When accounting goes unaccounted for
Remember how the military tried to recruit Call of Duty players to be drone pilots? Maybe the IRS can take a page from their book and convince young people there is first-person fun to be had bum-rushing naughty taxpayers’ homes.
Robert Snell over at Tax Watchdog tell us about Lil Wayne’s latest problem. This time it’s a $1.1 million tax lien courtesy of the IRS via Dade County Florida.
It’s probably NBD for LW, as he’s dealt with the Service in the past, paying a $977k lien back in August of ’08.
What is interesting is that this particular legal snag is on top of several other accomplishments that Wayne-o has stacked up while in prison.
Last month, he pleaded guilty to a laundry list of drug charges – possession of a narcotic drug for sale, misconduct involving weapons, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of dangerous drugs – related to a stop that occurred outside Yuma, AZ in 2008.
He [pleaded guilty] over a live video feed from Rikers, and will most likely get 36 months of probation in return (the official sentencing is scheduled for June 30). For those keeping track at home, the plea bargain follows sports blogging, life-saving, prison-rule flouting, and rapping as things Wayne has accomplished while in jail.
And now delinquent taxes. Very impressive.
Lil Wayne, big debt [Tax Watchdog]
Famously Hardworking Rapper Pleads Guilty to Drug Charges While Already in Prison [Vulture]
If you’re a member of the AICPA the biggest benefit you enjoy is not the prestige, not the certificate that you have mounted on your wall but the Journal of Accountancy that shows up in your mail every month. It’s really solid that your firm shells out good money on an annual basis so you can add new Excel tips to your spreadsheet wizard repertoire.
JofA manages to talk to a number of high profile as well, which you would expect from a behemoth professional journal. Case in point, when we received the latest month’s issue we couldn’t help but get a little giddy seeing Doug “Help me, help you” Shulman. We flipped to the Q&A immediately after seeing his handsome mug on the cover only to find the Commish’s picture at right. It makes us think that he’s channeling Monty Burns, which some of you probably find appropriate.
The Q&A is pretty much what you would expect, touching on the new preparer regulations, “We ran a very open, transparent, public dialogue about this,” to threatening offshore tax scofflaws, “The U.S. government is getting very serious about rooting out offshore tax evasion,” and warning whistleblowers not to expect that money any time soon, “[T]his could take multiple years to get the awards out. But I’m a big fan of the program.”
A couple of more interesting statements, include how excited Dougie is that all the assignments that other government agencies don’t want, get dumped on the service, “it’s…a big compliment that we’re seen as a ‘go-to’ agency in government.”
That being said, this particular interview was certainly conducted prior to the passage of the healthcare reform bill and no mention of the IRS’ role in enforcement (or lack thereof) was brought up. Maybe if the JofA had seen the Bill O’Reilly/Anthony Weiner throwndown it would have been a stop the presses moment.
The only other thing worth noting is that pizza parlors around the country might want to tighten up the ship in the coming months, “We will build features into our technology system so if we see, say, a pizza parlor that says they had $90,000 of sales last year and it shows that they had $85,000 of credit card sales and we know that pizzerias have a lot of cash sales, that will be a red flag. We’ll use it to better target our audits, to see where there’s potential noncompliance, and then we’ll use it to better focus our resources.”
Maybe the Commish is just giving an example of what a red flag is but using this particular example rather than say, a celebrity, seem peculiar. Just leave Di Fara alone, okay?
Tax From the Top: Q&A With IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman [Journal of Accountancy]
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report Tuesday [PDF] they initiated in […]
Comments are closed.
Are they really hiring 87,000 actual agents? Or are a lot of these jobs going to be filing, answering phones, sorting mail, low level admin tasks that have very little to do with actual audits.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with the IRS getting a bigger budget. Anyone who’s been on hold for 6 hours to talk to someone at the IRS just to verify some taxpayer data should welcome this news.
All this scaremongering is silly, and so is all the animosity towards the IRS. It’s like being mad the police because they arrest you for robbing a bank, they just enforce the laws – they don’t make them.
Everyone need to chill. The IRS has been long overdue for a larger budget and and upgrade on their systems. This is a good thing everyone. Relax.
Not quite. People are, correctly, angry with the police for harassment or overreach of authority, and having more IRS agents will have the same effect. Animosity toward the IRS is wholly justified and fear of its expansion is rational.
Just like the police, it’s not just about enforcing the laws, but how the laws are enforced. How they exercise their power.
And, further, if the laws they are enforcing are unjust, opposing the arm of enforcement is also reasonable.
A huge expansion of the IRS is not something to be celebrated.
Uhh idk about y’all but I’ll celebrate the IRS hiring people to answer the phones for sure
In over 100 years there have only ever been 8-9,000 IRS Agents filling law enforcement positions…the 87,000 are more likely to be revenue agents, auditors, and admin staff…
I’m sorry, but I kind of love that one dude with “CPA” written on his little military style helmet. Gonna go show this pic to my kids and tell them that’s what mommy does for a living.