The woman in the photo above is Nina Olson. She is the National Taxpayer Advocate. […]
Tag: Nina Olson
This Upcoming Tax Filing Season Promises To Be More Miserable Than Ever
These are not words you want to hear from the guy in charge at the […]
IRS Doesn’t Seem at All Worried About Overworking Already Overworked Employees
Earlier this week, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson gave her annual report to Congress. It's […]
Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson Would Like the IRS to Quit Slapping Liens on People
Presumably this means celebrities too! That is, until the IRS can show that it’s actually an effective means of collection and not so ‘hard core.’
Olson has accused the agency of relying too heavily on an automated “one-size-fits-all approach.” She said the agency misguidedly files liens against people who have no money and no assets.
“Absent data that show liens make a meaningful contribution to revenue collection and especially in this economy, I find it unacceptable that the IRS continues to torment financially struggling taxpayers in this way,” Olson wrote in a news release accompanying the report.
Perhaps Olson has a point but then Robert Snell over at Tax Watchdog might not have a job and we’d hate to see that happen. The guy is like Raisin Bran™ on the celebrity tax deadbeat.
IRS’s ‘hard-core’ collection tactics needlessly harm taxpayers, report says [WaPo]
How Big of a Burden Will the New 1099 Reporting Requirements Be for Small Businesses?
This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.
Slipped into the health care reform bill passed in March was a new tax reporting regulation likely to create a huge burden for businesses, something we wrote about recently. Now a government watchdog, the National Taxpayer Advocate, is questioning the rule’s potential unintended consequences for small companies.
Plus, it looks like the regulation won’t raise a heck of a lot of money anyway.
The rule would require anyone with business income to issue 1099 tax forms to all vendors from whom they bought more than $600 worth of goods and services that year.
In her report, Nina Olson, the Taxpayer Advocate, warned that the rule could prove to be an unacceptable added burden for small businesses, which would face a virtual cyclone of new paperwork to comply with the regulation. “The new reporting burden, particularly as it falls on small businesses, may turn out to be disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance,” she wrote. And the rule could also give an unfair advantage to large suppliers that have the resources to help customers track purchases.
What’s really going on here? The regulation, which would take effect in 2012, seems to be yet another attempt by federal and state government agencies to shore up revenues by cracking down on unpaid tax liabilities–and taking steps that intentionally or unintentionally impact small businesses in particular. For example, a bevy of agencies, plus Congress, are on a regulatory jihad against corporate misclassification of independent contractors. And there are reports that the IRS is especially eyeing small businesses in that crackdown.
Thing is, like that effort, the new 1099 tax reporting regulation isn’t likely to reap a whole lot of money. For example, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation recently estimated the rule would raise an underwhelming $2 billion annually in added revenue, according to CNNMoney.com.
Will the Taxpayer Advocate’s remarks have any effect? Even before Olson’s report, there were signs that the IRS had started to backtrack. For example, the IRS announced in May that the rule won’t include transactions made through credit and debit cards. As the tax agency addresses all the compliance complexities of the rule, it’s likely to make other changes, as well.
But with government agencies in desperate need of money, the reporting rule isn’t going to disappear completely.