July 27, 2023 - Epoch Times
09:58
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| Two days ago, the IRS made a giant reversal to one of their decades-long policies. | |
| Specifically, they released a statement saying that IRS agents will no longer be going out to personally visit the homes of American taxpayers. | |
| Although, at this point, you might be saying, wait a minute, Roman, the IRS makes house calls? | |
| Well, they do. | |
| In fact, this practice has been going on for a long time now. | |
| However, it came to broader public attention about three months ago. | |
| That was when you had a journalist by the name of Matt Taibbi testifying before Congress about his role in exposing the Twitter files. | |
| Essentially, he was testifying to the House, and by extension to the whole world, about how social media companies became the new avenue for the weaponization of the federal government. | |
| However, wouldn't you know it? | |
| by some cosmic-level coincidence. | |
| At the very moment that Matt Taibbi was sitting there in front of the Republican-led House committee, there were IRS agents knocking on his front door. | |
| Here's specifically how the New York Post described the situation as it played itself out. | |
| And by the way, I will mention that this is a few sentences long, but I think it is quite important to read out because, after all, this is an American journalist being targeted by the federal government that he himself is trying to expose. | |
| So here's what it says. | |
| Quote, the IRS opened an examination of journalist Matt Taibbi's 2018 tax return on Christmas Eve of last year, three weeks after he exposed sensitive documents about government officials pressuring Twitter to censor content. | |
| The House Judiciary Committee began looking into the matter. | |
| The IRS told the committee it was trying to ensure that Matt Taibbi wasn't the victim of identity fraud. | |
| But critics seized on documents obtained by the committee, which showed that the IRS opened its examination of Taibbi's 2018 tax return on New Year's Eve, December 24th, 2022, a Saturday. | |
| The IRS asserted to the committee that it sent a letter to Mr. | |
| Taibbi all the way back on October 24, 2019, nine days after Mr. | |
| Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return, asking him to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and... | |
| The IRS then alleged that it sent a second letter to Mr. | |
| Taibbi on March 23rd of 2020. | |
| However, according to Mr. | |
| Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant ever received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with this 2018 tax return. | |
| That is, until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. | |
| Taibbi's home three years later. | |
| The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the committee when asked to do so. | |
| And so in short, you have this journalist, Mr. | |
| Matt Taibbi, exposing the Twitter files, showing how government officials were pressuring Twitter to censor the free speech of American citizens. | |
| Then, coincidentally, a few days later, which happened to be Christmas Eve, and it also happened to be a Saturday, The IRS opened an investigation into Matt Taibbi, saying that his 2018 tax returns were rejected because of identity theft concerns. | |
| They have supposedly sent him letters about this before. | |
| He never received those letters, and when Congress asked to see the letters, the IRS couldn't find them either. | |
| Then, on the very day that Matt Taibbi was testifying in front of Congress about those Twitter files, well, the IRS sent agents to his front door. | |
| Here's how the article continues. | |
| What an amazing weaponization of government coincidence. | |
| And this, by the way, would not even be the first time that the IRS showed signs of being weaponized against government critics. | |
| If you remember, back under the Obama administration, the IRS was found to be targeting conservative groups, as well as those affiliated with the Tea Party, and tying them up in all sorts of red tape, making them unable to get non-profit status. | |
| And so this tactic is not exactly new. | |
| Furthermore, it's worth noting that besides journalist Matt Taibbi, there are quite literally tens of thousands of these unannounced IRS visits to people's homes every single year. | |
| However, according to this new statement, which just came out of the IRS, well, apparently that will no longer be the case. | |
| Here's specifically what their new statement says. | |
| The IRS will end most unannounced visits to taxpayers by agency revenue officers to reduce public confusion and enhance overall safety measures for taxpayers and employees. | |
| The change reverses a decades-long practice by IRS revenue officers, the unarmed agency employees whose duties include visiting households and businesses to help taxpayers resolve their account balances by collecting unpaid taxes and unfiled tax returns. | |
| Effective immediately. | |
| Unannounced visits will end except in a few circumstances and will be replaced with mailed letters to scheduled meetings. | |
| Then, in terms of the rationale for why this change was made, the IRS commissioner, well, it's worth mentioning he did not say anything about political intimidation. | |
| But instead, he said that this particular change was made for one, to ensure the safety of the agents, as well as to deter scammers who pose themselves off as being IRS agents and go to people's homes. | |
| Here's what he said, quote, For IRS revenue officers, these unannounced visits to homes and businesses presented risks. | |
| Revenue officers routinely faced hazards and uncertainty, making unannounced visits to attempt to resolve delinquent tax matters. | |
| These visits created extra anxiety for taxpayers already wary of potential scam artists. | |
| At the same time, the uncertainty around what IRS employees faced when visiting these homes created stress for them as well. | |
| This is the right thing to do and the right time to end it. | |
| But if you are worried that this change will lead the IRS to not be able to collect as much money as before, and therefore we as a country will not be able to send that money over to Ukraine, Well, you shouldn't worry about that. | |
| Because the IRS commissioner also made a special point to mention in the statement that the quote-unquote Inflation Reduction Act has allocated enough new funding to the agency, meaning to the IRS, such that they will be able to add more staff members and increase their work in what they refer to as compliance management. | |
| Essentially, the commissioner reassured the country, all of us, that the IRS will still be able to shake the American people down for their taxes, even without having the boots on the ground. | |
| And so, what all this means in practical terms is that starting today, outside of a very limited number of cases, if someone shows up at your home claiming themselves to be an IRS agent, well, then almost 100% likely they're a scam artist. | |
| Meaning that if you give that person any money, none of that money will wind up going to Ukraine. | |
| And so you might as well just keep it in your pocket. | |
| If you'd like to read the full statement from the IRS, well, I'll throw a link to it. | |
| It'll be down in the description box below this video for you to check out, which I should mention is the description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a moment to smash. | |
| Smashing that like button allows this video to reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm, while smashing that subscribe button will ensure that future videos will reach your newsfeed every time we publish them. | |
| And speaking of the IRS and taxes, let me take a quick moment to show you this little piece of money. | |
| Or rather, I should say that this is fake money And so before they completely obliterate your life savings, what I recommend you do is to convert that fake money into real money, which is physical gold and silver. | |
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| And now, let's head on back to the studio. | |
| And now lastly, since we discussed journalist Mats Haiby, if you would like to learn more about what he's uncovered regarding these hidden, shadowy, behind-the-scenes actors who work to distort reality, manipulate the public, and enforce a consensus, well, you're in luck. | |
| Because over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform, we just published a phenomenal interview with him. | |
| Here's a short trailer. | |
| This is the new technology of speech in America. | |
| You can dial people all the way up to everybody sees it, and you can dial someone else down to it's almost impossible to see them. | |
| That is extremely dangerous, and it's especially dangerous if it's done in secret and nobody knows exactly how it operates. | |
| In this episode, I sit down with investigative journalist Matt Taibbi. | |
| He was one of the key investigators of the Twitter files, which exposed collusion between social media companies, the nonprofit sector and the federal government to censor Americans on a mass scale. | |
| In parallel to this censorship program, I think what they're doing with things like shadow banning and denialisting is they're trying to simplify controversies and reduce everybody's intellectual field of view. | |
| And in doing so, kind of drain our will to be curious, to stand up for ourselves, to think about things in a complicated way. | |
| We discuss the current state of journalism, government information operations, internet culture and addiction, and the importance of free speech and free inquiry. | |
| This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. | |
| If you'd like to check out that entire interview, as well as a plethora of other great content over on Epic TV, again, our awesome no-sentation video platform, the link will be right there at the very top of the description box below. | |
| Just click on that link, and you can head on over and watch that interview right away. | |
| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times. | |
| Stay informed, most importantly. |
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