solstice @ solstice @lemmy.world

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Sort of. The IRS has an office of criminal investigations which is more equivalent to like an FBI raid with armed agents going to your home or a business and seizing your shit, maybe making arrests. I've personally never seen this or even heard of it second hand, but I've read about it. It's extremely rare and as you said you usually have ample opportunity to deescalate before it gets to that point. Overall though the term audit is just a third party reviewing your work for accuracy, which could be a simple smell check review, or a long laborious process going dumpster diving with a microscope looking at everything. It's unclear from the article what this is going to be.

The thing is, much of the complexity is directly in response to the stunts jackasses have pulled over the decades, to prevent that from happening again.

Complexity aside, focusing on sheer logistics, to do a true full scale 'drop your shorts and cough' audit, the auditor would need to cross-reference receipts and bank statements to financial statements, then to the business returns, and follow it all to the individual owners.

That's a colossal task, and it's just too much work, not enough time to do it, and not enough qualified people to do it. Hopefully AI can assist in streamlining this process significantly in the future but who knows.

I'm a cpa, and from what I can tell I'm the only one on Lemmy, god help me, so I'll chime in.

Partnerships with $10 billion assets are no joke so I would imagine they are businesses like real estate holding companies, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, things like that. Probably clients of a Big 4 like PWC Deloitte EY or KPMG.

The thing about entities like that is that they tend to be insanely complicated with TONS of moving parts. They'll be dealing with complex financial instruments, partners coming in and out, financing structures that aren't at all straightforward (if you've seen Shark Tank Mr Wonderful is infamous for offering complex financing deals rather than straight equity deals) plus international tax complications, book/tax timing differences, and all kinds of other stuff I can't begin to get into.

Oh, and that's just the tax side of it all. That's not even starting to talk about the actual accounting, recording the transactions, balance sheets, income statements, and so on, which is an enormous layer of complexity before we even think about tax. Zillions of moving parts with plenty of room for errors and omissions.

Partnerships don't pay tax at the business level so the individuals who own them need to report the income and activity on their personal returns and pay tax at that level. It's not at all easy reporting their share of activity from entities like hedge funds and PE so plenty of mistakes are made, some quite substantial. Im guessing they are going to look at the partnerships first and compare to the biggest owners returns to make sure everything jives.

I find this news great. Our industry often faces challenges due to time constraints, budget limitations, client-provided data quality, logistics, and so on. Unethical behavior is rare among practitioners, but there are some shady ones. Typically, we defer issues, leaving them for others to handle, which seldom result in consequences.

Throughout my career, the IRS has never questioned our filed returns for individuals or businesses. We've received notices, mostly related to administrative matters rather than full audits.

A strengthened IRS enhances compliance, but the accounting industry is strained with few professionals and a lack of future talent. We already cut corners for efficiency, so aiming for flawless accuracy could pose a significant problem. It's just another challenge to add to our list...

I guess I meant I didn't realize these things can and do swing back and forth with the political pendulum. It just felt more permanent ish than that, idk.

Why, because it's cheaper to get sued for a few bucks than to not be a shitty company? Interesting. Like Ed Norton's car recall equation in Fight Club. Got a source? Not challenging you but I'm curious if that's your opinion or a known concept.

Feels like every Evil Corporation (tm) has gone this route. In ye olden days it used to be a competitive market where businesses tried to provide the best product and services for the best prices. Then at some point everyone collectively decided to start doing as little as possible without getting sued. I'm so sick of it.

Regarding tax compliance for individuals, if you have the slightest complications in your financial situation, it might be best to pay a small time preparer $500 to deal with the hassle. Software isn't cheap these days so might as well pay a small premium for the better service a pro provides. (Disclaimer: I am a pro so my opinion is biased.)

Question: can we expect net neutrality rules to change every 4/8 years with each new administration?

How will that impact everything, broadly speaking? Unstable rules and regs are hard to work around.

People were sending Ajit Pai death threats. Were they aware his rules would be reversed in4-8 years? It sure seemed serious a few years ago (not violently serious but a major issue for sure). I feel misled for not knowing regs will change real quick.

Just curious, I have no idea how this sort of thing works.

My mistake, misread the post thanks. Horrible, poor woman.

change their minds

Good luck with that 🤣 I do this too though so again I acknowledge my hypocrisy.

Holy shit is 74 lashes even survivable?? I feel like it would flay the flesh off his her back and never recover, die from infection or something. Not a doctor and not a torturer so idk.

Humans created all religions. Seems like the problem is in our firmware :/

There are SO MANY contrarian assholes on lemmy it's just staggering. You found another one congrats. I'll hypocritically suggest you disengage, although they're fun to poke with sticks.

Personally I'm convinced they are chatbots designed to drive engagement and increase posting. At least I hope so, because the alternative is that all the assholes and morons on this site are real actual people and that's a super depressing thought.

All things considered, I think our institutions are holding up pretty well. The coup attempt failed and the election was certified. Trump tried to coerce Georgia into falsifying the election results and failed. Trump stole classified documents and the agencies responsible for that escalated appropriately to the point where he got raided by the FBI. The DOJ is prosecuting all these accordingly. It took longer than I would like but overall it's going pretty well.

We have enormous issues to address but it's hard to attend to domestic policy if our democracy is effectively destroyed with the inauguration of a tyrant who stole an election. That's pretty much game over..

Freedom of the press isn't worth much though when the most watched "news" network is the propaganda machine for one party right? If a hundred million people watch the Disinformation Channel and ignore reality then all the free press in the world won't help IMO

I hear you, it is an interesting cultural and quasi historic experience. It's fun to go back and compare commercials over the decades.

They aren't creating awareness of their brand, so much as they are making people associate their brand with being pissed off. Looking at you Liberty.

You actually find ads blaring at you amusing? What a truly horrid unpopular opinion. I'll respect that though if you're actually serious but it's hard for me to comprehend.

I'm always disgusted with tv ads and it blows me away that people just let commercials scream at them all day to buy viagra, anal leakage meds, insurance etc. Why would you let that shit in your home? Ugh

It's a costume party!! Not an actual job! How tf are they at all the same thing 😂 🤦‍♂️