Is the IRS Targeting Latinos?
It’s official, barrios are not safe places to live, but not for the reason you may think. It’s not gang-bangers or the usual suspects you need fear, it’s the IRS!
That’s what CNN’s Money.com says. They published a study done by Thomas M. Evans, CEO of TaxLifeboat, who gives advice to folks who have problems with the IRS. Thomas found that the taxman has a thing against Latino’s and blacks: a disproportionate amount of tax enforcement actions.
But Thomas comes to the taxman’s defense (two words I never thought I’d write together in a sentence). The article says Thomas “stresses strongly that the disproportionate number of IRS actions against minorities isn’t intentional. Rather, he charges, it’s the result of overly rigid, highly-automated enforcement policies that waste taxpayer money by pursuing low-earners who either can’t pay, or owe virtually nothing.”
Wait, “overly rigid, highly-automated enforcement policies” is a defense? The article points out that the problem isn’t that the IRS targets minorities, but that it’s ineffective because minorities have no money. Blessed are the poor!
This is how Thomas did some digging and connected some dots: “Evans examined the 1,000 zip codes where the IRS had filed the largest number of liens from July 2009 to July 2010. He then mined the 2000 Census, the most recent source available, to determine the racial makeup of those areas.”
He found that “on average, the populations of those 1,000 locales with the nation’s highest level of tax enforcement were 22% African-American and 24% Hispanic. That’s approximately double the proportion of those minorities in entire country.”
¡Hazme el tiznado favor!
The IRS justifies this by saying that Latinos commit the violations that are easiest to detect. Here’s a tip, not that you’d need it, of course: “The IRS’s powerful computers screen the W-2 forms from employers against the returns filed by individuals. If the worker didn’t file a return at all, or if they claim too many exemptions, the IRS automatically launches an “examination.”
The real reason, though, is that many Latinos believe that the amount withheld from their wages is enough to pay their tax bill, so they don’t file a tax return. That or they claim too many exemptions, but that’s fodder for another story.
The take away (pun intended)? If you live in the barrio you need to watch your pay stub more than you need to watch your back.
