The IRS said Friday that it has recovered $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from high-income Americans who had either failed to file their returns or who hadn’t fully paid what they owed.
The announcement, made jointly with the U.S. Treasury Department, is aimed at highlighting the agency’s ramped-up enforcement efforts against tax cheats, which have been funded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
That IRS funding has proved controversial, with some Republican lawmakers falsely claiming the money would be used to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to “to audit Walmart shoppers.”
Does that somehow mean they’re not rich?
Side question. What is most people’s definition of “rich” these days?
Is it:
or
Obviously both can be true, depending on perspective. But being rich is a spectrum.
If you’re a poor studen, the 40 year old who can pay cash for a car but cannot retire still may seem rich but could very well be firmly middle class.
Someone in their 20s who never has to work is more likely to be considered rich by most anyone’s standards. But someone in their 70s who is living modestly in retirement would still meet your second definition but few would consider them actually rich.
I think using net worth is a better measuring stick. In the US someone worth more than $10m is almost certainly living very well off and most would consider them rich.
I agree with everything you said. However, your usage in your post didn’t seem to speak to age or a sliding spectrum, but something more objective. It felt you had envisioned someone who was “rich” by your own definition. I was curious what kind of person/net worth you were thinking about when that was posted.
Well the $70,000 average recouped per person in this effort would certainly imply that those targeted are indeed “rich”, or at least high income.
So an annual before tax income of $218,750 is considered rich then? (32% is the tax rate which would produce $70,000 tax liability in a single year). I understand this is purely subjective. There’s no right or wrong answer. I appreciate you sharing your view.
They probably mean that we’re still not targeting the right people. Well, all of the right people. Millionaires are definitely still on that list.