IRS Overpaid by $6 Billion in Child Tax Credits in 2013
Although no one will probably ever shed a tear to hear that the IRS paid taxpayers too much money, this latest report does nothing to breed confidence in how things are run in the nation’s tax collecting agency.
According to reports, the IRS paid about $6 billion in child tax credits last year to people who shouldn’t have received them. The payments were made to people from all kinds of circumstances, including those who accidently claimed the wrong amount, those who shouldn’t have claimed the credit at all, and to others who simply committed tax fraud. The numbers come from an audit performed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax administration.
This credit has been a huge benefit to those families with children who do not make enough to pay federal income tax, as well as to other low-income families. The government has for years claimed that there is not a lot of risk involved with the child tax credit and improper payments. However, the results of this new audit would strongly suggest otherwise.
Even though the Inspector General made several suggestions, the IRS did not agree with many of them. However, in a statement, the nations’ federal tax agency did admit that new processes are needed in order to reduce the number of incorrect payments. A total of $57 billion in child tax credits were paid to more than 36 million families in 2013, with between $5.9 billion and $7.1 billion being improper payments.
Should the IRS File Your Taxes for You?
Imagine a world where you didn’t have to file your own taxes. Of course, you can use an experienced and professional tax and accounting firm like GROCO to do your taxes for you, but what if you didn’t even have to send your tax return information to an accountant? Could that ever really happen? In…
Unstable Stock Market Could Hurt State Tax Budgets
While many feel the wealthy should be paying more in taxes, the efforts to enforce this strategy does have some consequences for state budgets. Many of the country’s wealthiest individuals hold the majority of their wealth in stocks. That means when the stock market goes down, so do the tax payments of the wealthy. In…
Florida Looking to Lure More Wealthy Taxpayers
The reports regarding many of the nation’s wealthy packing up and moving to different states in order to avoid the high taxes where they currently reside continue to mount. According to one such report, David Tepper, the president of Appaloosa Management L.P., who is the wealthiest resident of New Jersey, is in fact no longer…
How Long Does it Really Take to Prepare Business Taxes?
How Long Does it Really Take to Prepare Business Taxes? For most people, just hearing the words business taxes is enough to cause uneasy feelings, but for business owners the thought of doing their own business taxes can be a nightmare. Filing individual tax returns can be hard enough but the process gets even more…