This is an older article. One of the key takeaways is that Congress in 2008 gave the IRS the capability to dive into your personal affairs online in ways that even the justice department can't (without a warrant). They only need to view you as somebody of interest.<p>Better still, the exact nature of all this -- wait for it -- is a secret.<p>The long-term trend here is pretty clear. Congress has the Big Data hammer out, and it's not afraid to use it on whatever political cause of the week makes them upset. NSA was first, because terrorism was so bad. But dang it, tax cheats are pretty bad too!<p>There's no slippery slope argument that needs to be made. We're already sliding down it. Just standby for the next travesty. Don't worry, the wait won't be long. Maybe a year or two.<p>The American people remain amazingly ignorant and/or apathetic, though. One wonders how many wake-up calls it will take.<p>ADD: The <i>very</i> interesting question here is this: since the IRS is authorized to go after emails and social chats without a warrant, how are the big service providers going to report this? Even if Google shows its thousands of NSLs, this type of activity wouldn't be covered by them. Some more info here: <a href="http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual-funds/articles/2013/04/04/irs-high-tech-tools-track-your-digital-footprints" rel="nofollow">http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/mutual-funds/...</a>
This article makes reference to a 38-page manual uncovered by EFF, in the context of a story about broad claimed authority by the IRS to examine online data to defend tax challenges. What the article doesn't say is that the manual was praised by EFF: it instructs IRS employees only to use public information, never to misrepresent themselves or attempt to gain access to people's social networks by posing as "friends", and never to use confidential information as search terms.<p>At one point, the manual explains to examiners how to use DomainTools to search for domain names, but cautions examiners that the site may ask for email addresses sometimes, at which point the examiner is <i>no longer allowed to use the service</i> and must instead revert to asking the taxpayer questions.<p>It's this kind of writing that drives me crazy. IRS may be overreaching, or they may not be; who knows? We get all our information through a game of telephone by media organizations that incentivized to write the most lurid stories possible.
Part of me wants to protect my purchasing decisions from public view. Another part of me wishes the IRS would use that data to just calculate my taxes for me so I don't have to do this ridiculous paper dance every winter.
Holy lucre ! 300 billion in lost <i>revenue</i>. That has to be wrong. Even at a tax rate of 30% (way higher than the US effective rate) that implies one trillion dollars each year gets hidden from the IRS.<p>That will solve every budgetary crisis going.
Taxes are to high for the services provided. Laws are mostly written by lobbyists for large corporations. Now the IRS is going to use "big data" systems -using input data from Google, Facebook,etc - provided by profit driven vendors to enforce this treachery on the middle class and upper middle class b/c they pay the highest tax rates. Its kind of like red-light cameras. Companies who provide the red-light camera technology share revenue with the municipalities who they contract with. Perverse incentives.<p>Makes me want to collect my family and leave the US. Become an expat in a low income tax state.
Page looks like its from something called `Bing'.<p>We see:<p>At the top is a U.S. News & World Report button,<p>4/10/2013 4:15 PM ET<p>By Richard Satran, U.S. News & World Report<p>At the bottom of story we see<p>`More from U.S. News & World Report:...'<p>-None of this links back to original source.<p>If I fb share it, or link it, this `Bing' becomes the link. without more further digging to get the original url, looks like I have to use this copycat of full-content `Bing' thing.
Did I understand this correctly?<p>"The IRS last year used a profiling test model to study 1,500 tax preparers with histories of reporting deficiencies and managed to recover $200 million. It cited the experience as proof that its data analysis works."<p>They recovered $200M from 1,500 citizens? That's $133k each. Seems like an extraordinarily large amount.
Meanwhile the fat cats pay little, or no taxes...<p>GE paid 7% in 2010, partly due to the poor economy.<p>How many of us wish we could get away with only paying 7% tax?<p><a href="http://money.msn.com/taxes/latest.aspx?post=26d490bd-7317-4f93-8b43-e1da1151ea5f" rel="nofollow">http://money.msn.com/taxes/latest.aspx?post=26d490bd-7317-4f...</a>
Is it me or does this sound like a nutty conspiracy theory?<p>NSA is one thing... But IRS? I have a hard time believing this is anything but grossly exaggerated.
I love it. An IRS audit based on trawling public data is more likely to wake up the moronic "I've got nothing to hide" clowns than any total surveillance by the NSA or the massive cyberstalking by Facebook, Google e.a.