The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the agency of the United States federal government that collects income tax and various employment, corporate and estate taxes, among others. It is responsible for enforcing tax laws relating to the United States federal budget. Faced with the surge in violations of tax standards, through cryptos, it created, in 2021, an Office to centralize its efforts in the investigation of digital assets. The prerogatives of the Office are extended to cybercrime, digital forensics and support for physical forensics. The Bureau is currently working on hundreds of tax fraud cases, carried out through cryptos.
Americans Are Increasingly Bypassing the Tax System With Cryptos
Last Thursday, the IRS Criminal Investigations Division announcement that it constitutes hundreds of files on the cryptos. These files, which aim to indict perpetrators of tax evasion via digital assets, will soon be made public. This was stated by the head of the division, Jim Lee, as part of the publication of his annual report.
He explains that these cases include offenses in which cryptos are exchanged for fiat currency. This, without there having been any declarations to the tax authorities. The manager explains that competent services have observed many changes in tax evasion in recent years.
“Over the past three years, I have seen a big change in digital asset investigations. Previously, most of them were related to money laundering. But tax cases now make up about half of those investigations.”, regretted Jim Lee. The IRS official announced that his services will make more efforts to combat the phenomenon, via cryptos.
87,000 people to better counter fraud?
Last March, The Block has reported comments from an agency official, who announced that more and more requests for information will be sent to exchanges, in order to list cases of tax evasion, via cryptos. The authorities are also considering an increase in the number of tax offences. For this, they plan to recruit new IRS agents. A policy that many people criticize on social networks. The figure of 87,000 new has been mentioned.
The protesters notably received the support of Tiffany Smiley, Republican candidate for the Washington senatorial elections.
“I will certainly make sure the 87,000 IRS agents don’t come after our small businesses and hard-working families in Washington. Those earning $25,000 a year are five times more likely to be audited by the IRS”she said.
One of the most recurring criticisms of the IRS is that it only attacks people with modest incomes. At the same time, the richest in the United States are those who pay the least taxes. Separately, Lee said investigations seized about $7 billion in cryptos this year. This is double the total of the previous year.
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