IRS Audited Over Inappropriate Spending, Claims It Can't Find Its Receipts

from the off-with-their-heads dept

Just a guess, but it probably sucks to be the IRS right now. Between reports about them snooping on people's emails and their targeting of conservative groups, it's quite easy to paint them as a big, evil bureaucracy. Actually, it was pretty easy to do so before all that. You can generally rely on the hatred of the people for a group that requires meticulous spending records and then collects taxes. Big, bad, evil. What could be worse?

Well, how about hypocritical? That sure seems like an apt word in light of reports on how flighty the IRS was with tax-payer money for their own comforts.

The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about "leadership through art," the House committee said.

Infuriating, right? The bald-faced audacity of the organization that collects our taxes using some of that tax money to go to baseball games has the air of outright thievery. Fortunately, thanks to the investigation by the Treasury Department, we now have a full and accurate account of the awful IRS spending, right?

No, we damn well don't, because the IRS -- and I stress this, the IRS -- is claiming it can't find its own receipts, so the spending may well have been even worse.

Hypocrisy, thy name is now an acronym, and that acronym is IRS. This is the type of thing that keeps pitchfork and torch manufacturers in business. In fact, were it not for the undeniably smooth face and impossibly perfect coiffure of Anderson Cooper getting me through this, I might just be leading the mob.

Filed Under: hypocrisy, irs, receipts, spending

North Carolina Demands Amazon Reveal Every Detail Of Purchases By NC Residents

from the hope-you-didn't-buy-anything-embarrassing dept

For years, there have been attempts by states to get Amazon to collect sales tax on purchases in those states, even if Amazon doesn't actually have any facilities in those states. Historically, companies haven't needed to charge sales tax if they don't directly operate in those states since (the argument goes) they're not making use of state resources and thus shouldn't have to collect for the state. Of course, buyers are still supposed to pay the sales tax directly to the state -- though that almost never happens. Various states have worked on ways around this in blatant revenue grabs. For example, it's become popular for states to claim that if a particular state has any residents who have signed up as Amazon affiliates, Amazon now has a presence in that state. In response to this, Amazon has cut off affiliate programs in various states. One of those states was North Carolina.

North Carolina's response was to go even further -- and have its Department of Revenue demand from Amazon a list of everyone in the state who had made a purchase on Amazon.com since 2003. Amazon contends that it already turns over plenty of data to North Carolina:

It routinely provides the Revenue Department with "voluminous information" about its sales to North Carolina addresses as part of routine audits of the company's compliance with sales and use tax laws. The information includes the date and total price of each transaction, the city, county and ZIP code to which each item was shipped and Amazon's standard product code for each item, which allows officials to see the description of every product purchased.

But what it does not provide is the actual names and addresses -- and North Carolina threatened to charge Amazon with contempt if it didn't provide that info. In response, Amazon is now suing North Carolina, claiming that the demand to turn over such information is a massive breach of the First Amendment, in that it could create serious chilling effects on what people would buy if they knew that the gov't was reviewing all of their purchases.

It's hard to see how North Carolina has any case here at all. Demanding such information would be a huge breach of privacy and of individual rights -- all in a blatant attempt by the state to collect more revenue. Hopefully the courts shut down this overreach quickly.

Filed Under: north carolina, purchases, receipts
Companies: amazon