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Who in Utah Is Going Out of Their Way to Screw with the IRS?

This apparently happened late yesterday but jesus, who the hell is the jokester in Utah?

 


So it turned out to be personal items. That could be anything and it sounds a little silly to blow the package up to find out that it’s filled with undies and socks (although we understand the paranoia).

This is the second false alarm for an IRS facility in Utah in less than two weeks. Last Monday Hazmat crews and the FBI showed up at the Ogden facility after someone found some baking powder and people started having seizures.

Whoever is behind these false alarms is probably having a good laugh about the whole thing. It could be the ghost of Joseph Stack for all we know. Then again, his Facebook group keeps growing so perhaps that’s a good place to start.

Layoff Watch ’11: The IRS Says Tomato

You may have heard some carefully coiffed pols shouting about the need for our government to “cut spending.” If you’re a Republican, this means everything is fair game with the exception of the defense budget. For Dems, it’s entitlements. Since these two sacred cows of the federal budget dare not be touched, all the stuff in between is on the chopping block. One of the easier areas of government for pols to offer up for sacrifice is the Treasury Department, specifically the IRS. Because GOD KNOWS we don’t need “a goon squad 5,000 IRS agents tromping around the country.”

It appears that all the budget thumping has worked and the IRS is looking for volunteers to help move this along:

The Internal Revenue Service has offered buyouts to 5,400 employees as it begins preparing for a likely budget cut of more than 3 percent.

The agency, which had 94,711 workers in fiscal 2010, plans to accept no more than 1,600 buyout applications. A second round of buyouts could follow. The Obama administration has said that as many as 4,000 IRS jobs could be cut over the next year, including some that would reduce tax enforcement and collections.

“This is really focused on trying to deal with the current budget situation and the uncertainty that we’re facing at this point in time,” Beth Tucker, deputy IRS commissioner for operations support, said in an interview today.

IRS officials directed the first round of buyout offers to back-office employees who don’t interact with taxpayers. A potential second set of cuts would affect “a wider range of employees who deal directly with taxpayers in service and enforcement matters,” commissioner Douglas Shulman wrote in a Nov. 4 memo to employees.

First off, putting 4,000 people out of work won’t make for a balanced budget. Secondly, I’m not saying these “buyouts” are actually “layoffs” but if you consider the fact that these “buyouts” include current employees will receive money and not be required to report to their cubicles EVER AGAIN sounds pretty similar to how “layoffs” work. Maybe it’s just me.

IRS Offers Buyouts to 5,400 Employees [Bloomberg]

IRS Ruling Gives Same-sex Couples Equal Tax Treatment

Specifically, under a feature of California law that recognizes domestic partnerships gay couples must now combine their income and report half of it on each of their respective returns.


The ruling marks the first time that the IRS has recognized same-sex couples as equal to their heterosexual counterparts for tax purposes. Of the community-property states (i.e. all property and debt is owned equally by a couple) Nevada and Washington also recognize domestic partnerships, so couples there may also be affected.

Gay Couples Get Equal Tax Treatment [WSJ]