The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Uncle Sam Wants to Check Your Tax Return—If You’re Part of the "Working Poor"

Feb 19, 2001

In 1999, if you made less than $25,000, your tax returns were more likely to be audited by the IRS than if you made more than $100,000.

For the highest income bracket, that is, those making more than a million a year, the I.R.S. checked up on only one% of taxpayers in 1999–only half as many as were checked the year before.

But if you used a tax break called the "Earned Income Tax Credit," which is only available to single parents earning less than $25,000, your chances of being audited were excellent. The I.R.S. directed 44% of all audits against this one small group of taxpayers.

Even if it were true that all the people using the Earned Income Tax Credit were cheating–and it certainly is not true–all the government could collect from them would not make a tiny% of the amount that ONE multi-millionaire could keep from the taxman with both legal and illegal methods of avoiding taxes.

Don’t forget, the tax laws were written by that millionaires’ club known as Congress.