As IRS audits waned, big businesses racked up unapproved tax breaks

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Federal audits of corporate tax returns have plunged in recent years, letting big companies claim elaborate tax breaks with less government scrutiny, according to a Washington Post analysis of company filings.

Accounting rules permit businesses to claim tax breaks even if they are likely to be overturned by tax authorities, legal experts said. In the past, the Internal Revenue Service audited virtually every tax return filed by large corporations and rejected tax breaks it deemed inappropriate, data show.

But during the Obama administration, congressional Republicans moved to slash the IRS budget, shrinking the agency’s staff and straining its ability to conduct audits. As a result, the federal government now examines just half of all large company tax returns, despite businesses claiming increasing tax benefits over this period that they say could be overturned by authorities, according to regulatory filings, interviews with tax policy experts and data from the IRS and financial researcher Calcbench.

Companies currently in the S&P 500 index had $235 billion in tax breaks awaiting audit at the end of last year, up 43 percent from a decade earlier, data show. These tax breaks, defined by companies as “unrecognized” or “uncertain” tax benefits, include deductions that companies see as unlikely to be approved by authorities because they rely on disputable interpretations of the tax code, experts said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/14/corporate-tax-break-irs/?itid=hp-top-table-main

[sprinkleeninow]

1. Oh, but they scrutinize small potatoes filers and afford them agita. n/t

[stopdiggin]

2. Auditing is down across the board

let's not sling around BS just because it makes a popular meme. Crippling the IRS's ability to do it's job was an intentional act of sabotage by the GOP. But the idea that the IRS then 'dug in' against poor Joe Sixpack - is just patently false.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/08/attention-taxpayers-irs-audits-have-fallen-significantly.html

Key points -
- The IRS audited roughly 1 out of every 220 individual taxpayers last year. A decade ago, those odds were closer to 1 in 90.
- The drop in audits correlates to budget and personnel reductions at the tax agency.
- Wealthy Americans are much more likely to be audited than low- and middle-income taxpayers.

[sprinkleeninow]

3. I'll clarify. Not necessarily auditing activity. Just general busting ordinary peoples' chops and

allowing 'some' others to escape scrutiny.

I was a recipient of a hardship situation.

[stopdiggin]

4. And I'll reiterate - as per the link

Everybody is getting less scrutiny now than they were before.

The consequences of allowing large corporations and the very wealthy to skate is (rather self evidently) of more consequence to the big picture ...

But I'm not going pander to the theme that this is coming at the expense of poor old Mom and Pop. Sorry if your experience got you sideways with somebody ... Perhaps you're entitled to your personal animus ... But the big picture is still less enforcement across the board.

[sprinkleeninow]

5. Awright awready. Love ya❣