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Posts Tagged ‘IRS’

IRS erroneously considered Fortnite V-Bucks and Roblox Robux “virtual currencies” subject to taxation

The IRS removed language from their Web site that listed Fortnite V-Bucks and Roblox Robux as examples of convertible virtual currencies, like Bitcoin. They were included on a page about virtual currencies as they relate to a new question on IRS Form 1040 that asks whether the taxpayer, sold, exchanged, or acquired financial interest ...

The sordid tale of Microsoft’s epic tax evasion and the war they waged against the IRS

Microsoft maintains the fiction that it has sold its most valuable copyrights and other intangible assets to a tiny factory in Puerto Rico, where, thanks to promising to hire a mere 85 workers, it pays effective zero tax; the company transfers almost all its profits to this factory to "license" its own crown jewels, making ...

VICTORY! New Free File rules ban tax-prep firms from hiding their offerings, allow IRS to compete with them (a love-letter to Propublica)

Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest people in America millions and millions of dollars, every single year.

The scam is one of those baroque, ultimately boring and complex stories that generally ...

Suppressed internal emails reveal that the IRS actively helped tax-prep giants suppress Free File

America is one of the only wealthy countries where you have to pay someone to prepare your tax return; in most other countries, the national tax office prepares a return for you and if it looks right to you, you just sign it and return it (you can always prepare your own return, too, or ...

Leaks reveal how creepy, cultish monopolist Intuit lobbied Congress and the IRS to **** free tax-filing

Virtually every rich country on Earth provides pre-completed tax-returns that you can either ignore (and pay an accountant or do your own taxes), or just sign and return: after all, the government already knows what you're earning and how much tax you paid, so they can do all the heavy lifting for your annual return.

But ...

For the first time ever, taxes on the 400 richest Americans were lower than taxes on everyone else

In 2018, for the first time in recorded US history, the 400 richest American households paid a lower rate of tax than any other group of American taxpayers: 23%, down from 70% in 1950 and 47% in 1980.

The data come from a new book, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and ...

IRS admits it audits poor people because auditing rich people is too expensive

Nine years ago, Republican lawmakers gutted the IRS's budget, but didn't relax its requirement to conduct random audits: in response, the IRS has shifted its focus from auditing rich people (who can afford fancy accountants to use ***** tricks to avoid paying taxes) to auditing poor people (who can't afford professional help and might make ...

When Trump’s #TaxScam meant that affluent people no longer had to use the paid version of Turbotax, Turbotax started charging poor people, disabled people, students and elderly people

In most countries, you don't have to pay an accountant to prepare your tax return: the government already knows how much you made, so every year they just send you a pre-filled in form to check over and sign.

In the USA, the highly concentrated tax-prep industry used its lobbying muscle to suppress the creation of ...

Understanding “transfer pricing”: how corporations dodge taxes through financial colonialism

Every day, the world's poorest countries lose $3b in tax revenues as multinationals sluice their profits through their national boundaries in order to avoid taxes in rich countries, and then sluice the money out again, purged of tax obligations thanks to their exploitation of tax loopholes in poor nations.

The secret to all this tax-dodging is ...

How the super-rich defeated the IRS’s ***** Global High Wealth unit

In 2009, the IRS created a Global High Wealth Industry Group to audit the super-wealthy, staffing it with skilled lawyers and accountants who could unravel the webs of "trusts, foundations, limited liability companies, complex partnerships and overseas operations" that were used to hide the income of the super-rich from the tax-collector.

A decade later, the group's ...