Kay Smythe just published an editorial in the Daily Caller arguing that one has to look no further than former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to see who the Biden administration is really targeting with its plan to ramp up tax enforcement. 

As you will see, Smythe certainly has a point here.

Background

In case you missed it, President Joe Biden and his administration are ramping up the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) enforcement of tax law.

Some $80 billion has been allocated for the effort over the next decade. Part of that astronomical amount of money will go to the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents to help get the job done.

Biden and his administration have claimed that the purpose of all of this is to go after the ultra-wealthy. But, many believe that Biden and his administration are actually targeting the average American.

Here's some proof: the New York Post reports, "the Internal Revenue Service is reminding tax filers to prepare to report transactions of at least $600 that are made through so-called “third-party” facilitators such as Venmo and PayPal."

It begs the question: If the IRS is only worried about ultra-wealthy people trying to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, then why is the IRS targeting something as small as an exchange of $600?

Smythe's editorial

Smythe's piece is aptly titled, "Newsflash: Those 87,000 IRS Agents Aren't For Sam Bankman-Fried."

In her piece, Smythe argues that the agents' "purpose is not to go after billionaires," but "to go after you." And, Smythe uses Bankman-Fried as an example.

She writes:

Actually, there is one thing you can do to avoid Biden’s IRS militia: you can steal, mismanage or lose billions of other people’s dollars held in cryptocurrency and then run away to the Bahamas to avoid getting in trouble. The Biden administration and IRS literally don’t care if you do this, so why not do it?

Smythe continues:

Satire and sarcasm aside, this is the world you actually live in. What I just described is exactly what’s happening to Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the glorified teenager CEO of FTX and Alameda Research. He and his organizations are currently being investigated for “fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, and mismanagement.” Meanwhile, though, all of the money held in them by Americans like you has disappeared into thin air.

"But you're expected to keep perfect records"

The Post's Glenn Reynolds puts it this way:

The federal government can lose trillions, as a recent Pentagon audit noted, and nobody goes to jail. Sam Bankman-Fried can lose billions and (so far at least) be treated as a darling by members of Congress to whom he donated. But you’re expected to keep perfect records, and the corporate/government machine that characterizes early-21st-century American governance will be sure to keep close tabs on you.

Or as Twitter user "Not Jerome Powell" put it:

Sam Bankman-Fried: I don’t know where $10 billion dollars went

The Pentagon: We don’t know where $2.2 trillion dollars went

The IRS: You just sent $601.37 don’t forget to report it.

— Not Jerome Powell (@alifarhat79) December 1, 2022