The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Most of us, if we were billionaires (or will be soon), probably wouldn’t mind showing the world just how wealthy we are.  Sure, you could buy that super yacht, a palace or two, maybe an island in the Caribbean, but easier to brag would be just let the folks back home take a gander at the last few years of tax returns.  Okay, maybe it might prove embarrassing that you didn’t pay very much on millions of earnings, but that’s just you, the big boyz don’t apologize for deductions and deferments and carried over losses and all the rest of the loopholes in tax laws.  After all, they didn’t pay all that money for lobbyists to end up paying what you pay.  Wake up!  The rich get richer, ever hear that little jingle?

But my man Trump isn’t like most billionaires.  He actually prefers to brag about his money, not show you his money, and he certainly doesn’t want anyone peeking at his tax returns.  You might think a savvy businessman who’s gone through more than a few bankruptcies and is still a billionaire would be amused if not outright happy to let the gawking losers check out how a winner wins.  Oh sure, the trolls think maybe he isn’t as rich as he says, maybe only a one billion billionaire, not the bragging amount.  Trust me, I could get over any embarrassment over exaggerating a billion or three.  You probably could too.

So what makes the King of the Casinos, the Entrepreneur who can sell his naming rights for millions, what makes him want to hide those tax returns?  Couldn’t be fear of an audit.  After all, he claims he would show them to us soon as the current IRS audit is concluded.  Meaning, if my logic isn’t haywire, he’s already being audited.  Ya think?

If you ever wonder why the GOP fights to defund the IRS, I can’t think of a better example than Donald J. Trump.  Hire a team of lawyers and accountants, play fast and loose with the loopholes, then count on the IRS being a little too undermanned to come checking.  Maybe making these returns public might be Clue 1 that a lot was hidden, a great deal was bogus and the light of day might just be the first step in a real audit. Like the man in the movie said, Show us the Money!

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Maybe you read about the mega Inflation Reduction Act that just got signed into law, the one that addresses climate change and prescription drug prices and health care subscriptions … and gives money to fund some auditors for the IRS.  According to the social media platform Hair on Fire. com, this is nothing short of hiring Nazi accountants to raid your bank accounts, haul you in for tax fraud and probably throw you and your children into jail for non-compliance.  Just another government intrusion into your personal life and worse, your personal finances.

Now, if you’re like me, a guy near the bottom of the economic totem pole, I honestly doubt the IRS will come to my door, turn me upside down and shake the pennies and nickels from my pockets.  What I do think they’ll do is finally go after the corporate tax dodgers who use questionable deductions, shaky strategies and outright tax dodges, fully expecting no audit, no accountability and no risk for taking a shot on their tax forms.  Who wouldn’t if you had high powered CPA’s and tax lawyers on retainer who say, well, it’s worth a shot.

I’ve never understood why Joe Sixpack would be afraid of the IRS.  Buddy, the laws were written by the rich, not by the factory workers or the fast food folks, whatdja think?  Or were you thinking at all?  C’mon, Joe, the game is rigged and if you haven’t figured that out since 5^th grade, you need to get off social media and pay some attention to the alarm bells in your head. The rich don’t get richer because they follow Instagram and Tik Tok, they get rich because you do…. Wake up and smell the money, pal.  They wrote the tax laws, amigo, and they have attorneys and CPA’s and accounting firms to worm their way around the intricacies the rest of us won’t understand in a lifetime of Turbo-Tax fill-ins.

So if you read that the IRS is arming themselves with AR-15’s so they can come to your rental apartment or your trailer door to squeeze another couple bucks from your puny wages, think it through a little harder, why don’tcha?  You really think some white collar decent wage goon is going to audit you, find that math error on your 1040-EZ, probably lose money on the time spent, but report back to his supervisors that the investigation lost hundreds of dollars but hey, we put it to the guy all right, we showed him who’s boss, he won’t forget to doublecheck his additions and subtractions next year, that’s for sure!  So yeah, stop the IRS from collecting from the rich and the corporations.  You probably feel okay about funding the Defense Department  all by yourself.  Or do you think we have an army so they can subjugate you next?

Oh, and here’s something else.  They don’t need to.  You’ve already volunteered for slavery.

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From the New York Times: BIDEN’S PROPOSAL TO EMPOWER IRS RATTLES BANKS AND THEIR CUSTOMERS

This is the sort of story I love. Sleepy Joe wants to find folks who hide their assets, work under the table or just plain scam the tax folks. Billions of dollars are lost, meaning, you and me pick up an even larger share of the defense budget. The rich, the corporations, the Pandora folks, well, we’re happy to spare them the burden of helping with health care or cancer cures or infrastructure rebuilding or education or … well, almost everything. Spare the rich! The American motto these days. Amazon pay taxes? Gee, why, they’re the job creators.

So here’s the New York Times story that the Big Banks (oh, and their customers, at least the Big Boys) are rattled that the IRS might be peeking at their finances. It’s okay that they look at mine, I guess, but whoa, that’s an invasion of privacy when they check into folks with a helluva lot of money and lawyers who can hide it for them. The Republicans, those good fellas who keep harping about the deficits and the debt ceiling, asking how are we going to pay for these programs for the poor, for climate change mitigation, for new infrastructure, for safety needs, for all that stuff that looks like socialism to them, they’re unwilling to hire more IRS auditors to make sure the tax cheaters pay their fair share, oh no, not that! Better to forget about those programs than find an honest way to fund them.

I’m a customer of my bank and I can tell you with some certainty, I’m not rattled by empowering the IRS to collect taxes that aren’t being paid right now. It’s a little like telling the cops don’t arrest the folks in the mansions, better to go after the petty crooks. Wait, we basically do that now. The rich made the tax laws and even then there are plenty of them who want to keep all their money, to hell with the needs of the larger society. They’re privileged and they want to keep it that way. The debt ceiling the GOP doesn’t want to raise is, in good part, the debt incurred by reducing even further the taxes on the wealthy and the corporations. God forbid we audit them to see if they’re playing by the rules. So no, I’m not rattled, but … I wouldn’t mind rattling their cages.

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