Atlas Shrugged also opened on Friday.
Related Posts
The IRS Will Pay You for Snitching but You Better Have a Big Fish and Don’t Mind Waiting
Recently we discussed snitching on tax cheats in the UK and we speculated that tax rats Stateside would be less common because of the increasing trend of hating (or just plain killing) on the Federal Government.
Well, we were dead wrong. Since Congress passed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the payouts to whistleblowers increased from a maximum of 15% of the recovered proceeds to a maximum of 30%. So far the temptation is working as tips to the IRS have increased to 476 for the latest fiscal year (9/30) compared to just 116 in the previous year.
Continued, after the jump
The catch is that the IRS doesn’t want to hear about your elderly neighbor that’s running numbers out of their basement for extra cash. No, they want the serious scofflaws, according to the Tax Girl, “the tax, penalties, interest, additions to tax, and additional amounts in dispute must exceed $2 million for any taxable year (that’s the sother restrictions also apply).”
So if you crunch the numbers, you can see there’s plenty of motivation to flip on someone if you know they are a tax dodger. Problem so far is that because of the boring arcane nature of tax law and the swiftness of the American court system, not one payout has occurred to date.
Plus, the law isn’t exactly encouraging the most honest of folks to come forward when you consider that Joe Francis’s accountant ratted him out only to be accused of shenanigans himself. And as Joe Kristan points out, “…there is always something creepy about the IRS being able to horn in on confidential client-professional relationships…”
The IRS probably isn’t worried too much about who gives them the information, just as long as they get it, so they’ll probably make a run at this with an imperfect system and with sources of questionable motivation for the time being.
If You Pay Them, They Will Come [Tax Girl]
Informant Program Spurs IRS Whistleblower Tips [Web CPA]
30 Pieces of Silver or 30 Percent of the Gross [Roth & Company, Tax Update Blog]
The IRS Was Just Kidding About Not Providing Interstate Migration Data
Last week, a number of conservative media outlets got a little bent out of shape […]
Legislation We Can All Get Behind: The BEER Act
Tax assassin Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform have thrown their support behind some important legislation that was introduced to mark American Craft Brew Week – The Brewer’s Employment and Excise Relief Act of 2011 or BEER Act.
While we’re certain that Grover & Co. regularly quaff craft brews, ATR’s support is also grounded in fiscal policy. Here’s Grover in his letter to Senators Mike Crapo (R-WY) and John Kerry (D-MA), the sponsors of the bill:
The BEER Act would reduce from $7 to $3.50 the tax paid per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels produced by small brewers. This is estimated to generate $19.9 million in capital for small beer producers, an enormous resource to promote job growth in the craft brewing industry.
Currently, brewers large and small pay the same tax on any production over 60,000 barrels. Set at an astounding $18-a-barrel tax, this represents a crushing weight on small brewers. This onerous tax penalizes production and disincentivizes industry growth, unnecessarily handicapping an industry that provides 100,000 jobs in the United States alone.
Your bill addresses this discrepancy by lowering the excise tax from $18 to $16 per barrel for production from 60,000 barrels up to 2 million barrels. This will provide an estimated $27.1 million for craft brewers to create jobs and spur economic growth.
Now, you don’t have to be a craft brew fan (like me) and you don’t have live in a state that produces many of these craft brews (like me) to get behind something as common sense as this. Unless, of course, all you drink is Bud Light™, which just means you’re a loser with no taste.