Happy New Year, it could be an interesting one in Congress
- Thread starter watu05
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The Senate has been held hostage by a small group of Senators for the last several years. I don’t necessarily believe it’s been a bad thing. See my post above, more pressing issues lie ahead.
One good thing McCarthy didn't allow, was putting Gaetz on the chairmanship of a key House Armed Services subcommittee.
The bad thing he gave up...
He agreed to appoint many members of the 20 Election Deniers to the powerful House Rules Committee, which determines which bills make it to the chamber’s floor, and the Appropriations Committee. So they will be heavily involved in the Speaker's main responsibility. A lot of crap will get voted on, and a lot of decent stuff won't.
The bad thing he gave up...
He agreed to appoint many members of the 20 Election Deniers to the powerful House Rules Committee, which determines which bills make it to the chamber’s floor, and the Appropriations Committee. So they will be heavily involved in the Speaker's main responsibility. A lot of crap will get voted on, and a lot of decent stuff won't.
Not one of the new Speaker's top priorities per his own stated agenda of detrimenting the IRS, tackling immigration (how many times are the Republicans going to have to tackle this? I though they already "built that wall") and addressing "woke" education.
I’m not optimistic. Expect more of the same except a different set of pointless priorities which we’ve seen the past two years.
I do support a couple of those initiatives. Protecting ordinary citizens from the IRS. Dealing with the flood of illegals crossing our southern borders. Other initiatives should be non starters.
Since when did paying your fair share of taxes become something that citizens should be protected from?
Lol. Has nothing to do with paying your fair share. The Service is one of the most powerful organizations in the world. They are operate through intimidation under a system where the taxpayer must prove his/her innocence. More agents doing more audits are not good for working class Americans and small business owners. The power dynamic and tax court are far too skewed in favor of the Service .
Bull.
When there is no enforcement of the law, there might as well not be a law. "Let's all pay our taxes on the honor system" is clearly a great method as evidenced by Donald Trump.
Total crap
How many audits have you overseen?
How many clients have you negotiated with the IRS for?
How many cases have you taken to tax court?
I’m very much in the philosophical camp of ‘trust but verify’, if you don’t have the right personnel to actually review / audit what is given to you as a regulator, you can not verify anything.
I don’t disagree that the IRS can misattribute financial burdens on entities in complex cases; but that’s the entire reason you have a tax court in the first place. To dispute claims. If your problem is that the tax code is so complex that it results in errors, imposed by the IRS, on private citizens or corporations… then your problem is largely with the tax code itself, not inherently the employees of the agency.
Americans only need protection from the IRS if the agency’s employees are misinterpreting the laws (either willfully or through error). If that’s the case, the issue we have isn’t with the fact that the IRS needs staffing. It’s that the staff needs to be replaced or trained better.
It is not just agents; it's overall staffing. I've spent a lot of time correcting errors that apparently arise from poor data entry at the IRS that were discovered years too late. My CPA says the IRS is years behind in multiple areas. This all results from chronic underfunding.
I support the hiring of clerical and customer service personnel. Unfortunately, well over half of the $80B goes directly toward lawyers, agents and other enforcement. It’s going to be a nightmare for middle to upper-middle class Americans. Won’t significantly affect the Uber wealthy contrary to justifications being put forth by the law’s supporters.
It’s almost like you have never been through a single case with the Service from determination, demand, lien, seizure, court. Add to that scenario the threats designed to scare individuals from contesting the findings of the Service.
This isn’t about large corporations or the under rich. They will and have always been fine. They have Harvard tax lawyers and practically unlimited resources (like the Service). This is about the small business owner who correctly makes his payroll tax deposit but the IRS system fails to accepts it or correctly apply it. This is about the burden of proof. This is about an agent showing up at a clients door threatening seizure of everything he or she owns unless $xxxxx is paid today. Yes….it can be that heavy handed.
My biggest complain is how the service conducts enforcement. There is little differentiation between a true tax cheat and those who are either innocent or make honest errors in my experience. With a thousand additional enforcement personel I would expect it to only get worse. Contrast to the OTC who also conducts enforcement activities but because they aren’t backed by the federal government are far easier to work with.
Do your experiences representing clients in front of the IRS differ?
To answer the last question first, we both know that such is not an area of my expertise; however, as a party of both group that's being taxed, as well as the beneficiary of the group that's doing the taxing I believe I'm entitled to some opinion on the matter.
I don't disagree that systems and policies of the enforcement arm of the IRS have flaws which need to be corrected, and that means the entity needs investment (though I will acknowledge and concede that investing in officers without investing in foundational systems is a flawed approach). Ideally you need both an improved foundation as well as the enforcement staff needed to actual review accounts (unless we could make such accounting automatic which H&R Block et. al would cry about)
I think as far as the heavy handed nature of enforcement goes... it's not that different in practice from any police force, and if you're going to complain about the heavy handed nature of tax enforcement, you should be complaining about the heavy handed nature of criminal enforcement.
Where I do have professional experience is at a regulatory agency that collected revenues from ad valorem in addition to providing regulatory oversight in business practice and public safety. What I will say about that the heavy handedness of agencies is typically purposeful. Those that aren't heavy handed tend to put up with / ignore quite a few bad actors and that ultimately ends up costing the public large sums of money, either from lost revenue or from cleaning up after businesses.
I've dealt with quite a few small businesses that shouldn't have been allowed to operate in the state at all because of their disregard for laws on public health & safety or the environment.
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I’m not saying you can’t have an opinion. I am saying our opinions on topics which we have zero or little experience or knowledge are limited by nature. Perfect example is your attempt to compare the protections afforded to citizens in an IRS action to a criminal action. They couldn’t be further apart including burden of proof.
I do agree on your comment regarding health and safety.
What I was saying was that enforcements officers both civil and criminal tend to be heavy handed in their interaction with the general public, even with those that are actually innocent of accusation, typically because they tend to deal with quite a few people who are actually breaking laws....
If they spend the next two years in impeachment while the nations crashes and burns when can talk. It’s been less than a week. That said….over the next few months they do need to start to anddress our economic issues.
Would you mind linking all the times you called out the Dem Congress for ignoring the financial crisis over the past two years
? Hell…I’ll settle for one.Cawthorn screws over Republican replacement. How do these guys ever get elected?
This stuff is bad for everyone.
This stuff is bad for everyone.
It will be interesting to see how the House Republicans offer a budget that doesn’t touch Medicare and Social Security or defense and lowers taxes and doesn’t run up the deficit. McCarthy has worked hard to avoid any specifics with good reason. Trying to be the the party of the working class with policies that favor the top 1% cannot be covered up by fanning a cultural divide forever. Huckabee sounded like an Arkansan ayatollah after the SOU tonight. The show is just getting started.
Sound like a great idea. If we just stop spending we won’t have debt anymore.… we won’t have a country… but we won’t have debt.
I’m looking forward to your criticism of Biden next month if his budget results in another trillion dollar plus deficit
What crazy town looks like. Really important stuff; given it’s a private company not a government agency. And who could blame them anyway, particularly after this?
Absolute loon. It's like she is in jr high. It's pretty funny that she got her GED right around the time her campaign started.
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