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Lowest-Income Taxpayers Are the Most Likely To Be Audited

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IRS Audits Target the Poor Data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University shows the IRS audited the lowest-income Americans—”wage earners with less than $25,000 in total gross receipts”—at five times the rate of everyone else during government fiscal year 2021.

TRAC reports, “A significant increase of federal income tax audits targeted at the poorest wage earners enabled the Internal Revenue Service the keep overall audit figures from further declines Americans as a whole,” TRAC reports.

The move is another indicator that the Biden Administration’s plan for increasing IRS funding, hiring more than 80,000 additional tax cops and improving monitoring of cash flows into and out bank accounts may harm Americans just scraping by and not just the wealthy tax cheats.

TRAC reports that the IRS did 306,944 audits in 2021 of low-income earners. 352,059 audits were conducted of everyone else income. The IRS conducted only 39,449 audits of individuals with taxable incomes of between $200,000 to $1 million each year.

Also, the chances of having an audit performed on high income earners were one-third higher than their lower-income peers. Only 4.5 percent of all 1,000 returns for the range of $200,000 to $1 million were audited versus 13 percent of those of the lowest-income group.

All earners who had positive incomes greater than $25,000 were audited at a rate of 2.6 per 1000 returns.

“IRS accomplished over 650 thousand audits last year by jacking up its already high reliance on so called ‘correspondence audits’—essentially a letter from the IRS asking for documentation on a specific line item on a return,” notes TRAC. TRAC notes that “over 50% of these letter audits targeted workers with low incomes who had applied for an anti-poverty tax credit to offset any tax due from their small earned income.”

Fivety-four per cent of all correspondence audits were directed at the “small proportion” of returns with gross incomes below $25,000 and claiming earned income tax credits.

“Does it make sense from either an equity or revenue standpoint to focus IRS’s limited firepower on the poorest taxpayers among us—those with incomes so low they have filed returns claiming an anti-poverty earned income tax credit?” TRAC questions. TRAC asks.

FREE MINDS

State rescinds FART license plate. North Carolina originally approved Karly Sindy’s “FART” plate license plate, but threatened to cancel it three months later when somebody complained.

Sindy made a website in response to the “state” telling her that she needed to get rid of the plate “unless she was able to make convincing arguments to keep it.” The first meeting took place. That nightJeremy Markovich, in The North Carolina Rabbit HoleSubscribe to our newsletter:

Fifteen people showed up. Soon, many people started making logos and the story gained a lot media attention. Sindy ended up being on Jimmy Kimmel LiveAmerica to argue her case. The DMV also received an appeal from her, stating FART that the plate was F.A.R.T. The hiking group.

Sindy was not allowed to continue using the truck’s plate. Yesterday afternoon she received a phone call from NCDMV confirming that her appeal had been denied.

Marty Honan from NCDOT said that Ms. Sindy would not be allowed to continue to have the plate placed on her car. He did this in an email to the reporter Rabbit Hole. “The text was not approved by us for some time.

However, the decision conflicts with an opinion by a federal court that states license plates can be free of speech. In 2020, a federal court held that California’s ban on plates with “connotations offensive to good taste and decency” was unconstitutional—paving the way for QUEER and SLAAYRRPlates for license.

FREIGHT MARKETS

Ohio permits concealed carry without restrictionsRepublican governor. Mike DeWine, Republican Governor of Ohio has signed into law a bill which will permit concealed carry guns without a permit. Continue reading The Columbus Dispatch:

Senate Bill 215, which will allow Ohio residents aged 21 or older to conceal firearms that they are legal permitted to possess without any training or permits, is now available. The law no longer requires gun owners to inform police that they have guns when pulled over. While law enforcement must ask about concealed weapons, it will not be illegal to lie about them.

“This is a day that will go down in history…,” Buckeye Firearms Association Director Dean Rieck said in a statement. “This is a wonderful moment for Ohio as well as for all who desire to fully exercise their Constitutional right of keeping and bearing arms.

DeWine signed bill into law over objections of law enforcement agencies, county sheriffs, Democrats and others who feared that eliminating training requirements would lead to communities being less secure.

QUICK HITS

• COVID cases are rising again in parts of Asia and Europe. David Leonhardt reports that the death rate has increased in Hong Kong to 25 percent per 100,000 people in just a week. The New York Times. Covid is rapidly spreading in New Zealand. South Korea, South Korea, and many other Pacific countries. European countries such as the U.K. Germany and Italy also see rising cases rates. This is largely due to an increase in omicron Subvariant BA.

• Timothy B. Lee at Full Stack EconomyOil and Inflation: The United States has experienced seven recessions over the past 50 years. Four of these—in 1973, 1980, 1981, and 1990—were preceded by conflicts in the Middle East that disrupted oil supplies and drove up oil prices. Two others—in 2001 and 2007—followed oil price increases driven by strong demand rather than supply disruptions.”

• “The three former Sharon Hill police officers who opened fire at an Academy Park High School football game in August, killing an 8-year-old girl, were held for trial Thursday on criminal charges relating to her death,” reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

• Freddie de Boer on demographic averages, identity politics, and maddening contradictions. He wrote that “if we want to stop projecting averages onto individual, you should do so with all types of people”, and not just for progressive politics. If the notion is that demographic identity should be less important because it distorts who we as individuals, then I’m all for it! That’s what I agree with. This attitude is often a violation of the social justice system.”

• Massachusetts is revising down its COVID death count. According to NBC 10 Boston, the state will use a new definition of public health surveillance next week. This means that 4,081 deaths previously linked with the virus are now classified as being from other causes.

• A look inside America’s first official safe injection site.