Tag: Secrets

IRS Not Too Forthcoming with the Success of Wealth Squad

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.

Is the IRS’s ‘Wealth Squad’ Working? [WSJ]

Deloitte Still Holding Back on Global Revenue Numbers

DTa.jpgThe U.S. numbers are out, $10.7 billion, according to Deloitte’s U.S. website but the global page still only has the fiscal year ’08 numbers. The U.S. numbers are essentially flat from fiscal year ’08 revenue of approximately $11 billion.
We don’t really know what the problem is but we understand that math is hard sometimes so we’ll just wait patiently until the global numbers come out. We all know what happens when SEC registered companies reports late.
Advantage to a private company: We’ll report our revenue WHENEVER THE F*(K WE WANT.
Some interesting data that is presented on the U.S. page so far includes:
• “Staff” dropping 1,490 while “Partners” went up 14 from FY ’08 to FY ’09
• Two offices were either closed or consolidated as the number went from 92 to 90
• Total number of CPA’s went up over 300
So at first glance, it appears that Big D had a similar year to E&Y but withhold judgment until the global numbers come out.