Re:How Billionaire Robert Smith Avoided Indictment in Multim...
by briffle on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @01:00PM
(#26016733)
To a person dealing with the IRS over millions, a whole team of lawyers at $1k/hour each is a drop in the bucket. to a person who cheated uncle sam of $2k, its cheaper to settle (even with penalties) than to hire a single lawyer to represent them. That is why the IRS loves going after the little guys, they don't fight back.
Re:How Billionaire Robert Smith Avoided Indictment in Multim...
by sokoloff on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @01:55PM
(#26017560)
They often don’t fight back because it’s often a fairly clear-cut matter where the taxpayer is in the wrong and both sides just move to resolution.
Re:How Billionaire Robert Smith Avoided Indictment in Multim...
by golf1052 on Wednesday February 03, 2021 @04:21PM
(#26019260)
Loves is a strong word. I think it makes more sense to say that the IRS doesn't have the budget or resources to go after the big players. Yes, people cheating only $2k probably won't pay for a lawyer but from the IRS side it's just much simpler to analyze and prove that person is in the wrong. See this article from ProPublica https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
another way to think of this is in the difference of relationship to money between a billionaire and a in comparison poor person. give 2K to the avg Joe/Jane they'll circulate it back into the market by purchasing while the billionaire sees themself as a "steward of their fortune" and who would keep in their accounts. (also the reason why trickle-down Reaganomics doesn't work).
Also to a billionaire there is a high chance justifying tax-avoidance (and evasion) is easier since they anyway do it using multinational corporations. And obvs. it's more work to go after big cases where the fight is about proofing overstepping the line between avoidance/evasion while with poor people the case is usually about just evasion.
I'll continue to recommend this here whenever the topic comes up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...