When accounting goes unaccounted for
“A lot of people think of the IRS and have a little bit of fear of the IRS and we want to make sure they know that our doors are open, our people are empowered to make decisions and our goal is to resolve your problem.”
~ Doug Shulman, IRS Commish, who doesn’t prepare his own taxes but wants to help you with yours.
Oh Joe Francis, why won’t you just take your Douche of the Decade trophy and ride off into the sunset?
Actually we know why. The IRS froze $22 million of Douche of D’s money because he still owes them $23 million for taxes owed in 2001, 2002, and 2003. J. Fran would not stand for such aggression and, being the savvy tax guy that he is, sued the Service to get access to his accounts. He concluded that the IRS was just bent out of shape that he got out of additional jail time.
The IRS claims that the real reason that they’re freezing DoD’s assets is that he tried moving the money offshore after his plea. And unless you’re Joe Francis, you know is not such best course of action these days.
IRS can freeze ‘Girls Gone Wild’ money [Don’t Mess With Taxes]
Remember the “Wealth Squad“? They’re the jolly bunch of IRS examiners that focus their audit efforts on the richest of richies because it’s become clear that wealthy people are incapable of being honest on their tax returns (plus, poor people don’t have any money).
This elite group was formed in 2009 and based on the IRS’s count, they’ve been some busy little taxbusters:
According to the agency, audit rates among taxpayers who reported $10 million or more in income in 2010 jumped to 18% from 10% in 2009. Among taxpayers who reported $5 million to $10 million in income, nearly 12% were audited, compared with 6% in 2008.
Seems like a nice little ramp up in activity which means a boost to the Treasury’s piggy bank, right? If that’s the case, the Service isn’t exactly thumping their chests about it:
The IRS has refused to report how much money the “wealth squad” has brought in. This isn’t so difficult. Britain, which set up a similar “rich squad” around the same time, has announced that its squad netted £162 million ($ 263 million) in 2010-11, up from £82 million the year before. Those amounts are on top of the taxes already paid by the rich who are being targeted.
Conventional wisdom tells us that if the IRS were to release these numbers, it would probably make for some nice political fodder and so the Administration is telling them to keep a lid on the results. If you thought the soundbites about new 16,500 IRS agents were bad, imagine if the IRS actually reported how much more money it got rich people to fork over. On the other hand, it could be that the Service is juking the numbers and the Squad has been a complete failure. Either way, it seems that the IRS wouldn’t gain much by shouting these stats from the rooftops.
Ginny Hopkins has waited tables at Johnny's Downtown in Cleveland for 20 years. In that […]