This nifty GOP trick will punish the poor and increase the deficit at the same time!

[japple]

Never accuse Republicans of being uncreative. Once again, they’ve found an innovative way to punish the poor and simultaneously increase budget deficits — all with one nifty trick!

To pull off this impressive twofer, they would put every American applying for the earned-income tax credit (EITC) through a sort of mini-audit before getting their refund. This would both place huge new burdens on the working poor and divert scarce Internal Revenue Service resources away from other audit targets, such as big corporations, that offer a much higher return on investment.

For those not familiar, the EITC is basically a way to top up low- and moderate-income people’s pay through a tax refund, to give them a bigger payoff from working.

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Arguably the IRS already devotes too many resources to these small-potatoes cases; EITC audits represent about 39 percent of all individual income-tax audits, despite accounting for just 7 percent of additional taxes that audits find to be owed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-nifty-gop-trick-will-punish-the-poor-and-increase-the-deficit--at-the-same-time/2017/09/11/6d6c5e6e-972e-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.28baf5c16571