July 27, 2024
$1 BILLION and counting.
That’s how much the IRS reported they collected just through the spring from only about 12-hundred super wealthy people who were cheating on their taxes. That’s an average of more than 800-thousand dollars each that they owed and just weren’t paying. Let that sink in.
Oh – and the IRS is not done.
Ok – so I’ve been telling you for months now that the IRS has been on a mission to put to work the initial portion of the $80 billion that the congress is going to be allocating to them slowly over the next 10 years. And one of the things the agency is doing with the first chunk of money is going after high wealth tax cheats.
But you may be wondering — if the IRS knew these wealthy folks were not paying what they owed — why weren’t they going after them before? Because for decades congress has been gutting the IRS’s budget. And going after rich people is harder, it takes more man power which takes money because the super rich have lots of lawyers and accountants who get let’s just say can get creative with their clients’ taxes. And now that the IRS has the money to finally go after them, they’re doin it.
So who are these people? According to the IRS says these are wealthy taxpayers who have incomes of more than $1 million a year and owed at least $250,000 in recognized tax debt each. And of the 1600 cases the IRS opened – it took 1500 IRS agents to look into investigate them. That’s about one agent per case. See what I mean about man power?
So why should you care? Well – one – if you have to pay taxes shouldn’t the wealthy? And two — that $1 billion that was sitting in these rich peoples’ bank accounts is money that should have been added to the pot of money the US government uses to fund all kinds of things including programs that benefit kids, and lower income folks and our seniors and veterans.
Now this $1 billion is only going to increase. The IRS says there are more open cases and more money owed that they expect will be coming in. In fact – the IRS has targeted 25,000 more potential tax cheats who earn more than a million dollars a year and that’s not even taking into account the initiative against large corporations and partnerships that they estimate will bring in billions more.
