Practical and Practice issues for Professionals who practice in the area of taxation. Moral, social and economic issues relating to taxes, including international issues, the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, state tax issues, etc. Not for "tax protestor" issues, which should be posted in the "tax protestor" forum above. The advice or opinion given herein should not be relied on for any purpose whatsoever. Also examines cookie-cutter deals that have no economic substance but exist only to generate losses, as marketed by everybody from solo practitioner tax lawyers to the major accounting firms.
Wright, who asserted that the attorneys had not paid taxes on the settlement payments they had obtained in numerous cases, said he would refer the matter to the criminal investigation division of the Internal Revenue Service.
The Honorable Judge Roy Bean The world is a car and you're a crash-test dummy. The Devil Makes Three
Just the tip of the iceberg. It's the cash economy, and if the tax police were to go to town with expanded audits on many small business people, they would pay their salaries many times over with funds raised.
'There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can.' (Roman. Cicero, De Off. I. vii)
'Choose loss rather than shameful gains.' (Chilon Fr. 10. Diels)
I have long maintained that if the IRS hired retired tax practitioners to select and perform audits and paid them 1% of the funds collected, the retired practitioners would make tons of money and we would go a huge way to resolving the tax collection gap. Nobody knows where the bodies are buried better than the undertakers.
My choice early in life was to either be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politican. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.
Duke2Earl wrote:I have long maintained that if the IRS hired retired tax practitioners to select and perform audits and paid them 1% of the funds collected, the retired practitioners would make tons of money and we would go a huge way to resolving the tax collection gap. Nobody knows where the bodies are buried better than the undertakers.
Which would only open the door to accusations that payment of commissions encouraged audits that inflated the numbers, that the audits selected were not an accurate and fair representation of the taxpayer population (since auditers would only focus on the wealthiest taxpayers who would be the easiest to collect from), that the auditors only assessed as much tax as they think could collect quickly rather than the actual tax owed, and that corruption set in as auditor acccepted bribes for amounts in excess of the 1% commission because it was still cheaper for the taxpayer to pay a 5% bribe vs. the 100% of the tax.
Many of the above situations occured in the IRS prior to the reform of the agency back in the 50s. This is why the auditing and collection functions were separated and why the attempt by the IRS to contract out collections to private agencies didn't work.
"I could be dead wrong on this" - Irwin Schiff
"Do you realize I may even be delusional with respect to my income tax beliefs? " - Irwin Schiff
