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The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board explains that the IRS will be putting its new army of 87,000 employees to work, turning out the pockets of regular Americans searching for their unreported side hustle incomes. They write:
There’s a new job for those 87,000 new employees at the Internal Revenue Service, and it isn’t chasing billionaires. It’s digging around to discover if you reported that extra $600 you made from selling grandma’s heirlooms at your garage sale.
The IRS is reminding Americans that the reporting rules have changed for payment-card and third-party payment network transactions. This means that if you received a payment of more than $600 via such networks as Venmo, PayPal, Amazon or Square, you will probably receive a Form 1099-K this year. The reporting limit for receiving a Form 1099-K used to be $20,000 a year.
You can thank the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion spending blowout that did so much to spur inflation. Democrats unleashed the IRS to find the money to pay for this spending, and apparently their belief is that tens of millions of you are hiding income from your side hustle or selling old furniture.
Americans are obliged to report all of their income, whether they receive a 1099 or not. But chasing after transactions as low as $600 means more hassle for you and millions of others, though we wonder how much money this effort will raise.
If nothing else, this gives the lie to the Democratic claim that the purpose of the $80 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to hire all of those new taxmen is to target the rich. They’re coming for you, and the neighbor kid who mows your lawn.
Read more here.
