The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 62

Episode 62: Rick Scott Says the IRS Wants to Kill You

Be warned, dear listeners: Spooks abound in this episode where we talk about horror movie-induced insomnia, attempting to join Delta Airlines' secret society, and seedy casino crawls. Then, we hit Intel's IPO for Mobileye, their autonomous driving technologies company, as we ask ourselves "how soon will the car become the chauffeur?" Remember the ice bucket challenge for ALS research back in 2014? This week, the FDA approved a new drug to treat ALS because of that funding and, in doing so, warmed the hearts of everyone who believes in this cause. Political rhetoric abounds as politicians with deep pockets and even deeper fears of being audited vilify the IRS with disinformation. That's more scary than spooky. And finally, you didn't hear it from us, but DISCLOSURE is the name of the game when using your social media channels to promote the latest crypto. This week, Kim K learns a tough lesson from the SEC about disclosure. Hit play and hear our hot takes!

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Links

The Ice Bucket Challenge wasn't just for social media. It helped fund a new ALS drug

Kim Kardashian to Pay $1.26 Million to Settle S.E.C. Charges Over Crypto Promotion

Gary Gensler: SEC Charges Kim Kardashian for Unlawfully Touting Crypto Security

Sense and Nonsense About the IRS’ Funding Increase From Congress

Airdate: 10/07/22

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Read the Full Transcript:

Speaker 1:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The Liquidity Event, a show about all things personal finance with a laser focus on equity compensation, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn FI. Each episode will take you through the week's news on fintech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.

AJ:

Hello. And welcome to The Liquidity Event. We're your hosts AJ-

Shane:

And Shane.

AJ:

This is episode 62 being recorded on October 5th. We will air this on October 7th. We've got some fun stuff on the docket today. We'll be talking about why politicians think the IRS wants to kill you. We've got a update on the Ice Bucket Challenge. Our friend Kim Kardashian has to pay seven figures for telling investors to invest in crypto and not disclosing the fact that she was paid to make that recommendation. Then we've got some updates on some electric vehicle wars between Ford and General Motors, amongst other things that I'm sure we will get to. How you doing, Shane?

Shane:

I'm a little light on sleep today, AJ.

AJ:

Why is that?

Shane:

I watched a spooky movie last night.

AJ:

Oh, no.

Shane:

Something that you never do anymore. When was the last time you watched a horror movie?

AJ:

Last time I watched a horror movie, I can tell you exactly. It was at ... I can't remember her last name. Her name was Amy. She was a friend in high school. It was The Ring. And I didn't sleep for two and a half years after that, so that was the last time.

Shane:

Yeah. I always try to update you on horror movies, and I always ... I can't share the passion with you because you refuse to watch them. You don't-

AJ:

You know what's funny? I like to read summaries of horror movies. I like to read the description and know the plot. I'm interested. It's funny because I love film and I'm interested in the aesthetics of film, and I know a lot of people love horror movies for that reason. I just am a scaredy-cat and I literally will ruin my life if I accidentally watch a scary movie.

Shane:

Yes. Well, yes, my last night was ruined for sure. [inaudible 00:02:15] maybe three hours of sleep after watching Smile, which is like a mix-up of The Ring and It Follows. And yeah, the premise is ... It's very scary. That's all I'll say. It was a very scary movie.

AJ:

Noted.

Shane:

Pleasantly good, as well. I thought it was going to be a cheesy [inaudible 00:02:31]-

AJ:

Put it on my do-not-watch list, not my watch list?

Shane:

Yes. Exactly. How are you doing, AJ?

AJ:

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm getting ready to do some traveling. I'm heading to Los Angeles, Denver, Palm Springs, and Chicago in the next two weeks. So I got to rack up those Delta Miles. Hello, Delta. Delta, if you're listening, I'd love to be considered for your Delta 360 program.

Shane:

That's how it gets done for sure. Delta [inaudible 00:02:59]-

AJ:

Oh, I'm sorry.

Shane:

We're going to tag Delta.

AJ:

I'm absolutely going to tag Delta 360. For those not in the know, Delta 360 is apparently the secret Delta status above Diamond. The requirements are somewhat unknown, and I want it.

Shane:

Invitation only.

AJ:

Yeah, I want it. I want it. So I'm traveling. What are you doing for fun?

Shane:

Oh, I'm in Mexico. I'm in Mexico City right now looking for my apartment for the winter. Actually, I've been apartment touring after hours the past week. I've looked at three or four apartments. It's pretty fun though.

AJ:

Oh. [foreign language 00:03:34]?

Shane:

[foreign language 00:03:34]. Yeah. So it's fun to try to speak in broken Spanish to real estate agents and explain that it's only going to be for six months, not a full year. I have a dog. I don't have permanent residency status, but I'm willing to pay up front for all six months.

AJ:

So you're showing up with a suitcase full of cash and saying por favor?

Shane:

Por favor.

AJ:

Got it. Got it.

Shane:

[foreign language 00:03:57]. Yeah, it's fun. It sincerely is fun.

AJ:

I'm willing to overpay if you don't ask any questions. Got it.

Shane:

Yeah. So yeah, they're used to it at this point. There's been a lot of articles about Mexico City being overrun with gringos, and here we are, the lifetime gentrifier, back at it again. I've been gentrifying towns since 1994 when my family moved to Mississippi for the casino, when the casinos opened.

AJ:

Oh, I thought of you the other day. I have a question for you. I was in New Orleans, which is a great town, by the way, for [inaudible 00:04:31]-

Shane:

You should think of me when you're in New Orleans.

AJ:

Yeah, well, that wasn't the reason. I walked by a casino, and I learned something that-

Shane:

Harrah's

AJ:

What's that? Harrah's. Walked by Harrah's.

Shane:

You walked by Harrah's.

AJ:

I walked by Harrah's. Is that the only casino in New Orleans?

Shane:

Yes, they have a monopoly on the casino game in-

AJ:

Oh, okay, good to know.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

This is why I thought of you.

Shane:

I think there's some riverboats on the Mississippi, but no, Harrah's is the only [inaudible 00:04:50].

AJ:

Right. Right. I learned one thing, and then I have a follow-up question. One thing I learned is that my husband potentially has a gambling problem because I was like, "Let's go in. It'll be fun." And he's like, "No, we cannot go in there." So that was fun.

Shane:

Well, I know he has a video game addiction, too, right? That's why he doesn't play?

AJ:

That's exactly what he said. Exactly what he said. He said, "You know why we don't have video games at home? Because I love the video games." And he's like, "I also love casinos, so we are not going in there. No, you cannot go in there and throw 20 bucks in a slot machine." Anyways, second question, casinos typically, is my impression and my experience, that you walk into a casino, smoke in the air, can be kind of depressing. Where do you go ... I know there's like high roller secret rooms, but are there really nice boutique hipster casinos that you can go to? Is that a thing? Or are they all just so regulated and chained up at this point that it's either like you're in with everybody, and it can be depressing, or you're minimum bet 200K and you're in the back room with Kanye West and sports people?

Shane:

Yeah, I mean, there are different brands of casinos. There is like the W Hotel or the Ace Hotel casinos, like especially in Las Vegas where there's over 50 casinos.

AJ:

What's the Ace Hotel casinos?

Shane:

I don't know what it is.

AJ:

That's fine. We can follow up.

Shane:

I bet it's in Macau. Yeah, I've been in a lot of high roller rooms just because I grew up in casinos with my dad. For those of you that don't know, my dad worked in casinos for over 30 years. I essentially grew up in them. And the high roller room, I think, is obviously where you want to be. Unfortunately, you have to spend a lot of money to get into the high roller room. I was betting $500 a hand in Harrah's last time I was there, and I was not in the high roller room.

AJ:

Right, right. Like high, like true ... yeah. I have no interest-

Shane:

Like over $1,000, maybe $5,000 a hand in blackjack. They also have different slots, too. And yeah, it's way too ... If you are in the high roller room, you have a serious problem. Your family needs to know about it, because you have a serious problem. Or you're just so, so rich that that's a small-

AJ:

It doesn't matter.

Shane:

Kind of like how [inaudible 00:06:58] 5% of our clients' portfolios to whatever you want.

AJ:

Whatever you want, yeah ... gambling.

Shane:

Maybe like if 1% of your income can go to whatever you want, and that turns into like $50,000 a year, 100K a year, sure, yeah. But I don't think casinos ... If you go to the ARIA Hotel or the ARIA Casino in Las Vegas, it's not very smokey. That's where Engage is, where I went with John. We go to that conference every year for CPAs.

AJ:

Engage, the accounting conference? Ooh, fun, yeah. I think I'm going next year. I'll see you there.

Shane:

Yeah, well, then I think you'll like the ARIA. It's very classy [inaudible 00:07:30].

AJ:

Okay, cool. Yeah, my experience and interest in gambling is like, "Yeah, I'll sit at a slot machine for a bit." I have ... I can stop. I'm good at that, I think. We'll see. We'll see. See you in June.

Shane:

Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

AJ:

Hope I don't bet the farm. Anyways, well, that was a fun little-

Shane:

Can't wait to put shares of Brooklyn FI-

AJ:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Shane:

... on the table.

AJ:

Exactly. Speaking of shares on the table, we do have an IPO this week.

Shane:

Hey, good segue.

AJ:

We've got Mobileye filed their S-1, which is very cool. Mobileye is a leader in the development of autonomous car software, so self driving cars. Have you seen any self driving cars with googly eyes on them driving around?

Shane:

I've only seen the ones in San Francisco with the insanely-

AJ:

With the ... We saw those.

Shane:

With the crazy spinning-

AJ:

We saw those together, right?

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

What was that [inaudible 00:08:27]? No, that's the bank. Whatever.

Shane:

Waymo.

AJ:

Waymo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Shane:

Waymo's cars in San Francisco that are completely autonomous and drive on the streets of San Francisco, yeah. Anyway, I wonder if there's any Mobileye chips in those Waymo cars.

AJ:

Right. Because Mobileye is the chip leader. They're a subsidiary of Intel. This is a significant IPO. We've been seeing some little baby microcap IPOs, but this is moving and shaking. What are we raising here would we say?

Shane:

They're trying to raise $2.5 billion, which if you care about autonomous vehicles, which I do, I think this is great. I love the idea of us moving towards a driverless future. And $2.5 billion of funding into that development is fantastic. Looking at the financials here ... I don't think we're going to do a deep dive today, right? But just looking at some of the financials at a high level, they've grown 43% over the last year. They've done $1.5 billion in sales, which is a 43% year-over-year growth.

Shane:

The red flag here, looking at the financials at a high level, is that they're 62 X leveraged, which means they've got 60 ... You take their earnings from the last year, and you multiply it times 62, and that's how much debt they have on the books.

AJ:

That's how much they have? Yeah. But isn't that-

Shane:

Which means it's going to take 62 years, everything being equal and pumping all of the profits into their debt payments, to pay it off, which obviously isn't going to be the case, but-

AJ:

It's not ... I mean, that's kind of par for the course though in a R&D-heavy industry like self driving cars or electric vehicles, which we'll talk about ... We saw that with Rivian, which was a huge IPO, which has plans to be profitable in, what, like 15 years or something. It's like, "We got to spend a lot of money because building game-changing technology." It's not like a software company where your startup costs are like ... or a couple smart people in a room with some fast computing power. There's significant startup costs here.

Shane:

Yeah. Well, their debt is $3.5 billion. So if they raise $2.5 billion and put all that towards the debt, which they shouldn't do, then obviously that leverage will be not as bad. And their EBITDA's up, or their earnings is up 150%, which is even way more than just their sales growth. So not only are they growing their sales, but the bottom line is seeing scale. So that's probably why they're going to go public in this hectic 2022 IPO market.

AJ:

Yeah, I wish them the best. I hope this ... Yeah, hope it goes.

Shane:

I'm done driving, so let's hurry this up.

AJ:

Same, honestly, same. I was trying to make plans for this weekend in Los Angeles with a friend, and they were like, "Meet me here. Oh, you don't have a car? That sucks." I'm like, "No, it doesn't suck. I am happy to pay a premium. I feel very lucky to be in a position where I can pay a premium to have someone drive me across town, sit in traffic, while I can read a book or get work done or call my business partner and complain about everything in my life."

Shane:

Indeed. With that said-

AJ:

So I like to ... With that said, Shane, I need Friday afternoon from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM West Coast time blocked off on your calendar please.

Shane:

Why, what's up?

AJ:

I'll be stuck in traffic, and I have something to tell you about.

Shane:

Oh. Oh, okay. I was going to do a segue where I try to sell my Subaru Outback before I move to Mexico.

AJ:

Oh, go for it. Go for it.

Shane:

To anyone that's got 13K laying around, I've got a beautiful [inaudible 00:11:46]-

AJ:

Speaking of self driving cars ...

Shane:

2004 ... Okay, joking aside, speaking of raising money, we've got a feel good story here from the ALS challenge. Do you want to lead us off on what's going on here?

AJ:

Sure. I'd like to turn this feel good story into a rant, but yes. Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? It was way back in 2014, [inaudible 00:12:05] in a land before time, before COVID. Ice Bucket Challenge, if you remember in the early days of viral videos, viral memes, was that you would pour a bucket of ice water on your head as a challenge in order to raise money for ALS research, ALS also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

AJ:

And apparently, all those memes, all those viral videos, did a whole lot of good because $2.2 million was raised for the ALS Association. And in fact, that went directly into research. And we have a new drug that's actually effective in treating ALS. It was approved by the FDA this week. So that's great, something good. What's your take on this?

Shane:

Oh, I love it. I didn't really get it back then. I think that was back when we were really grinding away to build Brooklyn FI or to lay the groundwork.

AJ:

In 2014? No, you and I were doing our shitty day jobs and partying at night.

Shane:

Well, that was when I was doing my taxes on the side, so [inaudible 00:13:06] I think was what I was referencing there.

AJ:

Sure.

Shane:

My take on this is less fun. First of all, they got this awesome article about the original people that got involved. It's unfortunate that ... I mean, you get ALS, it's a crippling syndrome, of course. It freezes up all your nerves. I was close friends with other people that suffer with MLS. This is a terrifying disease that needs a lot of attention. And I'm glad it got this amount of attention. I think that drug received millions of dollars, but there was also over $50 million raised over the years related to this challenge, which is awesome.

AJ:

Probably just awareness, right? It's like, "What is this? Oh, I saw this dumb video. Let me google this. Oh, I had no idea how common this is. Oh, yeah, my aunt has ..." that kind of ... That's what going viral is.

Shane:

Yeah, and I'm going to take a dark take on this because I was going through some of the old videos, and there was a great one of George Bush actually participating in the Ice Bucket Challenge.

AJ:

Oh, W?

Shane:

W, yes, of course. And he's like, "It's not very presidential for a bucket of ice water to be poured on me, so I'm not going to do it. I'm just going to write the check." And then Laura runs up and like Gatorade ... just like head-coaches him with the ice water, which was really funny. And I was laughing that he challenged Bill Clinton. And I was like, "Wait a second. George Fucking Bush, small government guy that started the Iraq War is cutting checks for AL ... How about we just fund it with government money?" And then it got me thinking, "How much was the Iraq War?" And then Brown University puts the Iraq-Afghanistan wars at $8 trillion. It's like I find it so ironic that we are responsible as ordinary citizens for raising money to help each other instead of the government, because of Republicans pushing $8 trillion into oil wars.

AJ:

Right.

Shane:

Sorry. That's my other take on the state of charitable contributions in America.

AJ:

Yeah, I had a similar thought, which is, yeah, not only is it up to billionaires who aren't paying enough in taxes to decide which organizations get funding. It's up to us, as ordinary citizens, to fund the causes to help our friends and family members who are dying of diseases that aren't ... It's not like, oh, it's curable. It's not like polio, which we have a vaccine for. But it sounds like with a bunch of money, we can make pretty significant strides in research here, which we're not doing. It's up to the viral meme folks to come up with a silly thing.

Shane:

I don't want to look up the National Health Institute's budget. It's really going to piss me off.

AJ:

Yeah, don't do that.

Shane:

But, speaking of funny government budgets, we have-

AJ:

Oh, my god. Oh, wait, sorry, quick side note before we move on. We're changing up the way we do the podcast slightly, mostly from our end. Listeners won't really notice, but we're calling our big stories, our lead stories, Spicy Meatballs. We're going to do our big Spicy Meatballs. These are the stories that we really want to talk about, and then we'll trickle down. We've found that we spend a lot of time talking about billionaires and we actually never get to the investing and tax articles that we want to talk about. So with that, speaking of taxes ... Sorry, that was a bad segue. You had a better segue?

Shane:

Well, yeah, let's talk about government funding.

AJ:

All right, all right.

Shane:

Speaking of government funding, so as to achieve results that we want from our government-

AJ:

Speaking of Spicy Meatballs.

Shane:

Yeah. We've talked about the government ... Or what ... the Build Back Better substitute wherein we got $80 billion funding for the-

AJ:

Oh, the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act?

Shane:

There it is. Thank you. Got it. I'm staring at this-

AJ:

Oh, the IRA? You forgot that acronym? That's so weird.

Shane:

Dammit. I still think of the Irish Republican Army when I [inaudible 00:16:42].

AJ:

Oh, of course. I mean, I call our company, which is an RIA, a registered investment advisor, an IRA all the time. [inaudible 00:16:49] it's just a weird thing. I was also talking to someone today who was like, "Oh, yeah, I got to get a 501(c)(3) set up for my kids. And I was like, "He meant 529 plan." I wasn't going to correct him because it's like a dumb ... The IRS or Congress names things after the tax code. Come up with better names. Anyway, speaking of Congress and being dumb-

Shane:

Yes, yes. So Bloomberg Tax has this great editorial or op ed from Charles Rossotti, for those of you that don't know, was a former IRS commissioner. For those of you that don't keep up with the former IRS commissioners throughout the years, that-

AJ:

Ah, Charlie, love Charlie.

Shane:

Yeah. One of the best, truly the good of IRS commissioners. Wrote this great article called Sense and Nonsense About the IRS' Funding Increase from Congress, which was posted at 3:45 AM, funny enough, on September 16th. Anyways, so-

AJ:

Charlie up at night [inaudible 00:17:43] deadline.

Shane:

Like a true CPA, working at 3:30 in the morning on September 16th. So yeah, so he just wanted to clear the air about what this money is going to be used for and wanted to rebut some of his Republican or anti-IRS, anti-big government politicians' thoughts and comments about this funding. And this is some of the ... I'll do the less fun stuff. Do you want to read some of these politicians' responses to the funding?

AJ:

I would love to. I would love to. Yeah, so basically, in the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, there's 10 years of funding for the IRS, much needed, as accountants in the profession, desperately needed. So we've got some of our Republican senators saying things like, "Hiring 87,000 new IRS agents is supposed to be for the rich, blah, blah, blah. If you think the federal government is out of control now, God help us when you get 87,000 new IRS agents who are looking under every rock and stone to get money out of your pocket." That was one thing. But the best thing-

Shane:

That's from Senator Lindsey Graham.

AJ:

That was from Senator Lindsey Graham.

Shane:

... who's currently being subpoenaed for numerous reasons.

AJ:

... who is currently ... He needs to be audited, by the way. IRS, if you're not on that, please ... But I think the one that takes the cake is Senator Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida says he urged people not to join the IRS. "You not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends. You need to be ready, and to use the IRS' words, willing to kill them."

Shane:

Incredible. Incredible.

AJ:

So Rick Scott is saying to go work for the IRS, you have to be willing to kill your friends, is the TLDR on that one.

Shane:

Yeah, and for those of you that don't know, Senator Rick Scott is definitely running for president in 2024, which means that you have to appeal to the farest, farest Right in Iowa. You have to appear the most crazy, because that works so well. I forget what plan he released recently. I think it was a plan to abolish, I think it was, all malls in the United States and start over from scratch.

AJ:

Start over?

Shane:

Yeah, just to start from scratch. That's one of his plans. It was something similar to that. Yeah, so we'll do a little bit of deep dive on what they're talking about here, what the money is for. First of all-

AJ:

Wait, I just have a question.

Shane:

What's that?

AJ:

Reaching across the aisle, we think these people are crazy. These people think we're crazy. What is the single, most important book that you would make a person like Rick Scott read and have to sit there and read and internalize that you think would help him the most understand your side of things as a person?

Shane:

Probably fiction. I mean, I don't feel like Republicans read any fiction, is my take on it, which has a lot to do with empathy, which is often what's missing from their worldview. And I don't mean to paint with such a broad brush, but when you say things like that, there's the rhetoric of ... I don't know. I mean, it's politics. Unfortunately, we don't have a ranked choice voting system here, so you just have to appear as crazy as possible because we have a winner-take-all system. And just due to the culture wars that we have in 2022, this is what works. I understand you're ambitious. And it only takes 15 people to run for president to be the most crazy out of 300 million people.

AJ:

I know.

Shane:

And this is what you get. And you mix the rules that you need to play by to win these elections, and you mix that up with a lot of ambitious and intelligence, and this is the result. I think it's all a function and a result of incentives. So I honestly don't blame them, and I don't want to tell him to go read some William Faulkner, but whatever. I mean, what's your recommendation?

AJ:

Okay, so I have two. I was thinking as you were talking about ... I asked you first because I wanted time to think about my answer.

Shane:

Oh, okay.

AJ:

The answer would be children's books. Two recommendations, one, The Giving Tree, and the second one would be ... I think it's called I Love You Forever. And it's this really sweet parable. It's got this rhyming thing throughout it, that goes like, "I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be." And it's a similar message to The Giving Tree. It's about a little baby going through his entire life, growing into a man, growing into an old man, the mother taking care of him, and them him coming back to take care of his dying 87-year-old mother. And it's just a beautiful parable about like be kind to your fellow person, because that's just a good thing to do, and everyone will have a better experience. So that's my recommendation.

Shane:

We send a lot of books out to clients here at Brooklyn FI. Why don't we send a copy of The Giving Tree over to Senator Rick Scott's office?

AJ:

... to Rick Scott in Florida?

Shane:

See if you can impact him.

AJ:

Anyways, I'm sorry.

Shane:

Moving back to the article ... yeah. No, I dig it. There's a couple things that I've heard from people I argue with on the internet about this bill and how it's going to impact people. One of the items that people are worried about is the additional agents auditing people. People are worried about being audited. For those of you that don't know, the richest ... The most audits by number do go to the lowest income taxpayers via the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a form of welfare. The whole purpose of this administration's raising money and tax policy is to tax those with more than $400,000 of income and above, which is intended to not scare people that make less than that. But it freaks out people making $60,000 for some reason. And they're trying to tell us that all of these audits will just be for low income people that are just W-2, hardworking union members in steel plants. That's not going to be the case.

AJ:

But what's so ironic though is like if you make $60,000 working for a factory, you get a W-2. There's nothing to audit.

Shane:

There's nothing to audit.

AJ:

There's nothing to audit. You have income. It's business owners that should get audited. It's people with large capital gains or large capital losses that should get audit ... That's where there's room for creativity. There's no room for creativity on a tax return where you have a W-2. The IRS already has that information. So don't worry.

Shane:

Right.

AJ:

Also, if you get audited, it's fine.

Shane:

And also there's the ... If you've got nothing to hide, then what are you worried about? And that is often used when it comes to policing minority neighborhoods. So fun for people in Republican enclaves to be worried about being audited.

Shane:

And also, this amount of money, this $80 billion, will supposedly only raise $300 billion, which is only 5% of the quote/unquote "tax gap." It's the money that's not collected due to cheating. And 80% of the $1 trillion of income that that's related to is from tax paying ... from pass-through entities, AKA, business owners, is from taxpayers making over $400,000. So this is all intended to actually have the money to go after people that misreport their income due to business income. And it's 80% of that type of income comes from people making over 400K.

Shane:

So when it comes to a cost-benefit analysis, the IRS doesn't want to ... It doesn't make any sense for them to raise ... They can't raise money from Joe Schmuck that's making 60K. I'm sorry. Sorry Joe Schmuck, whoever's listening.

AJ:

Joe Schmo. Joe Schmo.

Shane:

Joe Schmo.

AJ:

Joe Schmo makes 60K. Joe Schmuck makes 450K.

Shane:

Correct, correct. So it's people that can afford accountants to defend themselves that will be responding to these IRS agents anyway.

AJ:

I mean, look, you guys, this money it's for operational expenses. I think, Shane, you put this quote in here that the largest bank, JP Morgan, which serves only 20% of the number of customers that the IRS has, has an operating budget almost six times as large as the IRS. What is an operating budget going to be used for? Like, "Hey, are any of you waiting for refunds that you were due or waiting for a response to a letter and maybe it's been six months, or maybe it's been a year, or maybe it's been two years?" That's literally just to upgrade their computers to help serve you, the taxpayer. This does help more people than it harms. And this fearmongering, it's trash. That's what it is.

Shane:

Yeah. Yeah. Some other things about the agents that they're hiring, I mean, the IRS has not only dropped the amount of agents over the past 35 years due to budget cuts, but it's also been ... There's a lot more to deal with. All of the stimulus checks ran through the IRS this year. For anyone that filed a tax return in 2021, you know that you had to figure out how much you-

AJ:

Why don't we call them helpers instead of agents? Let's rebrand them. An agent makes me think of Men in Black, right? Not good ... or Matrix.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

Let's call them helpers.

Shane:

Yeah. And for those people worried that this money is going to be spent, AKA, like terrible spending. Republicans are all for saying that the government is a terrible spender of money, and you can't feed the beast. We're going to raise $300 billion. This is the sales department of your government. And the sales department goes out and collects money from people that are cheating and not contributing to the pot, so to speak, if there was ... They're cheating. I mean, we all have a responsibility, and they're not contributing. These people are going out to get it. They're not coming after your union benefits.

AJ:

Indeed.

Shane:

Yeah, the last two paragraphs are about interacting with taxpayers. If you're trying to call the IRS-

AJ:

Good luck.

Shane:

If anyone's tried to call the IRS over the past two years, then you know that we need more agents to answer the phone. And improving technology, we talked about this.

AJ: