The only difference is that in this case, the stated goal of ‘starve the beast’ is intentionally sabotage the entire government as policy goal. Underfund agencies, expand deficits through tax cuts, then cite the resulting debt and institutional breakdown as justification to dismantle more of government.
It almost makes the people who were outraged at the idea of sabotaging border enforcement seem disingenuous that they don't now care that undermining federal capacity is public strategy.
48% of audits were under 25k income. 87% of audits were people under 200k income.
Kind of interferes with the idea these audits were all about going after the uber rich. They were way more about going after the poor than they were about going after the rich.
[] l IRS management audit reports obtained via FOIA by via TRAC / https://tracreports.org/reports/706/
a) People who filled in the wrong number on the spreadsheet that is taxes for whatever reason, and the audit is informing the filer that they filled it out incorrectly. I mean, really, taxes should start with the government sending me the form of what it thinks I owe and I should be making corrections to that, since the government already has this information and has done it, and that would make many of these audits go away.
b) People who misunderstood eligibility requirements and claimed deductions they weren't entitled to.
c) So I don't know how these people are counted, but there are absolutely millionaires and billionaires out there cheating on their taxes and claiming no income (e.g., the current president). It's totally plausible that they get listed in the "under 25k income" audit section despite the fact that they are in fact the uber-rich that is the intended target of the outrage.
There's a sleight of hand in your argument here. I said under 25k with EITC. You can't get EITC if you're "claiming no income." That's why it's called earned income tax credit as the credit is intended to help offset welfare cliffs as you start to earn more money but at low incomes. So your whole paragraph here about <25k is null and void as "millionaires and billionaires out there cheating on their taxes and claiming no income" aren't in the <25k EITC bucket I mentioned, they're in the bucket of others earning under 200k.
(As an aside, if someone actually thinks earns nothing and doesn't want EITC which they can't get anyway with zero income they probably won't even be filing, there is no "return" to audit.)
Poor people pay very little income tax, as is the entire point of a progressive set of tax brackets and a large standard deduction.
It is trivial to not do your taxes wrong if you have legal employment. If you for some reason doubt your ability to do a couple calculations and copy over 6 numbers to a simple form, Turbotax will do that "hard work" for you for $30.
Even using Turbotax, I once failed to report a W2 (because I technically had more than one job) and the "penalty" was a letter that said "Hi, you missed this, we fixed it, give us $270 + $1 interest", which I never responded to because I am disordered, so they took my state income tax return.
No court. No threat. No serious penalty. I didn't even have to talk to anyone.
If we are talking about poor people, who by definition have minimal income, how do you think they supposedly would get hit by some giant IRS penalty? What is the magical pathway?