$80 Billion for IRS Attacks on Low and Middle-Income Citizens
87,000 IRS armed agents hired to go after the tax cheats? This isn’t going to affect the small guy right? Think again! Let me show you a history of my experience and what you can expect when the tyranny is taken to the next level!
This article falls under our Financial Health pillar and a critical subject for all of you small business owners and low to middle income citizens!
Many of you probably believe that this IRS expansion will target the rich and big business and the small guy has nothing to be concerned about. This is incorrect in my opinion and experience!
Here is a link to an article from the New York Post estimating that 80 percent of the 80 billion funding to the IRS will target small businesses and lower-income earners! Why IRS’ $80B expansion is a ‘nightmare’ for small businesses (nypost.com)
My Experience with Government Over-Reach Since the 1970s
I spent nearly a quarter century operating a small retail business that ended over 20 years ago. My experience and story happened decades before what is coming so you might think my experience was either small potatoes or irrelevant. I will instead show you a peek into what is coming on steroids!
I bought a barely solvent musical instrument store with my father in 1976 for around $12,000. It was a tiny 1700 sq ft shop in a strip mall located in a socal city called Garden Grove. I was a trumpet player with retail experience and my father, a musician, that spent his entire career with Pinkerton’s detective agency. The former owner was a bluegrass banjo player and the shop was geared for that genre featuring guitars, banjos, a few electric guitars, sheet music and a couple of guitar teachers.
We had no thought of business issues other than to get a lay of the land and survive! We got a few leads on suppliers and it was sink or swim. The prior owner in 7 years never sold more than 50,000 in merchandise for a year and hated dealing with customers so we purchased with zero good will.
I established one of our accounts with a local supplier about 15 minutes from the shop that we purchased accessories from and Yamaha guitars. After about 6 months or so in business, I spoke with the office manager there and had an eye opening discussion. She told me that we had already exceeded their expectations making it this far! She said that they had an office pool on how long we would make it and very few projected past 6 months! I didn’t know what to think.
After a crash course in learning the industry, I realized that catering to bluegrass musicians was never going to cut it. I didn’t know anything about the genre and it appeared the clientele hardly bought anything. We began transitioning to more electric guitars and amps for starters.
A couple years into it, my father passed away on his 57th birthday, July 2nd. I closed, buried him, and reopened on the 5th. We had not brought in more than 10k in any prior month and that month, I did 27,000 in sales during the slowest time of the year! Divine intervention? No other explanation!
As business progressed, I had to hire more employees and teachers. Within a few more years, we were hitting 50k per month and growing. Times were good and it appeared that the sky was the limit!
By the early 80s, only about 5 years into the business, paperwork, government regulations and taxes became a reality. Suddenly, I was getting hassled by city ordinance enforcement for my signs, dealing with payroll, quarterlies, etc.
I saw a notice in the local paper that a council meeting was scheduled regarding the plaza I was in and only for local citizens. Store owner were not allowed!
This piqued my interest of course and I decided that I would attend incognito.
This initiates my message in this article and became stunning to my senses.
It was a packed house of mostly odd-looking locals that apparently had nothing better to do and probably unemployed in general. The leader began by stating that the meeting was concerning the Orange County Plaza and its future. It was one of the original plazas built in orange county in the late 40s. We had Sears and several national chain stores but was a bit long in the tooth.
Local Government to IRS, Small Biz Has Had a Bullseye on Its Back
I figured that the discussion might be on renovation as the discussion began. The opening question was, what are we going to do with Moody Music? What? The attendee began with, I think they may be dealing drugs out of there! Yeah, how are they doing so much business and running tv ads! Their sign is homemade! I think they need to be evicted!
I couldn’t resist piping in and asked one of our detractors, have you ever been in the store? Hell no was the response!
Not one other business was scrutinized since they were all chain operations for the most part with a few exceptions like the butcher shop, cleaners and the jewelry store.
It devolved into how a super highway could be routed to go over the plaza and other insane comments!
I walked out stunned! Why would the locals demonize my store when we were selling and teaching families and kids how to play a musical instrument?
We continued growing until the city got their way and decided to keep the plaza but do a total makeover with new storefronts, signage, parking lot, theater, etc. I had a few years left on my lease.
It got so bad that the parking lot was mud, traffic was rerouted and we had no store fronts and it lasted for a year or so this way. The businesses had a meeting regarding lawsuits against the city and lost revenues. They went around asking each business how much their businesses were losing and it ranged from 20 to 80 percent from my recollection.
When they got to me, I said, we are up 20 percent, but I am totally on board because we may have gone up much higher if there was access and a parking lot! I literally got booed! Liar, impossible! Hey, don’t use my stats or assume that I am against your objectives!
I received an offer for a new lease from the new ownership and it was 4 times what I was currently paying! I told them that this figure was untenable for me. I began to search for another location. I found an option across the street and made a tentative deal. The plaza owners asked when I was going to renew my lease with no counter offer and I told them that I was moving. They couldn’t believe it.
My new location was over 5,000 sq ft and a former restaurant. I completely gutted it and had it built to my design. The small strip mall was renamed, Moody Music Plaza. We were all in!
I never expected to be managing 30 people, dealing with all the organizational issues and conducting business at this level but humans tend to adapt! We were now a high profile small independent business. I should have put a billboard out on the street asking any and all government entities to please attack me and my company!
Ii took several months to build out the new facility as I wound things down at the original location. I had hired a licensed and bonded contractor that happened to be owned by a female who had 20 plus hears in the business.
The project was finally completed and I was ready to move our entire stock and fixtures over and we did it overnight on a Friday and opened the next day! The local merchants were incredulous and blown away because we moved a couple hundred guitars, dozens and dozens of other instruments, etc. It was a monumental feat that looking back, do not believe we accomplished with about 6 employees and teachers.
We had a grand opening and were doing incredible sales!
Within a week, the city officials came in and I thought it was to congratulate us on the move. Wrong! They told me that a weight bearing wall was not permitted and planned to shut us down! How is this possible? I paid for all permits and this must be wrong! Their response was, we’ll be in touch and left!
I was beyond upset for weeks and never heard another word from them again.
Let the harassment begin! In addition to monthly threats from the city on my signage that I paid permits for, they had now targeted my rotating sign that had been grandfathered in. Constant, empty threats as though I was the enemy!
As though running a business was not challenging enough with constant shoplifting, burglaries and employee theft, the local cops needed a piece of the action! I detailed this in another post but the summary is that the local cops broke into my store twice and stole thousands of dollars of equipment! I am a licensed PI so I do not state this without facts and experience. I estimate losing over a quarter million over the course of this business from theft alone!
The icing on the cake were the endless audits and where the point of this article finally gets to. Sorry for the prolonged lead up but figure that anyone thinking about going into a brick and mortar operation should know.
I was not surprised at getting audited after 5 years in business and did not feel singled out at that time. As I recall, the IRS was conducting a general audit from a recent year. I was concerned of course but not overly since I was following the rules as best as possible. After the audit, several months later, I received a check for something like $12 from the IRS! I chuckled thinking that this will discourage them from future audits! I was so wrong.
The following years included every audit known to man from EDD to specific disputes on employee status, sales tax, worker comp, employee firing, etc. In addition, my store was temporarily banned from the recommended list to schools for rentals. My neighbor was a school district insider and told me that one of the stores bribed the superintendent to remove us from the list as the most powerful and well stocked in the district.
Janet Yellen Denies IRS Monitoring $600 Transactions Is Spying on Americans (newsweek.com)
One of my longest standing teachers tried to unionize the staff so I released all contractors, two out of thirty, that sided with him to quash that mutiny. This teacher went to prison a couple years later for molesting two minor students and spent the next 20 years in prison.
Janet Yellen, known globalist shill and head of the US treasury, tells the IRS not to target small businesses! Why would she say this when the propaganda from the left and IRS states they will be going after big business? She went on to say a few days later not to worry, she told the IRS not to fleece small biz and the poor so no need to worry! This is NGO speak for, the IRS is going to turn you upside down and shake even the loose change from you!
Yellen tells IRS not to use $80B funding on middle-class, small business audits (nypost.com)
Let’s Pick on the Little Guy for Fun and Profit!
Getting back to the audits. I received a letter from the IRS stating that I owed something like 60 grand for violation of contractor laws! Funny, I wrote a white paper for the entire industry on how to conduct a lesson program that will pass IRS rules! Of all people, I was the last that should have been targeted for this but I guess someone in the IRS got wind of my claims and wanted to make me an example that nobody is safe!
To summarize this audit, the idiot examiner mistakenly took suppliers with a person’s name as one of my “under the table” contractors. Hilarious! Companies like Ernie Ball, and many other small vendors operating under their names were listed. The bill went from 60k to zero in moments! The auditor actually tried to dispute it for a couple of weeks and gave up! Maybe they got the message? Hell no!
I got another EDD audit shortly thereafter! This is the worst one of all and the female auditor refused to speak to me and took several full days in my business scouring everything! She would leave and I would ask if she was done and there would be no response! After about 4 days, she spoke saying, goodbye! No answers, questions, nothing. Just like the city inspector, she left me hanging and worrying. Absolutely nothing ever happened, and I only presumed after many, many months, the coast was clear!
I got audited yet again a while later and was fed up! We had brought in thousands of Vietnamese refugees in 1979 and the city of Garden Grove renamed a portion, Little Saigon! They setup shops and commerce and even refused to use English on signs but that was OK because they were special! They openly advertised they did not collect sales tax and encouraged people to save money by making purchases from them!
So, on the most recent audit, I lost it! Why don’t you go down the street and audit the Vietnamese?! The auditor’s response? He got closer and said, they’re off limits!
If you believe that this administration and what follows is designed to go after big business, you are deluding yourself! Think about what happened during the plandemic lockdowns. What did all of the country do? Close small business! I read one account of their tyrannical rules that stores under around 7500 sq ft must close! What? Oh yeah, covid only strikes businesses under this size! Outrageous! These policies are designed to help big business globalist companies to dominate and put the small guys out!
This fact alone should be enough to convince logical thinkers to believe that the 87,000 new armed IRS will be coming for the small guys!
Do You Think that the Government Marks You for Life?
I am now retired with no income and yet was audited last year! It never ends! The IRS made up some tax credit violation they say I took and owed a couple thousand for! Here’s the incredible part. The IRS makes it virtually impossible to communicate with them other than by mail! I wrote a detailed letter questioning their claim and pointing out that I never received any ppp covid payments that would greatly offset this bogus amount. I still was owed money so figured that I would receive this acknowledgment.
Nope. I got a 2nd notice to pay letter a month later with section to fill out for payment! No acknowledgment of my details or missing covid payments. I wrote back again.
Around a month later, I receive a letter from the IRS stating, this is your final notice to pay before we take action! Are you getting the picture folks? Do you think that the IRS is really going to go into big corporations with guns to demand payment? Of course not! They will be going after small businesses and the poor who cannot afford to fight them!
I haven’t even touched on all the devious plans in the works to take away all of our freedoms! The globalists and current administration openly speak about a new monetary system. I just heard today that the goal is not to use a bitcoin type system but an open digital currency that can easily be viewed by the government to monitor all transactions.
For the past 30 plus years, I have been searched before boarding commercial flights 100 percent of the time! After around a dozen straight flights or so, I asked an airline agent why I am, without fail, pulled aside for searching. The agent responded by saying that it is random! I said something like, I should go to Vegas and score a dozen blackjacks in a row then! Decades since, even as a senior, I unfailingly get pulled aside every time.
Recently, I asked an airline official about this and was told….wait for it….this process is random! My response was that I have flown over a hundred times and pulled aside every time without fail and want to know if you show me on some type of list! She referred me to TSA. On my connecting flight, I was pulled aside as usual for searching and asked the agent about this.
I began to tell him the story and he laughed saying something like, we know all about you Mr. Moody and it’s totally random! What? He had that pedophile grin as he patted me down as though it was an inside joke that I was not in on! What happened and why are we ok with their personal violations on us? Like me, most of you are not felons or have terrorist backgrounds!
The first week that flights resumed after 911, I happened to be flying to the Monterey Jazz Festival in northern Ca. I, of course, got pulled aside for search and TSA found nail clippers in my carry on. This became a national emergency with her calling backup and hyper-ventilating! He has nail clippers with a file on it! What do we do? I reached over, took the tiny clipper from her hand and snapped off the file and threw it in the trash!
They stood in place still horrified and not knowing what to do! I said, problem solved! In the meantime, right before me entered a woman carrying an ornamental spear! I am not kidding! No questions asked! When I finally got through to the waiting area, I had to go over to that woman and ask her about this spear! She said what I thought in that it was an ornamental spear art piece. I said, it has a sharp tip on it yet they didn’t say anything to you? No, why? Because they nearly swatted me for nail clippers! We both laughed but this is not funny!
Get on a list and you are forever marked! The social credit score has been in beta mode for decades folks!
The social credit score in use already in China would be adapted in the US to control all of our actions and restrict access to all types of things we take for granted. If it gets to this, the IRS issue will come into play for collection of fines outside common tax issues! Can’t pay your fines for social score failures? No problem, we’ll send out armed IRS agents and take whatever you have!
Fellow citizens, we must become active before it’s too late! Regardless of your political persuasion, this movement toward Marxism and tyranny is going to affect all middle and lower-income individuals and businesses!
PS Update: Biden admin approved the IRS hiring bill and Kamala Harris was the deciding vote. This was a bill to target service workers. Harris has flipped on this issue claiming to want to eliminate tax on tips. Be careful to look into policies that candidates endorsed in the past.
