Our government LOVES fucking auditing the little guy.
Yes, and that's by design. Take this law for example. What the law does is when a cell phone company is audited to see if they are correctly collecting local sales tax, the state auditing the phone company has to go through the location data or each and every customer and inform the phone company of any discrepancies. And if they don't, they are immune from any tax liability. And when being audited, there's generally only a handful of auditors even for a company the size of AT&T. So what happens is that the state tax agencies say screw it, we'll audit Mo's Tavern down the street instead.
This is because the local dive bar doesn't have the protections in law that the mega corp gets, and an audit is actually manageable for one to two people to do. And this is all by design because the small business doesn't have the money to hire lobbyists and bribe politicians to get special breaks in the tax code.
The same thing happens at an individual income tax level too. It's much easier (and lucrative) for the government to go after the local dentist who makes just enough to be a juicy tax target and will only hire a CPA or a single tax attorney than a fortune 500 CEO who'll hire an army of lawyers that will bury the auditors in paperwork.
Yes, and that's by design. Take this law for example. What the law does is when a cell phone company is audited to see if they are correctly collecting local sales tax, the state auditing the phone company has to go through the location data or each and every customer and inform the phone company of any discrepancies. And if they don't, they are immune from any tax liability. And when being audited, there's generally only a handful of auditors even for a company the size of AT&T. So what happens is that the state tax agencies say screw it, we'll audit Mo's Tavern down the street instead.
This is because the local dive bar doesn't have the protections in law that the mega corp gets, and an audit is actually manageable for one to two people to do. And this is all by design because the small business doesn't have the money to hire lobbyists and bribe politicians to get special breaks in the tax code.
The same thing happens at an individual income tax level too. It's much easier (and lucrative) for the government to go after the local dentist who makes just enough to be a juicy tax target and will only hire a CPA or a single tax attorney than a fortune 500 CEO who'll hire an army of lawyers that will bury the auditors in paperwork.