I Didn't Eat The Cupcake...Or Vote To Send The IRS To Audit You

It seems that humans are born with an innate ability to lie even when caught redhanded.

Who hasn't confronted a young child when a cupcake is missing and ever got a straight answer about who ate it?

It doesn't matter even if the icing is smeared all of over their face.

A video about a young boy who was questioned about a cupcake by his father went viral in 2015 to such a degree that ABC News did a story on it.

https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/boy-denies-eating-cupcake-icing-face/story?id=34583512

One little boy is going viral for getting caught red-handed, or rather blue icing-faced, by his daddy.

“Did you eat a cupcake?,” the adorable boy’s dad asks him in the YouTube video.

“No!” Jack, the tiny toddler, quickly replies.

“You sure you didn’t eat a cupcake?,” Jack’s persistent dad asks again.

“No, I wasn’t at home,” the equally insistent little guy replies.

“Hmm…I thought for sure you maybe had a cupcake,” the father tries one last time, obviously referring to his son’s blue icing smeared all over his face and mouth.

You’ve got to hand it to Jack. He really says “no” with conviction. And who could get angry at that face?

“They were giving out free blue cupcakes in honor of the New York Giants,” the video, which has more than 215,000 views since Oct. 17, describes in the caption.

We should expect better from our elected representatives and other authorities but it is no different.

They are caught red-handed but refuse to admit the truth.

We are seeing exactly that in the aftermath of the $80 billion funding to hire an additional 87,000 IRS personnel.

There has been considerable blowback from the this provision in the "Inflation Reduction Act" and the Democrats are working hard to cover their tracks with the help of the mainstream media.

I have seen a stream of stories that have attempted to obscure, hide or deny the truth.

One example is the new narrative circulating that attempts to argue that most of those new IRS employees will merely be hired due to attrition over the next 10 years.

That is the theme of a story from Time.

Source: https://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/

According to a Treasury Department official, the funds would cover a wide range of positions including IT technicians and taxpayer services support staff, as well as experienced auditors who would be largely tasked with cracking down on corporate and high-income tax evaders.

“It is wholly inaccurate to describe any of these resources as being about increasing audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses,” Natasha Sarin, a counselor for tax policy and implementation at the Treasury Department, tells TIME.

At the same time, more than half of the agency’s current employees are eligible for retirement and are expected to leave the agency within the next five years. “There’s a big wave of attrition that’s coming and a lot of these resources are just about filling those positions,” says Sarin, an economist who has studied tax avoidance extensively and who was tapped by the Biden administration to beef up the IRS’s auditing power.

In all, the IRS might net roughly 20,000 to 30,000 more employees from the new funding, enough to restore the tax-collecting agency’s staff to where it was roughly a decade ago.

The problem with this explanation is that the legislation gives the IRS additional funds compared to what it has now.

The IRS would not need additional budget authority to replace current positions. It already has that funding.

The legislation makes clear that the new money appropriated is for additional resources.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1560307379274764288

You will notice in the Time article it also states that it is inaccurate to say that the additional resources will be used to increase audit scrutiny of the middle class or small businesses.

However, almost 60% of the money in the law was specifically mentioned as being for ENFORCEMENT.

Source: https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1560307565971611650/photo/1

Almost the entire reason for the increased funding for the IRS in the bill was premised on the fact that there were a lot of tax revenues that could be collected by increased enforcement and compliance efforts by the IRS.

In fact, of the $676 billion in gross revenue raised by the law over the next ten years, over $200 billion in additional collections is expected to brought in through increased IRS audit and enforcement activities.

Since the law was passed, almost every Democrat has gotten in front of a microphone and said that any additional audits and tax revenues were going to come solely from those making more than $400,000 per year and those big, rich corporations.

For example, Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen has specifically  claimed that the new IRS funds won't be used for increased tax audits for those under $400k in income.

Source: https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/yellen-new-irs-funds-wont-boost-audits-for-those-under-400k

Really?

Where is the estimated potential tax revenue that could be collected with more IRS audits going to come from?

It seems that the greatest opportunity for the IRS to collect more money is from those making less than $100,000 according to their own data.

The following chart is from a report that the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation produced that was prepared to answer the question as to where the biggest income levels were where the IRS might find unreported income.

Source: https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/irs_enforcement_jct_analysis.pdf

 

The IRS wants to collect more tax revenues from those who are underreporting their taxes.

75% of the opportunity comes from taxpayers who file tax returns reporting less than $100,000.

Most of it involves small businesses that are operated as sole proprietorships or partnerships.

Are they really going to ignore their own data?

It is interesting as well that Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho proposed an amendment to the bill that would have specifically made it clear in the law that audits of those under $400,000 would not be increased due to this new law.

Every Democrat voted against the amendment as it failed to be adopted.

What does that tell you?

I have also heard that the additional IRS funding is really directed at improving customer service.

It is true that that some of the money is supposed to be spent on customer service.

A grand total of 4% of the additional funding. (see the chart above).

So much for the customer service argument.

Finally, The Washington Post ran an op-ed defending the additional IRS funding arguing that its return processing is so antiquated that it is only reasonable to provide this money to improve technology.

The op-ed included an image of the IRS Service Center cafeteria in Austin, TX filled with boxes of tax returns,

Yes, the IRS is in need of modernization. 

However, refer to the distribution of funds in the chart above once again.

Only 6% is targeted for systems modernization.

Further, when technology is deployed you would expect that would result in the need for fewer paper shuffling processors. 

Employment should come down, not go up by 87,000.

Of course, new computers and processing technology do not require wages or union dues.

Could it be that the following factoid might also have something to do with why the Democrats are eager to add 87,000 new employees to the IRS?

Source: https://www.atr.org/irs-union-gives-100-of-pac-spending-to-democrats/

I am sure it is just a coincidence.

Just like it was a coincidence that the Democrats started insisting that the additional IRS funding had nothing to do with the IRS coming to audit you at the same moment that all of this was disclosed as being  a part of that "Inflation Reduction Act."

A 3-year with icing smeared on their face does not understand how easy it is to reveal their lie.

How is it that our elected representatives (and the media) don't understand this?

Why can't they just admit the truth?

They want to spend more money.

They know they can't raise taxes on the middle class because Biden said over and over he wouldn't.

However, they need $200 billion of tax revenues to make the numbers work in their climate change  inflation reduction bill.

The solution---give the IRS more money and more agents and get it from audit enforcement.

Then hope nobody will notice.

It was noticed.

And traces of the tell-tale "IRS audit" icing that gives away their lies is evident everywhere you look.

Just look above for starters.