I love this article by Ann Barnhardt! She is so insightful!
Brideshead Revisited is one of my favorite novels. Sad, but in many ways glorious. What a story of sin, repentance, and redemption! The movie with Jeremy Irons is also wonderful. (Caveat: There is one graphic bedroom scene.)
To be confronted with our sin is, indeed, a blessed gift of God. Those who don't believe in the existence of hell, but live according to its standards, are in for a rude awakening on Judgement Day. Better to have a rude awakening now! And it is a charity to love others, but call them gently to repentance even if they hate you for it. The death of Lord Marchmain displays the power of grace through the ministry of the Church. He has lived a sinful life with a hatred for the church but dies reconciled. Note the recitation of the Confiteor in Latin.
Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted, pray for us.
St. Joseph, patron of a happy death, pray for us.
For one's consideration - another understanding.
ReplyDeletehttps://time.com/6204928/irs-87000-agents-factcheck-biden/
Well, Susie, let's go to the horse's mouth instead of liberal sources like NPR and Time. This comes from the Treasury Departments document, The American Families Plan Tax Compliance Agenda, published in May 2021. It sounds very benign. They are going to go after the rich. But what's significant is the explosion of regulation. The Act expands the scope of the government using private institutions to examine the financial activities of Americans. This is chilling. And, yes, it includes hiring a large number agents over the next decade to be the government's spies. It is delusional to think that the IRS can bring in $700 billion over the next ten years by targeting the rich. They will always have legal loopholes. This act will go after the largest number of wage earners -- the middle class.
ReplyDeletehttps://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-American-Families-Plan-Tax-Compliance-Agenda.pdf
"Provide the IRS the resources it needs to address sophisticated tax evasion. The first step in the President’s tax administration efforts is a sustained, multi-year commitment to rebuilding the IRS, including nearly $80 billion in additional
resources over the next decade. The IRS would grow [to] have certain funding in place to make investments with large fixed costs—like modernizing information technology, improving data analytic approaches, and hiring and training agents dedicated to complex enforcement activities....
2. Provide the IRS with more complete information....strengthening third-party reporting is one of 1 IRS, 2019. “Federal Tax Compliance Research: Tax Gap Estimates for Tax Years 2011–2013.” Publication 1415 (Rev. 9-2019).
The President’s proposal leverages the information that financial institutions
already know about the accounts that they house. Financial institutions would add information about total account outflows and inflows to existing reporting on bank accounts. Importantly, there are no added requirements for taxpayers. The IRS will be able to deploy this new information to better target enforcement activities, increasing scrutiny of wealthy evaders and decreasing the likelihood that fully compliant taxpayers will be subject to costly audits. As a result, voluntary compliance will rise through deterrence as would-be tax evaders realize that the IRS has an additional lens into previously unreported income streams....
4. Regulating paid tax preparers and increasing penalties for those who commit or abet evasion...the President’s proposal includes additional sanctions for so called “ghost preparers” who fail to identify themselves on the tax returns which they prepare. [Beware if you prepare Grandma's taxes!]
Experts at the Treasury Office of Tax Analysis estimate that these initiatives would raise $700 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade. This revenue is backloaded in the 10-year budget window as several of these new investments—such as hiring revenue agents capable of complex global high net-worth examinations and building the technological infrastructure to support a new information reporting regime—take years to reach their full potential.