this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
792 points (98.4% liked)

News

23268 readers
3786 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel said that with a boost in federal funding and the help of artificial intelligence tools, the agency has new means of targeting wealthy people who have “cut corners” on their taxes.

“If you pay your taxes on time it should be particularly frustrating when you see that wealthy filers are not,” Werfel told reporters in a call previewing the announcement. He said 1,600 millionaires who owe at least $250,000 each in back taxes and 75 large business partnerships that have assets of roughly $10 billion on average are targeted for the new “compliance efforts.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] solstice@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

I'm a cpa, and from what I can tell I'm the only one on Lemmy, god help me, so I'll chime in.

Partnerships with $10 billion assets are no joke so I would imagine they are businesses like real estate holding companies, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, things like that. Probably clients of a Big 4 like PWC Deloitte EY or KPMG.

The thing about entities like that is that they tend to be insanely complicated with TONS of moving parts. They'll be dealing with complex financial instruments, partners coming in and out, financing structures that aren't at all straightforward (if you've seen Shark Tank Mr Wonderful is infamous for offering complex financing deals rather than straight equity deals) plus international tax complications, book/tax timing differences, and all kinds of other stuff I can't begin to get into.

Oh, and that's just the tax side of it all. That's not even starting to talk about the actual accounting, recording the transactions, balance sheets, income statements, and so on, which is an enormous layer of complexity before we even think about tax. Zillions of moving parts with plenty of room for errors and omissions.

Partnerships don't pay tax at the business level so the individuals who own them need to report the income and activity on their personal returns and pay tax at that level. It's not at all easy reporting their share of activity from entities like hedge funds and PE so plenty of mistakes are made, some quite substantial. Im guessing they are going to look at the partnerships first and compare to the biggest owners returns to make sure everything jives.

I find this news great. Our industry often faces challenges due to time constraints, budget limitations, client-provided data quality, logistics, and so on. Unethical behavior is rare among practitioners, but there are some shady ones. Typically, we defer issues, leaving them for others to handle, which seldom result in consequences.

Throughout my career, the IRS has never questioned our filed returns for individuals or businesses. We've received notices, mostly related to administrative matters rather than full audits.

A strengthened IRS enhances compliance, but the accounting industry is strained with few professionals and a lack of future talent. We already cut corners for efficiency, so aiming for flawless accuracy could pose a significant problem. It's just another challenge to add to our list...

[–] mycall@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does the gaps inside the flaws of accuracy often incur fill ins black market entities?

[–] solstice@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase please?

load more comments (9 replies)