuting the tax fraud in addition to whatever fines and penalties are relevant.
Politicians should receive a 6 figure pension when leaving office and be barred from taking most private sector jobs as a hedge against them making decisions that adversely impact the people in an effort to get a job after leaving office.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @02:10PM (3 children)
Fuck yeah! I'll start running for schoolboard right away if that becomes a thing. /s
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @04:45PM
Context called, it would like to have a word with you.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 18 2021, @08:33PM (1 child)
I think he meant politicians at a somewhat higher level than school board.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @10:12PM
<sarcasm>Those higher level politicians are worthless</sarcasm>
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @05:05PM (2 children)
Somehow I think that bribing people not to make money by being crooked will be as effective as San Francisco's innovative idea to pay criminals to not commit crimes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @05:42PM (1 child)
It's not bribing people not to take bribes, it's preventing them from taking those jobs and compensating them for the loss of income. If you're going to prevent them from taking those jobs, you have to provide them with income. Compared with the huge sums of money that get paid out on stupid bullshit projects, this isn't a lot of money at the federal level.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @07:55PM
You think people with national level political aspirations will ever be satiated with a simple "six figure" income? They'll get there and then pass laws to either give themselves 10x raises, or loopholes so they can continue to profit at 10x+ levels from the "value" of their "position and influence."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @09:42PM
anyone who pays the federal income tax (the rich included) are either willfully ignorant, sell outs, cowards or a mixture of all three.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @03:27PM (5 children)
There must be something wrong with that "ready access", if they want it legalized. How about we roll this access back instead?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday October 18 2021, @05:25PM (1 child)
This is probably obvious, but they pretty much likely have that data, but can't yet legally use it in court. But they'll use it to try to find something else to nab someone, and they are not required to reveal all of their information / sources. Do a search on "discovery", "withheld evidence", "redacted evidence", etc. Very complex the legal system is.
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @07:21PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday October 18 2021, @07:29PM (1 child)
What access? I've been around enough rich AND smart people to know about zero taxes, offshore bank accounts, domestication of money, foreign investing, the Grand Caymans, etc. The more money you have, the less taxes you pay, the less the rules apply to you. You move from one environment with a set of rules, to another environment with an entirely different set of rules.
Government has put so many loopholes in for the rich that I don't see how this possibly matters. This will most certainly not go after the rich at all, and they must be laughing their asses off. More specifically, their financial advisers will receive a call and tell them not to worry, "It doesn't apply to you". That's what all those zero taxes and financial tricks are all about. "It doesn't apply to you anymore".
Go after transactions higher than $600 huh? How does that apply to a foreign investment group? Proceeds from an insurance claim? Non-profit activities?
I'm all for rolling back the access they have to normal people because it has nothing to do with going after tax dodgers. Most normal people are already paying maximum withholding on their W2, and their entire lives are readily accessibly not just by the IRS, but companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.
This is theater! Where's my popcorn? :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday October 19 2021, @02:02AM
The IRS could always use more money and more personnel to go after tax cheats, but those people are most definitely cheats, and are not using existing law to avoid tax liabilities. For an idea of just how clueless your rant is, every single person with more than a minuscule amount of foreign assets already needs to file a detailed report of every single foreign bank account, investment account, partnership, and pretty much every single f*ing foreign thing you might possibly own except foreign real estate held directly in your own name. If you don't, and you get caught, there are truly draconian penalties, even if you didn't underpay your taxes by a single penny.
This must be done every year. Twice, on two different forms, because that's how bureaucracy rolls.
For another idea of your cluelessness, the US has citizenship renunciation rates that are sky-high due to just how far the arm of our tax law reaches foreign activity.
Back to topic: will this "apply" to rich people with offshore assets? Well, they or their financial advisers are already reporting all their foreign stuff to the government anyway, if they're honest. If they're not, their foreign bank/broker/insurance agent/whatever is probably tattling on them due to FATCA, in which event the IRS will be ass-raping them as soon as it gets around to looking at those reports. So, no, it will not apply to them, unless they also have significant domestic assets, because what this proposed law is doing is designed to catch domestic tax cheats. US law already gives the IRS every tool it possibly can to go after foreign tax cheats.
Said tools are, unjustly, sometimes also used to go after middle-class or lower expat English teachers who aren't clueful enough to know about FBAR filing requirements and who might therefore get fined $10,000 per year for every single foreign checking account they have open due to said lack of cluefulness -- even if they pay ever single penny of tax they owe, every year. But I digress.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @07:49PM
What have you been smoking? The banks and the revenue service do something to benefit the "little people"?
The only way to roll back access is to end-run the banks with a new financial model, without that financial model being deemed outright illegal because "it supports money laundering."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @12:20PM (3 children)
to fuck over the small guys.
Just curious, what is the carbon footprint of the data collection and processing of this information?
Cause you know, data centers run on Unicorn farts right?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday October 18 2021, @12:26PM (1 child)
It's very well known that tax evasion is the mostly the doing of the lower and upper middle class. It's because of them that the rich are taxed so much. It's high time someone cracked down on them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @04:14PM
Well, in terms of perp headcount, it very definitely is mostly the doing of the upper-middle class somewhat arbitrarily identified as the crowd between $250k-$1M/yr whose primary incomes rapidly transition to being almost entirely reported on Schedules-C/D.
The folks between $100-250k are just properly speaking regular old garden-variety middle-middle class, e.g. two-income households with salaries, student loans and mortgages.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @01:18PM
About one Bitcoin transaction per day, or two.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Redundant) by Spamalope on Monday October 18 2021, @12:24PM (17 children)
My social circles are roughly evenly mixed for politics.
Prior to the Loretta Lynch IRS scandal coming to light, the right leaning ones that made political donations were nearly all audited. They're the only people I've ever known who were.
That was done based on the campaigns having to report donors for certain types of donations.
I for one am shocked, shocked that this same organization would want detailed info allowing for behavior and political activism tracking beyond current 'admitted' measures. For the right - gun grabbers sure would like to have ammunition purchases tracked to have info on legal but not tracked firearms; for the left, lets get those family planning expenses tracked and logged, right?!? What could go wrong?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:05PM (15 children)
It's also mostly the right leaning organizations that break the law by using tax exempted donations for political work. You don't see it anywhere near as often on the left where a tax exempt nonprofit will use tax exempt donations to campaign for specific votes or candidates the way you do the right leaning ones.
That's a detail that people tend to ignore, it wasn't the fact that they were conservative organizations, it's that most of them were taking tax free money and using it to preform political actions. If they were using taxable donations to do it, like the leftwing organizations, there would have been no need for the auditing. But, it had gotten to the point where there were churches literally telling their members how to vote, not just what the church's take on the morality of the issues was, and threatening to withhold services to those that voted the wrong way.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:26PM (4 children)
O RLY? [redstate.com]
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday October 18 2021, @07:14PM (3 children)
Protip: you may wish to use a less flagrantly biased site for your assertion.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Captival on Monday October 18 2021, @11:24PM (2 children)
Translation: I got caught being a Liberal hypocrite again, so I hope strawmanning your source will work instead of actually admitting I was wrong.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday October 19 2021, @01:58PM (1 child)
Translation: The message inconveniently correct, so instead I need to attack the messenger.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday October 19 2021, @01:59PM
The message *is* inconveniently correct...
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @03:29PM (6 children)
And the evidence for that is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @05:09PM
It's self-evident, just as evident as the observation that a one party state is more efficient and harmonious.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @05:45PM (3 children)
The burden of proof here isn't on me, I was responding to the suggestion that it was politically motivated rather than the result of those organizations abusing their tax exempt status.
if you want proof, that's the party that owes it, not me. Plus, this was plenty covered at the time.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 18 2021, @08:30PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @08:36PM (1 child)
Busy alienating everyone huh? Jackass
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 19 2021, @04:36AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @07:02PM
The IRS refuses to audit anyone supporting the left, so therefore their crimes don't exist. Just like how Antifa and Black Lives Matter were peaceful and nonviolent because the feds refused to prosecute them (both were the Muslim Brotherhood and saying anything against them is a career ending offense in DC)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @06:58PM (2 children)
Are you fucking kidding me?
$150 Billion in Foundation Funds Attacking Trump and Pushing Third World Immigration [isgp-studies.com]
The Global Sustainable Investing Alliance reports nearly $23 trillion of assets being managed under socially responsible investment strategies globally [archive.md]
That money all went into campaigning for Joe Biden and the Democrats. It was all tax-exempt "charity" work. The right has nothing like this, just a loose coalition of working class people who know that they are being screwed and who all used to vote Democrat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 22 2021, @08:55PM (1 child)
The left lies all the time. They make things up and project their own attributes onto everyone else with little to no evidence and when you prove that it is them that are lying and that are the hypocrites they never acknowledge to being wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23 2021, @01:13AM
Here is a more recent example of that.
Remember those photos of kids in cages at the border that were released under the Trump administration? The ones that the media blamed on Trump and were trying to say how cruel he was? Turns out those photos were taken during the Obama administration.
Hannity: Brian Stelter had a 'meltdown' over my show
Fox News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qApeVN38z_k [youtube.com]
Of course you don't hear about this from the very dishonest mainstream media. They're not talking about how bad Obama was for this.
When the photos are taken during the Obama administration it's no big deal, it's just Obama enforcing border laws and it's not Obama's fault, it's the rest of the system's fault.
When it's under Trump the media makes a big deal out of it. Had that drone strike that hit the wrong people in Afghanistan happened under Trump the media would be hounding about how Trump is evil every day. When it's under Biden they mention Biden but it's more of a blunder and it's really not Biden's fault, it's the programming of the drone and the rest of the system's fault (someone else is directly to blame).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 18 2021, @03:12PM
That of course could easily be simply a matter of where you looked: What you've heard of definitely isn't the same as a comprehensive statistical study where everybody who got an IRS audit is cross-referenced with their political donations. Which can't really happen without a massive invasion of privacy.
I will say that the $600 threshold does seem to be set up to give the IRS lots of other things to look at besides the very rich people who simply don't pay their taxes (I'm not talking about the legal tax avoidance industry, I'm talking their accountants and tax lawyers do the math, say they owe $1.5 million or something, and they say "yeah, don't pay that"). And for reasons that are definitely not bribery never get prosecuted for that while the IRS is busy auditing poor people who have never given a dime to a politician because they need every dime they can get hold of to eat.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NateMich on Monday October 18 2021, @12:30PM (10 children)
There is simply no defense for this. It's an obvious attempt to track everyone's finances.
I'm absolutely certain that the fourth amendment was written specifically to prevent this kind of thing. And yet, here we are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 18 2021, @01:17PM (7 children)
Yes, here we are. When Bush & Cheney proposed the Total Information Program, we arrived here. We have been here since then, and getting deeper and deeper into here. The people pushing this now are pushing it because they are in power, but the moment they are not in power they will really, really not like it because it will be used against them; alas, at that moment they will realize they can't do anything to stop it because they are not in power. And so it goes, and will go.
And most tragic of all is that few realize that when they try so hard to take away somebody else's freedom, somebody they don't agree with, that they're also taking away their own freedom.
None of it stops until you, me, and everyone else says enough and burns Washington DC to the ground. Freedom is easily lost, as we are seeing, and nobody gets it back without fighting.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Funny) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @02:18PM (4 children)
Try voting first. It just might work if the regular 98% stop voting for the incumbent Party, reelecting 95% of these people every time. Can't blame the politicians for winning
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 18 2021, @07:42PM (3 children)
That has been tried, and tried again. In my adult life control of the government has changed hands between the two parties at least 5 times. That is, not just the White House, but also Congress. It has made no difference. It could not, because the same forces that control the Democrats also control the Republicans.
Many know this. Some know it, but have not accepted it; they need to accept it. Everyone needs to know it, and accept it. Then we can rectify the situation. In the meantime, we can vote with our feet and our wallets. If that fails, then we vote with our fists.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @08:46PM (2 children)
Democrats and republicans win because they receive 98% of the vote. Been through this a thousand times, still boils down to the personal choice to play along
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @11:08PM (1 child)
Politics devolves into the two strongest parties always at the top. If you want to change the status quo politically, your only hope is to change one of the parties from the inside. This takes a lot of work and time, but relying instead on an outside party being elected is a fool's dream.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @11:25PM
The voters have to demand it. The Party reflects their disinterest in any kind of "change". The government itself is a pretty good mirror.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @04:16AM
And of course the party of Bush & Cheney has somebody perfect to burn it all down and create a new shiny fascist presidential dictatorship.
It'll be great! Fantastic! It'll be the best dictatorship! The party of Bush & Cheney is going to Make America Great Again!
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Thursday October 21 2021, @04:56PM
The point is to take way enough of their freedom so that we can never lose power. Both major parties get that.
And they have our electoral system setup up pretty well now such that the most a third party can do is prevent another party with a similar platform from winning by spiting the vote. Attempting to sway the party you most agree with only hurts your interests.
This is when I start my sermon on the evils of "first-past-the-post' balloting.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday October 18 2021, @07:12PM (1 child)
Financial records will just be one more data stream used to compute your social credit score, along with your location data, communications, medical records, etc.
This has nothing to do with tax revenue and everything to do with surveillance. Don't believe them when they say they need the data to serve the function of tax collection, it's the data that they want and the byzantine tax code is the tool they use to get it. Almost nobody in Congress or the Whitehouse even pretends to care about budget deficits, so why would they care about revenue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @09:53PM
yeah, they don't need your pitiful tax return when they can print monopoly money at will (the same worthless crap you would pay the return with) and steal everything through inflation. this is just a step towards a global digital currency that will eventually be credits issued on good behavior through the social credit system. unless dumb fucking slaves wake up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @12:43PM (1 child)
I'd like to see the analysis of the cost to the IRS, the banks, and the public versus the additional revenue.
There is already a reporting threshold for reporting cash above $10k, with penalties for avoiding.
There may be a reasonable threshold for reporting the existance of a bank account, but $600 seems really low.
That says this was not thought out, or has another purpose than getting rich folks?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:08PM
The idea was probably that the ultra-wealthy would just smurf their money into tiny transactions that would fall under the amount that they set as a cap. But, it's hugely problematic when virtually everybody has transactions that are larger than the limit on a regular basis. At bare minimum, rent, mortgage and real estate taxes are going to run afoul of the rule at least a couple of times a year.
This seems to be more about avoiding giving the IRS more money to audit the tax cheats than it does about actually catching them. There's just too many ways around this, for example using expensive art work as a means of transferring large sums of money in private.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 18 2021, @01:17PM (6 children)
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/form-8300-and-reporting-cash-payments-of-over-10000 [irs.gov]
Not only is it in place, but it's been there for years. This new proposal only lowers the threshold.
Government wants surveillance, and government wants control. They don't catch enough fish in the 10,000 dollar net, so they're looking for a 600 dollar net. There's surely an anti gun angle here: not a lot of guns sell for $10,000, but the $600 threshold will catch most "assault" rifles, as well as many mid to upper tier handguns.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 18 2021, @01:23PM
Moreover, that threshold was put in place sometime (I know not exactly when) before 1970. That $10,000 threshold in 1970 would be equivalent to over $70,000 today.
Inflation has already lowered the monitoring threshold to the equivalent of ~$1400 in 1970.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @01:40PM (2 children)
Every country has anti-money laundering regulations.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/money-laundering-regulations-high-value-dealer-registration [www.gov.uk]
https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/what-we-do/crime-threats/money-laundering-and-illicit-finance/suspicious-activity-reports [nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk]
At least people are free to invest in Hunter Biden's "art".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 18 2021, @01:51PM (1 child)
Money laundering is a time honored profession, practiced by all the corporations and the individuals who comprise the top 5% of society. They're just pissed that little guys might launder hundreds, while they are laundering billions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday October 18 2021, @04:00PM
I think you may be conflating several different things in your broad generalization.
Tax avoidance is the legal practice of arranging your money just right to minimize your taxes (e.g. Apple declaring itself an Irish corporation even though it's headquartered in California). Tax avoidance is basically universal: If you're rich enough to hire an accountant and/or tax attorney, they'll advise you on legal things you can do to reduce your taxes. Heck, tax preparers will sometimes also mention things like "Hey, if you do this thing a bit differently next year, you'll qualify for a such-and-such deduction." This is a sign of skilled accounting, and while it definitely takes advantage of loopholes it's not something the IRS can legally go after.
Tax evasion is the crime of taking what was legally taxable income and hiding its existence from the IRS (e.g. stashing it in the Cayman's rather than in a US bank, and then not telling the IRS or your spouse or anybody else about it). Tax evasion is also pretty common, but can get a CPA or lawyer into trouble if they help you with doing it, so they aren't going to take that risk without significantly more money at stake.
Money laundering is specifically the crime of taking of illegally-acquired money (e.g. prostitution profits) and making it appear to be legally-acquired money (e.g. olive oil imports). Money laundering is quite a bit less common among rich people, because that generally involves rubbing elbows with very dangerous people and risking getting murdered by them. It's not like it never happens - HSBC was once caught handling the laundering for an international drug cartel - but your average corrupt corporate exec isn't going to want to go anywhere near it due to the non-financial risk.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @01:55PM
You're confusing assault rifles (a technical definition with a specific meaning) with "assault weapons" (a legal definition with no clear technical analogue, that varies across jurisdictions).
An assault rifle is a select-fire long arm firing an intermediate power cartridge from a detachable magazine. That's it. The original was the WWII-era german Sturmgewehr (literally translated: assault rifle) that was designed to give troops relatively lightweight access to portable, high rates of fire without dealing with relatively unwieldy machineguns.
Under US law, they are classified as machineguns and are therefore basically unobtainable for most people, very expensive to purchase and very expensive to shoot. This is why most of the time when some talking head talks about someone with a stash of AK-47s, or even AK-74s, they have no idea what they're talking about and it's really an SKS (which isn't an assault rifle).
In other words, financial dragnets will capture so minutely few assault rifle transactions, for such vast cost, that it's effectively irrelevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:20PM
Nice. Lower it to $150 and track all the gun sales.
Then go to Runaway1956 and take all his guns, he's so cute when he starts mumbling sumthin about a moron labia.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @01:55PM (3 children)
There comes a point where the only defense of freedom is the death of its enemies.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 19 2021, @05:47PM (2 children)
Instead of murdering people have you considered just paying your taxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @09:56PM (1 child)
we don't owe the parasitic jew anything
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20 2021, @04:19PM
Someone is sure pissed about the arthritic rabbi that slipped and cut half your dick off.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dale on Monday October 18 2021, @01:56PM (14 children)
I am a CPA, but work in private industry, not tax or public accounting. This is a mixed bag. On one hand, I wish the government wouldn't need to do this. On the other hand, the under reporting of income is a real issue across all income brackets. Think about how many people you know with something they do on the side and think on if they report that as income.
I don't see people with lots of assets moving money around to keep only $10k in any one bank. If you have $100k in deposits making half a percent interest (think my savings is paying 0.4% currently) that is only $500 per year in interest. Is someone really going to split their money into 10 banks over $150-200 in taxes? People with way more than that are certainly not going to have hundreds or thousands of accounts over this issue.
Banks are already required to report interest income over a small threshold and send a 1099 ($10 in interest?). I am not sure if they are required to send those to the IRS as well like the major employers already do with individual information. It seems like having the banks send their 1099 info to the IRS would be easier since the banks already have all the information prepared that they send to the individuals. I'm sure many would still be upset by that, but it it isn't unreasonable or without precedent. While giving the info for 1099 interest wouldn't give the IRS enough info to determine if people have a business being run out of an account, it would give them enough information to selectively investigate where likely under reporting or non-reporting occurs. It would force them to be very selective so that they aren't just doing a massive data collection thing. Sure it is harder, but it avoids the issue of mass intrusion on everyone.
At the end of the day it would be nice if people would just not cheat. If you disagree with how taxes are spent, address that with the congress-critters that are spending the money, not the people tasked with routine tax collection. If you don't want to pay taxes at all, then go somewhere you aren't expected to pay them and forgo the societal benefits that come from having funding for basic things.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @02:14PM
It is, but it's pretty clear that the bulk of the underreporting is done by those at the top of the scale who are also under-audited. Rather than lowering the limit, they should try just auditing more of the guys at the top and start throwing some of them in prison for tax evasion. If the IRS doesn't do that, then there's no real point to any of this as the little guys might be stealing a few hundred, the guys at the top are stealing millions and sometimes into the billions.
There's little point in going after the little guys when you might get a few hundred bucks or possibly a few thousand bucks back as a result when catching just one of the guys at the top could net tens of millions of dollars and the deterrent may result in even more being paid each year.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @03:11PM (3 children)
If you're a CPA you should understand that the problem with enforcement and auditing starts with having a useful chokepoint of data to audit, not desperately trying to fish for tuna with a shrimpnet on a stick towed behind a dinghy.
Effective (as in, hard to evade) tax policy would run tax rates against points in society that are small in number, well documented, readily verifiable and attached to responsible parties. This is the exact opposite of Joe mowing Mick's lawn for a few sawbucks in cash and a sixpack of bud. If neither Joe nor Mick feels like filing a 1099, you have to do a stupid monkey dance around inferences based on Joe's purchase patterns to even guess that he had some extra cash in his back pocket.
Bad tax policy is a bad idea no matter how much we might wish that people wouldn't cheat. As much as I think the property tax idiots are - well, idiots, at least the title deeds give you a place to start, and an identifiable venue for the convocation of tax collectors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @04:54PM (2 children)
Yep, I have no problem with them auditing relatively poor people from time to time, I have a massive problem with them not auditing the people they know are tax cheats at the top. Most poor people have relatively simple finances and you're just not going to find much money there, but the billionaires could result in millions of dollars in revenue claimed that should have been paid in the first place. Just make the billionaires pay for the enforcement action if they're found to have evaded any of their owed taxes and you'd probably see change soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @06:58PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, it's just not that simple. I understand why this is an attractive narrative, but it doesn't reflect reality.
First, there's a mismatch between: "We caught a billionaire out of compliance muahahahaha!" and "From this we can extrapolate $$$ if we nail all billionaires."
Second, there's a real problem with demanding costs of enforcement, because that's just a ratcheting spiral which pushes the punitive effect completely out of proportion to the point that it makes more sense for billionaires (and even MORE sense for millionaires) to just take their money, and go. Then you can kick and scream and wail and cry, and you still won't be taxing their hot fiscal bundle because it ain't there no more.
Third, there are actual foundational legal problems with tacking on costs of enforcement inequitably across the population, because now people are no longer equal before the law, and if you want to apply that same logic to a nearly-broke Mom-and-Pop, and nail them for every penny they have, or could ever get, you've just returned to the bad old IRS-vampire-scare days that powered major overhauls. It may seem like a comfy idea to someone shivering in a garret, but to a politician who actually has to persuade voters, this is poison. So I wouldn't bet on that one either.
When you peel the layers away you discover that what has actually happened is that the USA has created such a deep and muddy tax regime that enforcing it is less interesting as a strategy, than simply as an employment programme for the nation. I'm not advocating Carson's old 9/9/9 idea nor anything like it, but we could go a long, long way by just picking one thing, taxing that, and closing down everything else. Employment is a great start. You want to take advantage of the USA's well-trained, highly productive workforce? You pay a cut. Everything else? Keep on rolling. You don't have to quibble about which money is being spent on investment under rule 38512.354(iii).ds, you just take the payroll and turn it into a number. Mom and Pop don't hire anyone? No tax problem.
It also motivates a different take on all the evil deep red state ogres hiring all those pathetically shivering undocumented saints (or job-stealing goblins, depending on your politics). Forget about Juan picking the fruit, but Bubba the Farmer gets to pay a slice for the work.
But that's just one off-the-cuff proposal that would be easier, have stronger compliance, and reduced stress for everyone nationwide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20 2021, @04:22PM
Lol mhmm uh huh yuuuup
Thank you Mr. Gribbel
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 18 2021, @03:15PM (2 children)
I for one would think that it would encourage people to not cheat if the IRS focused their enforcement on the biggest tax cheats, who are usually very very rich people who according to some analyses are skipping out on billions in taxes. And that enforcement should involve jail time, not just a bill and a lecture about how naughty they were.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 18 2021, @03:57PM
I saw the Treasury's report on this, and I also dug through and found the underlying source: "Tax Noncompliance and Measures of Income Inequality" from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
They do make a compelling argument that income and subsequent taxes are underreported and underpaid. That argument is based on the fact that significantly more audits result in an adjustment to increase income than an adjustment to decrease income. There is a foundational flaw in that argument though; The audit selection process is specifically designed to find people that underreport. The machine intentionally excludes people that report truthfully or overreport.
"People must be cheating on their taxes because the machine we built to find people that cheat finds people that cheat" is not a valid predictor of the underlying dataset; They are unintentionally cherry picking the data because the analysis is dependent on the selectivity of the machine, not on the broader patterns of the underlying dataset. A better analysis would be to take a random sample of returns from a reported income bracket, audit/review those, and draw conclusions from that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @07:56PM
The reason you don't see a lot of this is because those rich people have the funds to drag the cases out for decades and can out spend the IRS on their case. Sure the IRS might win in the end if they don't make any technical mistakes, but they'll spend more on the lawsuit than they'll get back. I'd say that's worth it for fighting crime, but they have limited resources and the people in the easier cases are still doing illegal things too. Spend all your manpower on 5 cases and risk losing money and possible interference from lobbying, or do 6000 profitable cases. There's no right answer.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @06:43PM
And if neither of those things work anymore, you are supposed to remain a fool while liars run off with your wealth and your children's future?
Sorry, but no. Asking for compliance with the law and the taxation system assumes our society is just and the law equitable, in taxation if nothing else.
Our society is neither of those things and it worse it gets, the more unreasonable it becomes to expect compliance with the law. History proves this.
These moves by the corporate oligarchy reveal only how sly and cynical the citizenry have become (we are not told the actual levels of fraud anymore, because that would break the spell). The citizens have become cynical because their rulers have become feckless and unaccountable. You'd better start believing in the collapse of Empire; you're in one.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday October 18 2021, @06:46PM
Yes, they send them to the IRS.
A 1099 only tells the amount of interest paid out, from which they could estimate the average account balance. It has nothing to do with what the account is used for or what is going into or out of it.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday October 19 2021, @02:31AM
Any 1099 sent to you is always being sent to the IRS as well. This includes 1099-INT.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:24PM
It will be even nicer if the govt would stop wasting on blackwaters to the tune of $100B/year for tens of years in war adventurism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @09:58PM (1 child)
"On one hand, I wish the government wouldn't need to do this. On the other hand, the under reporting of income is a real issue across all income brackets."
you're a stupid fucking whore and you make your living off of an extortion racket. why don't you get an actual job?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20 2021, @04:25PM
You can tell an incel by the way that they do.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday October 18 2021, @02:02PM (2 children)
They really seem to have it in for CASH yet they keep driving people to CASH. It's approaching the line where one is starting to wonder if having a bank account is even really worth it. It's a bit of a hassle to not have one, in some cases you are more or less forced to have one. But one wonders when that time comes for a lot of people when it just ain't worth it anymore.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 18 2021, @02:15PM (1 child)
A decade ago (or more) my employer stopped doing payroll. Handed it off to a contractor to keep track of payroll. Everyone was warned that there would be no more checks handed out, get a checking accoung, and bring the information to payroll. The last holdouts weren't given a check on the cutoff date. Instead, they were handed an envelope with a USA debit card, and instructions how to activate their new cards. Everything goes electronic, so that it can be monitored better. Oh yeah - they laid off our payroll clerk, which supposedly saved them ~80,000/yr - but no one mentioned how much the contractors charge for those same services.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 18 2021, @04:10PM
For ADP it's between $10 and $23 per employee/month. If they have/had under 300 employees it probably was a net cost saving. There is likely also a significant data/software/reporting cost savings too if the company has employees in multiple states. HR is hard.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @02:10PM (3 children)
Won't help. It's one Party. Gotta vote these people out if you don't want to have these kinds of laws on the books.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Monday October 18 2021, @02:32PM
This kinda makes me wish there was a "Sad But True" mod.
As a sig on another site says; "Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice."
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by oumuamua on Monday October 18 2021, @03:27PM (1 child)
Won't happen ... until you support Ranked Choice Voting. That is the only way to remove the "I'm wasting my vote" effect that keeps two parties in power. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/02/why-ranked-choice-voting-improve-american-elections-yang-weld-column/5877731002/ [usatoday.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Monday October 18 2021, @04:09PM
I would prefer the "None of the above" option. Then prevent all the candidates that did not receive at least >50% of votes prevented from running in the re-election.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Monday October 18 2021, @02:48PM (7 children)
If the IRS needs that much power to exist, then maybe we should get rid of it.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @03:10PM (4 children)
Congress has to do that. You have just over a year left to fix it
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @04:44PM (3 children)
That doesn't make any sense. Are you suggesting that the Democrats will/should do something to fix this? They are the ones doing it.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday October 18 2021, @04:51PM (2 children)
Gotta vote for somebody else
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @12:29PM (1 child)
Angela Merkel will retire shortly. Who else would you suggest?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 19 2021, @06:33PM
German politics/religion hasn't changed in 800 years, who wold listen to me? Just vote for the cobbler down the street until you're down to the last one in the runoffs
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @04:49PM
The politicians are working hard to make that a reality. They've been cutting funding to the IRS for many years so that they wouldn't have the funding to go after rich tax cheats. It's not enough that the ultra-wealthy can get the tax code written to minimize their tax bills, they don't want to pay the rest either. Cutting the budget of the IRS also has the added benefit of making people think that the government can't do anything right, so why bother having services that need to be paid for?
Really, this power isn't needed, they just need the money to audit the high wealth individuals that are responsible for the bulk of the tax evasion and loophole creation. The small potatoes that the average taxpayer might be avoiding is hardly worth the effort in most cases and probably wouldn't happen if they didn't see the ultra-wealthy skipping out on such a large portion of their tax bills.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @10:01PM
Everyone that works for the IRS should be charged with a lesser sedition charge with the ones at the top banished from the country or worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday October 18 2021, @04:06PM
US Citizens are already subject to some of the most draconian financial reporting regulations in the world. As an American, opening a bank account in another country is a huge pain in the ass. Most foreign banks don't want me as a customer because of FATCA reporting. This hassle, and our taxation of income earned abroad while living abroad, is the number one reason for Citizens born and living abroad renouncing their citizenship.
Given the laundry list [washingtonpost.com] of IRS abuses with the data they have now, I'll need a much more compelling argument before I can agree with this.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday October 18 2021, @06:23PM (1 child)
Any reasonable person would read the 4th amendment and throw this out on Constitutional grounds without a 2nd thought. Of course, most people aren't lawyers. I'm sure they've got some brilliant argument based on the Commerce Clause that uses Wickard v. Filburn, and the Dred Scot decision as precedent to make this legal.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 18 2021, @06:31PM
> without a 2nd thought
What's the chance that some of them will think about the 2nd Amendment...and go postal on the IRS?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by darkfeline on Monday October 18 2021, @06:59PM (1 child)
The reason they're pushing this is because the government is badly in debt. They're hoping to offset their spending by catching unreported income from the low/middle class.
This is not targeting the upper class for two reasons: taxing the upper class more doesn't generate a lot of revenue, because there are so few people in the upper class and the upper class are evading taxes legally. Everyone in the tower knows this. The excuse they're giving is to attempt to placate the uneducated lower class that make up the majority of the voter base.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19 2021, @09:15PM
Sounds about right to me, the mega-rich, as you say, yes, are already using legal tax loop-holes to the max and off-shoring their money.