By Kristen Altus, featuring Gabriella Hoffman, senior fellow at Independent Women’s Forum
After the Congressional Budget Office reported that 78 to 90% of revenue from new audits under the Inflation Reduction Act will come from families making less than $200,000 per year, freelancers and small business advocates are voicing concerns they’ll be the IRS’ main target.
“I think this is the easiest way for the Biden administration to penalize those who work independently because they’ve tried and exhausted congressional means,” freelancer and Independent Women’s Forum Senior Fellow Gabriella Hoffman told Fox News Digital.
“It’s going to hurt the smallest among us,” she continued, “those who just want to get by economically or maybe are trying to find alternatives with COVID, with the Great Recession and what is now called the ‘Great Reshuffling.’”
…
Hoffman said the IRS’ recent $80 billion funding and beefing up of 87,000 additional agents will “affect a lot of people” working for themselves or small businesses.
“The burden will largely fall on independent workers, independent contractors, freelancers, anyone who comprises the gig economy, because they see them as this kind of uncharted workforce, kind of a wild workforce that has to be reined in,” Hoffman explained. “They think that we don’t pay enough in sufficient taxes, although we are paying more than our share.”
…
With freelancers paying a 15% self-employment tax on top of state and federal taxes, Hoffman believes the IRS enhancement is being used as a tactic to “scare” Americans away from independent work.
“They can’t try to regulate us out of existence. Maybe they’ll make it more painful to us to work in such a framework that some people may say, ‘Heck with it. I will go back to being a W-2 employee. I can’t surrender this much in taxes,’” Hoffman noted. “For [the IRS], it’s about accruing more revenue.”
…
“I think we have to be on high alert,” Hoffman cautioned, “and hopefully it won’t have to lead us to have to look for preemptive legal counsel. I don’t ever want to have to think of hiring a lawyer.”
…
“As we all very well know, people who create businesses, even corporations and smaller businesses, too, they’re making money and it passes down to those who they hire,” Hoffman said. “I think the Democratic Party, they don’t really listen to the concern of voters in these high inflationary times… You don’t tax and you don’t spend when people are hurting economically.”
…
“What the Inflation Reduction Act does is it enforces paying your taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers,” Bernstein told co-hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino. “And I don’t think anyone, including you two, would object to that contention.”
To read the full article, click here