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I just use a straight-laced Asian accountant every year. He plays it by the book, but does seek out ways to save us taxes. Still, I figure the IRS doesn’t barely look at clients of this type of accountant. He’s signing off on all the forms and his reputation is solid so they just “take the win” and don’t audit any of his customers.
It’s kind of like audit insurance.
I’ve never been audited.

As I recall, Al Cappone was sent to the big house for Tax Evasion. The Treasury department (who oversee the IRS) has always had a law enforcement arm. The concern is that witu this steped up focus on enforcement l, they will start going after small business rather than big time corporations.

The millionars and billionaires can pay a team of laywers and accountants to keep the IRS off their back... or at least delay the process. Your average family buisness... not as much.

Frankly, I think we should abolish income taxes, and the IRS entirely. Think of the money we'd save!

GreaterNYCDude says

Frankly, I think we should abolish income taxes, and the IRS entirely. Think of the money we'd save!

I agree.

All income and sales taxes should be replaced with a Georgist land value tax.

https://patrick.net/post/1346922/2022-08-05-georgism-thread

Land cannot be hidden, so there would be no need for the IRS to exist. Nor would businesses need to tack on and track sales tax, or any government agency to investigate whether they are doing it right.

But of course this would limit federal government power, so the federal government would never agree to it.

Constituonaly, federal governmental power is or ought to be limited. It's reserved to the states or to the people themselves but we all know that.

I wonder if they teach civics in school anymore.

That said, we do need centralized government for some things (common defense for example).

Articles of confederation proved that a loose alliance of independent states dosen't work unless there is a central authority to bind them together.

RedStar says

Hircus says

Tenpoundbass says

Besides that, where in the hell are they going to find 87,000 capable people willing or capable of firing a pew pew shootie thing?

I dont think many need to carry a gun. Just some.

But 87k new auditors... not only will they have trouble filling the cubicles, but does anyones think they will go through all the trouble to hire and train, just to let them go in a few years? No way. This is probably mostly permanent. They'll audit the "evil rich" first, but then after a few years the tree will have all the acorns shook from it, then they'll move onto middle class audits.

They have to train them on simple low income cases first. You don't sick a green agent onto complicated millionaires return without years of experience.

The experienced person currently auditing simple cases will now audit more complicated cases. The newb takes his place auditing simple cases. Like in businesses, adding more peons frees the experienced employees to focus on the complicated. But even newbs can work on complicated cases. It's not like they assign 1 auditor per business - complicated returns are almost certainly handled by teams of experienced auditors, and a few peons for them to delegate their grunt work to.

The point is they will have greatly expanded audit capability, and can direct it where they please. They will focus the additional audit power on the rich for now. They "promised" not to audit more under 400k income people, and I just don't believe they'll significantly defy their promise in the immediate term. But in time I think they will, because the promise maker will be gone by then.

I saw a headline on a physical newspaper saying that the IRS removed the "willing to use deadly force" line from the job description.

IRS: Shoot identified malfeasors first, ask questions later, let Satan sort the dead, soak up all asset for the regime.