The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations
(gizmodo.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Sep 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/4809242
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Sep 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/4809242
The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations::The agency is adding AI tools to identify taxpayers who make $1 million and up, and have more than $250,000 in tax evasion.
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Funny that they have to resort to artificial intelligence to accomplish what they should have been doing all along.
It makes a person wonder if the IRS has any real life intelligence… 🤔
The issue isn’t intelligence. The issue is that they’re terribly understaffed. So they’ll use their staff to go after a larger group of small offenders instead of going after the few at the top who have big lawyers. Using AI, hopefully they can target the people who can truly afford to pay their taxes. Or we can also budget more towards funding the IRS properly and getting way more taxes paid overall as a result.
Rs will not allow any more funding for the IRS. You saw how they freaked out when there was finding to hire new IRS agents as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, even though it was to replace existing agents as they retire, not expand the workforce.
They do have intelligence, but that intelligence is deliberately underfunded to prevent this very situation. It’s impossible to navigate the mountains of paperwork and legal loopholes the ultra-wealthy use with so few hands. That’s why poorer filers get audited more often: less leg work, easier wins, at the expense of real revenue and justice against tax evaders.
Decades of budget cuts by Congress have made it so they just don’t have the staff necessary to untangle the web of financial transactions that the ultra-wealthy use to hide their tax evasion. Using AI allows them to do so despite the perpetual budget cuts.
There was an article a while ago about how the IRS isn’t funded or staffed enough. Money spent on it is a net profit for the government, but many people (mostly conservatives) don’t care about that. 2018 so partly out of date: www.propublica.org/…/how-the-irs-was-gutted
How ironic, an organization designed to collect money let’s rich people slide, and they can’t afford enough qualified employees. Wonder what’s wrong with that picture… 🤔
If they hadn’t been letting the rich slide, they wouldn’t be in that dilemma to begin with.
They are not a for-profit organization. They get however much Congress gives them and that’s it.
IRS collects taxes, taxes go to the government, to be distributed out for all the various governing organizations and government projects and such.
A portion of that goes right back to the IRS to pay the employees, otherwise I’m pretty sure nobody would even go to work for the IRS. Non-profit doesn’t mean they work for free ya know.
Now you’d figure that if congress wanted to rake in more tax money, they’d ya know, like actually want to fund the IRS a bit more and want to tax the rich.
Please with the terrible takes. People with lots of money lobby governments to underfunded the irs so they can have more money.
1 million plus is not ultra wealthy lmao. Yes I see the second condition
Whatever world you live in where a million dollars income in one tax year is not considered ultra wealthy is dumb
It’s a ton don’t get me wrong but I’ve had clients who regularly make $50 million + annually on average. They spend a million bucks a year on household employees alone. Different world up there.
$650,000 a year puts a household into the 1%
This feels like “the ultra wealthy have already squeezed all the money they can out of the poor and lower middle class, so now they are starting to cannibalize the merely wealthy.”
I know the wealthy don’t see this directly, but if it keeps the machinery of government running so they can continue to benefit and they can mine it out through subsidies and backroom graft.
I am not saying that these millionaires shouldn’t get targeted for not paying their taxes, but the IRS should start at the top and work their way down.
Did you read the article?
They’ve been doing this for decades… AI, machine learning, statistics… the media thinks these words are perfectly interchangeable but AI gets the most clicks
Probably some fodder for the “defund the IRS” club.
I’ll believe it when i see it. The amount of lost funds from multi millionaires and billionaires would easily pay for the staff required and yet they don’t do it. It has always felt like an intentional act ignoring the wealthy to keep money in the US. Cheat on taxes as long as you keep your business woth us.
Worth noting Biden recently put something like $60-$80 billion into improving the IRS.
Counterpoint: one time he fell over and sometimes he speak bad
Pay more to buy politicians, which are way less than what it costs to pay taxes.
IRS works for the wealthy. Misleading title!
The IRS is a criminal organization like most government branches
They say “ai” but do they just mean software?
Probably machine learning models, as usual. Which may or may not be classified as AI.
Either way, useful in statistical problems like this.
Edit: reading the press release, yep, machine learning.
All software is now AI. The sensor that tells your fridge to turn off when it’s cold enough? Well that makes a decision of some kind, so AI. The cook timer on your microwave? AI. Your thermostat? Definitely AI.
Old-school AI systems from way back in the day called Expert Systems were just a crapload of IF statements. There’s never been a concrete agreed-upon definition of AI because there’s never been an agreed-upon definition of the word Intelligence.
They are gonna go after the ones that dont have tax lawyers on retainer.
Macine Learning models trained on capitalist propaganda: “the rich have earned their place and privilege, you should tax the Starbucks workers instead”.
You don’t need AI to find the ultra-wealthy. You need AI to help target the majority.
This is exactly the type of techno-authoritarianism Orwell warned us about.
That’s true, I remember the part of 1984 where Winston was taken to Room 101 and forced to pay his taxes.
They’re not going to spend a dime of it helping anyone. It’s going to go to bombs and drones and domestic surveillance, just like the money they already collect