Us Tax System

Did billionaire philanthropist George Soros fund the purchase of voting machines in order to rig the 2022 midterm elections? No, that's not true: Elections are funded by taxpayer dollars and Soros has no connections to voting machine or voting software companies. The claim appeared in a November 6, 2022, Instagram post that uses a long string of hashtags for a…

Does GPS data from voters' cellphones help election fraudsters identify those who were registered but did not vote so the fraudsters can cast illegal ballots in the name of those people? Should voters avoid bringing cellphones to polling places on Election Day for this reason? No, that's not true: Election workers most commonly rely on voters' signatures to verify absentee…

Did Americans keep "100%" of their earnings up until 1913? Not exactly: While the 16th Amendment, which taxed individual income, was ratified in 1913, some higher-earning Americans paid income taxes between 1862 and 1872 to pay off the cost of the Civil War to the U.S. government. A tax expert with whom Lead Stories spoke listed additional pre-1913 taxes that…

Are Federal Reserve notes -- commonly known as paper money -- just "obligations" and therefore exempt from taxes? And does the U.S. Constitution say gold and silver are the only form of "lawful money" to be used in paying debts? No, neither of those claims are true. The Constitution does not specify any particular form of currency, and under federal…

Is the IRS trying to arm all its employees? No, that's not true: A job posting from the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, which carries firearms, does refer to carrying firearms. However, the unit consists of only 2,100 law enforcement agents, according to a spokesperson. In comparison, during fiscal year 2021, the IRS used close to 80,000 full-time equivalent positions for…

Is the IRS opening a "sniper school"? No, that's not true: The IRS Criminal Investigation unit declared to Lead Stories that there is no such school opening. The claim was made in an article on a website known for fictitious content. The claim was originally found in an article (archived here) published on August 10, 2022, and titled "IRS to…

Is it true that at the beginning of June 2022 Poland annexed Ukraine? No that's not true. Such posts on social networks began to appear after the publication of a press release from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, in which the alleged state contract for the construction in Poland of a backup data processing center of the Ukrainian tax service…

Was the Titanic sunk intentionally in order to kill specific people who opposed a central banking system, thus clearing the way to establish the Federal Reserve? No, that's not true: This antisemitic conspiracy theory was already floating around the internet before it was promoted to followers of QAnon. There is no evidence to support this. In November 2017, a series…

Do U.S. government laws say no American can own a house or car and that all children are wards of the state? No, that's not true: According to Jeff Feldman, professor of practice at the University of Washington Law School, individuals or entities can own real property that the government does not own. Scott C. Idleman, a professor at Marquette…

Did the Biden administration develop a program that allows qualified homeowners to receive solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall battery system for free? No, that's not true: Although the administration proposed a $555 billion budget dedicated to clean energy and climate change efforts in 2021, there is no evidence of a program within that budget that would provide solar panels…