No stranger than former SEC lawyers going to law firms and defending clients from SEC claims or former prosecutors heading up defense litigation practices at law firms. Originally Posted by discreetgentYeah its called reality...after years on a G-whatever grade salary...private school tuition, college tuition on the horizon...and then someday retirement....the idea of making more coin in the private sector sounds tempting...
- atlcomedy
- 02-22-2010, 12:55 PM
- discreetgent
- 02-22-2010, 12:56 PM
Word!
- Chevalier
- 02-22-2010, 01:03 PM
The IRS tends to make the collections from the common citizen or celebrity, i.e., Wesley Snipes, a public affair. Making a politician pay up quietly makes no sense when they use those public tactics to scare the general population into submission. Originally Posted by DFW5TravelerThey can make Wesley Snipes a public affair because it became a criminal case, which made it a matter of public record. Otherwise, the IRS is prohibited from public disclosure of information about individual taxpayers. Which, realistically, we want to be the case. Would you want your tax return published in the local newspaper? As long as the situation is resolved before going to court, and you don't voluntarily provide your tax returns to someone (e.g., the Senate Finance Committee requires them for many nominees), it's between you and the IRS.
I find it ironic that some former IRS attorneys are now taking on case loads to fight the IRS. Originally Posted by DFW5TravelerWhat else do they know how to do?
It's not a lot different from former members of Congress becoming lobbyists -- you tell prospective clients "I know how to deal with these people; I used to be one of them."It's legitimate to fight the IRS -- I do it myself -- within the boundaries of what's reasonable to argue. Unfortunately, people sometimes need that assistance to deal with a large bureacracy. (Again, address your complaints primarily to Congress.) Some former IRS attorneys, though, rather than represent taxpayers with legitimate positions instead wind up promoting egregious tax shelters. Some of them have been fined heavily or gone to jail as a result.
Geithner's and Emanuel's tax problems both came up after their nominations and they were still confirmed. I, personally, believe in leadership by example and they do not deserve to hold public office. Originally Posted by DFW5TravelerTypically the first couple of nominees wind up withdrawing and then, after Congress' taste for blood has been satisfied, everyone backs off a little bit and the next nominees get through. Daschle, you will recall, did withdraw as he could not have been confirmed. Shades of 1993, when Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood both lost out on Attorney General position because of the nanny tax, and then Stephen Breyer (who'd done essentially the same) managed to skate through and be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Although it's a separate issue from whether the IRS will collect the back taxes, I agree that serious tax problems should be a disqualification -- either someone is incompetent or they're trying to cheat the government, and neither is consistent with government service. It depends on where you draw the line between "serious" and "trivial," something that any of us might do inadvertently. I would definitely classify Rangel's as serious (although of course he's subject to election rather than confirmation); Geitner's and Emanuel's, perhaps on the other side of the line. But it's a judgment call, and Your Opinion May Vary.
- pjorourke
- 02-22-2010, 01:18 PM
- GneissGuy
- 02-22-2010, 02:44 PM
Honor the dead and injured.
Forget the murdering asshole. He's no more significant than any other pathetic little piece of crap who sets a building on fire and kills one and injures two. Talking about him only honors him and encourages the next nutjob to follow his example.
Forget the murdering asshole. He's no more significant than any other pathetic little piece of crap who sets a building on fire and kills one and injures two. Talking about him only honors him and encourages the next nutjob to follow his example.
- TexTushHog
- 02-22-2010, 03:45 PM
I've dealt with the IRS on several occasions and frankly, I've found them to be fair, and relatively pleasant and professional. Granted, I've never had a compliance audit, but when my law firm has had it's taxes looked at, we came out smelling like a rose. Our accountant had everything in order and once the IRS employee spent half a day and found that we had documentation for everything that he asked for, he spend about an hour more and went on his way. He even complimented us on the completeness of my records on gambling wins and losses. We didn't even hire a tax attorney for the audit, although we consulted with one for about two hours worth of his time.
My impression is that the people that get cross ways with the IRS generally have some irregularities in their returns or documentation, or take an unnecessarily hostile attitude toward the process. Perhaps Chevalier or someone who deals with them more than I do can confirm this or educate me. But frankly, I've been fairly impressed in my dealings with them.
Yes, there are a few unethical attorneys and accountants, but they are few and far in between compared to most. If you will use common sense and avoid the obvious scams, and use the old adage that "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," you can avoid most of them."
My impression is that the people that get cross ways with the IRS generally have some irregularities in their returns or documentation, or take an unnecessarily hostile attitude toward the process. Perhaps Chevalier or someone who deals with them more than I do can confirm this or educate me. But frankly, I've been fairly impressed in my dealings with them.
He made persuasive arguments about the the law being illegible . . and unethical lawyers and accountants fleecing consumers. Originally Posted by woodyboydLaw is a complicated subject and given the complexities of modern society, it is impossible to write all laws where a lay person can decipher them unaided by trained counsel. However, I don't think that justifies a broad statement that laws are incomprehensible. You're supposed to pay your taxes. Plain and simple. If you're not sure what taxes to pay, hire a good accountant. If your problems are complicated enough, and they almost certainly aren't, you may need to hire a tax attorney.
Yes, there are a few unethical attorneys and accountants, but they are few and far in between compared to most. If you will use common sense and avoid the obvious scams, and use the old adage that "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," you can avoid most of them."
- Chevalier
- 02-22-2010, 04:41 PM
My impression is that the people that get cross ways with the IRS generally have some irregularities in their returns or documentation, or take an unnecessarily hostile attitude toward the process. Perhaps Chevalier or someone who deals with them more than I do can confirm this or educate me. But frankly, I've been fairly impressed in my dealings with them. Originally Posted by TexTushHogFor the most part, I've found them to be fairly reasonable. I often disagree with them but can understand their perspective. Taxpayers take aggressive positions in one direction and the IRS may take an aggressive position in the other direction. Usually, neither party gets exactly what it wants, as the law doesn't clearly support either extreme and both parties have risks if they go to court. That's why most tax disputes settle, either at Exam or at Appeals. Even if you file a petition/refund suit, most often you wind up settling with opposing counsel.
I've run into the occasional unreasonable IRS employee who is completely over-board. (I have a terrific example; if I told you the basic contention by the auditor, you'd fall over laughing. If it ever got to a jury on that exact situation, the jury wouldn't even have to leave the box. Of course, I can't share the details because of attorney-client privilege. But a rough comparison might be an auditor claiming that Warren Buffett could not deduct investment losses because he did not have a profit motive.) And sometimes the taxpayer's recalcitrance contributes greatly to that unreasonable attitude; failure to cooperate with the auditor or failure to maintain appropriate business records. Part of my job is just to be a buffer between the IRS and my clients.
There are so many procedural safeguards within the IRS that I can almost always eventually get a fairly reasonable -- given the state of the law and the facts -- result. I might think the taxpayers deserve a better result, that the law should be different, but the law is the law and the evidence is the evidence. It's not only a question of what happened but also what evidence you have and what you could convince a court of. Unfortunately, some of my clients just pushed the envelope way too far and a "reasonable" result is full payment of the taxes but limiting the penalties to 10% instead of 40%.
My primary complaint is not that the IRS reaches an unreasonable result but that it takes forever to resolve. But that's common with any large government bureaucracy, and a lot of times the slow speed is due to safeguards meant to protect not only the government but also the taxpayer.
-------------
Of course, taxpayers who can't afford or don't want to hire competent professionals can have a great deal of difficulty dealing with the IRS. But that, I think, is primarily the fault of Congress in enacting the tax law as it exists.
- charlestudor2005
- 02-22-2010, 05:21 PM
[I stole this from years ago, so y'all have probably seen it before.]
- How much did you make last year.......................... .......$_________
- Send it in.
- woodyboyd
- 02-23-2010, 01:03 AM
MA, a Jefferson quote for you, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
TTH, actually, my dealings with the IRS have been mostly professional as well. I understand that they have shaped up a lot in the last ten years.
As for the law being legible, I have had no problems reading Texas state law and federal law that is thirty years or older. However, recent federal law has taken obfuscation to an art form. The entire social security act was 64 pages, but Obama's health care bill was 2000 pages long, and not only was it long, it was illegible.
I agree with Joseph Stack on that point. On the one hand, we are told ignorance of the law is no excuse. On the other, the laws as you say are so complicated only the experts knows what they are.
Mr. Stack didn't articulate it well, but the truth is that when laws are written to be gray versus black and white, it serves not the people but those in power, and they seem to be getting grayer by the year.
It's pretty bothersome when even the so called experts can't fill out a tax form appropriately. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/money...7178/index.htm
TTH, actually, my dealings with the IRS have been mostly professional as well. I understand that they have shaped up a lot in the last ten years.
As for the law being legible, I have had no problems reading Texas state law and federal law that is thirty years or older. However, recent federal law has taken obfuscation to an art form. The entire social security act was 64 pages, but Obama's health care bill was 2000 pages long, and not only was it long, it was illegible.
I agree with Joseph Stack on that point. On the one hand, we are told ignorance of the law is no excuse. On the other, the laws as you say are so complicated only the experts knows what they are.
Mr. Stack didn't articulate it well, but the truth is that when laws are written to be gray versus black and white, it serves not the people but those in power, and they seem to be getting grayer by the year.
It's pretty bothersome when even the so called experts can't fill out a tax form appropriately. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/money...7178/index.htm
- Guest083011
- 02-23-2010, 05:44 AM
The entire social security act was 64 pages, but Obama's health care bill was 2000 pages long, and not only was it long, it was illegible. Originally Posted by woodyboydI'll see your multi-page bill and raise 'ya (sort a). Title IX in Sports (equality for the sexes) was about three paragraphs (yup paragraphs) to implement. No Child Left Behind was nearly 1,200 pages to administer. Thread Hijack!!!
- Chevalier
- 02-23-2010, 08:57 AM
Yeah, laws are getting longer and longer, as are a lot of other things. Try comparing the owner manual for your car or TV to those of 40 years ago, or for that matter the "help screens" for a word-processing program. (Talk about illegible!!) As the underlying system becomes more complex, the description and associated "rules" get longer too.
Certainly laws could be shorter and written in clearer English, but often the length is intended to provide better guidance than something shorter and more ambiguous -- clear rules so that people can determine (admittedly, with some effort) what the answer is. In that sense, it's an attempt to reduce it to black and white rather than gray, so you won't need a ruling by the IRS or a court to know what your return should show. And the complexity is also often intended to close loopholes or to precisely tailor benefits intended by Congress. It's part of the "hyperlexity" fallacy, that if you just provide more and more specificity and detail, you will reduce it to a technical exercise with a clearly determinable answer for every set of circumstances. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. But if you write something simpler, that's probably not a solution either; it may be even more ambiguous and require more intervention by the IRS or the courts. (On the other hand, that might increase the demand for my services so . . . )
The health care reform bill and No Child Left Behind, of course, don't have to be implemented by the average citizen but by government bureaucrats. With respect to the Internal Revenue Code, you actually have two separate phenomena: (1) detailed provisions where there is a definitive answer, but it may be hard to figure out because of the complexity; and (2) relatively simple issues (debt versus equity, material participation, business purpose, economic substance, like-kind exchanges) which may not even be spellout out in the Code but in any event may not have a definitive answer.
I'm a tax professional but I deal almost exclusively with the second category. I don't prepare returns and rarely deal with issues for which there is a clear-cut definitive answer. My clients can figure those out on their own. For everything else, I not only don't deal with it but also have at most a rudimentary grasp of what the law is. But I can still figure it out in order to prepare my own return.
The typical quiz of tax return preparers addresses the first category, and the failures on the quiz actually say more about return preparers than they do the complexity of the law. Most are hired on a seasonal basis by firms like H&R Block or Jackson Walker, have minimal or no prior experience, and get minimal training that isn't very effective. They can handle the plain vanilla return pretty easily. But there are a few areas that have such complex provisions (reflecting Congress' attempts to eliminate loopholes and very carefully tailor the relief granted); EITC is a prominent example. And the average (as opposed to competent) return preparer frequently goofs on those. Plus a lot of the errors on those quizzes are things like mathematical errors, omitting a dependant's SSN, etc. -- carelessness or sloppiness rather than complexity per se.
Certainly laws could be shorter and written in clearer English, but often the length is intended to provide better guidance than something shorter and more ambiguous -- clear rules so that people can determine (admittedly, with some effort) what the answer is. In that sense, it's an attempt to reduce it to black and white rather than gray, so you won't need a ruling by the IRS or a court to know what your return should show. And the complexity is also often intended to close loopholes or to precisely tailor benefits intended by Congress. It's part of the "hyperlexity" fallacy, that if you just provide more and more specificity and detail, you will reduce it to a technical exercise with a clearly determinable answer for every set of circumstances. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. But if you write something simpler, that's probably not a solution either; it may be even more ambiguous and require more intervention by the IRS or the courts. (On the other hand, that might increase the demand for my services so . . . )
The health care reform bill and No Child Left Behind, of course, don't have to be implemented by the average citizen but by government bureaucrats. With respect to the Internal Revenue Code, you actually have two separate phenomena: (1) detailed provisions where there is a definitive answer, but it may be hard to figure out because of the complexity; and (2) relatively simple issues (debt versus equity, material participation, business purpose, economic substance, like-kind exchanges) which may not even be spellout out in the Code but in any event may not have a definitive answer.
I'm a tax professional but I deal almost exclusively with the second category. I don't prepare returns and rarely deal with issues for which there is a clear-cut definitive answer. My clients can figure those out on their own. For everything else, I not only don't deal with it but also have at most a rudimentary grasp of what the law is. But I can still figure it out in order to prepare my own return.
The typical quiz of tax return preparers addresses the first category, and the failures on the quiz actually say more about return preparers than they do the complexity of the law. Most are hired on a seasonal basis by firms like H&R Block or Jackson Walker, have minimal or no prior experience, and get minimal training that isn't very effective. They can handle the plain vanilla return pretty easily. But there are a few areas that have such complex provisions (reflecting Congress' attempts to eliminate loopholes and very carefully tailor the relief granted); EITC is a prominent example. And the average (as opposed to competent) return preparer frequently goofs on those. Plus a lot of the errors on those quizzes are things like mathematical errors, omitting a dependant's SSN, etc. -- carelessness or sloppiness rather than complexity per se.
- TexTushHog
- 02-24-2010, 12:19 AM
Personally, I can't imagine a comprehensive bill encompassing a comprehensive reform of an entire industry that takes on as many issues as the health care bill does weighing in at much less than 2,000 pages.
As to your comparison with the Social Security laws, how many pages do you think that the Social Security laws take up now, much less the Social Security laws, the regulations implementing Social Security, and the quick abstracts of the cases interpreting those laws. Personally, my number on the over/under is in the 20,000 page range.
As to your comparison with the Social Security laws, how many pages do you think that the Social Security laws take up now, much less the Social Security laws, the regulations implementing Social Security, and the quick abstracts of the cases interpreting those laws. Personally, my number on the over/under is in the 20,000 page range.
- pjorourke
- 02-24-2010, 07:40 AM
- atlcomedy
- 02-24-2010, 07:44 AM
Personally, I can't imagine a comprehensive bill encompassing a comprehensive reform of an entire industry that takes on as many issues as the health care bill does weighing in at much less than 2,000 pages.At the risk of going on a brief tangent, what pisses me off is the guys that pass these huge bills don't bother to read them.
As to your comparison with the Social Security laws, how many pages do you think that the Social Security laws take up now, much less the Social Security laws, the regulations implementing Social Security, and the quick abstracts of the cases interpreting those laws. Personally, my number on the over/under is in the 20,000 page range. Originally Posted by TexTushHog
- charlestudor2005
- 02-24-2010, 08:54 AM
At the risk of going on a brief tangent, what pisses me off is the guys that pass these huge bills don't bother to read them. Originally Posted by atlcomedyThat's because there's no literacy test in becoming a congress person. Just the ability to raise money and votes. And we thought this was a whore board. Congress is the true whore board.