Nobody actually likes the Internal Revenue Service….
But agencies job IS to collect money for the government to pay its bills….
Ever since the Republicans have controlled Congress?
The agency has had its budget hacked away….
Now the agency ran afoul of Republicans back a while ago when it went after non-profit rightwingnut groups…..
Angered?
The Republicans have seemed and exacted revenge…..
They also have made sure that the rich and corporation’s have less to worry about from the tax man/women….
Along with the Republican way of doing things ?
Poor tax payers of course don’t get the breaks rich ones do….
Corporations and the wealthy are the biggest beneficiaries of the IRS’ decay. Most Americans’ interaction with the IRS is largely automated. But it takes specialized, well-trained personnel to audit a business or a billionaire or to unravel a tax scheme — and those employees are leaving in droves and taking their expertise with them. For the country’s largest corporations, the danger of being hit with a billion-dollar tax bill has greatly diminished. For the rich, who research shows evade taxes the most, the IRS has become less and less of a force to be feared.
The story has been different for poor taxpayers. The IRS oversees one of the government’s largest anti-poverty programs, the earned income tax credit, which provides cash to the working poor. Under continued pressure from Republicans, the IRS has long made a priority of auditing people who receive that money, and as the IRS has shrunk, those audits have consumed even more resources, accounting for 36 percent of audits last year. The credit’s recipients — whose annual income is typically less than $20,000 — are now examined at rates similar to those who make $500,000 to $1 million a year. Only people with incomes above $1 million are examined much more frequently.
We submitted a detailed list of questions to the IRS and asked about the budget cuts’ effects on the agency’s enforcement efforts. The agency replied with a brief statement. “The IRS has substantial resources to identify and audit noncompliant taxpayers and continues to deter those attempting to evade their legal obligations,” it said.
In ProPublica’s interviews with dozens of tax professionals and more than 50 former and current IRS employees — part of an ongoing series on the state of tax enforcement — many agency veterans wondered whether the damage of the past several years will ever be undone. And they had a greater worry: that the American public will inevitably realize how weak the IRS has become….