Troubling Report Reveals Which Americans Are More Likely to Be Audited

When President Joe Biden pleaded for Congress to increase the budget of the Internal Revenue Service by more than $80 billion he claimed that he would use that money to go after “the rich.” Well, he got his money. So did he fulfill his promise?

It turns out, “no” is the answer to that.

When he was angling for the huge expansion in IRS funding to hire nearly 87,000 new IRS agents, he claimed, without any foundation, that his new suite of agents would be put to use auditing “the rich” to squeeze more cash out of them. He claimed that he would only target people making more than $400,000 a year and would make rich people pay “their fair share,” as The Federalist reported.

The media was more than happy to play up Biden’s unfounded proclamations. Indeed, Bloomberg has continued to push Biden’s IRS propaganda to this day.

Only a month ago, the news outlet claimed that Biden’s bigger IRS budget is meant to “[build] up its enforcement efforts on wealthy individuals and companies that aren’t paying what they owe.”

Trending:

GOP Rep Moves to Institute Death Penalty for Child Sex Abusers: ‘Let’s See Who Tries to Protect Pedophiles’

Naturally, the IRS itself also played along with Biden’s con game, telling America that the budget hike would “restore fairness in tax compliance by shifting more attention onto high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations and promoters abusing the nation’s tax laws. The effort… will center on adding more attention on wealthy, partnerships and other high earners that have seen sharp drops in audit rates for these taxpayer segments during the past decade.”

Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, also assured the nation that no one making less than $400,000 a year had to worry that the IRS was coming for them with an audit, at least not in any greater numbers than have occurred in the past.

Yellen insisted that “contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation,” and that “small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”

So, as Biden sought his monstrous bump in the IRS budget, he told us all that only “the rich” need to worry.

Are you worried about the IRS targeting you?

That was then. Now, a new review of just what the IRS has done with its bigger budget and thousands of new IRS agents shows something quite different.

The new audit of the IRS finds that a whopping 63 percent of new IRS audits were aimed at middle-income families, those who made less than $200,000 a year.

“Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board reported last week.

The report, assembled by the IRS’s watchdog, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, “examines IRS progress on mandates from the Biden Administration backed by tens of billions in new funding,” the Journal added.

In fact, Biden’s claim that he was only going to target those making more than $400,000 isn’t even a policy at the IRS. As the Journal noted, there has never been any guidelines put in place to focus on that tax bracket and the agency has made no plans to do so.

Related:

MSNBC Disaster: Panel Goes Rogue, Rips Biden Apart in Catastrophic ‘Morning Joe’ Segment

The Federalist also noted that a 2022 report from Syracuse University found that the lower income earners suffer an audit rate that is five times higher than those who make more.

Some Republicans have continued to work to put a dent in Biden’s intention of growing the size, scope and reach of the IRS. Last year, Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun re-introduced the “Don’t Weaponize the IRS Act” to prevent the taxing agency from using its power the threaten audits as weapons to attack conservative-leaning groups.

In 2022, Republicans tried to add an amendment to Biden’s budget bill to “prevent the use of additional Internal Revenue Service Funds from being used for audits of taxpayers with taxable incomes below $400,000.”  Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats torpedoed it.

And since taking back control of the House, Republicans have succeeded in clawing back at least $20 billion of Biden’s new IRS funding, the Washington Post reported in January. They are also attempting to short the IRS of even more of that Biden spike.

Regardless, at least so far, Biden’s claim that he only intended to target “the rich” for higher rates of audits is simply a lie. To date, the IRS has made no effort to stop targeting the middle classes and to instead go after the top earners. And by the looks of their processes and policies, they have no plans to do so.


A Note from Our Deputy Managing Editor:

 

I heard a chilling comment the other day: “We don’t even know if an election will be held in 2024.” 

 

That wasn’t said by a conspiracy theorist or a doomsday prophet. No, former U.S. national security advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said that to the founder of The Western Journal, Floyd Brown.

 

Gen. Flynn’s warning means that the 2024 election is the most important election for every single living American. If we lose this one to the wealthy elites who hate us, hate God, and hate what America stands for, we can only assume that 248 years of American history and the values we hold dear to our hearts may soon vanish.

 

The end game is here, and as Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

 

All of this means that without you, it’s over. We have the platform, the journalists, and the experience to fight back hard, but Big Tech is strangling us through advertising blacklists, shadow bans, and algorithms. Did you know that we’ve been blacklisted by 90% of advertisers? Without direct support from you, our readers, we can’t continue the fight.

 

Can we count on your support? It may not seem like much, but a Western Journal Membership can make all the difference in the world because when you support us directly, you cut Big Tech out of the picture. They lose control. 

 

A monthly Western Journal Membership costs less than one coffee and breakfast sandwich each month, and it gets you access to ALL of our content — news, commentary, and premium articles. You’ll experience a radically reduced number of ads, and most importantly you will be vitally supporting the fight for America’s soul in 2024.

 

We are literally counting on you because without our members, The Western Journal would cease to exist. Will you join us in the fight? 

 

Sincerely,

Josh Manning

Deputy Managing Editor

The Western Journal

Source link