Tax Fraud And Tax Debt
On Capitol Hill this week… The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing Thursday to consider the nomination of the former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D) to be Social Security Commissioner.
Speaking of Social Security … TPC co-founder Eugene Steuerle has an opinion piece in The New York Times—coauthored with Stanford Business School lecturer Glenn Kramon—explaining why the country needs older Americans to work longer and expect less from the government. Otherwise, younger generations could lose out. They explain that Medicare and Social Security benefits are increasing while the number of workers available to support them is declining. “We acknowledge the unpopularity of this idea; look at protests in countries like France and Russia when they did this,” they write. “But some minds might be changed by noting that the big winners from growing retirement support are richer Americans, who tend to live longer.”
The IRS alleges about $3.4 billion in Employee Retention Credit fraud. The IRS Criminal Investigation Division is currently working through more than 300 cases involving the credit, reports TaxNotes (paywall). Many of them are relatively small, at $1 million or less.
Why does Microsoft owe the IRS $29 billion? Axios reports on how the IRS will attempt to calculate the penalties and interest on the company’s $29 billion tax bill dating back to 2004. It is the largest audit the IRS has ever attempted, all stemming from Microsoft’s attempt to book $70 billion in profits to a small factory in Puerto Rico that produced CDs for software storage.
In Scotland: A plan to tax cruise ships. The Scottish Green Party announced a new tax plan for visiting cruise ships that aims to address the challenges of harmful emissions and thousands of tourists in port communities. The tax would target the most heavily polluting vessels.
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