1y ago

The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations

gizmodo.com 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.

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.

34 comments

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.

They say "ai" but do they just mean software?
- 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.
- 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.

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.

You don't need AI to find the ultra-wealthy. You need AI to help target the majority.

Macine Learning models trained on capitalist propaganda: "the rich have earned their place and privilege, you should tax the Starbucks workers instead".

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?
  The agency clarified that AI will be used to initiate investigations into 75 of the largest U.S. partnerships that document assets that exceed $10 billion on average.
  It will reportedly be used to target hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, and law firms who may have skirted the rules, amounting to roughly 1,600 taxpayers in total who “owe hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.”

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... 🤔
- 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.
- 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.
- 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: https://www.propublica.org/article/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'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

They are gonna go after the ones that dont have tax lawyers on retainer.

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.

IRS works for the wealthy. Misleading title!
- The IRS is a criminal organization like most government branches

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%

34 comments