Why doesn’t the IRS go after the drug lords, the pimps and those who steal?

They caught Al Capone, Berine Madoff, Sam Freid, the solar panel CEO lady (I Googled it and I didn’t find her name).

They do go after them

Sorry. It was Elisabeth Holmes from Theranos . Not the solar panel lady.

Really? I never hear of it. Please, can you show a link? These folks deal on the black market. I doubt there’s a way to seriously track their income.

@snowberry Sorry I only have a cell phone.

And they are criminals. But they are making money, and a lot of it. However they are getting their money,, I should think the IRS would be interested.

The pimps, drug lords, and thieves are part of the cash economy – they don’t file W2s for the employees, or 1099s, or anything official.

So there’s nothing for the IRS to use as an investigatory hook, unless the IRS became part of the drug business, and the prostitution business, etc., in order to do the bookkeeping.

Best thing about cash is that it is fungible.

Those are state crimes, belonging to the jurisdiction of the states, not the federal government. It’s possible to make a federal investigation for crimes that cross states, but most state level offenses will not meet the requirements.

The IRS isn’t interested in prostitution, because it’s not theirs to prosecute. However, if they can prove a person is lying about their income, whatever the source, then they can be charged with federal crimes.

Cash is mostly for crime these days, because it’s really the last good use case for the stuff. Bring on the govcoin!

The FBI or local law enforcement might go after pimps and others and then the IRS might step in to do additional prosecution.

Many of the big drug kingpins are not taken down by drug busts. They’re taken out when their money laundering operations are exposed and it’s usually through inconsistencies in tax reporting.

Drug lords actually file taxes? Seriously? How do you know this?

This is a good idea, but then they would have to work together with the FBI and other law enforcement because the IRS, and I might be wrong about this, but I don’t think they actually handle things like going after drug dealers.

You need to be thinking more Walter White and less Pablo Escobar