6 ms·

When the IRS 'likes' your Facebook update

35 points by the_arun 13y ago

IRS mining your social graphs for hints to decide whether to/not to audit you

plusbryan 13y ago
All that effort to avoid simplifying the tax code so that the tax preparation industry can thrive.
- thenewbtg 13y ago
  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...
  - Omniusaspirer 13y ago
    The tax code isn't just overly complicated, it's poorly equipped for dealing with a global economy and effectively encourages you to shirk as many taxes as you can legally get away with. This is especially noticeable in the business world where you're forced to file more frequently and actively put yourself at a disadvantage if you don't exploit the loopholes to the level your competitors do. There's a certain irony in wealthy corps/individuals being able to pay less effective taxes than the less fortunate purely because they can afford to work the system to their advantage. The only reason most of these gimmicks are possible is because the government is so damn determined to influence behavior through taxes.
  - talmand 13y ago
    Wait, you say it's wholly untrue but the immediately say that it's somewhat true. Can't disagree with the rest.
    - thenewbtg 13y ago
      I apologize, I believe it's functionally untrue. I believe functionally that Intuit has approximately 0% effect on tax reform. I was being glib in saying that they do have an effect, because to me a 0.01 - 0.05% level of effect is negligible.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > 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 13y ago
      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.
- yukichan 13y ago
  I wonder if tax credits on mortgage payment interests is a contributing blocker to tax reform. If they got rid of it, buying and owning a house would be so much more expensive. It would make renting more worth it.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    The problem is they can't dump that deduction without causing a massive discontinuity. If you get rid of it, house prices will drop instantly and incumbent owners are holding the bag in the form of their existing mortgage. So the only sane way to get rid of it is start now and phase it out over decades.
- protomyth 13y ago
  A large cause is all the government handouts we hide in the tax code as deductions. Simplifying the tax code removes a favorite way for politicians to payoff donors.
pyrocat 13y ago
"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.
- the_arun 13y ago
  :) That is just in case, IRS excludes its fans from its filters.
- morgante 13y ago
  > 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.
matthewmacleod 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  Hmm, this sounds like the old "you shouldn't mind surveillance if you've got nothing to hide" argument.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    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.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - oldstrangers 13y ago
      Except it's exactly the same.
      - swalkergibson 13y ago
        It is not. Tax evasion is an actual crime. The IRS using public signals from social media to determine if somebody is cheating on their taxes is not the same as the NSA tracking your GPS location via your cell phone at all times.
        oldstrangers 13y ago
        "If you don't have something to hide then you shouldn't mind" ... "They do have something to hide, so fuck them!" is two sides of the same coin.
curlyquote 13y ago
If you don't want the IRS in your online business, I think there's an easier solution: Pay your taxes.
swalsh 13y ago
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)
akosednar 13y ago
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.
cheetahtech 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - john_b 13y ago
    > "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." This would have the desired effect, but also others. Mostly that the IRS would suddenly have a lot of individuals who owed money to the government but couldn't pay it. I agree with this in principle, but the current system has trained (intentionally, I would argue) people to not think about what they pay in taxes or what it gets used for. Suddenly reverting to a system that demands financial planning and responsibility from individuals isn't workable. It takes time.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    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.
Ricapar 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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...
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    There are different levels of audit. The "standard" audit they apply to everyone is basically a cross-check of your 1099's and W-2's, as well as a form check to look for computational errors (or didn't-follow-instructions errors). When people say "I am being audited", they mean the higher levels of audit where they must produce extra records for the IRS to prove deductions & such.
  - matwood 13y ago
    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.
DrJokepu 13y ago
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.
- talmand 13y ago
  You're just saying that because you don't understand it. Once you understand it, you'll come to admire the brilliance of the whole thing. At that point, explain it to the rest of us.
- cobrausn 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    don't forget all the loopholes that get added along the way.
talmand 13y ago
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.
seivan 13y ago
This happened in Sweden recently if I recall correctly.
jrs235 13y ago
Slight tangent: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/did-you-just-overpay-or-underpay-your-taxes/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/d... I wonder if Donald gets audited or not because he admits he doesn't know the accuracy of his return.
poulsbohemian 13y ago
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.

35 points by the_arun 13y ago

IRS mining your social graphs for hints to decide whether to/not to audit you

plusbryan 13y ago

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

thenewbtg 13y ago
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...
- Omniusaspirer 13y ago
  The tax code isn't just overly complicated, it's poorly equipped for dealing with a global economy and effectively encourages you to shirk as many taxes as you can legally get away with. This is especially noticeable in the business world where you're forced to file more frequently and actively put yourself at a disadvantage if you don't exploit the loopholes to the level your competitors do. There's a certain irony in wealthy corps/individuals being able to pay less effective taxes than the less fortunate purely because they can afford to work the system to their advantage. The only reason most of these gimmicks are possible is because the government is so damn determined to influence behavior through taxes.
- talmand 13y ago
  Wait, you say it's wholly untrue but the immediately say that it's somewhat true. Can't disagree with the rest.
  - thenewbtg 13y ago
    I apologize, I believe it's functionally untrue. I believe functionally that Intuit has approximately 0% effect on tax reform. I was being glib in saying that they do have an effect, because to me a 0.01 - 0.05% level of effect is negligible.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > 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 13y ago
    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.
yukichan 13y ago
I wonder if tax credits on mortgage payment interests is a contributing blocker to tax reform. If they got rid of it, buying and owning a house would be so much more expensive. It would make renting more worth it.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  The problem is they can't dump that deduction without causing a massive discontinuity. If you get rid of it, house prices will drop instantly and incumbent owners are holding the bag in the form of their existing mortgage. So the only sane way to get rid of it is start now and phase it out over decades.
protomyth 13y ago
A large cause is all the government handouts we hide in the tax code as deductions. Simplifying the tax code removes a favorite way for politicians to payoff donors.

pyrocat 13y ago

"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.

the_arun 13y ago
:) That is just in case, IRS excludes its fans from its filters.
morgante 13y ago
> 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.

matthewmacleod 13y ago

"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 13y ago
Hmm, this sounds like the old "you shouldn't mind surveillance if you've got nothing to hide" argument.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  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.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - oldstrangers 13y ago
    Except it's exactly the same.
    - swalkergibson 13y ago
      It is not. Tax evasion is an actual crime. The IRS using public signals from social media to determine if somebody is cheating on their taxes is not the same as the NSA tracking your GPS location via your cell phone at all times.
      - oldstrangers 13y ago
        "If you don't have something to hide then you shouldn't mind" ... "They do have something to hide, so fuck them!" is two sides of the same coin.

curlyquote 13y ago

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

swalsh 13y ago

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)

akosednar 13y ago

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.

cheetahtech 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- john_b 13y ago
  > "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." This would have the desired effect, but also others. Mostly that the IRS would suddenly have a lot of individuals who owed money to the government but couldn't pay it. I agree with this in principle, but the current system has trained (intentionally, I would argue) people to not think about what they pay in taxes or what it gets used for. Suddenly reverting to a system that demands financial planning and responsibility from individuals isn't workable. It takes time.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  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.

Ricapar 13y ago

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 13y ago
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...
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  There are different levels of audit. The "standard" audit they apply to everyone is basically a cross-check of your 1099's and W-2's, as well as a form check to look for computational errors (or didn't-follow-instructions errors). When people say "I am being audited", they mean the higher levels of audit where they must produce extra records for the IRS to prove deductions & such.
- matwood 13y ago
  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.

DrJokepu 13y ago

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.

talmand 13y ago
You're just saying that because you don't understand it. Once you understand it, you'll come to admire the brilliance of the whole thing. At that point, explain it to the rest of us.
cobrausn 13y ago
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 13y ago
  don't forget all the loopholes that get added along the way.

talmand 13y ago

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.

seivan 13y ago

This happened in Sweden recently if I recall correctly.

jrs235 13y ago

Slight tangent: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/did-you-just-overpay-or-underpay-your-taxes/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/15/d... I wonder if Donald gets audited or not because he admits he doesn't know the accuracy of his return.

poulsbohemian 13y ago

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.