In the IRS crosshairs: the wealthy and charities (lawyers, how much, economy)

[lifelongMOgal]

IRS audits jump by 11%. Nothing like the federal government targeting specific groups of people instead of treating every tax return the same.

IRS audits jump by 11 percent; wealthiest targeted - Yahoo! Finance (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/IRS-audits-jump-by-11-percent-apf-557157715.html?x=0&.v=4 - broken link)

Where were Timothy Geithner and Charlie Rangle's returns during these audits?

[sanspeur]

It's the churches that should be in the cross hairs...Taxing their income and their property would likely wipe out the deficit.

[Winter_Sucks]

The tax code is too complex. We could grow our economy and spend less money trying to collect taxes if we had a simple tax code. We need to put tax lawyers out of business.

[seattlerain]

The IRS has very good reason to target the wealthy, they are more likely to cheat.

Forbes.com: Rich Cheat More On Taxes, New Study Shows

[parfleche]

Originally Posted by sanspeur

It's the churches that should be in the cross hairs...Taxing their income and their property would likely wipe out the deficit.

You left out charities, soup kitchens,hospitals and homeless shelters .Oh maybe not, my bad

[texdav]

Originally Posted by Winter_Sucks

The tax code is too complex. We could grow our economy and spend less money trying to collect taxes if we had a simple tax code. We need to put tax lawyers out of business.

Yep;it's the rtax code. If it were based purely on income then it would be easy to collect billions from millions of cheats.

[Jaggy001]

Audits are great. We got audited a few years back and got $12k refunded.

To quote our tax guys .... the IRS won't be back anytime soon. We buried them

[sanspeur]

Originally Posted by parfleche

You left out charities, soup kitchens,hospitals and homeless shelters .Oh maybe not, my bad

\

I did? What I'm talking about is taxing the church and it's property. The money spent on soup kitchens and other charities would be a write off.

Today, there are 740 mega-churches in the USA. The most common trait that these churches share is their size; average number of worshipers is 3,646, up 4% from last year, according to Vaughn. But they also demonstrate business savvy, with many holding conferences (47%) and using radio (44%) and television (38%), according to a 1999 survey conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The average net income of megachurches was estimated at $4.8 million by that same survey. http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/17/cz_...egachurch.html

They are nothing more than businesses and I think should be taxed.

[cruxan]

Originally Posted by sanspeur

\

I did? What I'm talking about is taxing the church and it's property. The money spent on soup kitchens and other charities would be a write off.

Today, there are 740 mega-churches in the USA. The most common trait that these churches share is their size; average number of worshipers is 3,646, up 4% from last year, according to Vaughn. But they also demonstrate business savvy, with many holding conferences (47%) and using radio (44%) and television (38%), according to a 1999 survey conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The average net income of megachurches was estimated at $4.8 million by that same survey. Megachurches, Megabusinesses - Forbes.com

They are nothing more than businesses and I think should be taxed.

i agree..lots of money in them prayers.. wow nice organ, wonder how much money that thing cost.. they realy know how to help the meek ohhh zod.!!

[parfleche]

3,646 worshipers is a mega church? how can we tax them! got any other ideas to stop gov spending genius