Obama Opens Fraud-Ridden Benefits Programs to
Illegals
More than 1 million to become eligible for
federal transfer payments
(Washington Examiner) – President Obama’s
unilateral executive action on immigration will make hundreds of thousands,
perhaps more than a million, illegal immigrants eligible for federal transfer
payments. That will be done primarily through two widely used programs — the
Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, and the Additional Child Tax Credit, or
ACTC.
As it turns out, those two programs are
already among the most corrupt and fraud-ridden in the entire federal
government. A newly-released report from the inspector general of the Internal
Revenue Service confirms that the EITC is plagued by fraud (which was already
well known) and also reveals for the first time that the ACTC is even worse. The
two programs, intended for low-income workers, are what is known as refundable
tax credits. That means they give workers a tax refund that is larger than
their tax liability. So a family with a tax bill of $1,000 might receive an
EITC “refund” of $5,000, meaning the family doesn’t write a check to the
government but rather receives a check from the government. The ACTC works
similarly for low-income workers with children for Illegals! Supported by both
political parties over the years, the programs were intended to encourage work
and strengthen families.
Their growth has been extraordinary in recent
years — payments increased 40 percent from 2007 to 2012 alone. And now both are
beset by staggering levels of fraud. According to the inspector general, the
IRS paid out $63 billion in EITC benefits in 2013. Of that, 24 percent, or
about $15 billion, was given improperly to people not qualified to receive it.
That improper payment rate has been enough to qualify the EITC as a “high risk”
program for years. The IRS paid out $26.6 billion in ACTC credits in 2013.
The inspector general reports the child
credit improper payment rate for that year was somewhere between 25.2 percent
and 30.5 percent — worse than the EITC. Considering that federal law defines a
program as having “significant improper payments” when such payments exceed 2.5
percent of all the money the program sends out, those are pretty terrible
numbers. Even as the problems with the Earned Income Tax Credit were obvious,
the IRS has for years insisted that the child credit was a program with a “low
risk” of fraud. The inspector general concluded that the IRS has known all
along that the “low risk” designation was phony. “The IRS’s rating of the ACTC
as low risk for significant improper payments is contrary to its own
enforcement data,” the report noted. Both Congress and the president have
ordered the IRS to crack down on improper payments. But the agency doesn’t
appear to be trying very hard. “The estimated EITC improper payment rate has
remained relatively unchanged since fiscal year 2003 (the first year the IRS was
required to report estimates of these payments to Congress), and the amount of
EITC claims paid in error has grown,” writes the inspector general. The report
estimates there has been somewhere between $124 billion and $148 billion in
improper EITC payments in the last decade. That’s more than the federal
government pays for, say, veterans’ benefits, or the justice system, or
agriculture, or transportation in any given year. And it is all wasted. Top IRS
management has disputed most of the inspector general’s conclusions and
rejected most of his suggestions. So don’t expect much to change. But if
nothing changes, the problem will get worse. “Existing compliance processes
will not reduce the billions of dollars in improper Earned Income Tax Credit
and Additional Child Tax Credit payments,” the inspector general concludes. And
now the programs — and the fraud — are likely to grow with the president’s
immigration order. It’s something Obama did not take time to explain when he
made the announcement. In fact, the president obscured what is happening by
telling the covered illegal immigrants that if “you’re willing to pay your fair
share of taxes, you’ll be able to stay. …” In fact, for many of those affected,
“willing to pay your fair share of taxes” actually means “willing to accept an
assistance check from the government.” If past practice is any guide, the Obama
administration will likely start an aggressive, multilingual campaign to
encourage illegal immigrants affected by the president’s action to apply for as
many benefits as possible. And if not all of them are actually eligible to
receive the taxpayers’ money? Well, no one will be checking that too closely.
See more at: http://www.teaparty.org/obama-opens-fraud-ridden-benefits-programs-illegals-72362/#sthash.GJIiBpSW.dpuf
Source:http://www.teaparty.org/obama-opens-fraud-ridden-benefits-programs-illegals-72362/
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