‘No one at any income level should ever think they are safe in cheating on their taxes…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) According to a new U.S. Treasury inspector general’s report, almost 900,000 high-income taxpayers failed to file tax returns during the last two years of the Obama administration.
The result was $47.5 billion in unpaid taxes and lost government revenue.
What’s more, the Internal Revenue Service did not even attempt to collect tax debts in hundreds of thousands of cases.
The findings are at odds with an administration that campaigned on class warfare and blasting the so-called “top 1 percent” for not paying its “fair share” taxes.
The IRS under Barack Obama was exposed for targeting Tea Party groups, constitutional and free-market conservative nonprofits, and wealthy Americans of opposing political persuasions.
It’s unclear whether the stunning amount of overlooked delinquencies and uncollected tax debts in the twilight phase of Obama’s presidency was by design or the result of mass incompetence.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on Thursday to find out.
“The IRS should make sure its enforcement efforts are fair across the board. No one at any income level should ever think they are safe in cheating on their taxes,” Grassley wrote.
The Treasury report cited 369,180 cases of high-income earners that failed to file tax returns, representing $20.8 billion, where the IRS never even bothered to review their files.
The IRS was also shelving certain delinquent cases months after they were overdue, rather than keeping them open as permitted and pursuing billions of dollars in unpaid tax debts.
Grassley is specifically seeking information about the criteria auditors used to decide which cases to discontinue collection efforts.
“Surely you remember the late billionaire Leona Helmsley having been quoted as saying, ‘Only the little people pay taxes,’ and you likely also remember that Ms. Helmsley served time in federal prison after having been convicted on tax-evasion charges,” Grassley wrote.
“It is important that American taxpayers do not come to view Ms. Helmsley’s selfish words as prophetic.”