The Wednesday Lowdown ⬇️

If you're new around here, every day I share the 4-5 best accounting insights I saw in the past 24 hours.

I scroll. so you don't have to.

💎 WTF of the Day

IRS cracks down on illegal sports betting

The IRS’s criminal division is going after the darker side of sports gambling, even while legal betting is booming. They open about 30 new cases a year and win 92% of them. Over the past five years, nearly 100 people have been convicted, pulling average prison sentences of 5–33 months.

One crew called Red44 ran $2B in wagers through a Costa Rica server. They got caught, pled guilty, and now owe $19.7M in back taxes.

IRS officials are warning gamblers to stick to state licensed platforms, not shady offshore crypto casinos designed for anonymous bets.

Source: IRS

💎 What’s poppin in accounting

$2B Pandemic Tax IOU Still Unpaid

Remember when Trump let businesses defer payroll taxes in 2020? Most employers paid it back… but about 10,000 companies still haven’t coughed up $2B in Social Security taxes.

Out of the $133B deferred, 98% was repaid. The IRS has been busy slapping penalties, nearly $600M worth but they also mishandled $73M in fines because of delays in posting credits. Classic IRS.

Source: Accounting today

 📊 Weekly Trend Chart

School’s Back, So Is ChatGPT

ChatGPT use tanked in June when kids went on summer break. Now? It’s spiking again as essays, exams, and late night cramming return.

Finals week in May saw a record surge, almost 100 billion tokens processed in one day. A survey says 1 in 4 teens now use ChatGPT for schoolwork, double since 2023.

Basically, pencils, notebooks, and AI chatbots are the new school supplies.

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