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IRS consultant charged with disclosing tax return info to news organizations
- DSingularity 3y ago[flagged]
- meepmorp 3y agoWho should be criminally charged for the Iraq War, and on what basis specifically? The las broken and evidence needed to support a charge is pretty clear in this case - I don't think that's true for Iraq.
- o_1 3y agoTheres no money in that.
- fxd123 3y agoWhy would the Inspector General for Tax Administration go after people involved in the Iraq war?
- DSingularity 3y agoUh the justice department? It’s literally labeled public corruption. Was Cheney not a war profiteer?
- fxd123 3y agoThe Inspector General for Tax Administration is part of the treasury > Was Cheney not a war profiteer? It's not illegal to be a profiteer
- DSingularity 3y agoThis is a large on justice department?
- fxd123 3y ago...what?
- DSingularity 3y agoPost* on the justice department website
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rahimnathwani 3y agoFrom news articles, it seems that 'Public Official A' is Donald Trump.
- jedberg 3y agoYou'd assume so, but I'm surprised anyone even had access to those without a ton of paperwork and access controls and two-people-always-looking rules.
- stefan_ 3y agoWhy? There isn't a particularly good reason for these to be secret in the first place.
- mrkeen 3y agoAh c'mon, this is HN. Who here hasn't had at least a read-only connection to a relational database with something sensitive on it.
- communtator 3y agoYup. Mostly the US operates (both privately and in government) on an expectation of good behavior, and mostly it works. I believe this is referred to as a “high trust” society?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boeingUH60 3y ago“News Organization 2” is ProPublica, and they censored most names to avoid lawsuits I guess. Random fact; The top 15 is entirely new money, which was surprising. 1- https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...
- denimnerd42 3y agothat would make sense right? old money isn't going to take more income than required to make purchases, otherwise you pay taxes. if you include wealth gains and not just income, they will be more heavily diversified so their gains will be much smaller but hopefully more consistent. this true tax rate shenanigans drives me nuts though. so dishonest. yeah my true tax rate is like 5% too.. my house appreciated so much last few years...
- boeingUH60 3y ago> this true tax rate shenanigans drives me nuts though Not only you. It’s plain lying, but well, I guess the audience liked it.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI don’t know why ProPublica sullies its name by not being extra clear that they are complaining about the lack of a wealth/overall property tax. We already have property taxes. It would be simple to make an argument for or against expanding it. Or it could make an argument for marginal sales taxes (what I would prefer), to capture the rich people that borrow against their assets for their spending needs.
- nwiswell 3y ago> We already have property taxes. Sort of? They're a patchwork state system and they're heavily kneecapped because in many states property tax is not really proportional to the market value. In California, effectively the longer you've owned the property the less you tend to pay as a fraction of the value, which in a sense is regressive because younger, less affluent homeowners pay more tax.
- ksherlock 3y agoWSJ suggests he's pleading guilty which would explain why it's only one count.
- gautamcgoel 3y agoThis might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm glad he's being charged. I wouldn't like it if some activist stole my data and made it public. If you believe that it's in the public interest for this information to be released, you should advocate for disclosure laws. For example, one possible law might require presidential candidates to release their tax returns. I support disclosure through legal means, not through vigilante behavior.
- madsbuch 3y agoIn what world would it be an unpopular opinion that private information shared with a governmental organisation should stay private?
- Loughla 3y agoI don't want the information that I've sent to several agencies over the years made public. Some is medical, some is financial. It could be used against me in my field of work. No thank you.
- brobinson 3y agoYou misread the post you're replying to and are agreeing with it.
- robinson7d 3y agoIt’s possible that they’re simply agreeing with it.
- Loughla 3y agoNo they're right. I misread it. Even looking at it again, I think the post I was replying to was saying that nobody would have a problem with releasing their records. I don't see what I'm missing.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoLets see, the guy has embarassing tax info on important people. What are the odds he'll be forgiven, somehow? Because some important person will go to bat for him.
- fxd123 3y agoHe released all the info publicly...
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago...and the names were redacted? If I read it right.
- fxd123 3y agoThe names are redacted in the charges because they don't want to continue spreading them. The original info was not redacted
- eYrKEC2 3y agoWho, whom?
- mrkeen 3y ago[flagged]
- daft_pink 3y agoOnly five years? Seems like he should be facing much more than that.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoWhat about when IRS shares your financial information with google and medallia from their site through javascript includes? https://directpay.irs.gov/directpay/payment https://directpay.irs.gov/directpay/payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medallia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medallia …irs.gov …google-analytics.com …googletagmanager.com …medallia.com
- nvahalik 3y agoThis seems completely dishonest: Warren Buffett - $125M income reported - $23.7M taxes paid "real tax rate" = 0.10% I mean, this math only makes sense if you rewrite how math works...
- mixmastamyk 3y agoThe Propublica piece: They conflate unrealized capital gains with income for a dozen pages and then finally mention why it works that way. I think they should have led with that for full disclosure.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoI really hope any of the candidatea running, including RFK hopefully, make good on their promises to move agencies out of DC. The level of accountability and shame this individual would experience -walking down the street- if he lived anytown, USA is quite different from what happens in the big metros including DC
- ianhawes 3y agoIt’s funny to me that this announcement: - Came on a Friday evening - Was a criminal information filing, meaning it was not an indictment and the target likely wasn’t arrested - Was not precipitated by a major press conference by DOJ/Treasury Perhaps because the current administration was “soft” on this issue due to a desire to raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals?
- greenburger 3y agoOr perhaps they were eager to make the announcement prior to a government shutdown…
- rasse 3y agoBelieve it or not but in Finland this is done by the government. The tax authority will share the top earners' private data directly with the media.
- defrost 3y agoPay Transparency giving fellow citizens the Right to Request information regarding co-workers' pay and wage determination criteria exists as policy in Norway, Finland, Germany, and Spain (at least). It's not so much the tax authority reaching out to share "top earners" private data so much as it is media companies requesting what is considered public data of prominent individuals.
- vaadu 3y agoDoxxing from a government employee should get him life. If they can do it to Trump they can do it to you and me. And how do you know it hasn't been modified?