

When the IRS 'likes' your Facebook update - the_arun
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/when-irs-likes-your-facebook-update
IRS mining your social graphs for hints to decide whether to&#x2F;not to audit you
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Ricapar
I find the "well then just pay your taxes" answers to be on the same level of
"well if you have nothing to hide...".

You can be a honest and tax-paying citizen of society and still get audited.
There's always the chance that there _may_ be a mistake somewhere. The US tax
code is not simple. Even if you shell out $20-$80 a year to do it via
TurboTax, H&R Block, whatever, there's always room for a mistake.

And even if there are no mistakes, simply being told you are being audited
would make most people's heart skip a beat.

The article didn't quite cover what approach the IRS is using.. Whether they
are taking already flagged people and getting more info via social network
profiles, or if they are using social network profiles and using that as a
deciding factor on if one should be audited or not.

The former I don't have much of an opinion on. The latter I don't like the
sound of one bit.

~~~
yeukhon
They always audit your tax, no matter what. I just got audited and boom they
wanted $63 more. Whatever you paid this year, a few years later they will
review again...

~~~
matwood
Most people's taxes are pretty basic and this is likely the typical audit
response. The one thing I would have expected though is we want $63 more plus
a $100 fine for making a typo.

One thing that always bugs me, is that if the gov. has enough information to
know you owed $63 more dollars they had enough information to tell you exactly
what you owed up front and you could have skipped doing taxes and paying turbo
tax or whoever in the first place.

~~~
joshAg
blame intuit for lobbying to prevent the IRS from sending you what they think
you owe.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-
mill...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/turbotax-maker-funnels-millions-to-
lobby-against-easier-tax-returns/)

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DrJokepu
I deal with 3 tax agencies every year. I submit my personal and my business's
tax returns to the British HMRC as that's where I live. I deal with my home
country's (Hungary) tax agency too for various, boring reasons. And,
ultimately, as I tend to do my wife's tax returns as well and she's a citizen
of the United States I file taxes with the IRS.

I don't know how else I could put this: the US tax system is absolutely
insane. It's several orders of magnitude more complicated than any other I'm
familiar with. It's simply ridiculous. It's really, really bad.

~~~
cobrausn
My father-in-law was pretty high up in the NY State taxing agencies before he
retired. When I once asked him why he thought the tax codes in the US were so
complicated, he said it was simply because the US likes to use the tax codes
to for social engineering and many different people have had their hands at
the controls over the years.

~~~
joshAg
don't forget all the loopholes that get added along the way.

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akosednar
I think all they have to do is litterally like or retweet your post.

Imagine the fear of someone when the IRS likes your post.

You would definately do your taxes right after that because you'd think they
knew what you are up to.

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plusbryan
All that effort to avoid simplifying the tax code so that the tax preparation
industry can thrive.

~~~
thenewbtg
That's wholly untrue. Yes, the tax preparation industry has made token
donations to efforts to preserve the current tax code.

But I would argue that the failure of tax reform is not so simple. Major tax
reform is a massive, massive legislative undertaking. And doing so redefines
many of the basic American incentives. Having your say in tax reform is the
equivalent of leaving your mark on the next 20-30 years of American society.

Suffice to say, the massive polarization of our Legislature, combined with the
hyper-efficacy of Senate obstruction, and finished off with the fact that tax
reform is hard to campaign on means that there is no real incentive for our
legislators to reform. But sure, a token campaign contribution making up a
miniscule fraction of total donations doesn't hurt...

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yes, the tax preparation industry has made token donations to efforts to
> preserve the current tax code.

The millions Intuit alone spends annually lobbying to that end are
considerably more than anything that could reasonably called a "token".

~~~
thenewbtg
A billion dollars has already been raised in the 2014 _midterms_. A non-
presidential year, 6 months before the election, and a billion has already
flowed in.

So yes, your millions are a very tiny fraction of the money flowing in.

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pyrocat
"If you don’t want the IRS in your online business, Dyanim suggests ratcheting
up the privacy settings on all of your social media accounts. And never
posting anything that you wouldn’t want the agency to see. You could also try
a charm offensive. The IRS has 24,000 Facebook fans and 52,000 Twitter
followers."

Isn't it true that "liking" a page on Facebook gives the owner of that page
information about your profile? It seems like the two calls to action for this
article are contradictory.

~~~
morgante
> Isn't it true that "liking" a page on Facebook gives the owner of that page
> information about your profile? It seems like the two calls to action for
> this article are contradictory.

No more information than what's already public.

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swalsh
How many people tell the whole truth on facebook? Yay my side business just
made the first $300 sale! (but I spent $2k on advertising)

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poulsbohemian
We don't want to drive more corporations out of the US, but if the feds
actually think they are losing $300 Billion in revenues each year, why not go
after the Fortune 100 and their offshore shenanigans rather than 100+ million
poor schlubs who _might_ owe a few more bucks here and there. _That_ is the
major problem I have with the current tax system - Jane/John Sixpack don't
have the "opportunities" that corporations do when it comes to taxes, yet
every year around this time we hear hit pieces against the American people
like this that we aren't paying our fair share. Nonsense.

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cheetahtech
I am for over complicating the tax code. Let me tell you why.

If we over complicate the tax code as well as complicate doing your taxes,
maybe folks will finally get more upset with it.

The more folks get upset, maybe the more outspokeness to change it. The IRS is
a huge problem and the loop holes are even a greater problem.

I am all for flat or fair tax at 9-13%. First you might say no, but with a
flat tax, you no longer have to worry about filing taxes, but maybe a small
slip of paper. Secondly, how much time is spent preparing and filing? Time
could be drastically put back into the citizens rather than being taken away
with another government task.

~~~
talmand
I don't see how the US Federal Tax Code could get more complicated without
just inserting pure gibberish into it.

The thing is, most of the tax code doesn't apply to everyday citizen. The
really complicated stuff only applies to a certain number and I'm sure they
have well paid people doing their best to avoid those sections.

The easy way to get people riled up about taxes? Remove withholding from
paychecks and force people to write that big check every April. Then you'll
get an uproar since most people have no idea how much in taxes they pay. But
that's likely not the point you're trying to make.

~~~
maxerickson
That number is already shown on W-2s and copied to the tax return. I guess
it's easier to not care about the number than it would be to not care about a
check.

One thing that would happen is that a lot more people would come up short at
tax time.

~~~
talmand
And yet if you ask people how much they pay taxes they probably don't know.

They may know how much they take home and how much they get back on their
return, but the dollar amount they pay in taxes? I would bet most don't know.

~~~
maxerickson
Oh, I agree with that. I was just pointing out that the information is already
pretty available (It isn't actually on the W-2, that's just withholding, but
it's a line item on the 1040). To me that at least hints at people not
believing they can do much to change it, rather than being completely
oblivious.

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jrs235
Slight tangent:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/d...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/did-
you-just-overpay-or-underpay-your-taxes/)

I wonder if Donald gets audited or not because he admits he doesn't know the
accuracy of his return.

------
talmand
Could this turn into something interesting if people just started posting fake
data into their profiles? Pollute the waters so to speak?

Bonus is that some of your friends and family will wonder if you really did
take that expensive trip to Australia.

------
curlyquote
If you don't want the IRS in your online business, I think there's an easier
solution: Pay your taxes.

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seivan
This happened in Sweden recently if I recall correctly.

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matthewmacleod
_" If Nike is analyzing my information, the worst consequence is that they
market stuff to me that I don’t want and it’s annoying," says Dayanim. "If the
government does it, the worst consequence is there could be legal
ramifications, whether it’s fines, penalties or imprisonment."_

Maybe don't evade your goddamned taxes then.

Seriously, people who not only evade tax, but follow it up by flaunting that
fact in public, deserve absolutely no sympathy.

~~~
squidfood
Hmm, this sounds like the old "you shouldn't mind surveillance if you've got
nothing to hide" argument.

~~~
matthewmacleod
Except it's not. This is the "you don't get to complain if you brag about your
tax evasion in public and then go to jail" argument.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Except that I don't evade taxes, and I don't want the IRS using my online
presence to profile me and decide if I fit the profile of a tax evader.

~~~
gamblor956
The IRS doesn't use your online profile to decide if you're a tax evader. It's
simply fearmongering from anti-tax advocates.

The IRS doesn't even have the budget to carry out basic audits in which the
bulk of the investigational burden is placed on the taxpayer (by means of
responding to auto-generated documentation requests). It certainly doesn't
have the budget to invest in a high-tech system that could track multiple
social media platforms and somehow connect that to financial spending or tax
reporting.

