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Rudy Giuliani owes nearly $550K in unpaid taxes, IRS says
(www.nbcnews.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I bet the real answer is more nuanced than this.
More complex, yes, but not in the way you seem to think. The IRS is chronically underfunded and going after the rich is much more expensive since they have more complicated finances and a lot of expensive lawyers to fight it, so they usually aren't audited.
Also, the entire "justice" system is made by the rich and powerful to benefit themselves over everyone else.
You are right and wrong.
If you make probably around 200k or less, your taxes are pretty simple. You have some very basic filings like a 1080 and some mortgage items. Maybe you have some income from stock sales.
That’s about it. (Ignoring retirement and other still basic and easily calculated tax affecting numbers.).
If you get it wrong, they have all of the paperwork and can easily flag what doesn’t match.
If you are making way more, you probably have businesses and a weird intermingling of finances. Our tax structure just says “tell us what you think” and they take it as fact unless it is checked out. A businesses tax filing might be hundreds of pages long with tons of “I think x is value y and it depreciated by z amount” which of course is hugely subjective and not objective. And that’s the least complex part.
To audit those numbers can take hundreds of hours to get to understand what’s going on and where to go. We need to close loopholes and remove the subjectivity of our taxes for the rich and to dedicate resources in the irs to just this complex type tax auditing.
Not to mention remove the need for a 1080 or any other basic taxable form. Go to a website, see what it says you owe, view the calculation and give us the ability to challenge it if it’s wrong with simple paperwork.
You're absolute right, but what was I wrong about? You basically elaborated on what I said and then added a common sense solution at the end 🤷
Both the loopholes and the unnecessarily complicated process are put there on purpose though, by rich people who don't want to pay taxes and corporations like Intuit (TurboTax) H&R Block and TaxAct Holdings who want people to have no reasonable alternative to paying them to do it.
Because it's not about the amount of money or the ability to fight it, it's about the way the income or other wealth was generated. The IRS audits the rich all the time, it's just easier to have someone fix a mistake or catch tax evasion/fraud when the underlying income/wealth is only generated from a few sources. If you make 7 figures because that's your salary, it's still pretty easy to audit you.
Above a certain threshold of wealth is ONLY achievable through complex and/or shady means and it's the norm way below that threshold.
Rich people generate wealth in more and different ways than regular people.
Nope. They audit poor and middle class people MUCH more, even proportionately.
Nobody with a 7 figure salary doesn't own stock and/or property too. That's how the system works: the more money you have, the more opportunities you have to get more and the more eagerly your bank and/or accountant urges you to invest.
The difficulty is not intentional. It is knee jerk reactions that were poorly implemented from years and years of built up changes to how money is made (or hidden). Compounded on more and more with law over law. Just Don’t attribute malice to that which can be considered incompetence.
As for being wrong, that was too harsh. I don’t think the irs ignores the rich per se, but it’s just really difficult to quickly understand if they are following the rules. The time investment is very high and they don’t have dedicated people. It isn’t intentional though so your fix is either fund with a rule the funding only goes to six figure tax bill collection or fix the laws to make the information objective only and non complex while controlling loopholes .
Aniki says the tax code is straightforward, neither nuanced nor complex. Guess that's it. Close the thread town.