Saturday, September 21, 2024
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Estimated-tax-penalties balloon by four times in 2023 due to higher interest rates and a greedy, lazy IRS which just got tens of billions in new funding from Joe Biden but can't get its software updated
The average estimated-tax penalty in fiscal-year 2023 climbed to about $500 from about $150 in 2022, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Meanwhile the number of affected tax filers rose to 14 million from 12 million. Overall, the agency assessed $7 billion in estimated-tax penalties in 2023, nearly four times the $1.8 billion it assessed in 2022. ...
Filers who don’t pay in enough tax throughout the year owe a penalty in the form of an interest charge on their underpayment that’s set quarterly. In 2021, the year that prompted most of the 2022 assessments, the IRS’s rate on underpayments was a rock-bottom 3%. The penalty is based on the short-term Treasury rate plus three points, and it climbed to 6% as rates rose in 2022. That pushed up charges on underpayments assessed the next year.
In 2023 the rate rose to 8% for the fourth quarter. It’s still there–so underpayment penalties will continue to sting taxpayers who owe them. ...
The IRS’s computers can impose undeserved penalties on some estimated-tax filers, because they automatically treat income as though it’s earned equally throughout the year. So if a filer does a fourth-quarter Roth IRA conversion and pays tax on it at that time, the system will assume the income was earned all through the year but the tax was only paid in the fourth quarter.
More.
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Lyin' Joe Biden's IRS is auditing the middle class, not the rich as promised
Discussed here:
"As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000," reports the Journal. "Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million." ...
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was a bit sassier. "Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited," she wrote in a letter to Rettig. ...
Awkwardly, "revenue agent staffing had actually decreased by 8%, or more than 650 employees, between the end of fiscal 2019 and March 2023," per a previous watchdog report. And it's not just hiring that's in trouble: The agency has completed just 33 percent of its fiscal year 2023 milestones outlined in its strategic operating plan, which is…tough given that the year is over.
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Friday night news dump: IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, 38, charged with leaking tax records in New York Times and ProPublica incidents in 2018 and 2020
Littlejohn, 38, provided the public official’s tax documents to an unnamed news organization, and the tax information concerning other wealthy individuals to another unidentified news organization between 2018 and 2020, prosecutors said.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Influence-peddling WhatsApp message to Chicoms from Hunter Biden in July 2017 came from his father's guest house in Delaware
Byron York, here:
Hunter Biden wanted something from Zhao — it appears it was a payment of some sort — and he wanted it immediately. "I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled," Hunter Biden wrote. "Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father."
Shapley said the IRS team discovered the message in August 2020. Even for people who questioned the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop — and we now know the FBI had verified its authenticity in December 2019 — the WhatsApp message was worth investigating. "In August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant," Shapley said. "Unlike the laptop, these came to the investigative team from a third-party record keeper and included a set of messages. The messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on."
The IRS team wanted to execute a search warrant at the guest house and Joe Biden's house in Delaware, where Hunter Biden was staying at the time of the message. In discussions with the Justice Department, they were told that there was more than enough probable cause to get a warrant but that "optics" were a problem. A Justice Department official told them, in Shapley's words, that "a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden but said there is no way we will get that approved."
IRS team investigating Hunter Biden's alleged crimes never investigated the Ukraine-Burisma bribes allegations
Jerry Dunleavy, here:
Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, was the "foreign national" involved in the alleged "criminal bribery scheme" aimed at shaking an alleged investigation into Burisma by then-Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, according to sources familiar with the FBI record who described its contents to the Washington Examiner.
The sources said Zlochevsky said he believed it would be difficult to unravel the alleged bribery scheme for at least 10 years because of the number of bank accounts involved.
Amid the threat of being held in contempt of Congress, FBI Director Christopher Wray allowed members of the GOP-led House Oversight Committee to review an FD-1023 form this month that contained redacted versions of the allegations from the paid FBI informant.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, repeatedly claimed following a late May FBI briefing that Barr and his “hand-picked prosecutor” — Scott Brady, then the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania — ended the investigation into the bribery claims in 2020. But Barr quickly said that is false.
“It’s not true,” Barr soon told multiple outlets in early June. “It wasn’t closed down. On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”...
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also revealed this month that a less redacted version of the form he has viewed says Zlochevsky claimed to have 17 recordings of his conversations with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (two of the former and 15 of the latter) as an "insurance policy."
Zlochevsky’s alleged reference to Joe Biden as the “big guy” appears independent of the apparent reference to the now-president as the “big guy” by a Hunter Biden business associate during negotiations with Chinese intelligence-linked businessmen. The China-related reference occurred in a May 2017 email not made public until October 2020.
Shapley said that Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf instructed FBI and IRS investigators not to ask witnesses about “dad” (Joe Biden) or about “the big guy.”
Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, Weiss’s office revealed in a court filing on Tuesday.
The IRS whistleblower claims detailing the politicization and slow-walking of the Justice Department investigation were made public on Thursday, including allegations that Weiss had sought special counsel status from the DOJ and sought to file charges in California and in the nation’s capital but was repeatedly denied. The whistleblowers also pointed to new apparent links between Joe Biden and his son’s China deals and that the FBI authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop by November 2019.
Friday, June 23, 2023
IRS whistleblower says FBI confirmed authenticity of Hunter Biden laptop in November 2019, almost one year before New York Post laptop story
“In October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that the laptop might contain evidence of a crime. The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID,” Shapley said.
The laptop’s contents linked Joe Biden to his son’s dealings, including in China and Ukraine — contradicting his public claims he never discussed business with his son Hunter or brother James Biden.
Despite the FBI’s internal corroboration, 51 former US intelligence agency leaders signed a pre-election letter saying that the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” ...
But behind the scenes, “when the FBI took possession of the device in December 2019, they notified the IRS that it likely contained evidence of tax crimes,” Shapley said.
Shapley, who has worked at the tax agency for 14 years, supervised a 12-person team that determined Hunter Biden had failed to pay $2.2 million on $8.3 million in income earned between 2014 and 2019 from foreign countries where his father held sway as vice president, such as China, Romania and Ukraine.
The case was resolved Tuesday with the announcement of a probation-only plea deal with the first son, despite investigators attempting to recommend felonies, Shapley and another IRS whistleblower told the committee.
On October 19, 2020 — the same date the “spies who lie” letter was fed to Politico — Shapley said he emailed Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf to tell her: “We need to talk about the computer.”
More.
So the Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf is the one who stymied the FBI investigation of Joe Biden's links to Hunter Biden's deals
[Whistleblower] Shapley said that, prior to the interview with [Hunter Biden business associate Rob] Walker, “we had obvious questions like who was H, who the big guy was, and why this percentage was to be held separately with the association hidden.” But the whistleblower said that Delaware assistant U.S. attorney Lesley Wolf “interjected and said she did not want to ask about the big guy” and stated that she did not want to ask questions about "dad."
The whistleblower said that “when multiple people in the room spoke up and objected that we had to ask, she responded, there's no specific criminality to that line of questioning.” Shapley said, “This upset the FBI too.”
“There were multiple times where Lesley Wolf said that she didn't want to ask questions about dad,” Shapley said. “We referred to Hunter Biden's father, you know, as dad.”
Shapley quoted the Delaware prosecutor as saying, “I don't want to talk about the big guy. I don't want to ask about dad. … Don't ask about the big guy.”
Shapley said, “The IRS and FBI agents conducting this interview [of Walker] tried to skirt AUSA Wolf's direction.” He added that the FBI agent tried to get Walker to talk about the email “while not directly contradicting” the direction by Wolf not to ask about “the big guy.”
The IRS whistleblower argued that “based on guidance provided by the prosecutors on a recurring basis to not look into anything related to President Biden, there is no way of knowing if evidence of other criminal activity existed concerning Hunter Biden or President Biden.”
The whistleblower said that “in August 2020, we got the results back from an iCloud search warrant” and that “the messages included material we clearly needed to follow up on.” Shapley said that “nevertheless, prosecutors denied investigators' requests to develop a strategy to look into the messages and denied investigators' suggestion to obtain location information to see where the texts were sent from.”
More.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Kim Strassel: Republicans should claw back $80 billion IRS infusion in wake of IRS targeting of Taibbi and Shapley
IRS Needs a Cage, Not More Cash
The cases of the whistleblower Gary Shapley and journalist Matt Taibbi show why the GOP should claw back that $80 billion infusion.
As House Republicans and the White House wrangle over a debt-ceiling deal, one GOP demand ought to be nonnegotiable. A politicized Internal Revenue Service has no business keeping its untrustworthy fingers on last year’s $80 billion cash infusion.
More.
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
IRS whistleblower says he and his entire team have been removed from the Hunter Biden investigation by Joe Biden's Department of Justice
ABC News, here.
Previously the whistleblower has alleged that the investigation of Hunter Biden is being mishandled.
Friday, January 20, 2023
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Monday, August 8, 2022
The Federal Government has been collecting record taxes for months, but that's not good enough for The Beast: The Manchin inflation bill gives the IRS $80 billion to collect even more, $204 billion extra in the next ten years
Meanwhile Sean Hannity on the radio is talking about anything but.
FEDS COLLECT RECORD TAXES... ^
FEDS COLLECT RECORD TAXES... ^
FEDS COLLECT RECORD TAXES... ^
FEDS COLLECT RECORD TAXES... ^
FEDS COLLECT RECORD TAXES... ^
Reconciliation bill includes nearly $80 billion for IRS including enforcement, audits: What that means for taxpayers :
Joe Manchin's gift to America: IRS gets a whopping 58% funding increase each and every year for ten years over fiscal 2021
They're coming for YOU.
The IRS spent $13.7 billion last year.
The Manchin bill gives the IRS an additional $79.6 billion over ten years:
. . . it will take time to phase in the added IRS funding . . .
CNBC says you WANTED this:
More than two-thirds of registered voters support boosting the IRS budget . . .
LOL, are YOU ever going to get it, good and hard.
Monday, March 14, 2022
Gold fanatics never mention the potentially bad tax news
The war in Ukraine has pushed more investors into gold, which some see as a “safe haven” in volatile times, and fueled a price rally. ...
Conversely, the capital-gains tax rate on collectibles aligns with these seven [ordinary income tax] rates, up to a 28% maximum. That means an investor whose annual income puts them in the 12% tax bracket would pay a 12% tax rate on their collectibles profits; an investor in the 37% bracket would be capped at 28% on their collectibles profits.