IRS Audits Single Mother For Not Making Enough Money

Modbert

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Sep 2, 2008
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IRS Audits Single Mother For Not Making Enough Money | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

They thought that she was too poor to be telling the truth about her income.

This is absurd. Via Raven’s Eye, Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times has uncovered a case in which the IRS audited a single mother with two kids, who earns $10 an hour at Supercuts and lives with her parents. What was their reason for doing so? Random selection? An incorrectly completed return? No, they just thought that she was too poor to be telling the truth:

“I asked the IRS lady straight upfront — ‘I don’t have anything, why are you auditing me?’ ” Porcaro recalled. “I said, ‘Why me, when I don’t own a home, a business, a car?’ ”

The answer stunned both Porcaro and the private tax specialist her dad had gotten to help her.

“They showed us a spreadsheet of incomes in the Seattle area,” says Dante Driver, an accountant at Seattle’s G.A. Michael and Co. “The auditor said, ‘You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle.”

Seriously? An estimated 60,000 people in Seattle live below the poverty line — meaning they make $11,000 or less for an individual or $22,000 for a family of four. Does the IRS red-flag them for scrutiny, simply because they’re poor?

And the story gets worse from there. Disgusting, Absurd, and insane.

Discuss.
 
As much as the rich are crying "class warfare" they don't seem to realize that it does exist, and the victims are the poor.

See, I have no tall poppy envy of the rich, if you are smart or lucky, good on you.

But when the whine about paying taxes and claim it is class warfare, I mean really now, grow up.
 
It is not class warfare. The deeper in debt this country goes the more events like this will occur.

If it's money they are looking for, why are they auditing the one's who don't have any?

Perhaps you should read for comprehension? They audit her because her life style exceeds the amount of income she claims. THAT is the criteria for the IRS to audit people.
 
It is not class warfare. The deeper in debt this country goes the more events like this will occur.

Yeah, and it's strange too because NORMALLY the IRS doesn't even BOTHER with people making such little money.

They know they'll probably spend more money auditing the person than they'll end up getting if they somehow uncover money that's owed.

This is like when the Labor Dept. in NJ recently came around to various job sites and starting demanding that employers open up their books and show paperwork for all their employees. I've never seen that happen before until now.

Governments all over are pulling out all the stops and doing whatever they can to gain revenue.
 
It is not class warfare. The deeper in debt this country goes the more events like this will occur.

This has been going on for years. Rich people get to cheat on their taxes because if the IRS tries to investigate them, they call their buddies to bail them out of trouble.
 
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It is not class warfare. The deeper in debt this country goes the more events like this will occur.

If it's money they are looking for, why are they auditing the one's who don't have any?

Perhaps you should read for comprehension? They audit her because her life style exceeds the amount of income she claims. THAT is the criteria for the IRS to audit people.

She pays $400 a month rent to her parents......because of that she is being punished....the kids, now apparently don't belong to anybody as she's not allowed to claim them and her parents don't claim them as dependents......Perhaps you should try reading comprehension....They went after her because she was POOR. They've taken money away from those who can least afford it.
 
It is not class warfare. The deeper in debt this country goes the more events like this will occur.

If it's money they are looking for, why are they auditing the one's who don't have any?

Perhaps you should read for comprehension? They audit her because her life style exceeds the amount of income she claims. THAT is the criteria for the IRS to audit people.

Unless they're wealthy. Then they just ignore the fraud.
 
If it's money they are looking for, why are they auditing the one's who don't have any?

Perhaps you should read for comprehension? They audit her because her life style exceeds the amount of income she claims. THAT is the criteria for the IRS to audit people.

She pays $400 a month rent to her parents......because of that she is being punished....the kids, now apparently don't belong to anybody as she's not allowed to claim them and her parents don't claim them as dependents......Perhaps you should try reading comprehension....They went after her because she was POOR. They've taken money away from those who can least afford it.

You're more likely to be audited if you make less than 25k a year than if you make over 100k.
 
You're more likely to be audited if you make less than 25k a year than if you make over 100k.

Of course, the people who are making over 100k can afford to fight the IRS.
 
You're more likely to be audited if you make less than 25k a year than if you make over 100k.

Of course, the people who are making over 100k can afford to fight the IRS.

That wasn't always the case. Before this decade, the wealthy were far more likely to be audited. However, they aren't anymore because the Republicans cut funding for audits while they controlled Congress and rewrote tax laws to make them more friendly to upper-class tax cheats.
 
You're more likely to be audited if you make less than 25k a year than if you make over 100k.

Of course, the people who are making over 100k can afford to fight the IRS.

That wasn't always the case. Before this decade, the wealthy were far more likely to be audited. However, they aren't anymore because the Republicans cut funding for audits while they controlled Congress and rewrote tax laws to make them more friendly to upper-class tax cheats.
Just sickening.
 
Of course, the people who are making over 100k can afford to fight the IRS.

That wasn't always the case. Before this decade, the wealthy were far more likely to be audited. However, they aren't anymore because the Republicans cut funding for audits while they controlled Congress and rewrote tax laws to make them more friendly to upper-class tax cheats.

Just sickening.

David Cay Johnston wrote a series of great articles on this topic while he was at the Times (one of which he won a Pulitzer for). If you haven't done so, I'd highly suggest his book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everyone Else.
 
That wasn't always the case. Before this decade, the wealthy were far more likely to be audited. However, they aren't anymore because the Republicans cut funding for audits while they controlled Congress and rewrote tax laws to make them more friendly to upper-class tax cheats.

Just sickening.

I have long favored a flat income tax over a set amount of income regardless of source. I'll throw a number that I advocated twenty years ago of $40,000. Up to forty thousand dollars per family, you are tax free. Anything above that and you pay fifty percent to the IRS and ten percent to your state tax. You can still get rich but you pay for doing so.

You can substitute whatever number you want to.
 

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